Hard to argue that this is anything but clear evidence that Mars was once a wet planet.
It’s the sort of terrain where, on Earth, I’d not be surprised to see a fossil shell or footprint. That’s doubtless too much to ask *here,* but the evidence of water just sitting there like that is pretty spectacular.
Feel free to try to imagine “other ways of knowing” providing this.
Sometimes you just can’t win.
And don’t forget *this* classic:
I don’t know what the Russian military was expecting, but being on the receiving end of the first industrial-scale use of robots to hunt down their soldiers one at a time was probably not high on their list.
The Dem-dominated government of the state of Illinois passed an “assault weapon ban” that bans not only commonly owned firearms but also standard capacity magazines as part of their policy of decriminalizing violent crime while criminalizing the law abiding. But the law was so badly written – and badly conceived – that I wonder if the inevitable boomerang effect might end up with Illinois finally entering the twenty first century and ditching *all* of the unconstitutional tyrannical nonsense that has been on the books. Consider:
The ban on common rifles is clearly unconstitutional on second amendment right… but it’s *also* unconstitutional – state and federal – on “equal protection” issues. Because while it bans *some* people from owning, say, an AR-15, it exempts current and retired police, current military and security guards. The point is often raised that the same politicians who rail against average schmoes being able to defend their homes, persons and property with a semi-auto rifle often have armed guards packing semi and even full auto weapons.
One can hope that the court smackdown of the “assault weapon ban” will hit so hard that other existing gun laws in Illinois will be brought down. By over-reaching, the gun-grabbers might well have assured that all gun control laws across the US end up before the US Supreme Court. It would be spectacular if the NFA winds up going the way of the dodo, as it should. There are few enough arguments that support banning fully automatic weapons; there are none for bans on suppressors and short barreled rifles and shotguns.
The hardware has been modified to “print” up to the full six feet in length (actually a little more, maybe 6’8″). I continue to crank out test prints, with about a 50/40/10 mix of “awesome”/”disappointing”/”dismal.” Now it seems the production part of the project is largely dialed in; it seems that *chemistry* is responsible for much of the trouble. There is a window in which the fluid can be properly used:
While the hardware is set up for in excess of 6 feet, so far the biggest print I’ve done is 56 inches, a *spectacular* pair of isometric interior structure views of the B-2A. yeah, I’m a bit surprised that the original was declassified, but it was, so there it is (and it was sent to me by a Russian feller, so it’s out there). I’ve done 2 so far… one is as close to perfect as I can hope for; one is *slightly* flawed via faded bits.
When I left Utah, my cyanotyping hardware got trashed. But I had the foresight to roll up all the transparencies I had. And wow, I have a lot of them. And WOW are they dirty. Utah is great and all, but it *is* the desert and full of dust… it’s coarse, rough, irritating, and it gets everywhere. All of the transparencies will have to be washed and windexed. And I’ve washed, but not yet windexed, the first of the six-footers I plan on printing: a CAD diagram of my own, the SLS in 1/72 scale. A good businessman would have had this ready for the Artemis mission a little while ago but… shrug.
These test prints will probably go up on ebay to get some sense of the interest in them. I suspect an Etsy store would be the best next step. There are a *lot* of crappy digitally printed aerospace “blueprints” there… one of the very first ones to pop up is a digitally printed 12″x72″ Saturn V that almost certainly was derived from Space Drawing 4. I previously sold actual cyanotypes of this at the exact same size… for $50 compared to the digital print at $75. I feel rather like a chump. There are actual cyanotype prints available as well, but the one’s I’ve seen all look rather bland and low-effort. Bah.
Yesterday Project Veritas released footage of a Pfizer employee on a “date” talking about how his company is “mutating” the Covid virus. I’ve seen a lot of people losing their minds over this, seeing it as evidence of the virus being weaponized. But I can honestly see it the other way: If you are in the business of producing vaccines, you want to stay ahead of the diseases out there. Figure out where things might be going so you can produce vaccines *before* nature does its thing. If the employee is a bit drunk, or not exactly scientifically versed in what’s going on (this is a marketing guy, after all), then a basic, valid explanation can be described poorly and come off like supervillainy. I don’t know, and since there’s legitimate room for doubt, I didn’t think much of the story. Seemed like a nothingburger to me.
But then today. As Project Veritas generally does, they released a second video where they confront the subject openly. Typically the subject does the only thing they can and scuttle away, saying little. But this guy… boy, he’s *special.* I think he’s borked both his career *and* his dating prospects.
What we seem to have here is someone who has lived a fairly sheltered and entitled life, and the moment things don’t go his way he loses his little mind. One minor decision different in his life a year ago and I suspect instead of a PV video, we’d be watching him on an Adult Daycare video showing all the snacks he eats in a day, then pissing about how unfair it is that he just got laid off from his six-figure, zero-effort job.
Filming pistol rounds hitting a steel plate at 250,000 frames per second. Interesting detail: almost all impacts generate a flash. Since the bullets are lead or lead and copper and the steel plate is almost undamaged, it seems the flash is probably air being compressed to incandescence between hammer and anvil rather than superheated bits of metal sparking.
I just sent files to the print shop to get transparencies of two new cyantypes. One will be a pair of 18X24 SR-71 CAD drawings by yours truly, and one will be a 12X38 vintage USS Monitor diagram. I kinda plan on doing a range of ships and submarines, based on vintage blueprints and Booklets of General Plans, if they prove popular. If interested in these, or interested in suggestions something, let me know. 
There is a fan-built replica of the original USS Enterprise set – the whole ship, at least as built in the 1960’s – in Georgia. These sets were used for the filming of the “Star Trek Continues” fan films, and they look convincingly like the originals.
There are two such complete sets… this one, and one in New York. Every kid who was a fan of this show in the 60’s, 70’s and into the 80’s would have killed to have a set like this… at least the captains chair. I imagine there are a lot of folks who want a set of the Enterprise D bridge, probably some Voyager fans. But can anyone really suggest that, fifty years from now, fans of Star Trek Discovery will have recreated the sets from that show in a warehouse somewhere for their own fan films, offering daily tours to paying customers? I suspect not: not just because the show sucks, but because the sets are bleh and soulless… and if anyone wants to do fan films of STD, they’ll likely just work in front of a green screen and CGI-in the sets.
I do wonder if the builders for either of these Enterprise sets could make a decent business out of selling replicas of the captains chair, navigation, the science station, perhaps even occasionally the complete bridge. I suspect there are legal issues that would stand in their way, but if not, I don’t doubt that there are a number of fans with a lot of money and a lot of floorspace who’d happily pay for their own little bit of the Enterprise.
