This is a bad era for large-scale Enterprises

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, Gah., models, news, science fiction, spacecraft, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jul 162022
 

It looks pretty doom-laden for the Tomy 1/350 scale die-cast Enterprise… with one week to go, they’re still at only 63% of their funding goal. If, as seems likely, this doesn’t come to pass, a bunch of potential buyers will be disappointed… but they won’t be too likely to be *angry*. This is not the case for *all* buyers of large scale Enterprises, however.

In December 2020 Eaglemoss announced their 27-inch long Enterprise D model. I posted about it HERE. This is a large and complex model kit, not a finished product. And Eaglemoss has an unusual way of releasing these things… instead of one big box with all the parts, you get a packet every two weeks with *some* parts. It’s a subscription service, you pay as you go. And the cost of the model stacks up… looks like over the length of time it takes to get all the packets, you’ll end up spending over $1700. Youch. But I’ve been watching some YouTubers as they’ve been getting the bits and gradually assembling the thing, and it looked promising (with some issues here and there).

*Looked.* Past tense.

Part Works publisher Eaglemoss goes out of business

It seems Eaglemoss is in a bad way. Due to Covid lockdowns in merry old England, their ability to do business was massacred and they are in a deep, deep hole… one it looks like they might not climb out of. They seem to be already out of business.

That’s bad.

It’s especially bad not only for their employees and stockholders, but those working away on the Enterprise D (and other subscription kits of similar scale and cost). Because the Enterprise D is distributed over *30* *months.* Which means if you started in January of 2021, you’d currently be about 18  months along… with 12 months to go on your kit. Twelve months worth of parts it seems unlikely you’ll get. You won’t be charged for those parts, of course… but you will have spent over a grand for sixty percent of an Enterprise, plus however much time you spent on a model you’re now unlikely to ever finish, display or sell.

This looks to be about the current state of the Enterprise. It’s… sad.

 

I’ve never liked getting big, expensive things via subscriptions spread out over years. This only reinforces that.

 Posted by at 10:23 pm

H.R. 1808

 Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., I'm from the government, news, politics, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jul 152022
 

Here’s a link to H.R. 1808, a bill the Democrats are pushing that is *blatantly* unConstitutional. Anyone who signs it should be impeached, but here we are.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1808/text

To regulate assault weapons, to ensure that the right to keep and bear arms is not unlimited, and for other purposes.

The important bits:

“(36) The term ‘semiautomatic assault weapon’ means any of the following, regardless of country of manufacture or caliber of ammunition accepted:

“(A) A semiautomatic rifle that—

“(i) has a magazine that is not a fixed magazine; and

“(ii) does have any 1 of the following:

“(I) A pistol grip.

“(II) A forward grip.

“(III) A folding, telescoping, or detachable stock, or is otherwise foldable or adjustable in a manner that operates to reduce the length, size, or any other dimension, or otherwise enhances the concealability, of the weapon.

“(IV) A grenade launcher.

“(V) A barrel shroud.

“(VI) A threaded barrel.

So, in short, an “assault weapon” is basically any semi-automatic rifle you are likely to come across.

And what do they want to do with these “assault weapons?”

It shall be unlawful for a person to import, sell, manufacture, transfer, or possess, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, a semiautomatic assault weapon.

They want to imprison or kill – perhaps both – tens of *millions* of Americans.

The Democrats don;t have the votes to pull this scheme off by themselves. They’ll need a few backstabbing “Republicans” to get onboard as well. Keep an eye on them.

 Posted by at 2:29 pm

One of these women is a moron

 dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., I'm from the government, news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jul 152022
 

I’ll leave it to the student to assess which.

Here’s a hint: the moron in this little display is in a position of political power.

 Posted by at 11:10 am

“This is a job” part two

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, Forward!, Gah., Hmm..., politics, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jul 132022
 

I posted a link to this vid nearly two weeks ago, but this guy has a good time laughing at it. Some amusing and interesting discussion.

 

BTW, “the beautiful ones” is likely a reference to “Universe 25 ” or  an experiment with mice that showed that excess population density leads to disaster. A “rodent utopia” led to, among other horrors:

Consequently, the next generation of mice, having never experienced healthy mouse behaviour, had no concept of mating or parenting, or even territorialism. Some – dubbed the “beautiful ones” – spent their time eating, drinking, and grooming themselves in seclusion. Elsewhere, mice formed gangs of cannibalistic, raping plunderers.

Tell me that doesn’t sound a lot like modern cities. Go on. Tell me.

I wonder what would happen to the TikToker shown above if, on one of her drinking and partying binges after yet another empty, meaningless day of snacking, drinking and goofing off, she encountered some of the people that I’ve posted *other* kinds of videos about. Assuming she survived the experience with her brain still capable of rational thought, would she look at the world differently? Would she maybe reflect on her life spent accomplishing nothing and decide to maybe consider actually *doing* something?

I also wonder if she looks at young men whose greatest ambition is to spend all day playing online video games and thinks that *they* are losers.

 Posted by at 2:39 pm

Behold the future that they want for you

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., Meh., politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jul 092022
 

The sustainable cities made from mud

Where the BBC extols the virtue of buildings made from mud in a desert climate. “It is the architecture of the future.”

Every year the residents of Djenné gather together to repair and reclay the mosque, supervised by a guild of senior masons. … Everyone takes part. Boys and girls mix the mud, women bring the water and masons direct the activity. 

Because buildings that require the *entire* community, down to children, to labor to repair on an ongoing, annual and permanent basis… sure, that’s “sustainable.”

Much is made of the mud architecture of Yemen. Great. Ummm… what was the last great contribution to science or engineering or philosophy or medicine to come out of Yemen?

I imagine Britain will be seeing a lot of mud buildings soon enough. As modern Britain falls to the third world, the millions of invading colonizers will, after tearing down what the natives built over a course of centuries, construct their new mud-filled civilization using the wrack and ruin they stand upon. I’m not sure how great mud will be as a construction material on an island that gets fairly constant rainfall, but, hey, such questions are inappropriate in this new world of Other Ways Of Knowing.

 Posted by at 5:01 pm

Dairy drives weirdoes bonkers

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., Hmm..., news, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jul 072022
 

First up, there’s this insanity:

Adults Who Still Drink Milk: Are You Okay?

Unless you’re a hungry baby, drinking milk on its own is unsettling behaviour.’

The British author tries to argue that milk is inappropriate for adults. The author only succeeds in demonstrating that she’s some kind of deviant perv. And as it turns out, the author looks pretty much like you’d expect she would. She seems about one face tat away from grabbing a rifle and going to a rooftop near a parade.

And then there’s this, also out of Britain:

Supermarkets put security tags on cheese blocks as stores tackle shoplifting amid soaring food costs

 

 

Ummm… are you ok, Britain? Things seem kinda wrong over yonder.

 

 Posted by at 11:12 pm

Food Insecurity

 AARRRGH, Gah., Hmm..., youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jul 072022
 

The planetary geopolitical situation seems to be sliding towards that “hell in a handbasket” phase. If things get really bad, international commerce could grind to a halt. Economically that is of course bad… but if you are in a place that imports a lot of your food, or imports the fertilizer and tools and fuel and whatnot you need to grow your food, things could get *really* bad. This sort of thing has happened before, of course. The usual result was regional famine. But now… thanks to modern agriculture and transport, there are vast numbers of people living where food will suddenly vanish. This, one would immediately think, would lead to *astonishing* local famines. But now, as well as having far more people we have far more transport systems. So those starving millions, or indeed billions, will try to leave for greener pastures. But in a planetary collapse situation, greener pastures won’t be able to support all that many people. Having millions of starving migrants swarming your borders means not only less food for your own people, it’ll mean less food *in* *total,* as the refugees, if they come in large enough numbers, will set upon the fields like locusts, and not only consume what’s there, they’ll trash the ability to grow more.

The obvious answer: walls, guns and a bit of a policy shift where it comes to open doors.

 

EDIT: Hmmm. Weirdly, the video was privated. Oh well….

According to this, Britain (and a fair chunk of the rest of Europe) is kinda up the creek. Right now they are insanely allowing a million “migrants” a year to come in, set up shop and start drawing off the dole and demanding yet more. If things go bad, it would behoove the Brits to not only stop immigration, but to encourage – as aggressively and energetically as necessary – that a few million recent immigrants explore career opportunities in other lands. other lands that won’t have them either.

And then… the Chinese will probably slap together biological warfare systems: insects, bacteria, virus, whatever, that trashes all the rice that doesn’t have a particular gene sequence that Chinese rice just happens to have. It would probably be a really good idea for the CIA and every other intelligence service on the planet to sneak out a lot of samples of Chinese rice and Russian wheat and keep a constant surveillance on any sudden change in their DNA.

 Posted by at 9:21 pm
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