As always, interesting and entertaining and jam-packed with some of the best Anglo-Saxon words.
May 042022
May 042022
Well, this should prove an interesting tale, especially when they figure out the motive:
Attacker had an ill-defined weapon… apparently it looked like a gun, but was a knife… and apparently it could hurl the blade. “Ballistic knives” are fundamentally kinda useless weapons, only cool to those in middle school, but they’re also often illegal which seems to be the case in California. Since they are illegal in California, and since a criminal certainly would not break the law in California, it’s a mystery what the attacker actually had.
I’m 50/50 on whether the attacker was politically motivated or just bog standard bugnuts. In either case, it’s reasonable to assume that public displays of humor are likely going to decline a bit.
May 042022
After the unprecedented (and I’m led to understand illegal) leak of the Supreme Court preliminary opinion on overturning Roe vs Wade, the violent insurrectionists, yearning for the glory days of 2020, are back to doing what they do: violence.
Pro-abortion protestors smash windows tonight in Los Angeles: pic.twitter.com/HwGyOqGd0Z
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 4, 2022
Pro abortion activists are now openly calling for and threatening violence and unrest. pic.twitter.com/LeE2QaGzEW
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 3, 2022
With a healthy (?) dollop of Current Year Progressive Discourse:
Happening now in Foley Square, NYC. People are REALLY angry that it will be more difficult to kill babies. pic.twitter.com/Cco6sLxfKn
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 3, 2022
Apr 302022
The news out of China, in particular Shanghai, is just bizarre. The governments extraordinarily draconian lockdown just doesn’t make sense on the face of it. It seems nuts. But the video below presents a few theories that *do* make it make a bit of sense. The first is that Xi is simply stubborn, and that saving face – either of the man himself or of The Party – trumps reason. But the last theory is the most disturbing… and it seems pretty believable: the havoc and despair produced by these policies is intentional because it’s a test. If China invades Taiwan like Russia invaded Ukraine, the worlds response would be similar: an economic lockdown of China. How would China’s cities respond to suddenly no longer having income? When all the factories shut down and nobody is working, how bad will it have to get before the citizens rise up or die en masse? China is also hoarding food supplies as if they are preparing for something major.
Some people wonder why the West should give a damn about Ukraine. *This* is part of the reason why: if large dictatorships see that they can invade and conquer without meaningful pushback, they’ll do it again and again until they *do* get pushback.
Apr 292022
The uncomfortably-named “Padraig Belton” who works for the BBC came to the US and forgot that the US doesn’t have British power outlets, so he went to WalMart. He reported on twitter his findings.
The whole thread is just filled with comedy gold.
— 🇺🇸 Aaron Harper 🇺🇸 (@AaronHarper78) April 26, 2022
There are times when I really, REALLY miss Utah. Where the local grocery store sold ammo and magazines, but if I wanted pistols, shotguns and AR-15s I’d have to walk all the way next door to the Ace Hardware.
Apr 272022
I wanted my son to reject masculine stereotypes. Then he fell in love with tractors
What kind of father wants his son to reject masculinity? A bad one. But at least in this case this weak man bends to his childs wishes and lets his son actually be a boy. This kid has an uphill battle to reach manhood with a father who is as strong as a damp Kleenex. The kid will very likely begin to assert his own power at some point, and if his parents aren’t able to impart the manly virtue of self control, we might wind up with yet another anti-social monster.
Apr 272022
Ghostbusters 2016 is a terrible film. Part of that is of course the toxic nature of the people responsible for it, but the film itself is crap regardless of the culture-eroding behavior of those responsible. If the universe was a good and just place, GB16 would be utterly forgotten by now… but here we are, in a world filled with famine and disease and earthquakes and Bernie Bros, so GB16 remains a blight on the ass of society. Fortunately, when it is discussed these days, it is largely discussed in terms of just how awful it is and what makes it awful. The following two-part video does a good job of breaking down the terrible decisions that led to that cinematic trainwreck. It is vastly more entertaining than the movie itself.
Apr 272022
This development will probably result in a *lot* of comedy gold. here are some early winners.
— bongo x (@bongotron_x) April 26, 2022
Apr 262022
I don’t know why YouTube decided I needed to see this, but I both rue and lament it. It is a debate (???) amongst a group of shrieking harpies young women about… well, I don’t really know. Something about how men are terrible, or something. One thing I caught was the claim that men are more emotional than women… which if that’s true for the men in *these* women’s lives… wow. Wow.
These are people who seem to get along and presumably have similar outlooks/beliefs. The way they seem wholly incapable of having a thought and not expressing it immediately at high volume would seem to explain why so many college-age people these days cannot witness someone speak political heresy without losing their minds and screaming like dollar store banshees on meth.
I can only imagine what would have happened if some guy had been invited into the room, calmly sat down and, when asked, told them “you’re wrong.”
Apr 252022
I have hopes that at least some of these – Star Wars and Star Trek – can be returned from the dead. But to do so would require both a virtually complete change in “leadership” (i.e. those who are currently in charge of the IP’s) and an adequate passage of time. They should be left to sit quietly for a few years, in which time the hatred that recent misadventures have engendered in the fandom could cool off, and better ideas could be gathered.
I remain of the opinion that what the owners of Star Trek need to do are two main things:
1) Gather all the rights back into one place, allowing *real,* and not “25% different,” Star Trek to be made.
2) Create an anthology series. But *not* one helmed by a bunch of suits. Instead, open it to the fandom. Have anything from lone writers to whole amateur production teams (“Axanar,” “Continues,” etc) give them pitches. Those that seem pretty good get funded to make a small number of episodes… one to four, say. Something that could be a series. Then make a season with up to perhaps ten wildly different stories. One set on a ship at the same time as TOS, using actual TOS designs. One set in the movie era. A Klingon or Vulcan-specific yarn. A post-Voyager show. What-the-frell-ever. If, out of those ten shows, one is a smash hit? It gets turned into a full series. If three or four of the stories are wildly popular? Then great, now you can have four series that are popular right out of the gate.
Sure, there are counter-arguments. One big one is that ten wildly different stories would require ten wildly different sets of costumes and props and actors and starship bridge sets. Granted. But: do them sequentially and repurpose as much as possible. Do as much as you reasonably can with virtual sets. Don’t go nuts with the budget; let it be known right up front that the budget for these sort of things is limited. The fandom will accept that, and perhaps embrace it: I will die on the hill that TOS 1701 is the best starship design to date, and that both DS9 and Enterprise showed that the old-school bridge – which can be rented in New York State, IIRC – still looks awesome. You don’t need STD-level production standards for these little mini-shows. Because what you’re selling isn’t the effects; nobody complains that STD or STP have crappy effects and production standards – you’re selling the concept, the characters, the plots. If just one of these lower-budget short subjects knocks the viewers socks off with characters on par with Kirk and Spock and McCoy, *then* you can lavish an effects budget on it reasonably secure in the knowledge that things should go well.
Hell, I even wrote a short story a year or so ago set on a Klingon tugboat. Is it good? Dunno. Probably not. But if those in charge of Star trek seemed like they actually cared about Star Trek again… hell yeah I’d turn it in. There’s even my odd little “Artifact L-374-Alpha” thing from… holy crap, exactly one year ago today. Weird. OK… Anyway, that would likely make a poor basis for an ongoing series, but a season-long miniseries? Maybe.
Is such a thing likely? Sadly, no. So we’ll have to live with murdered franchises for a while, being dangled before us on strings like marionette zombies.