There are *lots* of people working on their version of the “Dicken Drill.” This one seems reasonable:
Dicken Drill: Proving Long Range Matters
Aug 072022
Aug 052022
If you live in a city that has been run sufficiently poorly, it’s quite possible that you *do* see robberies of stores on a daily basis. But the store employee/owner shanking the hell out of one of the robbers? Kinda innovative.
A robber in black bloc was stabbed & subdued by an Asian-American shop keeper wearing flip flops in Las Vegas this week. The robber’s accomplice leaves his friend behind. Police are investigating the robbery & stabbing. pic.twitter.com/EJrF6syO1d
— Andy Ngô 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) August 5, 2022
People dressed like Antifa getting what’s coming to people who act like Antifa? I’m not remotely upset about it.
UPDATE: video enlongered:
FAFO.
The store owners response to “Please don’t let me die, this wasn’t my idea” is comedy GOLD.
Aug 052022
The same seller trying to sell the Martin X-23 lithograph is also selling a lithograph of an orbital HL-10.
Turns out that these two lithographs are, at least based on stains on the X-23 matting, the same two lithographs sold just a few months ago. I’m dubious of turning around two lithographs that sold for $384 together for a grand or more each. The seller has a *lot* of high-value items… celebrity autographs and such, so he’s presumably doing well, but normally a lithograph like this would sell for well under $100.
Shrug.
Anyway, the art depicts an HL-10 coming in for a landing. The configuration includes a raised cockpit and reaction control thrusters at the tail; the white paint seems burned off along the underside. This would indicate an orbital craft after re-entry. Given the lack of an apparent hatch in the rear, this would not seem to be an operational orbital HL-10 (depicted hereabouts many times in the past) but instead a slightly smaller test vehicle, probably with a single pilot, possible lobbed on a once-around flight.
Aug 042022
Finally, it can be told. The “Primitive Technology” YouTube channel advances to the point of developing long range artillery:
Soon this guy will be launching comsats made out of bamboo.
Aug 042022
Currently on ebay is a lithograph of the Martin X-23 PRIME (Precision Reentry Including Maneuvering reEntry) subscale lifting body, a mid-1960’s program to build small test vehicles for the full-scale X-24A lifting body. This depiction shows it without the “bump” on the forward fuselage simulating the contours of the cockpit canopy. The seller is rather optimistic with a $1875 Buy-It-Now price, although he will consider offers.
Another copy of the same lithograph, along with a lithograph of an orbital HL-10, sold a few months ago for less than $400. That was too rich for my blood for two lithographs, never mind nearly two grand for one. Shrug. But at least the listing provides a fairly decent photo of the art. I *believe* I’ve only seen it reproduced in B&W.
Aug 022022
Currently on eBay is a photo of a to-scale collection of NASA rockets from Redstone to Saturn V. This must date from the early 70’s… late enough to capture the damaged Skylab, early enough not to include Shuttle. The photo is ok, I suppose… what I would have wanted are the actual models. I’ve seen some of these, scattered here and there across museums (of course, more than one of each were made, probably at the Marshal or Johnson model shops), but to my knowledge I don’t think I’ve seen all of them together like this.
The same seller also has a Rocketdyne H-1 manual for sale that I’d snap up in a heartbeat if he didn’t have a four hundred dollar pricetag on it…
Aug 012022
I don’t care who you are, this right here is *funny.*
If you think it’d be just neato-keen to get a tattoo in some foreign language, go right ahead. But is it really so much of a bother to put some actual thought into it first? I checked out a number of these, both Chinese and Japanese, on Google Translate, and the video seems to be generally correct in the wacky translations of the ones that are shown. Which means that if you want, say, “courage” tatted on your arm in Chinese, you could get 勇氣 (Yǒngqì) and feel *reasonably* confident that you won’t come off as too much of a fool. Heck, at least you could do your translation, print it out and show it to a Chinese speaker and see if they say it means what you think it does. Is it really *that* friggen’ hard?
I bet a lot of Chinese-speaking tattoo artists are tempted to slap “愚蠢的白人自由主義者” on their customers.
Jul 312022
Someone has been trying to sell a lithograph on ebay for a *long* time without apparent success… probably because they want $650 for it. Move that decimal place to the left, and I would stand a decent chance of buying it… but for $650, it has to be the *original* art. No way for a *small* lithograph.
The listing is:
1960s GENERAL DYNAMICS “Small ICBM” Concept Art Lithograph Print 8.5×11 RARE
It’s not from the 1960’s, but the 1980’s. It depicts a General Dynamics “Midgetman” Small ICBM concept launching from a mobile launcher; a concept the Soviets (and Chinese, and Norks) ran with, but the US never really got behind. The launcher seems very likely to be the artists fantasy; these vehicles were designed to withstand a reasonably nearby nuclear strike, and one of the ways they did that was by not having a huge single piece canopy.
Jul 312022
Unfortunate demo of some sort of early Photoshop-like software. Late 1980s? Early 1990s?
Jul 302022
Well, it’d better be weird.
‘Max Headroom’ Series Reboot Starring Matt Frewer In Works At AMC Networks From Christopher Cantwell & Elijah Wood’s SpectreVision
Matt Frewer is said to be onboard to play Max again. One wonders if the way to go this time will be to use *actual* computer generated characters. That seems obvious… but maybe it’d be appropriately weird to stick with prosthetics.