I don’t know how accurate this is… but if it’s even *remotely* accurate, then the bodies of those who went down on the doomed Titan sub were *obliterated.*
Aug 112023
Aug 102023
There is an ongoing spat between two YouTubers. The details don’t really matter; the YouTubers don’t really matter. Like a lot of these things, their spat is boooring. However, sometimes these sad little moments result in other people trying to explain the situation, and making something interesting and useful out of it. Below is a video from yet another YouTuber; in the process of explaining why one of the combatants is wrong, he devotes the majority of his video to explaining how 1930’s/40’s German National Socialism is indeed far leftist ideology, and actual *socialist* ideology. This is not a new concept, but some people persist in believing that Funny Mustache Man was actually a right winger, and it’s always important to correct them.
Aug 082023
People who have lived in a place for centuries often hold eccentric, old, downright obsolete facilities in higher regard than people who hav4e just moved in and have no links to the place. Example: a centuries-old pub was sold to a developer. It was signed up for historic protection, but before the paperwork could go through a pile of rubble was mysteriously dumped into the road leading to it. And then it mysteriously caught fire, with the pile of rubble blocking the fire department. The brick structure remained standing, opening up the possibility of being restored; it was then very quickly razed to the ground mechanically. Gosh, I guess it’s gone, nothing left for it but to built cheap housing on the very valuable plot of land…
Police ‘reviewing all evidence’ on cause of Crooked House pub fire
Mayor calls for Crooked House pub gutted by fire to be rebuilt ‘brick by brick’
Huh. It’s a mystery.
Aug 072023
14:25 into this video is an *astounding* scratchuilt Saturn V. Cutaways of not just all three stages, but also of the Command and Service Modules. unfortunately the camera moves too fast to make out anything that might say *who* built this masterpiece.
Aug 032023
A 1979 promo for TMP. Some interesting stuff here… work on the Enterprise model, Klingon battle cruiser models getting exploded (a scene later re-imagined) and Persis Khambatta losing her hair, and not being entirely thrilled by it.
Aug 032023
A Sam Jackson-starring movie about money laundering via crappy paintings. Hmmm…
This is, of course, not a new idea. It’s actually a pretty obvious one; the value of art is about the most subjective form of monetary valuation you could dream up. Even more than a dollar bill, a painting is objectively nearly worthless, with it’s “value” being almost purely determined by what people *believe* it’s worth. A painting that was slapped together in ten minutes could sell for a million dollars if you can persuade someone that it’s worth it. Or it could sell for a million dollars if, say, you want the Chinese government to give you a million dollars without being clearly seen as taking bribes.
Hmmm. Can I interest anyone in a million-dollar cyanotype?
Jul 282023
Starships first not-exactly-successful launch was filmed not only from the ground, but from the NASA WB-57 flying at altitude. Apparently at least five cameras were trained on the launcher; video from two have been released, while three remain classified. i would *assume* that the classified three display some combination of:
1) better tracking
2) Better image quality – better sensor and/or telescope
3) Different spectra… IR and the like
Even with the somewhat dodgy tracking and potato-quality images, these are interesting. You really get a sense of how Starship flopped around the sky at the end there. Which was both sad and incredibly impressive… no other rocket would have survived as long flying *sideways.*
Jul 282023
A description of the phenomenon, the physics and history. Includes a discussion of the politics of it, how it’s supposedly misogynistic. But included in the video are a number of old movie clips showing how vocal fry (at least used to) feature a lot in depictions of High Upper Class British Dudes… who are every bit as annoying as a Kardashian. Remember: we fought two wars to keep those inbred aristocrats from ruling over us.
Also includes some clips of native Finnish speakers deploying the vocal fry that they seem to have developed to a high art. A high, brain-erasingly irritating art. I think I’d lose my mind listening to that all day. Gah.
Most of this is informative, but there is some virtue signalling. Part of that is self-evidently and unironically dumb. The narrator claims that part of the reason why a lot of people don’t like vocal fry in young American women is because it makes them sound like they’re trying too hard to display excessive confidence. And part of the reason why a lot of people dislike the polar opposite of vocal fry, “uptalk” (where the speaker ends sentences with higher tone, making it sound like they’re asking a question), is because it makes them sound like they have an excess of 8uncertainty* about the statements of fact they’re making. Narrator says something like “Make up your minds, misogynists.” The here’s the thing: “vocal fry = excess confidence” and “uptalk = excess uncertainty” are not mutually exclusive concepts, and thus you don’t need to choose… both can be entirely true and valid simultaneously, since they cover very different things. Kinda like how you can dislike both being doused in liquid nitrogen *AND* dislike being torched with napalm. But other than that sort of thing, it’s an interesting video.
Jul 282023
The driving motivation behind everything in the movie “Avatar” was humanity’s need of the mineral “Unobtanium.” It was special since it was a room temperature superconductor, allowing for a lot of advanced technologies. In the movie, humanity would travel light years and wipe out primitive alien civilizations to get it. But recent news suggests that we might not need to… but only if the study turns out to be true. And scientists are dubious.
A spectacular superconductor claim is making news. Here’s why experts are doubtful
Korean scientists claim to have created a room temperature superconductor (up to 127 decrees C). The video *seems* to back that up, but who knows. This will need to be tested and replicated. And the chunk they’ve displayed seems kinda cruddy… but the history of prior low-temperature superconductors seems to be that the first bits out the gate are cruddy, with quality following along as production techniques are refined.
*IF* this pans out, there are two fantastic takeaways here. The first is “hey, awesome, room temperature superconductor.” Maglev trains and such become a lot easier. CAT scanners won’t need liquid helium supplies to keep their magnetic bearings working.
But the second thing to note should be noted and noted *hard:* the material is primarily lead, doped with copper oxygen and phosphorus. You know what I *don’t* see there? I don’t see “rare-earth elements that we have to go hat in hand to the Chinese to obtain.” We don’t need to throw money into third-world hellholes to have them scrape vast pits into the ground. Domestic mining and production would seem entirely feasible.
That’s all great. I hope it bears out. But history is full of fabulous press releases that turned out to be fraudulent or simply wrong. That’s certainly possible here. We’ll just need to wait and see.
Here’s how Wikipedia describes the material. See how far you get before you go “I dunno what the frak they’re talking about:”
The chemical composition of LK-99 is approximately Pb9Cu(PO4)6O such that—compared to pure lead-apatite (Pb10(PO4)6O)[4]: 5 —approximately one quarter of Pb(II) ions in position 2 of the apatite structure are replaced by Cu(II) ions.[1]: 9 This partial replacement of Pb2+ ions (measuring 133 picometre) with Cu2+ ions (measuring 87 picometre) is said to cause a 0.48% reduction in volume, creating internal stress inside the material.[1]: 8
The internal stress is claimed to cause a heterojunction quantum well between the Pb(1) and oxygen within the phosphate ([PO4]3−) generating a superconducting quantum well (SQW).[1]: 10 Lee et al. claim to show LK-99 exhibits a response to a magnetic field (Meissner effect) when chemical vapor deposition is used to apply LK-99 to a non-magnetic copper sample.[1]: 4 Pure lead-apatite is an insulator, but Lee et al. claim copper-doped lead-apatite forming LK-99 is a superconductor, or at higher temperatures, a metal.[4]: 5
Here’s a video discussing the “discovery” and the causes of skepticism:
Need a 4K release of this
AARRRGH, art, awesomeness, Crazy, Gah., Hmm..., religion, youtube, ಠ_ಠ
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Jul 272023
“The 13th Warrior” was, shockingly to me, one of history’s great box office bombs… budget was about $100 million in 1999, but it only made about $33 million domestically, less than that foreign. Counting marketing, it lost well over a hundred million dollars. I’ve never understood why this was so; it was a substantially badass movie, based on a Michael Chrichton novel (“Eaters of the Dead”) not long after the success of “Jurassic Park,” starring Antonio Banderas. It had Vikings fighting Neanderthals. What was not to like? Well, apparently the movie going public wasn’t interested. My ass was in the theater on opening weekend.
It had a DVD release, but never a valid Blu Ray. I’d be all over a 4K release.