Feb 222022
 

A few days ago Amazon plopped one of the most cringe-worthy videos I’ve ever seen onto YouTube. It *claimed* to be a video of four “superfans” of The Lord of the Rings reacting to the new trailer for “The Rings of Power,” and it was just astonishingly painful to watch. Basically they are everything wrong with modern woke corporate “fandom,” demonstrating a lack of understanding just what the frak Tolkein was on about in favor of unhinged “influencer” nonsense. These four Brits exemplify the soy-boy, alphabet-people hipster cliches, with one “guy” hoping that Sauron will appear in the series and be “hot” so he can dream about “fixing him.” You can *smell* their parents disappointment through the screen.

If you *must* watch it, here is:

Lest you think that Amazon UK just happened to randomly stumble across the four least credible, least serious fans of Tolkein, it turns out that Amazon did the same nonsense for several other countries. The *same* nonsense.

Despite the scripted, woke nature of this “round table” of genetic defectives, some important truths slipped out. The four UK “superfans” consist of one seemingly ethnically British person and three non-ethnic-Brits; a seemingly unlikely ratio in the land of JRR Tolkein. But the point is raised that they are *thrilled* to finally be “represented” in the Tolkein universe. And yet… they claim to have been fans *before* this series. Thus they were fans of white dwarves and white elves and white hobbit, as Tolkein described them. They didn’t actually need “representation” to be fans. They were fans (if they really were fans, and not just paid actors) of the story, characters and world that Tolkein created. They weren’t fans of the story, characters and world created by an Amazon algorithm.

Given the scripted nature of this atrocity, this is how Amazon wants to portray their little project. It’s not an accident. This is what Amazon thinks of Tolkein, his works and those who have actually been fans of them for years and decades.

If Amazon really wanted to produce a quality product that respected Tolkein and the fandom, they’d have a “roundtable” with acknowledged scholars and long-term fans. This group of people would, theoretically, be able to say “why, yes, it looks like it really respects Tolkein and I approve.” The fact that Amazon has no such offering tells you a lot.

Shrug.

Maybe in fifteen, twenty years, Elon Musk will have bought the rights to LotR and the Silmarillion, and will produce a *proper* multi-year projects covering the First and Second Ages. We can only hope, cuz this thing fills me with STD-levels of basement-level expectations.

 Posted by at 5:12 pm
Feb 222022
 

Putin moves troops, Biden levies sanctions and Europe prepares for war

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Donetsk and Luhansk, two territories in Ukraine on which Russia has laid claim for years. He did so under the guise of “peacekeeping,” even as he made clear that he did not accept the basic premise of Ukrainian sovereignty.

Spectacular.

“Ukraine is not just a neighboring country, they are a part of our culture,” the Russian leader said in a Monday night speech.

Basically Putin has annexed the Sudetenland. Yeah, that worked out great the last time…

Time to stock up on food, toilet paper and ammo.

 Posted by at 9:00 am
Feb 222022
 

The one where it is claimed that Sonequa Martin-Green’s character of Michael Burnham is loudly touted as the first black female captain in the Star Trek franchise…

And yet…

Star Trek IV gave us the Captain of the Yorktown:

Star Trek: the Next Generation gave us Captain Tryla Scott:

Star Trek: The Next Generation gave us Captain Silva La Forge:

Star Trek: The Next generation gave us Fleet Admiral Taela Shanthi. OK, not a Captain, but I imagine “Captain” is in her bio somewhere unless she skipped a few steps:

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine gave us Kassidy Yates. Sure, she wasn’t a Starfleet Captain… but she OWNED HER OWN SHIP:

 

I guess it should not be surprising that major figures in the worst of the Star Trek series cannot be bothered to remember Star Trek canon and precedent… the writers of STD cannot remember their *own* continuity.

 Posted by at 8:53 am
Feb 202022
 

Rocky Top Goes Woke

University of Tennessee-Knoxville (UTK) is instituting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies, with the goal of making staff and students “diverse.”  The usual bunkum is described, but the bit likely of greatest interest hereabouts is this:

UTK’s diversity plans put many academic disciplines in a bind. The physics and astronomy department, the faculty of which is entirely white and mostly male, had to invent a “diversity plan” knowing that 80 percent of physics Ph.D.s nationwide are men and that the discipline produced only 22 black Ph.D.s out of nearly 2,000 awarded in 2017, the last year for which we have reliable data. In light of this difficulty, the department promised to “provide a clear set of guidelines” about “expected behaviors” with respect to “diversity and inclusion” and to develop an anti-bias reporting mechanism. The department’s plan envisions no curricular or partnership changes; it aims merely to reflect the racial and sexual makeup of the “American physics community and, eventually, our nation.” Something has to give: either the school will stop devoting resources to a department that cannot deliver “diversity” for the foreseeable future, or the department will sacrifice professional standards in the name of those goals. Similar dilemmas confront the biological and engineering sciences.

It’s long past time that this sort of nonsense was not only dispensed with, but investigated. *Nobody* in the US benefits from this sort of thing apart from grifters. Foreign adversaries, however, must look upon this with glee. Do they also look upon this as the culmination of plans? The FBI *really* should be looking into it.

 Posted by at 9:49 pm
Feb 202022
 

The Ottawa cops trampling people with horses story just got a bit more interesting:

Woman trampled by Trudeau’s forces during freedom protest identified as Indigenous elder

As those who recall Smirkageddon a few years ago, the media loves them an “Indigenous Elder,” at least when they are on the right side of the narrative. But since she’s on the side that the political class has decided are racist terrorists… huh. I suspect she’s going to get a *lot* less coverage than Nathan Phillips got. Because getting trampled by a horse is less of a newsworthy big deal than having a kid smirk at you.

 Posted by at 8:22 pm
Feb 202022
 

Yer got-dayum right, whoa.

Somebody’s got some ‘splainin’ to do.

Also, someone has some ‘splainin’ to do about this truly *quality* journalism on the topic:

At one moment, a massive wave smashes through the front windows of the boat, demolishing one passenger and flooding the entire cabin.

The wave was so powerful, you can hear the window break under its G-force.

Not clear the passenger was “demolished,” especially since the same article points out a lack of reported injuries. And I really kinda doubt that the wave broke the window through the gravitational field produced by the mass wave rather than, you know, the momentum of the wave.

 Posted by at 1:52 pm
Feb 192022
 

Race to salvage fire-ravaged US-bound cargo ship drifting in the Atlantic with thousands of supercars on board including Porsches, Bentleys and Lamborghinis with blaze fueled by batteries in electric vehicles

The cargo vessel “Felicity Ace” is burning, and will likely be destroyed along with its $120 million in cargo, due to a fire that may have begun in the batteries in the electric cars its carrying. There are 4,000 cars including Porsches, Bentleys and Lamborghinis.

When you ship a car, you ship it with the fuel tanks empty. Saves weight and makes things less flammable. But an electric vehicle ships with the batteries. And whether the batteries are charged or not they weight he same; and charged or not, the lithium in those batteries remains insanely flammable. So you pack a bunch of those cars together in a ship with no way to separate them, and no good way to put out a lithium metal fire… well, there ya go.

 Posted by at 6:22 am
Feb 182022
 

So a bunch of gullible saps donated to an organization that just used their money to bail a racist terrorist and would-be assassin out of jail. The best possible result of this would be for the terrorist in question to attempt to run, get caught just across state lines, and that bail money to go *poof.* If that happens, my response would be almost *exactly* the same as the first 16 seconds of this video:

 

 Posted by at 7:10 pm