“Suchomimus” seems to be a Ukrainian, gathering together a bunch of short videos from on the ground of the Russian invasion. So long as Ukrainians maintain the ability to communicate with the outside world (I’m surprised the Russians haven;t taken out all the cell towers and satellite dishes), this will remain an unusual war… the world can watch it happen live from the ground, from the viewpoint of the civilians watching an invasion force coming in.
For example, a Hind firing rockets in a city. I don’t speak Russian or Ukrainian… but I recognize some words here, and I don’t think the cameraman is happy.
And finally, Ukraine deploys the Ultimate Weapon: Karens.
That’s got to be a hell of a morale boost to the Russian troops: “If you fall in battle, don’t worry… we’ll reduce your remains to ashes so your family need never know what happened to you.”
You know what the biggest roadblocks to converting to this or that religion usually are? The people pushing that religion the hardest. Take this Very Special Episode for example:
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.
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.
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.
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.