All evidence points to the forthcoming “Snow White” live action movie from Disney being something of a train wreck. It is a remake of the 19430’s animated classic, but it’s getting rid of pretty much everything… Snow White was originally prettier than the Evil Queen, now she’s objectively “meh;” Snow White was originally a love story, now Prince Charming is wholly absent and the Snow White character seems to be devoid of any motive but personal ambition for power; Snow White had seven dwarves, now a Bennetton Ad of “magical creatures;” and originally the actress for Snow White wasn’t an insufferable doofus, now it’s Rachel Zegler. *Lots* of people have a serious problem with almost every decision Disney has made here.

But here’s the thing: “Snow White” is public domain. Anyone can make a Snow White movie.

So the conservative “Daily Wire” new outlet is doing just that. Is it going to be any good? I dunno. Honestly I’m dubious… “really high quality movies” is not something I normally associate with “politically driven media company.” And it is in a way something of a “mockbuster,” a movie made specifically to ride the coat tails of a much more expensive studio production. But it is the right way to counter Disney’s crap: do it yourself. Make an effort to show how it *should* be done.

The “Bent Key” production company seems to be going all-out on content creation:

I have hopes that this will work out. Not because I have any particular interest in Bent Key (first I heard of ’em was when I saw the Snow White trailer), but because if they succeed, *maybe* there’s a very slim chance of some stories getting told correctly. If they can get the rights, imagine a *proper* telling of, say, “Have Spacesuit Will Travel” or “Red Planet” or “Rocketship Galileo,” or – and this would be spectacular – “Tom Swift Jr.” I have no idea if they *want* to tell these classic SF yarns, but I do know that I don’t want legacy Hollywood to tackle them. Because they *would* (and have) screw them up to the point of mutilating them.

NOTE: The post below was originally from 2008. But for some reason, it seems like it might be worth a second look.

The basic issue comes down to this… the Israelies had the poor manners to occupy Muslim territory. Granted, it was Christian territory before the Muslims conquered it, and Roman Pagan territory before the Chistians conquered it, and Jewish territory before the Romans conquered it… but apparently Muslims are real twitchy about Muslim territory being made “not Muslim territory anymore.” The consequence of this is that the Israelies are forever going to be in a state of siege. It doesn’t help that both sides see that little scrap of land as their Rightful Gift From God. When people are convinced that their God wants them to be someplace, they’ll often enough make some effort to actually be there.

So, what to do? I have a suggestion. It would work. It only has one serious flaw.

It boils down to this: give up on the scrap of land currently known as “Israel.” Pull the Israeli people out, put them somewhere else. However, the entirety of land area on Earth, except for Antarctica, is owned by somebody. So, whereever New Israel might be, is currently already somebody else’s. At first blush, that means the problem has not been solved… same issue as with Israel/Palestine. But here’s the thing: most people on Earth are sane enough that they can be bought. This was not the case in the Middle East…. they’s crazy. But there are lots of scraps of land that can be had, if you just know how to bargain. And I have just the scrap of land: northern Mexico. Specifically, a strip along the US/Mexico border, 50 miles wide, stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific.

A few questions:

1) How much would this cost? I have no friggen’ clue. Probably a trillion dollars or more.

2) Who would pay for this? I’d suggest a split between the US and Israel, both governmental and private donors. I’d suggest that the bulk of it come from the US, and be paid to Mexico over a period of, say, thirty years. Israel would be on the hook to repay the US over the following thirty years or so.

3) Why would the Israelies want this? They’d have their own spot of land for Nuevo Israel, with an ally on one side, and on the other… someone who at the very least doesn’t really give a rats ass.

4) Why would the US want this? Several reasons. For starters, we could finally tell the Middle East to go piss up a rope. The ME’s troubles are hardly going to go away if the Israelies bug out; the local Arab governments are simply going to have to scramble to find some other bullshit strawgoblin to rattle their populace with. Second, having Israel on the southern border would mean nothing but goodness for the US. Illegal immigration would slow to a crawl; the drug trade would be similarly stymied. Cross-border crime from Mexican drug gangs would be a thing of the past. Any drug gangs on the Mexico/Nuevo Israel border who to tried to cause a ruckus would find out that the IDF is not as hand-tied as the US border patrol. The costs involved in this land purchase would, in the long run, be a pittance compared to the savings to the American penal and health care systems, never mind the economy in general.

5) Why would the Mexican government want this? Buckets of money.

6) Why would the Mexican people want this? Many probably wouldn’t… but again, there’s that “buckets of money” thing. The deal could ladle out large sums to Mexican families currently living in the strip to move south. Mexicans who don’t want to leave could be incorporated into Nuevo Israel, much as many Arabs were integrated into Israel. Those who stay would find that their surroundings would get vastly better. Instead of corrupt Mexican cops and government, there’d be the NIDF forces. Criminals would very quickly find themselves deported to Old Mexico.

OK, here’s the big, HUGE stumbling block: God. Getting God’s Chosen People to clear off of God’s Chosen Real Estate could be trouble. Still, the majority of the Israelies seem like reasonably reasonable folk… just as reasonable religious folk see Genesis not as literal fact but as allegorical, so could the idea of “Israel is wherever the Israelies are” be spun.

Also, there are a whole lot of Christian and Jewish “holy sites” in the current land of Israel. Well… presumably they’ll still be there, even after the Palestinians sweep in and loot whatever the Israelies leave behind. And once the Israelies are gone, the Arab world (along with the rest of the world) will stop giving a damn about Palestine; after the famine and general pestilence passes through and burns out the whackadoodle element, the tourism trade will be all that’s left, and should do brisk business with Nuevo Israelies visiting the ancient homeland once or twice in their lives. Practically, this should be doable… after all, all Muslims with the means of doing so are supposed to visit Mecca at least once in their lives, but they seem to be fine with going back home to Indonesia or Canada or wherever once the visit’s over.

And hey… if as the Israelies are packing up and leaving they dig up the Temple Mount and ship it across the sea… who’d notice?

Below is a map showing the rough geometry of Nuevo Israel as a 50-mile-wide strip. There’d be some good seashore for ports, both east and west. Off in the Pacific is the current state of Israel for scale. Clearly, Nuevo Israel would be vastly larger. Lots of room to grow… and seeing what the Israelies did with the Negev desert, it would not be shocking if, a century or three down the line, the US/Mexico border is easily seen from the Moon as a verdant belt fifty miles wide.

The idea of a repeating firearm (a gun that does not need to be manually loaded after each shot) goes back to at least the 1500’s. But more-or-less practical “repeaters” were produced in time for the American Revolutionary War. Such weapons were proposed to Congress, but even though they worked they were very expensive. As well as complex, heavy and likely unreliable in field conditions. but the important thing to note is that they existed, well in advance of the adoption of the Constitution. So anyone who suggests that the Second Amendment only supports ownership of single shot muzzle-loading muskets because that was all that was available… well, they’re (charitably) wrong, or (not unlikely) outright lying.

Sadly not a lot of info on this. The Vulcan Aircraft (Houston, TX) “Starfire” concept from the mid/late 1980s used lift vans and vectored thrust for VTOL. Both military and civilian uses planned. Seems kinda reasonable, if perhaps a bit light on power. The basic design seems like it might be more practical today, though of course someone would try to make it all-electric.

If anybody has anything more on this, let me know!

What he says is interesting… mostly because it’s not what I generally expect to hear from non-sci-fi/non-science types. Most of “those people” look at “2001” with some mix of bafflement and disdain, generally bored out of their minds.

Grumman won the contract to build the forward-swept-wing X-29. But Grumman was not the only company to go for the contract; Rockwell devoted a fair amount of effort – both engineering and PR – to win the prize. Their concept was similar, though intended to be a wholly new aircraft, and with a notably different planform. Below is a magazine ad from 1980 showing a model of the Rockwell “Sabrebat” concept.

The full-rez scan has been uploaded to the 2023-10 APR Extras folder on Dropbox for $4 and up Patreons/Subscribers. If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.

These rumors sound good. Too good, in fact…

Rumor: Christopher Nolan Directing Next James Bond?

Not just that Nolan will direct the next two or three Bond movies, but that they will be based on the original Ian Flemming novels, set in the original time periods, and will be faithful to the source material. This would be directly opposed to the modern studio system of making crap For The Modern Audience, with character race and gender swapped, with the good guys turned into bad guys, beauty made ugly.

Again, just rumors. Thus very likely not gonna happen. But if it does, it’ll be remarkable.

Do you want your very own genuine space suit from “2001: A Space Odyssey?” Sure, we all do. Got at least eighty grand to start bidding on it? Sure, we all don’t. But at least you can look at the pictures and dream.

Astronaut Space Suit (6) Piece Ensemble from 2001: A Space Odyssey (MGM, 1968)

2/ More photos of the "2001" lunar space suit: pic.twitter.com/4ldclFqS44

— Unwanted Blog (@UnwantedBlog) September 22, 2023

"2001" space suit backpack. Again… WANT.
/1 pic.twitter.com/m8KKv2lVuu

— Unwanted Blog (@UnwantedBlog) September 20, 2023

Well before the BBC fell into ruin and self-parody, it had a moment of undeniable awesomeness. Nicolas Winton was a British banker who rescued nearly 700 mostly Jewish children from the Nazis just before the outbreak of WWII, getting them to new lives in Britain. Afterwards, he did little to nothing to glorify himself or his deeds; it only really came out in 1988 when his wife found an old notebook with the names and passed them on to a Holocaust researcher. There followed a couple TV programs culminating in an episode of “That’s Life” where, unbeknownst to Winton, the *entire* audience was filled with the children and descendants of children he’d saved.

That’s how you fricken’ do it.

And now there’s to be a movie about Winton starring Anthony Hopkins.

This YouTuber has a *lot* of incredibly mundane videos that are surprisingly interesting. They are largely videos shot in public places over the years… stores, malls, etc. on average days and remarkable days.

https://www.youtube.com/@vampirerobot/videos

For instance, shopping at a mall in 1984 is a fundamentally different experience than any mall I’ve seen in over a decade: there are a lot of people there.