Rocket videos worth watching

 art, awesomeness, Hmm..., news, photography, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Sep 292022
 

Say what you will about United Launch Alliance and the fact that it is far, FAR behind the times when compared with SpaceX, they’ve recently been issuing some damned impressive videos.

And they’re retweeting some good vids of their Delta IV launch:

 

 

Some great launch videos. Now, to release some equally impressive landing videos, demonstrating that ULA is in the business of recovering and reusing rockets to not only lower launch cost (and compete with SpaceX) but also to ramp up launch rates in order to save western civilization off-world, because it’s going to hell on *this* one.

 

 Posted by at 11:09 am

The madness of crowds

 Crazy, Gah., Hmm..., wisdom, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Sep 272022
 

A fitness class out for a jog goes by an outdoor cafe… and the people having their lunch think that the class are running *from * something, panic, and take off running with them. On one hand.. ha ha, very funny. On the other hand, this was in Brazil. I’ve seen the videos. The many, many, MANY videos. It’s not insane to keep your head on a swivel in Brazil, and be ready at the drop of a hat to bolt. That whole country seems like Chicago writ large.

 

 Posted by at 10:03 pm

How could this have possibly been prevented?

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., Hmm..., news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Sep 272022
 

Homeless man arrested for vicious beating in NYC train station

How could this crime have been prevented? Were there any warning signs? Any possible hints of what was coming? Any chances to go ina  different direction?

In 1995, Foster was arrested as a 14-year-old for killing his own 82-year-old grandmother in Flatbush, Brooklyn. He apparently got into a dispute about money and started punching her. She died on the couch shortly after the attack. …

In 2010, police arrested him for stabbing a 50-year-old woman at a psychiatric center in Queens Village. The woman was left permanently disfigured in the attack.

Foster was paroled last year for that incident.

New York City Police arrested him in August for Petty Larceny. The next day he was arrested again for criminal mischief.

Nope. Nothing at all that could have been done. There were no chances to have nipped this in the bud.

 Posted by at 3:54 pm

Interesting if true

 Crazy, Forward!, Hmm..., humor, news, politics, Worldwreckers  No Responses »
Sep 272022
 

“IF” being the operative word. Assume this is as accurate as a random anonymous comment usually is.

…or Maybe the Trans Shop Teacher Is the Hero We Need Right Now

This dude is gaming the system. An anon here yesterday was in this dude’s class. This teacher was almost fired for ‘toxic masculinity’ last year, as well as not embracing woke culture. He’d drop redpills to his class, such as how silly gender neutral bathrooms are. The school board hates him.

He’s now upping the ante to exploit the very clown world the school and society itself created. His long game is most likely to get fired, and then sue for discrimination. There is no other explanation.. No better way to troll clown world than to become an over-the-top caricature of a woman.

Don’t trust this to be true. But if it is… suddenly this ridiculous story is elevated to hilarious troll. On the one hand, this is a long way to go to make a point. on the other hand, it’s a longer way to actually *be.*

 Posted by at 1:46 am

The 2022-2023 Reality TV season promises to be interesting

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., Hmm..., news, politics, russian empire, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Sep 262022
 

Never mind vacuous celebrities, the show to watch in coming months will be “Europe in the Cold.”

You really don’t understand how bad it could get in Europe this year

Europe bailed on nuclear power and decided to rely instead on natural gas from Putin. Good plan, geniuses.

Another genius move that will come back to bite them: importing whole armies of military-age males from third-world antagonistic cultures. Now they’re going to turn the lights off at night. Yeah… the combo of reduced lights and increased criminality? BRILLIANT! The women of Europe had best be ready to lock themselves into their chilly little apartments all through the winter, lest they become one more in an increasing statistic.

I guess one possible benefit might be that the price of gas goes so high the colonizers won’t be able to afford Molotov cocktails.

 Posted by at 11:51 pm

So much for “graphic novels”

 art, awesomeness, Crazy, Hmm..., science, science fiction, youtube  No Responses »
Sep 252022
 

Well, in a way. In the way of “I need to hire at great cost artists to illustrate my graphic novel.” AI has now reached the point where a creditable graphic novel can be put together based purely on a long series of text prompts, using a consistent set of characters based on as few as five photos of an actual individual. You want the graphic novel version of “The Hobbit” starring Humphrey Bogart as Bilbo and Dom Deluise at Gandalf, done in the art style of HR Giger? Comin’ right up. “At The Mountains of Madness” starring Burt Reynolds and Gene Wilder, in the art style of Salvador Dali? No sweat. Any story ever, starring the Playboy Bunnies of 1972?  On it. It’s not perfect… it seems to have a serious problem understanding hands and fingers, and there seem to be inconsistencies in shot to shot with costumes and such. But, dayum, this makes art *easy.*

 

This is honestly kinda startling. If I was a book/magazine cover artist… I’d be looking into exciting new career opportunities in the food service or housekeeping industries, cuz they’re gonna lose a *lot* of business. This could replace the standard storyboard for moviemaking. AI generated video won’t be far behind.

 Posted by at 10:44 pm

Argument against Monarchy

 blather, history, Hmm..., news, politics, youtube  No Responses »
Sep 242022
 

As an American, my opinion on the British monarchy this:

I Don’t Care.

It’s profoundly silly, terribly obsolete, fundamentally useless and wasteful. But if the Brits want it… shrug, that’s on them, nothing to do with me.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not like the point of view of rabid pro-abortionists who shriek that men, who cannot get pregnant (transphobia!!!), are not to have opinions on abortion, up to and including not having opinions on how thrilled they are that their own offspring are being summarily and unilaterally exterminated. If another American wants to rail against monarchies… great. If another American *wants* a monarchy, or thinks the British version is just neato-keen… they are allowed to have that clearly wrong opinion. The only time *my* own blood gets hepped up regarding monarchy is when the idea is floated that *I* should subject myself to such a system. If the Queen or her idiot mutant son Charles tried to sail to these shores and restore their hold on American… well, them’s fightin’ words. Similarly with American celebrities, talking heads or politicians want Americans to be subjects to a system that is monarchy in name only, with fundamental rights being yoinked at the whim of some doddering old fool.

But hey, back to the Brits. The last few weeks have seen a *lot* of performative grief out of the UK, with quite a number of very bizarre arrests. Honestly, the Queen was 96 years old… her death was not some shocking tragedy. Dying is what people in their late 90’s *do.* And further, this seems like a lot of effort to go to to pretend to give a damn about British history and tradition when British history and tradition are being torn down across the board. A series of mass deportations of foreign-born criminals, rape gangs, rioters, trouble makers of all kinds would go a hell of a lot farther in demonstrating an actual interest in preserving Britain than shutting down businesses and pretending to be grief-stricken for weeks on end. Whether the British monarchy survives the next few generations is a hell of a lot less important of a question than whether *Britain* survives the next few generations.

The British feller below is in the “end the Monarchy” camp, and he makes a number of valid arguments.

 Posted by at 4:11 pm

AI-generated alternate history automobiles

 art, awesomeness, Hmm..., science, science fiction  No Responses »
Sep 232022
 

And now AI software can show you cars that never were. The images produced are all flawed in some way… some slight, others rather blatantly; and some of the cars are downright goofy, like the 1970 Model T. But still, a lot of them are not half bad extrapolations of what might have been.

What If: AI Generated Cars That Never Were

1940 Chevrolet Corvette. Note weirdness with the grill and the soft top. But other than those… this is a creditable design.

 

Curiously, no late-model Deloreans on display. I want to see the 2015 edition.

 

 

 

 Posted by at 7:28 am

Bad time to be a Russian

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Hmm..., news, politics, russian empire  No Responses »
Sep 222022
 

Seems there’s a run of just darn bad luck for those fellers, especially the rich, powerful and politically connected. It’s like gravity keeps reaching up and grabbin’ ’em.

A Kremlin ally died falling down the stairs, report says — the latest in a series of unexplained deaths among prominent Russians

The Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI) university announced the death of Anatoly Gerashchenko, 72, saying he died “as a result of an accident.”

An unnamed source told Russian newspaper Izvestia that he died on the university’s grounds, by falling “from a great height” down several flights of stairs.

Huh.

 Posted by at 4:58 pm
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