May 262023
 

Funny, though:

A soundproof, breathable device to silence your baby’s cries during long flights and movie nights.

https://babymute.com/

The Baby Mute is a must-have for any parent who wants to enjoy long flights or movie nights without the distraction of their baby’s cries.
With Baby Mute, you can relax and enjoy your favorite movies or TV shows without having to worry about your baby’s cries disturbing others.

Heh.

No, it’s not real. If the clearly non-functional rendering above doesn’t give it away, perhaps some of the people supposedly involved will… Dr. York Hunt and Dr. Michael Lit, for example. And the little detail that when you click on the “Order” button it takes you to a page where you can order a prank package.

But dayum, if such a product were to exist and work as advertised… the ability to strap it onto a screaming child on a bus, airplane or in a restaurant, or to use it on a babbling infantile politician? I’ll take a dozen.

 Posted by at 10:14 pm
May 172023
 

I know, I’m shocked too. It was well made, well acted and actually entertaining and *funny.* Not being a D&D aficionado, I don’t know if they did the lore justice, but I found it an adequately good movie. Certainly vastly better than the flick twenty-some years ago, and not as gawd-awful as the producers had promised it would be. Yeah, there’s some The Message casting going on, but that’s hard to get away from these days.

 Posted by at 6:38 am
May 162023
 

1: A Remington Rand Printing Calculator showed up today. I need it solely for the number keys. Damn thing weighs a ton. Not sure what I’ll do with it after… It’s not something I have a particular use for, nor am I likely going to be able to restore it properly.

 

 

 

2: I’ve figured out the “video camera:” it’s a Japanese “Monolux” telescope with a box wrapped around it. Some comparison shots  between the prop and two copies of the scope I found on ebay:

The size is about right, the shape is dead on, the details are right, the colors are, within limits, correct. The “box” might have been an actual product, but it’s simple enough, and the seams look crappy enough, that making it from scratch seems fully warranted.

 Posted by at 11:00 pm
May 162023
 

A song from five years ago is now made relevant again by this news about the “Trump-Russia Collusion” narrative falling apart even more:

Special counsel John Durham concludes FBI never should have launched full Trump-Russia probe

As the kids say, it’s a “banger.”

 

It was produced by the same folks responsible for the Alex Jones “Gay Frogs” remix:

 

 

 

 Posted by at 4:58 am
May 062023
 

In 1983 “Science Digest” ran an article that 13-year-old me lost his tiny little mind over. Illustrated by Rick Sternbach, designer of, among other Star Trek vehicles and artifacts, the USS Voyager, it described a series of possible means of interstellar travel. While the physics and engineering of some of them have proven dodgy in the years since (the Bussard ramjet has serious problems with the proposed magnetic fiend, the Enzmann starship has turned out to not be as well thought out as many had assumed, etc.), it remains a tantalizing glimpse of what might be. The article has been scanned in full color and made available to APR Patrons/subscribers at the above-$10 level.

 

If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. Back issues are available for purchase by patrons and subscribers.




 

 

 

 

 

 Posted by at 11:29 am
May 052023
 

So, here are a young couple reacting to the movie “Apollo 13.” Nothing particularly noteworthy, except to the likes of me: they didn’t know how it was going to end. The public schools may well teach kids to hate western civ and to think the US was built by slaves and to count an uncountable number of imaginary genders, but actual history? None of that.

 Posted by at 11:19 pm