*WOW.* Not a fun day to be a tanker.
Chinese TV crew captures Russian tank turret going rocketing into the sky. A design flaw in many Russian tanks is that the ammo store is directly underneath the turret – if a hit detonates it, the turret goes straight up, sometimes reaching extremely impressive heights, like here pic.twitter.com/Flli1DK4t3
— Euan MacDonald (@Euan_MacDonald) May 11, 2022
Before Star Trek, I was a fan of the 1950’s run of “Tom Swift jr.” books back when I was in grade school. Those were some of the first books I read, kicking off a love of science fiction literature that has lasted for more than forty -five years. The whole idea of A Kid Like Me being a scientific/engineering genius appealed, and undoubtedly played some role in my becoming an aerospace engineer. So just imagine how thrilled I was when I saw this trailer for an Extra Special version of Tom Swift soon to premier as a series on the CW:
I *defy* anyone who read the 1950’s run of Tom Swift to suggest with a straight face that this has any resemblance beyond the name and the concept of “genius inventor.”
Is there any intellectual property that modern Hollywood *can’t* or *won’t* turn into crap? The existence of this series does not negate the original books, of course… but the existence of *this* series negates the possibility of the good series that *could* have been made.
It is possible that some writer on “Strange New Worlds” might have slipped in some non-leftist messaging. Personally I believe that the more likely explanation is that this was meant to smear the right, but due to the current-day Star Trek writers being lazy and none too bright, they screwed it up.
In short: in the premier episode of SNW, Captain Pike uses some January 6 footage to show how Earth walked into World War III, with the protests leading to the Eugenics Wars, and then to WWIII. Buuuuuuuut… Pike referred to the Jan 6 footage as a “fight for freedom.”
Hmmm. Pike’s not wrong there.
Another good point: “That’s why I watch a show set in the future, to watch video from last year.”
This particular form of video meme has been around for a while, but it is sometimes interesting. The song “Little Dark Age” by MGMT, often slowed down somewhat, is played against a series of images all to a particular theme, such as “America” or “Space Exploration.” Often the videos start with images or video clips from the present that show some of the bad aspects of the topic, depressing stuff such as Antifa and Joe Biden and “Hamilton” for the “America” theme, then follow it with uplifting historical images. The point, it seems, to be to contrast the current-day insistence of many to view things only in the worst possible light with a much better view of the topic. A lot of these videos are lame, but the better ones have an evocative mix of despair and hope.
Some vary the style up by ditching the Black Pill content at the beginning and just use a vast number of historical images to tell a story. This one, for instance, tells the story of Western Civilization and somehow got itself “age restricted,” even though there’s nothing in there that seems to merit it… looks more like some algorithm decided that “western civilization = bad.”
A video taken by Ukrainian forces after taking a formerly Russian-held position, showing a good reason why the Russian military seems so incompetent: instead of loading their positions with militarily useful equipment, they burdened themselves with loot. And not even *good* loot… not gold and diamonds and Lugers and such, but washing machines. The fact that these soldiers think hauling pilfered home appliances – and big ones – around an entire *war* makes any kind of sense says a lot about how things are back home in Russia. In a country where the Dear Leader has himself yachts the size of warships that cost as much as space programs, apparently the average schmoe doesn’t have the sort of mundane normal stuff that people in the west take for granted. So they’re stealing it from Ukraine.
Seems the Russian soldiers are pointing their guns in the wrong direction.
— Gosi (@gosi1984) May 10, 2022
Other than lobbing rockets at Odessa, at least so far none of the kinda-expected escalations of Putins war came about. Not a single NATO country got nuked, for instance. Still, Operator Starsky, a Ukrainian National Guardsman who has put out a lot of videos and tweets and whatnot in this war, “celebrated” the day with a video compiling several interesting bits of Russia: the head of the Russian space program being an actual Nazi, Russian politicians proposing genocide, excuses made for theft, etc.
Today is “Victory Day” for Russia, celebrating the victory of the democidal Soviets over the genocidal Nazis. Parades and celebrations and bloviation, oh my. Basically everyone is expecting Putin to either announce some crazy new offensives against Ukraine or to actually enact said craziness. This could include strikes against non-Ukrainian targets, possibly NATO nations, even nukes. Wheeee!!!!! The next day or so should prove interesting… even if nothing happens. A *lack* of some new offensive might indicate things are falling apart.
A “panel of experts” selected 70 books, one for each year of God-Empress Queen Elizabeth II, Defender of the Faith, Monarch of India, Regina Andor Augustus Iaponius Centarius’s reign from 1952 to the present. In all those seventy titles meant to honor the British monarch… there seem to be twelve English authors, two Welsh, four Scottish, one Northern Irish. Actual Brits are not considered all that literary-worthy by the BBC. JRR Tolkein’s “The Lord of the Rings” is conspicuous in its absence. The rest is a “Who’s That” list of authors from Sri Lanka and Rwanda and Jamaica, stuff you’ve never read and likely would put down after a page or two to go find something actually interesting to do instead.
And British people *still* have to pay a license to watch the BBC, even though it is freely broadcast through the air.
Not *much* of a tornado from the looks of it, but I remain surprised that the balsa wood and fiberglass blades didn’t fold up like a wet newspaper.
This is kinda what I expected:
There are people who suck just about everywhere. And these people seem to love to exercise their vileness on cats… most likely because cats are not only weak and vulnerable compared to humans, they also have distinct personalities, and probably most importantly because they are loved by other humans. This means that harming the cat also harms some humans. Often, *many* humans. Somebody is getting off on this. Somebody who should be found, tried, convicted and then shoved through the nearest convenient stargate.
The news story (which took place distressing close to where I live) is beyond the “Continue Reading,” because even the headline might be a bit disturbing for those who don’t want to read about such things. Included within the body of the linked news article is a news story from a dozen years ago that set me off watching it.
There is a GoFundMe that has been set up to raise funds for a reward to find whoever’s responsible. Hopefully local security cameras caught something.
This is one of the reasons why my cats are indoor cats. The world is dangerous enough for cats without throwing in actual monsters.