Asking for a friend.
Technology for the wrong cause pic.twitter.com/VrzQlhSszR
— Clement Ben IFS (@ben_ifs) March 26, 2023
Mar 262023
Mar 242023
Season three of “Star Trek Picard” has been an astonishing breath of fresh “Star Trek.” After four dismal years of “Discovery” insulting the fandom and crapping on the legacy, and two hideous seasons of “Picard” that took a steamer on the character of “Picard,” season three, under new management, has really turned things around. And the latest episode goes so far as to wipe out the Discovery production design aesthetic.
There is a visit to the Star fleet Museum, showing a number of of ships on display. These include the Defiant from Deep Space Nine, Janeway’s Voyager, the NCC-1701-A Enterprise, the HMS Bounty whale hauler… and the USS New Jersey. This is a never before seen, probably never before mentioned ship. Which makes sense; doubtless Star Fleet has lots of ships worthy of keeping that never showed up in any prior episode or movie. But what makes the scene really special: all of these ships are, so far as I can tell, *exactly* what they should be in terms of design. The Bounty looks like a Klingon vessel from Star trek III and IV, not one of those gibberish ships from Discovery. The Enterprise, Voyager, Defiant are all quite correct. And the New Jersey? Take a look:
That’s a *proper* TOS-era Connie-class. Not like the sad spectacle of “Pikes” Enterprise from STD/SNW.
And there’s the fact that Worf looks like a Trek Klingon, not a nuTrek Klingork.
So, yeah. Picard ends with this season. But the powers that be will be *really* missing out if they don’t follow this up with a series that spins off of Picard Season Three… same production crew, same production aesthetic, same writers, same producers. They finally found people to work on Trek who actually *like* Trek.
Mar 192023
After watching these videos, I’m glad I passed on buying into the Mars Industries 1/18 scale “Airwolf” kit. There are a lot of problems with it. A *lot* of problems. There are design issues, uncured resin, quality control issues and, most shocking to me, problems with the vac-formed transparencies. The problem with *those* was that the forms were themselves 3D printed, which is fine… but the prints with their substantial layer lines were not sanded smooth. Thus the transparencies have layer lines. AAAARRRRGH.
Mar 162023
At last, my collection of “Tom Swift Jr.” novels is complete. Since I’m a miser/dirt poor, I was only willing to spend a pittance for each book, but if you wait long enough pretty much everything shows up on ebay.
Woo.
And because why not, here’s the next shelf over:
On a related note: turns out that last year a bit of good news slipped by me un-noticed. The CW a few years ago decided to make a TV series about Tom Swift Jr… it could have been good (I mean, it’s not beyond the bounds of the physically possible), but CW decided instead to make an abomination. The series began airing on May 31, 2022. It was promptly cancelled on June 30, 2022, due to low ratings. And of course: Tom Swift had been turned from a no-nonsense STEM-focused blond blue-eyed teenager with a girlfriend into a flamboyant gay black adult. Thus assuring that the existing fanbase would be uninterested. And who among that fraction of the population for whom “flamboyant gay black man” is a draw would be interested in a crappy sci-fantasy show?
From the Wikipedia article on the series:
Lead actor Richards said of the adaptation, “The original Tom Swift was great for his time and what he represented. At the time, that was the face of young boys, All-American kids full of possibilities. But in 2021, that can look so different. It can look like someone like me—a Black guy who is chocolate, who is queer, who is all those things that we’re told aren’t the normal or the status quo.” He added, “We’re going to dive into so many sectors of identity. We’re going to talk about Blackness—and a different kind of Blackness than we’re used to seeing, which is the Black elite, the 1 percent, the billionaires. We’re also going to talk about a queer boy’s journey into becoming a queer man. Not only self-acceptance, but acceptance as a whole, having the community and people around you.”
Gosh. I wonder why it failed to grab ratings.
Mar 152023
This is a “cut scene” from a video game (“Star Wars: Squadrons”) and is a few years old… but it’s the best official non-“Rogue One” Star Wars that has come out since Disney bought the franchise.
Mar 102023
Yeesh. Bad news on the culture *and* economic fronts:
‘You’re probably going to see a dumbed down version’: Amazon Diluting Henry Cavill’s Warhammer 40K Series Like They Did With ‘The Rings of Power’?
Nobody knows *anything* about Amazons 40K adaptation yet… but basically everyone assumes that it’ll be trash. not because of the soruce material, but in spite of it.
– – –
William Shatner on ‘Star Trek,’ Space Travel and Mortality: ‘I Don’t Have Long to Live’
He’s 91 so, yeah, he’s probably not wrong. But he seems depressed. And not just because of the impending inevitable, but because society is going to hell.
– – –
Silicon Valley Bank collapses after failing to raise capital
Oh, goody. Bank failures.
NEW: Massive line forms outside Silicon Valley Bank in California as customers panic.
Welcome to Biden’s America. It will only get worse.pic.twitter.com/MNCQuKIc9h
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) March 10, 2023
Mar 092023
“You are who you choose to be.” “Superman.”
The question I’ve seen asked before: “why didn’t the giant simply blast the missile?” Because he chose to be Superman, and Superman isn’t a gun (let’s ignore the “heat vision” for just a second).
This guy’s channel is definitely worth watching. He also had the correct response to the end of “The Mist.” His *dogs* had the correct response there.
Mar 062023
Augmented Reality (AR) Sandbox
Yes, there are practical applications here for agricultural planning, water engineering, etc. But let’s face it: if this was affordable, this sort of thing would be used far more by people designing their own worlds for role playing games, sci-fi, fantasy, etc.
Responsive digital effects superimposed onto this augmented reality sandbox creating an interactive tool for geoscience
e.g understanding the effects of rain flows, as virtual water moves across the landscape in accordance with the laws of motion
pic.twitter.com/Nbe1IS510P— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) March 5, 2023
Feb 232023
Turns out the AI are learning to code. Two immediate takeaways from that:
1) There goes another career path.
2) Dear Sweet Baby Jeebus, have none of these people ever watched *any* science fiction? Giving an AI that has a demonstrated lack of morality the ability to re-write itself is the very height of “I *told* you not to do that!” insanity.
I saw a somewhat astonishing thing today. GPT was asked a question that it needed to write code to answer, and given access to a Python REPL. It wrote buggy code, then based on the error message it fixed its own code until it worked (and gave the correct answer). It debugged. pic.twitter.com/O6cdxH8gvC
— John Wiseman (@lemonodor) February 22, 2023
DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM
Feb 182023
So there’s this forthcoming movie, “Space Oddity.” The premise is that a guy is selected for a one-way mission to Mars. This is not an unrealistic idea… for every colonization mission throughout history there have been people – lots of people – who went on a one-way trip. That’s how we colonized the entire planet, and that’s how we’ll colonize the entire universe. But instead of the movie being about the boldness of the mission, the braveness of the guy, the vision for the future… it seems to be about the people dragging him down, refusing to let him have his dream. Fark the future of mankind, stay down here with us in the dirt (rather literally in this case).
It’s not entirely clear how the movie will end, but the trailer seems to be one of those that lays out the entire plot. And it indicates that, gosh, love conquers all, including the urge to explore. To that I say: bah. And to my satisfaction, so do a lot of the commenters on the video.
@joefelice5062
5 days ago