I have questions

 blather, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., Hmm..., politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Nov 282022
 

There is a video at THIS LINK that shows the aftermath of a number of thieves trying to break into a guys property (home? car?). The thieves are uninjured… but they are seriously *cowed* by the cameraman, the owner of the property in question. He’s able to wander around and berate the thieves one by one… and not only do they not run off, they follow his orders which include stripping buck nekkid. It’s amusing to be sure. But there are some plot holes:

1) How does he command their obedience? Some possibilities:

1A) He’s well armed

1B) He has off-camera backup that is well armed

1C) The thieves didn’t know who they were robbing, and now know that he is, perhaps, some locally respected criminal leader. Gang activity is not to be discounted.

2) What happened next? Beyond the NSFW options, were the cops called? Did the interactions end with a series of gunshots? Were the thieves sent on their way sans wallets, phones, clothes, shoes? They seem to have been in possession of one of more cars. Presumably not after this encounter, though it’s reasonable to assume they stole those cars in the first place.

 

Note that one of the thieves was found to have an ankle monitor. This means that not only has he committed crimes before, he’d been arrested, tried, convicted and punished by the legal system… and wasn’t dissuaded from continuing criminality. One wonders if getting caught and humiliated by one of his intended victims might have a more salubrious effect on his future plans than getting arrested would. Given the propensity of so many local legal systems to simply decriminalize crime these days, having non-official responses to criminals might not be a bad thing.

 

As to the ankle monitor: cutting it off might have some captivating results for the guy who’s supposed to be wearing it.

 Posted by at 8:13 pm

Can I buy one square foot of a star and call myself Star Lord?

 AARRRGH, blather, Hmm..., Meh., news, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Nov 262022
 

Doutbless there are more than a few readers old enough to remember when “buying a star” was a thing. You’d send someone money, they’d send you a certificate telling you which of the bajillions of stars in the sky is now yours, and let you know that your name for it has been entered into some “star registry” or some such. I suspect most people of average-and-above intelligence knew that it wasn’t anything of any real seriousness; it had no force of law behind it and is wholly unrecognized by the International Astronomical Union. It was uncharitably a scam; charitably, a briefly amusing gag gift, maybe a nice gesture for a friend or family member.

 

Something similar has popped up in recent months: “Established Titles.” You can pay someone fifty bucks to buy one square foot of Scotland and call yourself “Lord” or “Lady.” The idea seems to have a *lot* of similarities with the star naming bit from decades past. I’m unschooled in British/Scottish law but I do know there’s this bit in the US Constitution:

 

https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-9/clause-8/

 

Article I  Legislative Branch

Section 9 Powers Denied Congress

        • Clause 8 Titles of Nobility and Foreign Emoluments

        • No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

           

If I’m reading that correctly (who knows), this says two main things:

1) The UNITED STATES won’t issue titles such as “Lord” and “Lady,”

and

2) Nobody holding some sort of governmental office in the US will be allowed to accept such a title from a foreign power.

 

So (again assuming I’m reading this correctly), Joe Schmo can be freely granted a title of nobility from the Brits, no problem. But Representative Bill Yahoo or Senator Joe Schmuck is legally barred from doing so. It would, it seems, be a Federal crime for an officeholder to spend fitty bucks and buy themselves that one square foot. Shrug.

Me, personally, I’ve no interest in it. I’m an American; the basic idea of being called a “Lord” or being in any way associated with royalty is distasteful; any American who takes such a title seems to me to have something a little askew about them. But I have little problem with anyone else if they want to buy into this… just so they do so with adequate knowledge of what it really is.

YouTube has been *crawling* with “Established Titles” sponsorships for a few months now, rivaling the “World of Warships,” “World of Tanks,” “League of Legends” and “Raid Shadow Legends” sponsorships that lousy up so many videos. I’m just glad that YouTube has a fast forward function. > > > >  Some YouTubers, though, are less sanguine about this. If you’ve been tempted to spend money on this, perhaps as Christmas gifts, maybe take a look. Some points:

1) These “souvenir plots” aren’t registered with the Scottish government, You don’t actually own the land.

2) You don’t actually become a “Lord” or “Lady.”

3) “Established Titles” is apparently a *Chinese* company. Send them $50, and you end up not actually owning a bit of Scotland, not actually being a “Lord,” and actually funding the Chinese Communist government.

 

 

 

 

 

 Posted by at 1:27 pm

The True Story of Thanksgiving

 blather, Forward!, history, politics, religion, wisdom  No Responses »
Nov 242022
 

I post this every few years because people have a short memory and generally refuse to learn from history.

The Plymouth colony was originally set up to be a Christian commune. This was not some random weird choice on their part, but was based on their reading of the Bible and Plato, both of which suggested that communism was a good and proper system to live under. As governor Bradford related in “Of Plimoth Plantation:” (available on Project Gutenberg)

1. The adventurers & planters doe agree, that every person
that goeth being aged 16. years & upward, be rated at 10li.,
and ten pounds to be accounted a single share.
2. That he that goeth in person, and furnisheth him selfe
out with 10li. either in money or other provissions, be accounted
as haveing 20li. in stock, and in ye devission shall receive a
double share.
3. The persons transported & ye adventurers shall continue
their joynt stock & partnership togeather, ye space of 7. years,
(excepte some unexpected impedimente doe cause ye whole
company to agree otherwise,) during which time, all profits &
benifits that are gott by trade, traffick, trucking, working, fish-
ing, or any other means of any person or persons, remaine still
in ye comone stock untill ye division.
4. That at their coming ther, they chose out such a number
of fitt persons, as may furnish their ships and boats for fishing
upon ye sea; imploying the rest in their severall faculties upon
ye land; as building houses, tilling, and planting ye ground,
& makeing shuch comodities as shall be most use full for ye
collonie.
5. That at ye end of ye 7. years, ye capitall & profits, viz.
the houses, lands, goods and chatles, be equally devided be-
twixte ye adventurers, and planters; wch done, every man
shall be free from other of them of any debt or detrimente
concerning this adventure.
[29] 6. Whosoever cometh to ye colonie herafter, or putteth
any into ye stock, shall at the ende of ye 7. years be alowed
proportionably to ye time of his so doing.
7. He that shall carie his wife & children, or servants, shall
be alowed for everie person now aged 16. years & upward, a
single share in ye devision, or if he provid them necessaries,
a duble share, or if they be between 10. year old and 16., then
2. of them to be reconed for a person, both in trasportation
and devision.
8. That such children as now goe, & are under ye age of
ten years, have noe other shar in ye devi~ion, but 50. acers of
unmanured land.
9. That such persons as die before ye 7. years be expired,
their executors to have their parte or shaff at ye devision, pro-
portionably to ye time of their life in ye collonie.
10. That all such persons as are of this collonie, are to have
their meate, drink, apparell, and all provissions out of ye comon
stock & goods of ye said collonie.

In short, the land was to be worked communally, and the produce distributed equally. Two centuries before Marx, this was a perfectly valid description of “communism.”
How’d it turn out? Well… in 1623, Bradford wrote this:

The experience that was had in this comone course
and condition, tried sundrie years, and that amongst
godly and sober men, may well evince the vanitie of
that conceite of Platos & other ancients, applauded
by some of later times; that ye taking away of
propertie, and bringing in comunitie into a comone
wealth, would make them happy and florishing; as if
they were wiser then God. For this comunitie (so
farr as it was) was found to breed much confusion &
discontent, and retard much imploymet that would
have been to their beneflte and comforte. For ye
yong-men that were most able and fitte for labour &
service did repine that they should spend their time
& streingth to worke for other mens wives and chil-
dren, with out any recompence. The strong, or man
of parts, had no more in devission of victails & cloaths,
then he that was weake and not able to doe a quarter
ye other could; this was thought injuestice. The aged
and graver men to be ranked and [97] equalised in
labours, and victails, cloaths, &c., with ye meaner &
yonger sorte, thought it some indignite & disrespect
unto them. And for mens wives to be commanded to
doe servise for other men, as dresing their meate, wash-
ing their cloaths, &c., they deemd it a kind of slaverie,
neither could many husbands well brooke it. Upon ye
poynte all being to have alike, and all to doe alike,
they thought them selves in ye like condition, and one
as good as another; and so, if it did not cut of those
relations that God hath set amongest men, yet it did
at least much diminish and take of ye mutuall respects
that should be preserved amongst them. And would
have bene worse if they had been men of another
condition. Let none objecte this is men’s corruption,
and nothing to ye course it selfe. I answer, seeing all
men have this corruption in them, God in his wis-
dome saw another course fiter for them.

In the end, it was found that communism bred not plenty, but famine. If you get your share whether you bust your ass in the fields, or just laze about all day, pretty soon people are going to realize that they are being played for chumps if they actually go and bust their asses in the fields all day. And the result of that will be a massive drop in productivity; and in a razors-edge colony on the far end of the map, this is a recipe for disaster.
As a result, the colony rethought its communist ideology:

All this whille no supply was heard of, neither knew
they when they might expecte any. So they begane
to thinke how they might raise as much corne as they
could, and obtaine a beter crope then they had done,
that they might not still thus languish in miserie. At
length, after much debate of things, the Govr (with
ye advise of ye cheefest amongest them) gave way that
they should set corne every man for his owne per-
ticuler, and in that regard trust to them selves; in all
other things to goe on in ye generall way as before.
And so assigned to every family a parcell of land,
according to the proportion of their number for that
end, only for present use (but made no devission for
inheritance), and ranged all boys & youth under some
familie. This had very good success; for it made all
hands very industrious, so as much more corne was
planted then other waise would have bene by any
means ye Govr or any other could use, and saved him
a great deall of trouble, and gave farr better contente.
The women now wente willingly into ye feild, and
tooke their litle-ons with them to set corne, which
before would aledg weaknes, and inabilitie; whom to
have compelled would have bene thought great tiranie
and oppression.

The result here was that going from collectivism to private ownership resulted in a massive increase in productivity and the end of the famine. With the assistance of the Indians in matters agricultural, the colony went from a dying group of starving commies, to a prosperous group of feasting private property owners. If you’re of a mind to believe in God, then the deliverance from Communism is certainly something to be thankful for. The Pilgrims lucked out… a more typical story would have the totalitarian government maintaining the communist ideology until complete disaster struck. But the colony was too thinly populated for a Pilgrim-KGB to maintain order through force.

There are any number of lessons to be learned here. The primary one that *should* be hammered home in every school is the Tragedy of the Commons and how through many long years and many, MANY examples, collective ownership of the means of production is just about the *worst* way to run an economy. It’s strange that when the Myth Of Thanksgiving was being generated over the last few hundred years that it focused on the Pilgrims and the Indians playing nice, rather than the triumph of privatization over communism. You’d think that the 1950’s, when it was still good and proper to be an American patriot and people recognized just how awful the Commies were, that serious efforts to correct the myth would have been made.

 Posted by at 1:07 am

Britons Getting Snippy

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., Hmm..., news, politics, Worldwreckers, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Nov 212022
 

The policies that the British government have enacted over recent years of allowing the mass invasion of Britain are, it seems, finally getting the British citizens mad enough to, maybe, do something about it. Britain seems to have a number of problems, including but not limited to:

1) Their National Health Service provide free health care to everyone… including the “migrants.” But the “migrants” aren’t funding new hospitals or more doctors; they’re just consuming the available resources.

2) The “migrants” aren’t building new housing; they’re simply being *given* housing. Houses, apartments, hotel rooms are disappearing from the market and being filled with, mostly, military age males from antagonistic nations.

3) The utilities, from electricity to natural gas to the water and sewers were built assuming the British population… not the British population PLUS an occupying foreign force.

 

The answer is obvious: first, prevent new “migrants” from landing; second, mass deportations. None of this is likely to occur. Why is the British government doing this to the British people? Fark if I know. The only explanations that seem to make any sort of sense sound a whole lot like conspiracy theories. But reality is what it is.

 

 

Asylum seekers to be sent to rural areas for fairer distribution of migrants

 

 

Here’s a thought… take a few hundred thousand of the military age migrant, give each of them an AK-47 and two magazines, and drop them off in Luhansk. Wacky hijinks ensue.

 

 Posted by at 10:05 am

A nod to Real Star Trek

 art, awesomeness, blather, history, Hmm..., science fiction, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Nov 122022
 

The Paramount/Nickelodeon series “Star Trek: Prodigy” is very definitely a kids show. The main characters are kids, the plots are generally kid-friendly, the writing is pretty much kid-level. Given how the last three Star Trek live action series – STD, STP and SNW – have all to greater or lesser degrees crapped on the legacy of Star Trek, it would be both easy and fair for an actual Star Trek fan to simply give “Prodigy” a pass. But I am becoming more and more of the opinion that prodigy, like fellow animated series “Lower Decks,” is *actual* Star Trek worthy of attention.

 

Prodigy has started in on the second half of the first season. The most recent episode, “All The World’s A Stage,” has our heroes stumbling across a primitive society that was previously contacted by the USS Enterprise under Captain Kirk a hundred years previously. As happens rather a lot in Star Trek, there was cultural contamination and the locals have picked up on Starfleet appearances, iconography, technology and ideology, though incompletely and somewhat inaccurately. But what *is* accurate: when it came time for “Star Trek Prodigy” to depict the shuttlecraft, phasers, uniforms and bridge of Kirks Enterprise… they used TOS designs. Not Discovery, not Strange New Worlds… The Original Fricken’ One And Only Series.

 

It is somewhat amazing to me that the people behind the friggen’ *cartoons* care vastly more about canon than the people with actual vast sums of money to lavish on the live action shows. While the animated series have from time to time dropped little nods to the Crap Series like STD and STP, when given the option they go with the good stuff. This indicates to me that the two animated series (three if you want to go back to the 70’s) are canonical with TOS and TNG and DS9 and VOY, while STD, STP and SNW are not.

 

The video below is by a couple of guys who arguably spend *way* too much time on this sort of thing. Here they’re geeking out over the appearance of true TOS in Prodigy. Included are a number of screenshots, including several when the bridge of the USS Protostar is holographically reconfigured to have TOS crew stations. And these guys are correct: it looks *glorious.* There was never any good reason to redo the TOS aesthetic.

 

 

 

By the way: I know a lot of people liked “Strange New Worlds.” Compared to STD and STP, it was a massive step up, but it was still a massive step down from proper Star Trek. The link to Discovery was enough to mean it’s not canonical, but the show was *filled* with evidence that SNW cannot be considered to exist in the same universe as TOS. Besides the various carryovers from STD (including the fact that the Enterprise is like 50% bigger), there are two main discrepancies within SNW:

 

1) They run into the Gorn, again and again. They’ve had direct interactions with them, met them face to face, have detailed scans and biological samples. This is around ten years before Kirk & Co. were supposed to have run into the previously wholly unknown Gorn for the very first time.

2) The season finale had Captain Pikes mind projected into an alternate future where he was still captain of the Enterprise during the TOS “Balance of Terror” episode. In the end, his mind is returned to the “present,” and he decides to choose a path that won’t lead to that divergent timeline. Great, wonderful. But… he *remembers* that timeline. The McGuffin that permitted the time travel, a Klingon “time crystal,” is a previously established thing that Starfleet is fully aware of. So doubtless Captain Pike will promptly file a report. A report that will tell Starfleet that:

A) The Romulans are a Vulcan offshoot

B) The Romulans are working on their plasma weapon

C) The Romulans are working on a practical cloaking device, and methods to detect it

D) The Romulans will attack this, that and the other outpost on such-and-such dates.

 

In the SNW universe, when “Balance of Terror” does eventually roll around, that Romulan warbird will get blown to smithereens the moment it first drops its cloak, because Starfleet will have had a decade to prepare. So, no… SNW is not in the TOS universe.

 Posted by at 11:08 pm

Blue Checks Banned

 blather, Forward!, Hmm..., Meh., news, politics  No Responses »
Nov 072022
 

So the latest news freakout over Elon Musk buying twitter is that he is banning people impersonating him:

 

Furious Elon Musk Pledges to Ban Anyone Who Changes Their Display Name to “Elon Musk”

Twitter bans comedian Kathy Griffin for impersonating Elon Musk

And so on. Lots of lefties are screeching that this means Musk is opposed to free speech.

 

Here’s the thing, though. The accounts getting banned are “Blue Checks.” You will see a little blue check mark next to some Twitter accounts; these accounts have been verified through some process to be actually who they say they are. This might be a corporate account like Ford or Lockheed; this might be the President of the United States; this might be a journalist or an actor. For most people it doesn’t really matter. But if you’re making Big Money on Twitter and you want to make sure that people know that they can trust that You are in fact You, I guess that little blue check mark is important.

Great, whatever.

But the moment you take your blue check account and change the name to someone else’s – like, say, “Elon Musk” –  and then start making posts impersonating that other person, you are committing fraud. The blue check is supposed to say that You are You, not You are Some Other Person.

So, it’s simple. If you want to have a parody account, great, go right ahead. Just don’t use your already established “blue check” to try to fool people into thinking you are someone else. I’m not sure how this was even supposed to be controversial.

 

And there is another issue with the “blue check verification.” It is supposed to be proof that you are who you say you are, and it is supposed to be an impartial procedure. But there are accusations that the verification was refused sometimes unless you paid someone a bribe. And the bribes were reportedly not small. For a celebrity, fifteen grand might be chump change; but for journalists or “lesser” notables, it was a lot of money. But it would have been worth the price for that little blue check mark. It might even have been *necessary* in some fields, like journalism. In some respects, it’s like a drivers license… needed to do your job, open and available to everyone on a supposedly even playing field. So finding that *anyone* can be verified for a mere eight buck after you blew fifteen large? Yeah, that’s gotta grate.

 

 Posted by at 6:21 pm

Offensive humor

 AARRRGH, blather, dumbassery, Forward!, humor, politics, science, wisdom, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Nov 012022
 

This guy tells a joke, the short from of which is that learning about science in school is useless, because he didn’t become a scientist. Now it could well be that he doesn’t actually believe that; perhaps a longer video with more context has him redeem himself later. But the basic notion expressed here grates on me more than a lame joke by an unknown standup comic really aught to. It would be better by far for kids to learn about science and math and then have them not go into STEM fields, than to replace science and math with the latest trendy identity politics subjects. Because even if the kids *do* go into the fields of gender studies or LGBTQ studies or racial grievance activism… society is *worse* off. Learning math helps a kid order their mind. Learning science helps a kid learn skepticism. Learning critical race theory helps a kid become a racist monster. Learning about the latest innovation in pronoun-invention helps a kid become schizophrenic and sterile.

 Posted by at 8:20 am

Know your place, serfs

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, Forward!, Gah., history, news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Oct 312022
 

Back in the Bad Old Days, a whole lot of people were trapped as serfs. While not technically slaves, they kinda were… they were legally trapped onto a particular piece of property and had to work for the landowner (generally some flavor of “nobility”). You could get in a *lot* of trouble if  you just decided to get up and walk twenty miles away. It’s a good thing that that concept is dead and buried. Right?

Right?

Behold the “15-Minute City.” As described on Wikipedia, this is straightforward enough… a form of civic planning where the bulk of your necessities – groceries and such – are available within a short walk (you can walk there in “15 minutes”). It *sounds*… well, maybe sorta kinda nice enough, maybe, on a limited basis; probably more so for people who have never actually known wide open spaces, but there are of course large sections of urban areas where groceries and medicine and whatnot are *not* available anywhere near you. But whether it was the intention of the people behind it or not, the “15-minute city” concept is a lead-in to modern serfdom. Gentlemen, behold:

Anger after travel chief announces traffic filters are ‘going to happen, definitely’ ahead of decision

Mr Enright explained in the Sunday Times that the heart of the traffic filters policy was to turn Oxford into “a 15-minute city” with local services within a small walking radius.

The new traffic filters on St Cross Road, Thames Street, Hythe Bridge Street and St Clements would operate seven days a week from 7am to 7pm.

Two more filters on Marston Ferry Road and Hollow Way would operate from Monday to Saturday.

People can drive freely around their own neighbourhood and can apply for a permit to drive through the filters, and into other neighbourhoods, for up to 100 days per year. This equates to an average of two days per week.

 

Translation: if this comes to pass, people within these “15 minute cities” will only be allowed to freely leave their plots of land 100 days out of the year by means of their own vehicles. Sure, you can walk out… but how far can you walk, carrying all your property? Sure, you can ride public transportation… which goes where it goes, not necessarily where you want to go. And I look forward to seeing people try to carry their beds and fridges and libraries on the bus. And sure, you can leave 100 days out of the year. Then 90. Then 75. Then 50. Then “papers please.”

The process seems to be to slowly acclimate Brits to accept that where they are is where they’ll stay.

Curiously, at the same time the British citizens are being trained to become sedentary, to reduce their horizons to little further than they could throw a rock (not that they’ll be allowed to throw a rock, of curse), they are also being trained to accept that an Englishmans Home Is Not His Castle:

Homeowners are being offered contracts to take in illegal Channel migrants as govt hotel bill rises to £2.4bn-a-year

As Britain continues to be colonized by military age males from the third world, Brits are being conditioned to not only accept these world travelers into their country, but into their homes. Right now the British government is attempting to get this done via bribery. When that fails to take care of the problem, I’ll but utterly unsurprised when eminent domain is used to appropriate second homes, unoccupied apartments and other currently-unoccupied places. And when *that* fails to solve the problem – and why the hell would it, as the British government would be throwing the door open to a full invasion, providing room and board to the latest waves of colonizers – then people who are deemed to have Too Much House will be required to share. Got a barn? Not anymore. Got a spare bedroom? Not anymore. Got a living room? Not anymore.

 

Haha. I got me a 3rd Amendment, chumps!

 Posted by at 11:59 am

Art DOOOOOOOOOOM

 art, blather, Hmm..., politics, science, War With The Deep Ones, youtube  No Responses »
Oct 262022
 

It’s a long video, but it’s interesting to listen to an artist rail against AI text-to-image art generators. The guy knows that his field is as endangered as a factory workers; even if AI never get *quite* as good as human artists (doubtful), the sheer volume of art – images, music, videos, whole movies – will simply overwhelm the pitiful output that a finite number of humans can produce. Hell, my “War With The Deep Ones” stories, currently something like 400 pages, could be overwhelmed by ten thousand pages of adequate AI-generated content on the same subject in a matter of seconds. Once AI “writers” are there, I stand no chance of making a dime off fiction. I suspect it won’t be too long before “US Supersonic Bomber Projects” could be written and fully illustrated by an AI, with a thousand-page tome full of readable, factually accurate descriptions and beautiful general arrangements and inboard profiles and full-color 3D renderings. Humans like myself have some current advantages due to the fact that most of the archives are not scanned and available online… but *that* probably won’t last long. On the other hand… as AI start taking history-writing jobs away from humans, these humans will have neither the incentive nor the funds to go to archives or pay archives to scan stuff. So it may be that a number of archives end up closing the doors and turning off the lights due to lack of interest. And thus history that *could* be written won’t be.

Hmmm.

 Posted by at 7:25 pm
 Older Entries  Newer Entries