Jan 032023
 

Something like 15-20 years ago I bought a 1/18 scale P-47D “Ultimate Soldier” toy. This line of large scale accurate fighter planes was sort of peak Golden Age Of Toys For Adults, even though they sold for a reasonable price at WalMart. They make great display pieces even without structural modifications or repainting, but they are generally screaming for such.

 

Anyway, the P-47D spent years on a shelf in my shop in Utah. From time to time it caught direct sunlight. This discolored the paint *slightly,* but it turned the originally crystal clear canopies milky white. I’ve left them in the dark for some years to see if that would help… nope. I boiled them… nope. I nuked them, if perhaps briefly, with UV; no change. Anybody got any ideas? Why did this happen? How can it be reversed? Scrubbing has shown that this is not a surface feature, but seems to be throughout the plastic.

At some point, recasting them with crystal clear resin might be the only solution, but it’s not one I’m fond of. None of the other canopies did this, so it would seem these two pieces of plastic came from a bad batch.

 Posted by at 8:56 pm
Dec 232022
 

A McDonalds in Texas is fully automated (except, of course, for the people maintaining the machines). Expect to see more of these… especially in places with legally mandated high minimum wages. So much for “entry level” jobs…

 

Welcome to the First Ever McDonald’s Where You’re Served by Robots—In Texas

@foodiemunster

@McDonald’s has a new test concept

♬ Jingle Bell Rock – Bobby Helms

 

 

 Posted by at 8:17 pm
Dec 232022
 

Here’s something interesting…

 

AI-Created Comic Has Been Deemed Ineligible for Copyright Protection

If AI created art is ineligible for copyright protection, that’ll set up a roadblock to the forthcoming artpoclypse. It isn’t complete protection, of course… I’m sure there’s some spectrum between “eligible” and “ineligible.” How much manual tinkering a bit of AI-art needs is yet to be determined.

 

Also… it appears that the US Copyright Office believes that copyright protection is available only for art created by humans. Right now that’s fair… but in the future, probably not. AI might change from an unthinking tool to actual entities, with civil rights and all that. Someone twenty years from now might get bored and genetically tinker with Bonobos or Bottlenose and uplift them to full human sentience; at which point granting *their* personhood would mean that any art they create should merit their copyright.

 Posted by at 9:44 am
Dec 192022
 

Artists stage mass protest against AI-generated artwork on ArtStation

 

At best they’ll *slightly* delay the development and deployment of AI that will render them utterly obsolete. Welcome to being just like everybody else.

So wouldn’t it make sense, rather than *not* producing art right now, to instead take this time to crank out as much art, and the best art, so that they can to try to maximize their income potential while they actually can? Artists are no more going to prevent the introduction of AI art than factory workers prevented automation.

 Posted by at 11:37 pm
Dec 082022
 

Not politically, literally:

 

The Great Purpling

 

I’ve noticed a number of streetlights around here pumping out a distinctly blue/purple light for a while now. It’s disconcerting… it’s not an unpleasant color, but it’s *different,* and everything looks funny under it. I thought it was a choice, but it turns out it’s a manufacturing flaw.

 

 Posted by at 10:21 am
Dec 062022
 

… of just what constitutes this garbage. What fraction is paper? How much plastic? And how much is just sticks and weeds, stuff not normally considered “garbage” in the ecosystem?

 

 

In any event, this mechanism seems to be working quite well. I wonder if it could be made actually productive, though, rather than just harm-reducing: instead of shipping the garbage off to be landfilled somewhere, run it directly into an incinerator. Use the heat and the water to spin a turbine; use the turbine to drive a generator. Use the generator to power not only the mechanism, but feed excess power – if any – into the grid.

 Posted by at 7:15 pm
Dec 062022
 

This is weird. And if this is confirmed, it’ll mean… something.

 

Asymmetry Detected in the Distribution of Galaxies

As if playing a cosmic game of Connect the Dots, the researchers drew lines between sets of four galaxies, constructing four-cornered shapes called tetrahedra. When they had built every possible tetrahedron from a catalog of 1 million galaxies, they found that tetrahedra oriented one way outnumber their mirror images.

Huh.

 

Might be related to why the universe has more matter than antimatter. Or maybe it’s just that Azathtoth is right handed. Who knows.

 Posted by at 7:16 am
Nov 242022
 

Not enough time to do anything about it, but then it was only a meter or so wide. At that side it was probable to be harmless. Ten times bigger, though, it starts to get worrisome. A hundred time the diameter, you need to stand up, take notice and consider launching the nukes.

 

This was not the first impactor to be detected prior to impact. In March, a 2-meter asteroid was detected 2 hours prior to impact.

 

NASA program predicted impact of small asteroid over Ontario, Canada

 Posted by at 10:31 am