Some more Utah skies via phone:
Jun 042017
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Jun 042017
Probable correction:
Color me stunned, but the article is written in a way that seems to exaggerate the actual claims. For the moment I assume that the stage didn’t so much “splash down softly” as “plummet from the sky at terminal velocity.”
——
Bwuh?
NASA Considering Using Pre-flown SpaceX Rockets for Cargo Flights
SpaceX has also had success recently in recovering Falcon 9 second stages and payload fairings, the nose cones that protect satellites and other spacecraft during launch. After its work was done on Saturday, for example, the Falcon 9 second stage apparently splashed down softly in the ocean southwest of Australia, Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX’s vice president of build and flight reliability, said during Saturday’s press conference.
Hold up. The second stage soft-landed in the ocean??? Way to bury the lede, guys.
Jun 032017
Some recent photos of the Utah sky taken with my 3+ year-old camera phone.
Jun 032017
They launched a Dragon resupply module to the ISS today and successfully recovered the first stage. Not new. But this is the Dragon second flight; that’s new. They recover it and it’ll be *really* new.
SpaceX sticks 11th rocket landing after launching first used Dragon capsule
Later this summer SpaceX will do their first Falcon 9 heavy launch, and they are apparently planning to *try* to recover the second stage, though they are apparently not very confident of success. But eventually they’ll get it, and then they’ll have a reusable first stage, reusable second stage and mostly reusable payload.
Jun 032017
Yet no confirmation, might have just been an accident. But it sure sounds familiar…
London police report ‘incident’ on London Bridge
Of course, accidents usually don’t involve stabbings. But you know, Europeans are a funny lot…
London Bridge chaos as ‘several people mown down’ by van sparking station evacuation and armed cop response
Eye witnesses report that victims were receiving CPR after being ‘stabbed’
Jun 032017
Not unrelated to the immediately preceding post about Kekistan is the marvelous new invention I just read about, “Orcposting.” This one is an incredible fertile field to be sown…
Jun 032017
I’ve been watching the rise of Kek & Kekistan for the last several months with what can best be described as “bemusement.” If you are unaware of Kek/Kekistan… first, where the hell have you been? Second, the easiest way to think of Kek it to think back to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. FSM and the Church of the FSM were created as satire, a way to poke creationists with a pointy stick. They use they same lame-brained arguments in favor of teaching “intelligent design” by introducing a wholly ridiculous pseudo-religion that is just as valid an explanation at the traditional “creationist” explanations.
Kek/Kekistan is the same sort of idea, but instead of aimed at creationism, it’s aimed at political correctness and current Leftist extremism. The idea seemed to have arisen after it was pointed out that online trolls -specifically “sh*tposters” who tend to go after social justice warriors – qualify as an ethnic group under British law. What seems to typify Kekistanis is a willingness, nay, a gleeful enthusiasm, to poke the PC talking point of the day, to take the big scary moral panic and wear it like a party hat. The biggest symbol of this is Pepe The Frog. Originally a conventional cartoon character, it was turned into a meme For All Purposes. But since it was *also* sometimes used by members of the alt-Right, many on the far left freaked directly out and declared that Pepe was a symbol of white supremacy/nationalism. If the Left had ignored it, Pepe would have faded away. But they couldn’t let it go, so the alt-Right took it and ran with it. And now Pepe has gone through an apotheosis, turning into Kek (a frog-headed Egyptian god and symbol of the Kekistanis). This is a defining feature of the Kekistanis; the thing you freak out about the most is the thing they’re going to proudly wave as a banner. Call them Nazis and they will start waving swastikas around. Scream at them that they’re racist, and you’ll be bombarded with a million racist memes. The flag of Kekistan is now a green, modified version of a Nazi-era German military flag. The motive isn’t, I think, to actually be racist, but to irritate the hell out of the people who too easily toss such accusations about. The moment you see something and say “that’s not funny,” they’ll take it as a challenge. Too soon for Hitler jokes? Guess what’s coming.
If nothing else, Kekistan is a stellar example of basic human nature. The left demands that certain ideas, thoughts, images and symbols be never allowed. They demand that identity politics be held up as inviolable and divine. And the Kekistanis, being human, respond to such demands as the best of all humans do… with an upraised middle finger. For decades the PC brigade has used beratement and browbeating to bully people into not speaking up, and this sort of thing – and the election of the idiot buffoon Trump – is the natural response. And at least unlike the anti-Trumpers, the Kekistanis are generally funny and non-violent.
On my recent trip to the USAF Museum in Dayton, somewhere along the line I stopped and had a Kek spotting out in the wild:
The video below is a satire of the sort of thing MSNBC would put out about Kekistan. And it takes a good long while to be obvious that it’s *not* straight outta MSNBC.
Insofar as there is an ideology, it seems to be something that was virtually inevitable. For my entire adult life I’ve seen the PC fascists trying to control actions, thought and speech; the lefties should be damned grateful that the result seems to be this satirical response rather than a boot to the head.
Here’s a description of the Kekistanis from the guy who essentially created ’em, YouTuber Sargon of Akkad:
Jun 032017
Ha. Military-style satire.
ISIS condemns Kathy Griffin for cultural appropriation
The self-proclaimed Islamic State has issued a statement condemning self-proclaimed comedian Kathy Griffin, accusing her of “cultural appropriation” after she posed for a photograph with a mock severed head of President Donald Trump.
The group, which has been protective of its brand ever since taking over vast swaths of Iraq and Syria and establishing itself as the premier beheading agency in the Middle East, said it was deeply disturbed by Griffin’s “ignorant and offensive” use of a “sacred Islamic State tradition.”
…
“Of course, the West’s social justice ‘warriors’ have always been our ally, and once again, they did not disappoint. We’re thankful that our fatwa friends immediately identified her offensive appropriation of one of our most cherished rituals,” said Aahil al-Raqqa, an executioner for the group.
Heh. The Duffle Blog is usually pretty good; this one nails it.
Others:
Navy unable to locate clitoral combat ship
Coast Guard under fire for saving too many straight white males
Army Welcomes First Openly Transgender Military Working Dogs
Riot breaks out at Fort Hood dining facility after menu promises chocolate milf
World Begs U.S. To Use Military Force in Syria So They Can Bitch About It Later
Air Force to allow average looking, uncool people to become fighter pilots
LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, Va. — Due to manning cuts and years of major airliners paying higher wages for sweet abs, the U.S. Air Force Air Combat Command may begin allowing normal-looking people become fighter pilots as early as 2020, sources…
Jun 022017
This purports to show the effect of sea level rise on new York City after two°C of temperature increase. This is of course relevant today since Trump pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Accord/Agreement/Anything-But-A-Treaty, which would have accomplished nothing because its strictures on the US were minimal and nonexistent on the likes of China and India, both of which are far greater “carbon footprint” threats going forward than the US. Additionally, since Trump made his announcement a number of US cities and states have come together to say they are going to reduce CO2 by the US’s agreed-upon amount anyway… which shows that it’s not the FedGuvs job in the first place.
Anyway, the video. It’s technically really good; the water in the streets looks real. I’ve seen some people claim that the water levels are inconsistent from street to street, but I don’t know NYC, so I can’t comment on that. I’ve also seen people comment that this is some terrifying vision of the future, but I honestly don’t see it. For starters, the ocean level rise shown here is what you might expect after a century or more. And if NYC does anything, it’s knock down old stuff and build new stuff. Sea level rise like this in a century? Not a problem. Secondly: I’m forever hearing New Yorkers whine about traffic. Well… here ya go! The city streets are now cleared off not only of cars, but of junkies and bums. Plus, look at the buildings, water or no: most of them look like, well, “tenements.” Horrifyingly soul-crushing people-warehouses. The city just looks *ugly.* From the looks of it, most of NYC getting washed away could only improve the joint.
AND ANOTHER THING:
The radio and TV talking heads keep yapping about how the US is abandoning “leadership” of fixing climate change to the likes of China. Ummmm…. how, exactly? Before this, American tech firms, science labs and universities would invent some spiffy new PV cell or improvement thereupon, the Chinese would promptly Culturally Appropriate it and mass produce the hell out of them via slave labor and crappy environmental regulations, flooding the market with PV arrays so cheap that it doesn’t make sense to manufacture them in the US. After Trump’n’Paris… how’s this going to be different? What *exactly* was the US FedGuv going to do otherwise that would have been so important that American companies, if it made any economic sense at all, weren’t going to do anyway? Before this, was the US government going to crank out terawatt-class thorium reactors by the cargo ship load, but now they’re not?
Jun 022017
The essence of maturity is not only knowing when to deny yourself, it’s doing so.
As an example, may I present this video of a caracal kitten making the oddest, cutest noise to attract its humans attention in order to feed it:
Now, what sort of inhuman monster looks at that and says to themselves, “naw, I have no interest in that beast.” But here’s the thing: caracal kittens grow up. And when they do and it’s time for foodening, you get this:
And you can see that this animal is *not* what you’d call exactly domesticated. There are several noises contained here that should be enough to convince a wise person that this is not a pet to keep. Not least of which is the sound of bones being *crushed.*