The Turbo Encabulator has *finally* been updated:
Nov 232022
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.
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.
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.
Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying “parody” will be permanently suspended
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2022
Any name change at all will cause temporary loss of verified checkmark
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2022
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.
Yup
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 5, 2022
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.
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!
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.
Oct 242022
Been unable to log in to post for more than a day this time. I was told that “‘mysql-tmp’ directory was full in server end.” That means that the server is running out of storage space, yes?
Really rather tired of this…
Oct 192022
Ronald Reagan chats with a Nazi in “Desperate Journey:”
The dialog from IMDB:
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[Major Otto Baumeister has told the captured crew that, since they know the location of an underground Messerschmitt underground factory, they will feel his iron fist. Now he separates Flying Officer Johnny Hammond from the rest, questioning him for intelligence]
Maj. Otto Baumeister : That plane you were flying, American-built, wasn’t it? One of the new ones. We have heard a good deal about them. We know that they are capable of operating at amazing altitudes. How do you manage to supercharge the engines at the extreme cold of those high altitudes?
Flying Officer Johnny Hammond : If I told you, the others wouldn’t find out?
Maj. Otto Baumeister : Certainly not.
Flying Officer Johnny Hammond : They can’t hear us out there?
Maj. Otto Baumeister : Quite sure. Now, about the supercharger.
Flying Officer Johnny Hammond : It’s done with a thermotrockle.
Maj. Otto Baumeister : A what?
Flying Officer Johnny Hammond : Thermotrockle amfilated through a daligonitor. Of course, this is made possible because the dernadyne has a franicoupling.
Maj. Otto Baumeister : I do not understand you.
Flying Officer Johnny Hammond : I knew you wouldn’t. The amsometer on the side prenulates the kinutaspel hepulace. That’s the entire secret. There you have it.
Maj. Otto Baumeister : I do not follow you.
Flying Officer Johnny Hammond : Well, maybe I could make it more clear if I drew a diagram.
Maj. Otto Baumeister : Certainly.
Flying Officer Johnny Hammond : [Bending over as though to draw] There’s three things you gotta understand. As I said before, the daligonitor is amfilated by the thermotrockle. It’s made by its connection with the franicoupling of dernadyne. Even at cruising speed the kinutaspel hepulace is prenulated by the amsometer. Makes no difference. Could be taking off. Snowing or raining, any pilot will tell you that the altitude, 10, 20, 30, 40,000 feet…
[flexing his arm to strike]
Flying Officer Johnny Hammond : [appearing casually in Baumeister’s doorway] Oh, Terry. He wants to talk to you.
Flight Lieutenant Terrence Forbes : Oh. The major wants to see me.
[Forbes enters Baumeister’s office and sees him under the desk, unconscious. he looks incredulously at Hammond]
Flying Officer Johnny Hammond : The iron fist has a glass jaw.
Oct 172022
Over the years there have been suggestions of using “lithobraking” as a means of reducing the cost of transporting payloads to the lunar surface. As the name suggests, the idea is to use the lunar surface itself – the lithosphere – to slow the craft. Meteoroids do this all the time, of course, though in their case it’s pretty destructive. But for those rare serious suggestion of using lithobraking, the idea would be to lay out a miles-long “track” of smooth lunar dust; the spacecraft would come in at a *very* shallow angle and touch down at extreme – essentially orbital – velocity, and use skids to brake using friction. The precision required, and lunar infrastructure required, would be pretty substantial. One early suggestion of what a lithobraking spacecraft might look like is this (from HERE):
It might be workable. But it’s not something I’ve seen demonstrated too often, either practically or in animated form. Well, until now. At last, we have a good video representation of what lithobraking might look like in actual practice:
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