Target Targeted

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May 272023

It seems obvious by this point that a rational corporation would, when presented with the option of weighing in on politically decisive “culture war” topics, just stick their fingers in their ears and hum real loud until whatever -themed month it is ends, and spend their time trying to sell their normal merchandise to their normal customers. But, no. Due to the insidious and invasive influence of “woke” ideologies and diversity initiatives, companies have been led to believe that they *have* to build up their diversity social credit scores, or else… something.

Target stores are the latest to discover that attempting to appease a small group of weirdos ticks off a far larger group of people who don’t want to sterilize, mutilate and drive insane their children.A lot of customers have expressed outrage; a few by pestering the employees (these are just regular folk trying to earn a paycheck, leave ’em the frak alone); a few others by causing damage (come on, you’re not on the left… the law *will* go after you for vandalism). But by far, from Targets perspective the biggest threat to the corporation are the large number of customers who are simply not spending their increasingly thin dollars there. Apparently Target has lost about nine *billion* dollars so far. So Target has decided to move their displays of child-grooming-friendly products further back in the store where they’ll be less conspicuous. This, supposedly, is in response to threats to the stores, products and employees from customers who don;t like those products.

But now they’re getting threats from the *other* side… bomb threats from weirdos ticked off that Target is now attempting to appease right wingers.

You know who’s not getting bomb threats from *either* side? Companies that didn’t delve into goofy identity politics in the first place. There might be a lesson there.

Utah Target Evacuated After Reports of Trans Extremists Threatening to Bomb Multiple Target Locations for Removing Satanic Groomer Products

Republic? Democracy? Or something else?

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May 202023

So, what is the current form of American government? To the simple, it’s a democracy. To those who actually have *some* understanding of the theoretical workings of the US Federal government, it’s a representative republic. But to those who have watched how the Feds and a startling number of state and local governments work, a more accurate descriptor is one that most probably haven;t heard of… but rest assured, you *will* be hearing it a lot so long as the means of communications remain reasonably free and accessible:

Anarcho-Tyranny

Coined in 1995, “Anarcho-tryanny” is a form of government that is characterized by taking a hands-off approach to dealing with actual criminality at all levels… but exercising draconian oppression upon the average citizens. Sound familiar? Cities that let criminals loot and burn and protest and terrorize at will… but toss people who defend themselves into the hoosegow for show trials. States that do diddly to deal with gangs and murderers of all stripes, but ban common firearms and standard magazines. Federal law enforcement agencies that welcome in whole armies of invaders, and hire armies of armed bureaucrats to hunt down small business owners who might have made small mistakes on the deviously complex tax returns.

And then there are the “glowies.”

If you, as an average, law-abiding citizen who wants nothing more than to be left alone to live your life and pursue happiness, fear the government descending upon you more than the guy breaking into your car or shoplifting your store does… you may be in an anarcho-tyranny.

A fair explanation of why Modern Trek doesn’t fit Classic Trek

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May 132023

Strange New Worlds’ Upgraded Tech Has a Canon Explanation

As readers of this blog are doubtless aware, I am unimpressed with Kelvin-timeline Trek and *especially* “Discovery” Trek. STD sucks on a whole multitude of levels, from bad writing and terrible characters, terrible politics and worse ideology; not a lot can fix that. But one thing that the article above *can* deal with is the fact that STD simply doesn’t fit canon-wise with TOS. And what is that explanation? Time travel. There has been a *lot* of time travel in Trek over the years. And Trek has demonstrated that changing the timeline is possible; the universe does not necessarily reset to some special chosen track.

So why does STD not fit with TOS? Because time travelers have mucked up the timeline and have, like in the Star trek: Lens Flare movies made post 2009, created offshoot timelines where things are different. And of course, if the relatively tiny groups of people followed int he shows and movies encounter time travel as often as they do, it’s reasonable to assume that the whole galaxy is filled with people and races constantly mucking up the timeline, unseen by Starfleet.

This seems like a compromise that trek fans should be able to accept: TOS/TNG/DS9/VOY were one timeline… one that got diverted for 2009 and again for STD. They are different canon. I’ve been saying *that* for a while, but here’s a fair in-universe explanation for it.

A light on the horizon

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May 102023

A new Supreme Court case seeks to legalize assault weapons in all 50 states

The Supreme Court could hand down a decision any day now in National Association for Gun Rights v. City of Naperville, a case that could legalize assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in all 50 states.

“Assault weapons:” Normal semi-automatic rifles

“High-capacity magazines:” the standard capacity magazines that come with the gun

Most of the article, apart form the above bit of Scare Text, is pretty straightforward. However, there’s this bizarre bit:

And there is good reason to fear that this Court could, at the very least, decide to make semiautomatic assault rifles legal throughout the United States.

“Fear:” a funny way to spell “hope.”

Anyway, “National Association for Gun Rights v. City of Naperville” is on the Supreme Court “Shadow Docket,” which means they could issue a ruling without the usual trouble of oral hearings. This would speed things up a *lot.*

The concept of a Shadow Docket is a bit strange, and one I’m not entirely sure I’m entirely behind. However, I would accept any Shadow Docket ruling *IF* that ruling came down in favor of rolling back government power, impositions on the citizens or curtailments of rights. If s Shadow Docket ruling was in favor of the government, then it should automatically be set aside in favor of a full court proceedings.

Interesting times

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May 072023

Interesting times *here* and interesting times forthcoming. In the past day or so Texas has seen a mass shooting with 8 dead, and an SUV *apparently* intentionally rammed a group of “migrants” at a bus stop, killing at least 7. In both cases it appears that the killer was a narrative-busting Hispanic male. In the former case, the shooter has been ID’ed as one Mauricio Garcia… and HERE the narrative is being spun that this Hispanic guy, who had a prominently displayed tattoo for the “tango blast” Hispanic prison gang, was a white supremacist and a neo-Nazi. In the latter case the suspect has been arrested but not yet identified, but a potato-cam video of him being arrested *appears* to show a Hispanic guy, though that’s uncertain.

With hundreds of thousands to potentially *millions* of illegal aliens preparing to invade in the coming days and weeks, expect this sort of thing to only increase. You’ll get a vast increase in third-world cartel members in the US here to sow chaos, and who knows how many native Americans losing their minds and going buggo. When you couple that with the Just In Time For Summer deaths of a nutjob on a subway train in Manhattan and a thief in Oakland, BLM and related activists are getting ready to start up another summer of burning cities to the ground. Stock up on essentials while you can; if you live in cities, your favorite stores may well be ashes and bits of broken glass before you know it.

UPDATE: A photo reportedly of the SUV driver:

He has multiple Rio Grande Valley Tango Blast gang tattoos. From bottom lower left RGV for Rio Grande Valley, above the R Valluco, above the V is the 956 area code. above either side of the RGV block letters are the two palm trees. And those are just the ones I can see. pic.twitter.com/rqAf0UssbB

— 🍊 🍊 🍊 🍊 MrsLibertyBelle pronouns: bad/bitch (@MrsLibertyBell1) May 8, 2023

“2001” Laptop: TLAR 2

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Apr 282023

The tripod showed up. I do believe it is correct. Compare to the original prop. Here it’s fairly well hidden by the video camera, but the size seems about right in the case:

When extended one leg-segment, the top of both the prop tripod and the one on hand are right at the top of the opened briefcase lid.

Until I either find out what some of the remaining items are (the rectangular “buttons,” the TV screen, speaker cover, “light pen,” knurled knobs), this seems to exhaust my search for and procurement of vintage artifacts. However, the project proceeds. As can be seen, I’ve mostly removed the interior fabric liner and its card backing; that was some tough stuff. The boxes for the keyboard and the numeric/math board will be fabricated; this can be done pretty accurately given that I have the keys and fairly clear photos. The long space bar is going to be a challenge… the typewriter I have has one, and it’s in great shape… but removing it requires undoing some screws that I just can’t reach without an extensive disassembly of the typewriter. Instead, I think I can *just* manage to make a silicone mold of it in place and cast a copy right there.

Note also in the color photo of the prop: the keyboard is off-kilter. It looks like the bits and pieces were just placed into the case and not fixed down in any fashion. My replica will be different: the boxes and the phone will be designed to attach to a fiberglass board that fills the back of the case. There will also be something to attach the camera and the tripod to keep them from flopping around inside the case. Also note… there are no wires connecting the TV screen and memory components in the lid to the keyboard, phone and camera in the base. I suspect this was just a way to keep things neater for the prop (or even an oversight), but I would not put it past the prop people, or even Kubrick, to have made the decision to not have wires. Instead there might have been microwave, laser or radio links between the components. More complex, and needlessly so… but this was a world in which businessmen went to space stations to buy bush babies over the videophone and signed contracts on the moon with atomic-powered pens. So a laptop where the top and bottom communicated via Wifi rather than wires does not seem out of place.

“Fine Art”

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Apr 282023

I listened to part of an NPR piece earlier today on the subject of art forgery and the economics of it. Part of the discussion revolved around a case where a museum had a special display of “art” produced, supposedly, by Jean-Michel Basquiat in the 80’s. If you’ve never heard of Basquiat, there are two things to keep in mind:

1) His paintings have sold for over one Hundred MILLION dollars.

2) His paintings look like this:

Yeah. That’s really what passes for “fine art” these days.

As it turns out, this museum exhibition was populated by *forged* Basquiat paintings, which caused headaches all around.

Anyway, the thing that made me laugh out loud was one of the admissions by one of the forgers: the paintings took less than half an hour to create. According to THIS ARTICLE, some of them as little as five minutes. If you can forge “art” that passes *any* sort of muster in a matter of minutes, I gotta question whether said “art” is worthy of any real mention.

In the NPR piece, the expert they talked to yammered on about how “important” Basquiat was, along with Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock. There’s yer problem: you think *that* is art worthy of remembrance. But where is your reverence for Chesley Bonestell? Norman Rockwell? Robert McCall? You know, artists with actual skill and talent, producers of art that inspired and uplifted… and demonstrated craftsmanship and ᚠᚢcᚲᛁᚾᚷ effort? Artists you couldn’t create “previously unseen” art from in the time it takes to listen to a mediocre podcast?

This is just a part of the uglification of the world, the exaltation of the mediocre, the banal, the bland.

“2001” laptop: what phone is this?

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Apr 202023

I would love to have a replica of the briefcase “laptop” that was built for “2001: A Space Odyssey.” I don’t know that I’ll have the time or the funds to actually see that happen myself, but I’d love to see *someone* pull it off. Maybe figuring out what the source of the various bits here would help me, or someone else, to actually see it happen. So… one thing at a time. First, this prop:

This prop was built by Honeywell circa 1965, and it’s reasonable to assume that most of the components were Honeywell components. That’s not a certainty, however. On the righthand side of the briefcase was a telephone using an unusual hybrid of a dial and push buttons; buttons such as became pretty much standard in the sixties and beyond, but laid out in a circle like a dial telephone. Below are cropped images of just the phone and the hand-held receiver. Note a few distinctive features beyond the buttons: the black circle in the “dial” that appears to have the numbers printed on it (rather than having the numbers on the buttons themselves); the raised frame the receiver would fit on; the crosshatching on the outer surface of the receiver, similar detailing in at least the lower/mouth “well” of the body of the phone. I don’t have the foggiest how to go about trying to find out what this was; Google image searches using what seemed relevant search terms didn’t turn up much, and searching eBay for vintage 1960’s push button phones resulted in tens of thousands of results, far to many to look through without going insane. Doubtless, though, there is someone somewhere who would look at this and know *exactly* what kind of phone it was. The red Honeywell “H” in the middle of the dial is very likely a decal added by the prop builder.

“Ultra Right Beer”

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Apr 132023

Conservative activist launches ‘Ultra Right’ beer as rival to Bud Light after Dylan Mulvaney controversy

I’m amused by this, but also very, very dubious of long-term success. I don’t know from developing a beer brand from scratch, but I suspect it’s not something you can slap together at a moments notice. I suspect developing a *good* beer is a process that takes a lot of time, trouble, money and expertise… not to mention infrastructure.

I get the idea of developing a “non-woke” counter to large corporations that hate you. But I’ve also seen a lot of “right wing/Christian” movies. Or to be more accurate, I’ve seen a few minutes of a number of these entertainment products… and those few minutes were generally painful. When your *primary* goal is Messaging rather than Good Product, you tend to end up with crap. Hollywood is coasting on decades of building up the infrastructure and talent for Good Product; the Message came to dominate after the process for good entertainment-making was already in place. A “right wing beer” sounds like the sort of thing that will be released long before it’s actually a *good* beer, will disappoint the intended fanbase, and fade into oblivion, leaving the supposed market to be dominated by the corporations that were meant to be challenged in the first place.

No, not at all creepifyin’ and disturbin’

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Apr 082023

So there I am minding my own business when a text message comes in from my dad. Nothing unusual there. But the message is long, rambling, kinda stream-of-consciousness, seemingly part of a conversation I wasn’t a part of. I have received messages meant for other people before, but the format of the message, and the length of it, were quite unlike my dad’s normal type of messages. So I send him a “WTF” response. A few minutes later, clarification: the phone *listened* to my dad as he held a conversation with someone else, transcribed both sides of the conversation into a single kinda gibberishy paragraph, and then decided to send that transcript to me.

At no point in the process was my dad clued in to this; the phone did it itself.

So… who else gets these transcripts? The NSA? FBI? IRS? The Russians? And as seems most likely, the Chinese?

Something to keep in mind: if your phone, or Alexa, Siri, HAL, or any other modern device *can* hear you, it *does* hear you. And sometimes it does stuff with what it hears.

Now pardon me while I wrap my cell phone in a few layers of tinfoil.

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