Jan 302023
 

Interesting if true. A 5.9 magnitude earthquake as a direct result of an explosion would indicate a yield on the order of one megaton. more likely would be a sizable *bang* near a fault line, which would be stupid in its own right. The epicenter was apparently a number of kilometers below the ground, so it was almost certainly a perfectly natural quake… but hardly impossible that it was triggered by a sizable explosion.

 

 

 

 Posted by at 8:00 pm
Jan 292023
 

Once again, virtually inevitable technology. And once again, people are dreaming up terrible uses for it. In this case, brain wave monitoring devices to track your mind while on the job to make sure that:

1) Your mind doesn’t wander from the task

2) That you don’t think about other employees

3) That you don’t make plans with other employees for things the company doesn’t want

 

 

 

Any tech like this that can be legally allowed to be mandated by an employer is tech that a government can make legally mandatory for all subjects.

 

 Posted by at 8:56 pm
Jan 262023
 

Yesterday Project Veritas released footage of a Pfizer employee on a “date” talking about how his company is “mutating” the Covid virus. I’ve seen a lot of people losing their minds over this, seeing it as evidence of the virus being weaponized. But I can honestly see it the other way: If you are in the business of producing vaccines, you want to stay ahead of the diseases out there. Figure out where things might be going so you can produce vaccines *before* nature does its thing. If the employee is a bit drunk, or not exactly scientifically versed in what’s going on (this is a marketing guy, after all), then a basic, valid explanation can be described poorly and come off like supervillainy. I don’t know, and since there’s legitimate room for doubt, I didn’t think much of the story. Seemed like a nothingburger to me.

 

But then today. As Project Veritas generally does, they released a second video where they confront the subject openly. Typically the subject does the only thing they can and scuttle away, saying little. But this guy… boy, he’s *special.* I think he’s borked both his career *and* his dating prospects.

 

What we seem to have here is someone who has lived a fairly sheltered and entitled life, and the moment things don’t go his way he loses his little mind. One minor decision different in his life a year ago and I suspect instead of a PV video, we’d be watching him on an Adult Daycare video showing all the snacks he eats in a day, then pissing about how unfair it is that he just got laid off from his six-figure, zero-effort job.

 Posted by at 11:12 pm
Jan 212023
 

Filming pistol rounds hitting a steel plate at 250,000 frames per second. Interesting detail: almost all impacts generate a flash. Since the bullets are lead or lead and copper and the steel plate is almost undamaged, it seems the flash is probably air being compressed to incandescence between hammer and anvil rather than superheated bits of metal sparking.

 

 Posted by at 7:46 pm
Jan 162023
 

I’m not sure how practical this is; the actual tabletop seems like it might not be extravagantly study, being held together with many, many glue joints. But as *art* it’s pretty durned nifty.

 

 Posted by at 1:39 pm
Jan 112023
 

If it works, if it’s affordable, and if it makes us that much less reliant upon the crappier parts of the world… hey, great, soy-infused tires.

Goodyear’s New Tire Is Made From Soybean Oil, Rice Husks And Pine Resin

 

At CES 2023, the company revealed a tire in which 90 percent of its components are materials that come from sustainable sources. Goodyear says there are 17 sustainable ingredients that include things like recycled polyester and plant-based components like soybean oil, rice husk waste, and “bio-renewable” pine tree resin. It also uses steel with “high recycled content” and “ISCC certified mass balance polymers from bio- and bio-circular feedstock.”

There have been concerns about the availability of natural rubber (i.e. from rubber trees on rubber plantations in places like south east Asia) due to the usual concerns: climate change, China, diseases, etc. So if a perfectly cromulent replacement for natural rubber can be had from stuff that can be grown in the US… yahoo. For too long has the wealth of the modern world poured into other lands.

 Posted by at 8:18 am
Jan 092023
 

Here’s your new “zombie apocalypse writing prompt:”

Study using mosquitoes to deliver vaccines has Chinese researchers buzzing

In an article published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications on December 16, researchers said they had developed new technology that can turn a mosquito into a flying vaccine carrier to immunise animals in the wild.

Oh, goodie. Commie scientists studying ways to deliver vaccines, drugs, plagues, manmade horrors beyond your comprehension, etc. via skeeters.

The ChiComs have already announced that they are working on genetic weapons to target specific ethnic groups for everything from death to dumbing-down. This seems like a decent enough way to deliver such a weapon in certain geographic regions.

 

Now, is the idea of immunizing wild animals against pandemics a good one?  Quite possibly. Is the use of skeeters to do this a good idea? Possibly. Would I trust anything produced by people who think that Mao and his policies were good ideas? Not a chance in hell, Skippy. If you buy into socialism, you’ve demonstrated a sufficient lack of critical thinking skills and judgement that you should be kept far away from anything more scientifically complex than a wooden block.

 Posted by at 11:34 pm
Jan 072023
 

The title of this YouTube video claims that “Chrome Lords” was a 1988 movie that ripped off “RoboCop” and “Terminator.” But in fact “Chrome Lords” never existed. The video is ten minutes of “stills” from a movie that never was… all the images were produced by an AI. And other than places where it looks like AI/CGI, it *does* rather look like one of those schlocky 1980’s crapfest movies. So, well done. But here’s the thing… give it a few years (5? 10? 20?) and someone will have an AI take a few text prompts and spit out a full script, feed these images and the new script into another AI… and shazam, “Chrome Lords” will exist as an actual 90 minute horrible movie. But who – if anyone – will own the copyright?

 

 Posted by at 11:53 pm