No need for the blue monkeys?

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Jul 282023

The driving motivation behind everything in the movie “Avatar” was humanity’s need of the mineral “Unobtanium.” It was special since it was a room temperature superconductor, allowing for a lot of advanced technologies. In the movie, humanity would travel light years and wipe out primitive alien civilizations to get it. But recent news suggests that we might not need to… but only if the study turns out to be true. And scientists are dubious.

A spectacular superconductor claim is making news. Here’s why experts are doubtful

Korean scientists claim to have created a room temperature superconductor (up to 127 decrees C). The video *seems* to back that up, but who knows. This will need to be tested and replicated. And the chunk they’ve displayed seems kinda cruddy… but the history of prior low-temperature superconductors seems to be that the first bits out the gate are cruddy, with quality following along as production techniques are refined.

*IF* this pans out, there are two fantastic takeaways here. The first is “hey, awesome, room temperature superconductor.” Maglev trains and such become a lot easier. CAT scanners won’t need liquid helium supplies to keep their magnetic bearings working.

But the second thing to note should be noted and noted *hard:* the material is primarily lead, doped with copper oxygen and phosphorus. You know what I *don’t* see there? I don’t see “rare-earth elements that we have to go hat in hand to the Chinese to obtain.” We don’t need to throw money into third-world hellholes to have them scrape vast pits into the ground. Domestic mining and production would seem entirely feasible.

That’s all great. I hope it bears out. But history is full of fabulous press releases that turned out to be fraudulent or simply wrong. That’s certainly possible here. We’ll just need to wait and see.

Here’s how Wikipedia describes the material. See how far you get before you go “I dunno what the frak they’re talking about:”

The chemical composition of LK-99 is approximately Pb9Cu(PO4)6O such that—compared to pure lead-apatite (Pb10(PO4)6O)[4]: 5 —approximately one quarter of Pb(II) ions in position 2 of the apatite structure are replaced by Cu(II) ions.[1]: 9 This partial replacement of Pb2+ ions (measuring 133 picometre) with Cu2+ ions (measuring 87 picometre) is said to cause a 0.48% reduction in volume, creating internal stress inside the material.[1]: 8

The internal stress is claimed to cause a heterojunction quantum well between the Pb(1) and oxygen within the phosphate ([PO4]3−) generating a superconducting quantum well (SQW).[1]: 10 Lee et al. claim to show LK-99 exhibits a response to a magnetic field (Meissner effect) when chemical vapor deposition is used to apply LK-99 to a non-magnetic copper sample.[1]: 4 Pure lead-apatite is an insulator, but Lee et al. claim copper-doped lead-apatite forming LK-99 is a superconductor, or at higher temperatures, a metal.[4]: 5

Here’s a video discussing the “discovery” and the causes of skepticism:

New PBYs?

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Jul 262023

Color me not just skeptical, but damn near dismissive:

Reviving The PBY Catalina For Modern Warfare Is This Company’s Goal

I fully support the manufacture of newly designed, modernized PBY “Catalina” flying boats. Damned things were awesome 80 years ago; had I buckets of money, I’d fund the program myself. But *this* program does not inspire a great deal of (i.e “any”) confidence. All they show are a few *very* low re and simplistic CG renders of a modernized PBY… lacking the braces that kept the parasol wing from snapping off during maneuvers. I know materials have advanced a lot since the 1930’s, but come *on,* that design just don’t look right without those braces.

Recall that just over a year ago an Australian company said they were going to remanufacture the Grumman Albatross flying boat. The last “news” update to their website was December of 2022.

Woke morons

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Jul 262023

Study results: unsurprising.

Higher Cognitive Ability, Less Concern for Political Correctness – Study Finds

As you can see, there was a moderate positive correlation between cognitive ability and support for freedom of speech, and a moderate negative correlation between cognitive ability and concern for political correctness. (The asterisks tell us these results are statistically significant.)

North Americans with higher cognitive ability are more supportive of free speech and less concerned about political correctness. They’re less woke.

It’s a single study and not a terribly comprehensive one. But with a sample size of a single Kamala Harris or AOC or Swalwell, it’s easy to conclude that wokism leads to a massive case of brain rot.

Return of the Automat

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Jul 262023

An “Automat” was a style of restaurant that was basically a great big vending machine. A wall, or part of one, was covered in little cubbyholes with locked doors; behind each door was a piece of food that the customer could see and pay for. Feed in your coins, the door would pop open and you’d get your sandwich or apple or slice of pie or whatever. Door closes, and the guy working on the *other* side of the wall puts a new one in the cubbyhole. Used to be real popular, but they faded away a couple generations ago.

They seem to be making a comeback, and it’s really not surprising. The video below is an interview with the owner of an Automat franchise; economics is driving this, as three employees can service 250 customers a day, where a regular restaurant would require six. And of course as the minimum wage continues to be driven higher and automation continues to be driven cheaper, soon enough the production of those individual food items will be automated and the cubbyholes will be filled by a robotic arm.

There is another aspect that makes the automat format attractive: this separates the staff almost entirely from the customers… which makes them harder to rob. Additionally, other than the individual cubbyhole doors and things like windows and furniture, violent morons have little to reach that they could destroy. BLM or Antifa rioters come by to smash up the joint? No cash registers or computers or stoves or anything else to reach, so long as the staff doors are secure. The food-doors would be small and mass produced in vast numbers; they would likely be both cheap and durable… and stocked in large numbers in a few boxes in the back. A Mostly Peaceful Protest sweeps by, you’re closed for a day while the staff swaps out doors, and then you’re back in business. There are those customers who are provoked to violence not because of politics, but because they are crazy or stupid; they order the wrong thing, or their order is screwed up, and they lose their minds and started screaming and flailing. With an automat, they see what they’re going to get before they pay. So long as the mechanisms work, there *should* be reduced incentive for violence. Of course, some people are just going to go buggo anyway, but here humans are largely removed from the other side if the equation.

So long as we’re bringing back things from the Depression era, can we swap out Brutalist architecture for Art Deco?

STEM smartassery is best smartassery

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Jul 222023

Researchers horrified, decry rise of ‘fascism’ as students send mocking responses to woke survey

Academic researchers condemned students’ irreverent and offensive responses to an LGBTQ survey, claiming the pushback indicates “fascist ideologues” are “living ‘inside the house’ of engineering and computer science.”

In an article for the Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies, academics from Oregon State University wrote about their shock at receiving sarcasm and mockery in response to their research into undergraduate LGBTQ students studying in STEM fields. …

According to the article, when the “malicious” subjects were asked to fill out demographic data, “12 respondents (24%) indicated their gender as being related to a helicopter or aircraft” ranging from an “Apache Attack Helicopter” to a “V22 osprey.” In the section declaring one’s disabilities, responses ranged from claiming to be “illiterate” to lamenting “My country is run by communists,” or even declaring that identifying as transgender is a disability in itself due to “the inability to come to terms with biological reality.”

One respondent claimed to identify as a gift card as their gender. Under racial and ethnic identities they said, “I’m an ethnic gift card,” and for disability the answer was “I don’t have enough gift cards.”

There is hope for the future; these kids have their heads on right.

Are you questioning whether there is increased mental illness in Certain Special Groups? Maybe this bit will help you make up your mind on the subject:

The research team declared that the mockery they received “had a profound impact on morale and mental health,” particularly for one transgender researcher who was “already in therapy for anxiety and depression regarding online anti-trans rhetoric.” The paper claimed that “managing the study’s data collection caused significant personal distress, and time had to be taken off the project to heal from traumatic harm” of having to read students’ responses in the survey.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

The whole article is entertaining as hell; the “researchers” are so screwed up that they think any mockery of their views is down to “fascism.”

Babylon 5 coming to Blu Ray

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Jul 202023

To be released on December 5, the full series (21 disks, nearly 79 hours) will cost about $100 to $135. The filmed scenes were scanned at 4K and color corrected and such, then brought down to Blu Ray rez; the CGI scenes were upscaled with AI. I do wonder if there might be thinking that in the future there’ll be a 4K release, but that would pretty much require the CGI scenes to be completely remastered. I’d support that, but I honestly doubt there’d be a financial case to be made for it. This release doesn’t seem to include the movies beyond the pilot.

Disney must hate money

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Jul 152023

Photos have emerged from the next Disney live action remake of one of their classic animated films, “Snow White.” You know, the one about the Germanic princess with skin so white it looked like snow, who ended up running around with seven dwarves? Well… about all that, Disney has decided to continue the unprofitable trend of de-whitening European folk tales.

There are claims that these *aren’t* the actual “dwarves.” But given that “Snow White” is to be played by a Hispanic woman… why assume that these *aren’t* an accurate depiction? And remember, Hollywood is hardly above lying to the public’s face. Remember when Benedict Cumberbatch *wasn’t* playing Khan? Or when all the remakes and reboots of classic animated series were supposed to be faithful continuations that the existing fans would recognize, love and appreciate? Yeah… lying liars who lie have a tendency to lie.

And… it turns out that those claims of “fake” are probably themselves fake:

‘Snow White’ Set Pics Stir Anti-Woke Criticism

Asked for comment on the brouhaha, a Disney spokesperson initially told The Daily Beast “the photos are fake and not from our production” and added that the Mouse House wanted a correction from the Mail.

Hours later, however, Disney’s PR shop completely backtracked and said the photos were from the production but were not official “photos”—chalking up the earlier statement to a misunderstanding.

Dear readers, consider this: somewhere out in the multiverse there’s a version of the Disney corporation that decided to do a live action remake of “Snow White,” and decided to try their hardest to make it look like the original animated classic. And somewhere else out there is another Disney that decided to do a “Snow White” remake that was faithful to the Grimm tale as written. And somewhere further down the multiverse line is a version of Disney that decide to say “Fark it” and make a truly messed-up remake that swaps out all the “disneyfication” for hard-core “let’s make this thing like Germans a thousand years ago would have made it, with friggen’ terrifying monsters and death and horror straight out of Teutonic legends and myths and folk tales,” likely directed by del Toro with the aid of the ghosts of Lovecraft and Giger.

Any one of those is something I would have been interested in. *This* worlds Disney? Nah.

Note: the “dwarves” from Norse/Germanic folk tales weren’t just short humans. They were a different order of being entirely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_(folklore)

Anyway, Hollywood is basically on strike now, with writers and actors on the picket line. I imagine this might effect “Snow White,” as well as every other movie and TV show out there. But you know what? Who friggen’ cares. Things have gotten so slow in Hollywood that people have come to expect *years* between seasons of shows… seasons with a tiny number of episodes. long gone are the likes of *good* Star Trek series where you could expect 20+ episodes every year. now… Eight? Ten? And with many shows, the gap between seasons lasting a number of years. When did season 3 of “The Orville” end? When will season 4 start… if it ever does? And let’s face it: there are a metric fark-ton of old movies and shows available for streaming, more than enough to tide most people over for the most extended of strike. And beyond even that… YouTube and the like are loaded to the gills with lone creators who are far more entertaining than quarter-billion-dollar productions. So you go right ahead and shut down production, Hollywood. if it strangles nonsense like “Snow White,” so much the better.

How long before I’m able to say “Hey, AI, make me a four-hour faithful adaptation of ‘Snow White’ Using the production team from “The Lord Of The Rings” and starring Marylin Monroe as Snow White’?” Because that’ll be the end of Hollywood.

Depressed? Kiss your rights goodbye.

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Jul 142023

On some level, “red flag laws” make some sense. On a perhaps more important level, they are a slippery slope that slides down into totalitarianism. Take, for example, a law proposed for the state of Tennessee:

Additional Red Flag proposal seeks to target individuals on specific prescriptions

Another “Red Flag” category of legislation has surfaced on April 20, 2023. This one is written as an amendment to House Bill 768 by Representative John Ragan and Senate Bill 522 by Senator Frank Nicely At this time, we have no information to indicate that either of these sponsors are cooperating with the proposed amendment or even willing to consider it.

This bill comes from a different angle. What it seeks to do is to create a new class of prohibited persons in Tennessee who will loose their 2nd Amendment rights, perhaps permanently, based solely on whether the individual is taking one of ten (10) specifically listed prescription drugs. The drugs listed in the legislation are:

(1) Citalopram;
(2) Fluvoxamine;
(3) Paroxetine;
(4) Fluoxetine;
(5) Sertraline;
(6) Venlafaxine;
(7) Mirtazapine;
(8) Nefazodone;
(9) Bupropion; and
(10) Escitalopram.

As written, the proposed amendment would require that the individual receiving a prescription for one of these drugs would have to sign an acknowledgement that the person:

(A) Understands and agrees to be barred from the purchase of a firearm for at least the duration of the treatment regimen; and
(B) Understands and agrees that information concerning the prescription will be shared with the Tennessee bureau of investigation and that the patient waives the patient’s non-disclosure rights under the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) (42 U.S.C. § 1320d et seq.) and other federal and state confidentiality laws for purposes of sharing information concerning the prescription with the Tennessee bureau of investigation.

All ten of those drugs are prescription anti-depressants. This article was written back in April; I can’t find whether or not the amendment has passed But the fact that it was proposed at all is Not A Good Thing. To have a natural-born citizen’s basic civil and human rights deleted at the stroke of a pen not because you’ve committed violence, not because you’re a threat to yourself or others, but simply because you’re depressed and under a proper doctors legally-prescribed care, is appalling.How about let’s start with “Have you committed arson? Shoplifting? Vandalism? Assault? Strong-arm robbery? Rioting? Looting? Then you lose the right to vote for a term of X years, along with all government benefits.” Start there, see how it goes for a generation, *then* start looking at laws against people who’ve done nothing wrong.

An exhausting few days

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Jul 132023

I have no idea if it has been apparent or not based on recent blog/Twitter postings that the last few days have been frazzling for me. But the short form is that Buttons has been quite sick… and terribly miserable. Several days of vet visits finally culminated today in the conclusion that he *probably* is suffering from another bout of pancreatitis, though the initial symptoms were quite different from the earlier bouts. This time it seemed as if he was plugged up somehow, but a X-ray showed that he’s clear. Blood work revealed the infection markers of pancreatitis, so he was treated for that today… and he has shown improvement.

A vocally miserable cat is not something I recommend. Especially one so miserable that he chooses to remain inert and just wail. AAAARRRRGH.

This was him yesterday, looking hopeless.

This was at the vet today prior to the doc coming in. You can see just how absolutely thrilled he was.

X-ray of his innards. It reportedly shows that his intestines are largely empty. To me is seems to indicate that his abdomen is infected with a space-squid of some kind.

And this critter is “Ziggy” the French bulldog who was in the vet clinic waiting room as I was checking out. Friendly little guy even if he looks like he aught to be gnawing the foot off of a selfless dark age princess of Urland.

Buttons seems to be on the mend. He does not appear to be in agony anymore; instead he simply seems to be wore out. He didn’t eat or drink for several days; he has recent eaten and drank *some,* though not a lot. Progress, anyway.

This has cost a *lot.* I need to put a ton of stuff on ebay, both to cover this and my other rather voluminous bills, but if you’re of a mind to, feel free to hit the tip jar below…

Pushback

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Jul 132023

The pendulum *may* be beginning to swing the other way on some issues. For a number of years the bulk of the populace has been cowed into obedience over LGBTQ/Pride stuff with threats ranging from being called names to losing their jobs… but more and more people are ceasing to care. Some of this is doubtless due to the over-use of Cancel Culture tactics. And a lot of it is doubtless due to people being fed up with the utter insanity that many weirdos are trying to normalize. “Drag Queen Story Hour” may go down in history as the moment when people, parents of small children in particular, said “enough.”

The video below describes a *lot* of recent events, both of the weirdos trying to threaten people for not going along with the ideology, and with normal folk pushing back.

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