Feb 152021
 

The Great Reset summarized:

The Great Reset is such an obviously doom-filled notion that you have to wonder why anyone would even bother trotting it out. If something like this was actually instituted, the inevitable result would be Eat The Rich and street corner guillotines. I can only see two explanations:

1: This is a world-class Trumpian troll. Perhaps the bajillionaires involved in the World Economic Forum did this as some sort of drunken bet just to see how many morons would sign up, or to see what kind of chaos could be created from the inevitable outrage.

2: Ideology. Only whackadoodle political or religious ideologies can make people who should know better actually think that planned, centralized economies are a good thing, that the wants and desires of entire populations can be scheduled in advance, that people will be satisfied with less, that people do not have self-interest or a desire to won their own stuff.

3: The ultimate reason why.

 Posted by at 11:18 am
Feb 142021
 

Oh, boy! Mayhem!

There was likely a short in the first vehicles battery pack. Whether due to damage or bad manufacturing/materials… shrug. But lithium and oxygen make an energetic pair, and it’s generally advisable to keep them apart.

Interestingly, at about 1:20 you see the truck roll backwards. Looks like the brakes cut loose.

 Posted by at 8:26 am
Feb 132021
 

Lochnagar Mine was a pile of explosives dug under the German front lines in France by the British during WWI. This was of course during the era of trench warfare, one of the most spectacularly futile endeavors in human history, with the consequence that the Brits dug a chamber fifty feet beneath German lines and filled it with 60,000 pounds of ammonal (ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder) explosive. On July 1, 1916 the explosives were detonated creating a crater about 100 feet deep and 300 feet in diameter.

Considering that the war dragged on for another two and a half years… all that effort and destruction, for nothing. And in the end, the allies set up a punitive system that virtually ensured that something worse would come along… and of course it did.

 

 Posted by at 9:48 am
Feb 092021
 

Here’s a problem that just a few years ago would have been inconceivable. Now it’s conceivable. And hilarious.

Also hilarious: the legal notice that recording that hearing was illegal. Snerk.

 

 Posted by at 4:44 pm
Feb 072021
 

A little while back, one of President Bidens first actions was to overturn a Trump ban on turning the American electrical grid over to the control of the Chinese Communist Party. Clearly only right-wing nutjobs would be opposed to China digging deeply into vital American infrastructure. Chinese construction quality, customer service and ethics are world renowned and should not be questioned. Here’s an example of what we can look forward to from our future ChiGreenCom power systems:

Feh.

Communist crap is to be avoided at all costs. Communist *control* is to be actively resisted.  The ChiComs have nothing to offer. Their lackeys – paid and otherwise – have nothing to offer. You want quality? Go with good old American craftsmanship.

 Posted by at 7:13 pm
Feb 032021
 

Lots of people love Snopes. Lots of people hate it. I find it to be usually useful as a first check on something, when that somethign is a clear binary choice: did X say Y, soemthgin like that. but sometimes thigns are gray. And sometiems Snopes *decides* that things are gray when they’re really not. Attend:

Did a ‘Convicted Terrorist’ Sit on the Board of a BLM Funding Body?

That would seem to be a binary choice. Did a group have a convicted terrorist on their board or not? Simple to determine a yes or a no. But Snopes… they had some difficulty and decided that the claim is “mixture.” Why?

What’s True

Susan Rosenberg has served as vice chair of the board of directors for Thousand Currents, an organization that provides fundraising and fiscal sponsorship for the Black Lives Matter Global Movement. She was an active member of revolutionary left-wing movements whose illegal activities included bombing U.S. government buildings and committing armed robberies.

What’s Undetermined

In the absence of a single, universally-agreed definition of “terrorism,” it is a matter of subjective determination as to whether the actions for which Rosenberg was convicted and imprisoned — possession of weapons and hundreds of pounds of explosives — should be described as acts of “domestic terrorism.”

Holy doubletalk, Batperson! Someone who was an active member of a political extremist group that used bombings and armed assaults and who stockpiled and attempted to transfer a battle rifle, a submachine gun, a sawed-off shotgun, three pistols and *740* *pounds* of explosives (the merest fraction of this list would get a right winger labeled as the owner of an “arsenal”), all in the service of intimidating the public and forcing the government to change policies, would seem to be a textbook example of a terrorist.

Gotta wonder who Snopes thinks they’re fooling.

 Posted by at 5:49 pm
Feb 032021
 

This bill does not yet have a number, or much in the way of text:

‘‘Closing the Loophole 2on Interstate Firearm Sales Act’’

https://crow.house.gov/sites/crow.house.gov/files/CROWCO_014_xml.pdf

To prohibit a Federal firearms licensee from transferring a long gun to a person who the licensee knows or has reasonable cause to believe does not reside in (or if the person is a corporation or other business entity, does not maintain a place of business in) the State in which the licensee’s place of business is located.

Translation: the Constitution will no longer cross state lines. Soon you will need special papers to leave your state if these jackholes get their way. The internet will be blocked from going from one state to another, never mind internationally.

There needs to be some form of legal sanction for congresscritters who propose laws that are this blatantly unConstitutional. Automatic ejection from the House and a permanent voting disenfranchisement would seem to be the bare minimum for totalitarian morons like these.

 Posted by at 2:59 pm
Feb 032021
 

Scott Manley analyses the crash of SN9:

Problem, crudely, was that one of the two Raptor engines meant to  ignite for the landing maneuver doesn’t ignite. *Why* that happened is as yet unclear, but it looks like the engine (specifically the turbopump) was falling apart. The end result is that it seemed it hit the ground at about 120 mph, resulting in RUD (Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly). Ouch.

 

This remarkable slo-mo footage of the thing coming down is not to be missed:

It’s beautiful in a way. The fact that nobody was on board, and the fact that it wasn’t an example of taxpayer funded blaot, makes the loss non-tragic. Of course, if you work at SpaceX, your mileage may vary.

 Posted by at 7:51 am