First: this is a really short (less than 2 minutes) horror flick featuring a mom, sick child and a demon (or a rough equivalent). The demon has a limitation that is common in folklore. It’s a reasonably good little short, showing someone with a *serious* problem. But there is a solution to the problem…
So, first watch the video, then click the “continue reading” to see a straightforward solution.
A combo of computer aided design and machining with low-cost Chinese labor and an expansion in the market for model kits has in recent years led to the availability of model kits the likes of which would have been simply unthinkable when I was a kid. For example: the P.1000 “Ratte.” The Ratte was one of the goofier ideas to come out of Nazi Germany, a 1000 ton tank that used two U-boat diesel engines to haul around a turret from the Tirpitz-class battleships packing two 38-cm cannon. The idea – beloved of Hitler – was clearly insane and while some doodling on the concept was done, no evidence of serious engineering has come to light. It’s the sort of idea that would not be seriously contemplated either as a weapon of war or as a commercial high production run injection molded kits.
Except…
A few years ago, the Chinese model kit company “Takom” released an injection molded kit of the Ratte in 1/144 scale. Even at that small scale the model was good sized, because the design was just that insane. I was honestly a bit shocked that someone would go to the trouble of releasing a 1/144 scale kit of the Ratte. But now there’s this:
A Ratte in 1/72 scale, in a box big enough to make a dog house out of. The company behind this, Modelcollect (another Chinese company), has a whole range of truly befuddling designs. Not only perfectly understandable models like 1/72 B-52s and B-2s and, at long last, a 1/48 A-12 Avenger II, but also a bunch of WWII German tanks redesigned as walking “mechs.” I dunno. Well, the Japanese go bughouse for model kits of ridiculous giant fighting anthropomorphic robots, so maybe the Chinese like quadrupedal King Tiger tanks. Well, there are two billion Chinese, so it doesn’t take a big market share to still end up with a big market.
So the Black Panthers have taken to the streets to stump for a politician they like. Ain’t nuthin’ wrong with that. They are armed in public. Ain’t nuthin’ wrong with that, neither… on its own. But they are stumping for a politician and a party who would throw them all into prison for being armed as they are.
I do, however, wonder how the American news media and our cultural betters would respond to the sight of a white racist organization taking to the streets brandishing weapons like this. We’ve seen them freak out over college graduates with guns.
PHOTOS: Armed With Rifles, Black Panthers March For Stacey Abrams In Atlanta
(Images via The New Black Panther Party – Atlanta / Facebook) pic.twitter.com/9c7roRBdBa
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) November 4, 2018
Here’s a guy with a heck of a hobby…
Digging up century-old chemical weapons seems, errr, fun.
Two days after I posted THIS, Black Rifle Coffee released THIS:
See, now here is a horror movie I’d watch, a story I’d like to write: the monsters/evil villains come looking for trouble and rather than finding screaming terrified helpless victims, find people not only ready for them, but enthusiastic about the challenge. And even if the monsters are not stoppable via normal means, doesn’t mean overwhelming and entertaining firepower can’t ruin their day…
Slasher flicks have never really been my thing, never cared for the genre. Heck, I’ve never seen the original “Halloween,” so far as I know. Still, something about this writeup about the new sequel speaks to me:
…Laurie Strode, played once again by Jamie Lee Curtis. Laurie has excellent reason to suspect the presence of dark and evil in the world, and she taught her daughter from a young age about firearms, the fallen nature of man, the failures of the state, the blessings of rugged individualism, and the collected works of Russell Kirk. Okay, maybe not that last part, but still: Halloween is a gung-ho, gun-loving, liberal-trolling, capital-punishment-backing conservative manifesto in the format of a slasher flick.
Huh.
The first two nuclear weapons dropped are very well known. But for a long time that was not the case. In fact, the appearance of these weapons was hidden from the public until late 1960, more than 15 years after they were dropped. As a consequence, there are a number of depictions of these bombs – magazine articles, movies and such – that show configurations that are fanciful and entirely dead wrong because the artists behind them had no idea what an atom bomb actually looked like.
But in late 1960 the Atomic Energy Commission (replaced in 1974 with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission… note that even the names denote a change from an organization meant to provide energy to one now devoted to regulation) finally released a pair of photos showing Fat Man and Little Boy. Since then far more information has been released, including the display of real but inert bomb casings in numerous museums.
This is how Aviation Week reported the reveal in the December 12, 1960 issue. Note that even then there was a distinct tinge of political correctness, a fear that showing photos of the bombs would hurt feelings. There’s also discussion of putting the Enola Gay on display at the Smithsonian, something that would not come to fruition for another four decades.
An advertisement from 1960, illustrating Marquardts work on the Project Pluto nuclear ramjet:
If you want more on Project Pluto – and who wouldn’t, as the idea of a locomotive-sized cruise missile flying at virtually unlimited range at tree to level and at a blistering Mach 3+ is fascinating – check out Aerospace Projects Review issue V2N1.
Satellite imagery shows that the Russians seem to be packing up and going home, abandoning the”nuclear powered cruise missile” test site. The article suggests that this is because the missile isn’t working. Other explanations include that the Russians are simply testing elsewhere. In any event, some interesting photos here.
Huh. I’m not sure which is more unusual-seeming: that the second-in-command at SpaceX said that they would indeed launch American space weapons… or that it seems odd that an American aerospace firm would even be questioned about such a thing.
During an appearance on Monday at the Air Force Association’s annual symposium, Shotwell was thrown a question she said she had never heard before: “Would SpaceX launch military weapons?”
“I’ve never been asked that question,” Shotwell said somewhat surprised. Her response: “If it’s for the defense of this country, yes, I think we would.”
This should be such an uncontroversial point of view that you wouldn’t even expect it to be raised. But we do indeed live in a time different from when Republic advertised their fighters, Boeing advertised their bombers and Martin advertised their nuclear weapons-delivering rockets.
Reminds me of one of the more disturbing moments from my university education. I was in a class on orbital dynamics (of of my favorite subjects back in the day) when we got to ballistic suborbital trajectories: ICBMs, in other words. Who wouldn’t want to study that? Well… turned out half a dozen or so of my classmates decided that they didn’t, and refused to study that section. This baffled both the teacher and myself; but where I saw their position as foolishness worthy of nothing but mockery, the teacher buckled and allowed them to do something else (details escape me). Even if the idea of lobbing nukes to the far side of the world fills you with existential dread, studying the subject is just math. And getting better at the math of lobbing nukes makes you better at… oh, I dunno, getting better at the math of lobbing reusable first stages to land them on floating landing pads.
Vaguely related: promo art from 1961, published in Aviation Week, with a number of corporations proudly proclaiming their involvement in aerospace weaponry.
