They found the radioactive capsule in Australia.
Feb 012023
Feb 012023
WOW. This woman is the very epitome of entitled. I *hope* she’s stoned or drunk or whacked out on *something,* cuz if this is how she is sober… WOW.
Clearly she is well practiced at this. This behavior has gotten her what she’s wanted in the past… and it more or less worked here, too. It won’t last forever, of course. Someday she’ll try that with someone with a lot less patience than the cops shown here. Someday she’ll try it with quota-stuffer cops like the ones who beat Tyre Nichols to death. That will be an interesting experience for her.
Jan 292023
“Creature Features,” a YouTube channel that shows less-than-spectacular movies interspersed with segments with a trio of characters (a format made popular on TV decades ago with the likes of Elvira), found a better-quality copy of the movie “Meteor.” It remains a *terrible* movie with atrocious visual effects and models that can’t even be considered half-assed. But it somehow is rather entertaining. I remain vaguely interested in the notion of someone doing a Special Edition where all the model shots are replaced with insanely good CGI, maybe even tinker with the other visual effect. Ain’t nuthin’ gonna help the plot, though.
Jan 282023
January 28, 1986. One of the few school days that I remember clearly.
Manly tears are appropriate.
Jan 272023
Granted, there are people who actually *work* at shopping malls. But these “tours” of the Google offices in LA really don;t seem like tours of work sites. There are not a whole lot of people in evidence, and the vast majority of those seen doing something are shown relaxing, playing, eating, drinking.
I’m sure hiring a large percentage of the workforce to simply tick quota boxes seemed like a good idea to *somebody.*
One might wonder why I’m suddenly yammering on about this. I think it’s because this sort of thing offends me… it’s not that “work” should be an oppressive, dreary existence (been there), but because works should be about The Work. Granted I used to be an aerospace engineer, not a software worker; if Google’s latest update is a little wonky, who cares. If the latest jetliner is a little wonky, people *die.* So industries that actually matter should take themselves seriously. No goofy TikTok dance videos, no on-site clowns or cry-closets. The things that made our society successful have in recent years been not only neglected but denigrated. This has included objectivity, being on time, having a good work ethic, recognition of cause and effect and so on. I see these adult daycare centers as part and parcel of this. The people who work there seem to *not* actually work there. Granted *somebody* has to be doing the job; Price’s Law suggest that the square root of the number of employees are doing half the actual work. Regardless of how true that is, any place where *anything* gets done has to have some people who are actually working. And surrounding hard workers by slackers who are getting paid just as well as them and who are visibly being coddled… that has *got* to be a morale-killer among the productive. And doubtless many of the slackers would have turned into hard workers who would derive great and substantive meaning from being productive… but they’re being indoctrinated into a culture of bland excess and sloth.
Jan 242023
A 1950’s film describing the “Lobber” rocket from Convair. This was a small battlefield cargo delivery system… rations, medical supplies, ammo, that sort of thing. Kind of a neat idea, but obviously it didn’t go into service. The ability to launch 50 pounds of stuff eight miles just wasn’t that spectacular when cargo planes could para-drop tons of stuff hundreds of miles away, when choppers could zip in and out in the time it would take to pack stuff into the rocket. Today i imagine drones would take on the task… not as fast, but less harsh on the cargo and much more precise.
Note that it is also described as a system capable of delivering *nukes.* Well, any rocket that you can swap out the payload could be a nuclear delivery system if it’s got the capability. Fifty pounds just barely covers it. It would be safer for the launch crew than a Davy Crockett with a range of only a couple miles, but 8 miles is still pretty close. The W54 warhead weighed right about 50 pounds and could yield up to about one kiloton. Eight miles would be a safe distance… so long as the fallout didn’t rain down on your head.
Jan 222023
A YouTube video discussing the time between the cancellation of Star Trek and The Motion Picture. It would be an era unimaginable to fans of a just-cancelled franchise today: back then, you either saw the showed when it aired, or you didn’t. Until it hit syndication, there was for all intents and purposes no way for someone to see the show. All you had were your memories, the verbal descriptions from others, the occasional magazine article, and a series of novelizations of the episodes. There was no renting an episode on tape at Blockbuster, no buying the DVD, no streaming it online. A few might have access to crappy films.
And yet… when the first Star Trek Convention was held in 1972, the place was swamped, and attendance only grew from there. It was an analog IRL experience unlike anything possible today. On the one hand it was lean, dark times, with limited resources and opportunities; on the other hand, it led to fandoms and communities of a kind impossible today. There is value in rarity, I suppose. People value that which they have to work for.
A post from a few years ago with a Star trek Convention film shot in 1976.
Jan 212023
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.
Jan 202023
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.
Jan 192023
This new Apple+ show looks like it *could* have truckloads of potential… and I can see where it could torpedo itself. Behold “Hello Tomorrow!” Some sort of alternate history where the 1950’s never ended yet technology continued, so there are hover-cars, robots and spaceships that all look like they belong in the 50’s. This *could* be friggen’ spectacular: a bright, uplifting story of possibilities. But there are unsubtle hints that “things are not what they seem,” that could turn the whole thing into garbage. “Ascension,” anyone?” The space colonies don’t work, or there are dark conspiracies, or bog-standard “racism and misogyny and transphobia, oh my,” or it’s all some sort of simulation.
Remember the days when you saw a great-looking trailer and you actually held out optimism? But as I don;t have Apple+, I guess it doesn’t much matter…