Anyone care to explain WTF is going on here?
May 192023
May 172023
Supreme Court ‘transparency’ charity director panics over IRS donor leak: ‘I just f***ed up’
Short from: someone who demands that *other* people be transparent freaks out when *he* becomes transparent.
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In other news… when is Adam Schiff going to face consequences? Any day now, surely. Right?
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.
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.
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:
May 132023
Strange New Worlds’ Upgraded Tech Has a Canon Explanation
As readers of this blog are doubtless aware, I am unimpressed with Kelvin-timeline Trek and *especially* “Discovery” Trek. STD sucks on a whole multitude of levels, from bad writing and terrible characters, terrible politics and worse ideology; not a lot can fix that. But one thing that the article above *can* deal with is the fact that STD simply doesn’t fit canon-wise with TOS. And what is that explanation? Time travel. There has been a *lot* of time travel in Trek over the years. And Trek has demonstrated that changing the timeline is possible; the universe does not necessarily reset to some special chosen track.
So why does STD not fit with TOS? Because time travelers have mucked up the timeline and have, like in the Star trek: Lens Flare movies made post 2009, created offshoot timelines where things are different. And of course, if the relatively tiny groups of people followed int he shows and movies encounter time travel as often as they do, it’s reasonable to assume that the whole galaxy is filled with people and races constantly mucking up the timeline, unseen by Starfleet.
This seems like a compromise that trek fans should be able to accept: TOS/TNG/DS9/VOY were one timeline… one that got diverted for 2009 and again for STD. They are different canon. I’ve been saying *that* for a while, but here’s a fair in-universe explanation for it.
May 102023
Back in the Good Old Days of above-ground nuclear testing, a series of solid propellant smokey-trailed rockets would be launched just before detonation. They would leave vertical trails in the sky near the detonation. The video below explains just what they were for, as well as some of the physics of the detonation itself… the radiation front and the shock front. It’s interesting.
May 102023
A new Supreme Court case seeks to legalize assault weapons in all 50 states
The Supreme Court could hand down a decision any day now in National Association for Gun Rights v. City of Naperville, a case that could legalize assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in all 50 states.
“Assault weapons:” Normal semi-automatic rifles
“High-capacity magazines:” the standard capacity magazines that come with the gun
Most of the article, apart form the above bit of Scare Text, is pretty straightforward. However, there’s this bizarre bit:
And there is good reason to fear that this Court could, at the very least, decide to make semiautomatic assault rifles legal throughout the United States.
“Fear:” a funny way to spell “hope.”
Anyway, “National Association for Gun Rights v. City of Naperville” is on the Supreme Court “Shadow Docket,” which means they could issue a ruling without the usual trouble of oral hearings. This would speed things up a *lot.*
The concept of a Shadow Docket is a bit strange, and one I’m not entirely sure I’m entirely behind. However, I would accept any Shadow Docket ruling *IF* that ruling came down in favor of rolling back government power, impositions on the citizens or curtailments of rights. If s Shadow Docket ruling was in favor of the government, then it should automatically be set aside in favor of a full court proceedings.
May 082023
Every now and then I see posts, tweets, comments, etc. mentioning that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has a net worth over a billion dollars. For a comedian to be that rich, especially when his nation is gettign bombed into gravel, is suspicious to say the least. The implication, of course, is that there is financial chicanery goign on… likely American tax dollars being funneled directly into his pockets.
But as with so many Interesting Stories, this appears to be complete BS.
An article from Forbes:
President Zelensky Is Not A Billionaire. So How Much Is He Worth?
In short, he’s nowhere near a billionaire. Forbes estimates he’s worth $20 to $30 million, which is a surprisingly high amount. But there is a fair explanation for that:
His main asset: an estimated 25% stake in Kvartal 95, a group of companies that produce humorous shows, which he transferred to his partners after being elected president, though he’ll likely regain his shares after leaving office. Kvartal 95 produced and owns the Servant of the People series, a popular political comedy starring Zelensky as a Ukrainian high school teacher who is elected president. Netflix, which previously streamed the show between 2017 and 2021, snapped up the rights again in March. With estimated revenues of $30 million annually, Forbes Ukraine values Zelensky’s stake at $11 million.
He was an entertainer, and prior to the war had a goodly stake in an entertainment company. This makes sense.
If there is evidence that he’s substantially richer than that, in the “Russian Oligarch” category, I’m sure the world would be interested to see it. But “evidence” has to be more than the say-so of some Russian talking head.
May 072023
Interesting times *here* and interesting times forthcoming. In the past day or so Texas has seen a mass shooting with 8 dead, and an SUV *apparently* intentionally rammed a group of “migrants” at a bus stop, killing at least 7. In both cases it appears that the killer was a narrative-busting Hispanic male. In the former case, the shooter has been ID’ed as one Mauricio Garcia… and HERE the narrative is being spun that this Hispanic guy, who had a prominently displayed tattoo for the “tango blast” Hispanic prison gang, was a white supremacist and a neo-Nazi. In the latter case the suspect has been arrested but not yet identified, but a potato-cam video of him being arrested *appears* to show a Hispanic guy, though that’s uncertain.
With hundreds of thousands to potentially *millions* of illegal aliens preparing to invade in the coming days and weeks, expect this sort of thing to only increase. You’ll get a vast increase in third-world cartel members in the US here to sow chaos, and who knows how many native Americans losing their minds and going buggo. When you couple that with the Just In Time For Summer deaths of a nutjob on a subway train in Manhattan and a thief in Oakland, BLM and related activists are getting ready to start up another summer of burning cities to the ground. Stock up on essentials while you can; if you live in cities, your favorite stores may well be ashes and bits of broken glass before you know it.
UPDATE: A photo reportedly of the SUV driver:
He has multiple Rio Grande Valley Tango Blast gang tattoos. From bottom lower left RGV for Rio Grande Valley, above the R Valluco, above the V is the 956 area code. above either side of the RGV block letters are the two palm trees. And those are just the ones I can see. pic.twitter.com/rqAf0UssbB
— 🍊 🍊 🍊 🍊 MrsLibertyBelle pronouns: bad/bitch (@MrsLibertyBell1) May 8, 2023