Back when art was uplifting. And *society* was uplifting.
— Americana Aesthetics (@AmericanaAesth) October 1, 2022
That’s “The Kansas City Spirit” by Norman Rockwell, 1951, painted in response to historic and damaging floods, and the resilience shown by those who rebuilt.
The budget for this movie was apparently about $50 million. Something like half of the domestic box office goes back to the studio… about $19.85 million. About a quarter of the international box office goes to the studio… about $0.325 million. For a total of $20.175 million. Add in anywhere from $25 million on up in advertising costs, and I’m uncertain that $20+ million will pay off an investment of $70 million, even given that it has weeks to months more run time. I can see it getting to $60, maybe $80 million domestically… which won’t be break-even on production, never mind marketing. If it truly fails, I wonder if we might get a sequel to THIS STORY.
“Inspired by true events.” In much the same way that “The Man in the High Castle” was, I suppose.
“Optimus” is not exactly a Boston Dynamics masterpiece, but it’s certainly better than anything *I* could cobble together. Musk promises a ticket price of less than 20 grand. It’ll be interesting to see if U.S Robotics or NorthAm Robotics can match that.
Huh. Who woulda guessed.
It kinda seems like Ukrainian interest in NATO membership has been on the rise for a while. One wonders why that might be.
Historical remark on historical day: It is Russia that persuaded Ukrainian people that the best security option is #NATO. Today, more than 80% of Ukrainians support it! #UkraineWillWin pic.twitter.com/TDjmDaM1ro
— Petro Burkovskyy (@PetroBurkovskyi) September 30, 2022
Interesting:
I’ve always wondered how blind people in the US handle paper money. All our bills are the same size and are essentially featureless from a tactile sense. A $1 would be indistinguishable from a $20 or a $100 bill.
Technology to the rescue!
I suppose someone will get snippy about “mutilating” bills by adding braille bumps to them. But then, someone *always* gets offended by some damn thing or other. I can’t imagine it would be all that hard to add tactile features to bills. raised bumps might get squished over time, but braille punched-out dots seem workable. But embedded bumps are probably best.
The Hubble and Webb space telescopes both observed the DART asteroid impact, and both saw distinct “streamers” in the ejecta. Which seems rather odd given that the asteroid appears to have been a loosely-assembled gravel pile, with nothing holding the ejected particles together… no surface tension, no magnetic fields, not even any appreciable gravity.
Webb’s view in near infrared:
Hubble’s view in visible light:
So Russia has blamed the west for sabotaging the pipeline; everybody else on the planet blames Russia for sabotaging the pipeline. But there is another possibility. Consider, for a moment, the fact that the same culture of corruption, arrogance and vodka that gave us Chernobyl was also responsible for maintaining the pipeline.
Yeah. No sabotage needed to explain massive mechanical failures.
An interesting read full of things you probably haven’t considered:
Might be advisable to figure out of this was just a maintenance fail before people start nuking each other over it.
For starters, it has the FBI actually doing its job. Shocking, I know.
Not so much “leak” as “sell.” The medical information seems to be medical records of military personnel and their families, a pile of data that does not immediately seem all that terribly useful. But then, the Russians do not seem to have actually been involved here; these people were baited by the FBI. And what people they are:
During an initial Aug. 17 meeting in a Baltimore hotel room, (Anna) Gabrielian told the agent she was “motivated by patriotism toward Russia to provide any assistance she could to Russia, even if it meant being fired or going to jail.”
Nice. But where it gets more interesting: the female doctors spouse, also arrested, has been in the news before:
(Jamie Lee) Henry received attention in 2015 after becoming the first known active-duty Army officer to come out as transgender. A Buzzfeed article from that time said she was also, to her knowledge and to the knowledge of LGBTQ advocates, the first and only active duty service member who had changed her name and gender within the United States military.
In the one photo in the article Henry looks like a dude. But I guess Henry considers Henry to be female. Shrug.
“My point of view is until the United States actually declares war against Russia, I’m able to help as much as I want,” Henry, 39, told the agent, according to the indictment. “At that point, I’ll have some ethical issues I’ll have to work through.”
“You’ll work through those ethical issues,” Gabrielian replied.
Henry also told the agent she had looked into volunteering to join the Russian Army after the conflict in Ukraine began.
Wonderful. *These* are the sort of people the military is hiring *and* promoting.
It seems that both of these characters consider themselves women. So the fact that they have some number of children is a bit unusual; once again, biology ain’t what it once was. But also:
Gabrielian did fear what might happen to the couple’s children if she put herself at risk of arrest, demanding that the kids be put on “a nice flight to Turkey to go on vacation” if arrest seemed imminent.
What the hell is in Turkey awaiting these kids? “Gabrielian” is an *Armenian* surname. I may not be a world-reknowned historian, but I do seem to recall some unpleasantness between the Turks and Armenians that would tend to suggest that they’re not real fond of each other.
This seems like a moment in time that won’t last. Cultural Enrichment is damn near certain to bring this practice to an end.
@annieineventyrland ♬ path of the wind ~ my neighbor totoro lofi – Closed on Sunday