And it only took me four decades

 art, awesomeness, blather, books, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., history, Hmm..., politics, science fiction, Worldwreckers, ಠ_ಠ  1 Comment
Mar 162023
 

At last, my collection of “Tom Swift Jr.” novels is complete. Since I’m a miser/dirt poor, I was only willing to spend a pittance for each book, but if you wait long enough pretty much everything shows up on ebay.

Woo.

 

And because why not, here’s the next shelf over:

 

 

On a related note: turns out that last year a bit of good news slipped by me un-noticed. The CW a few years ago decided to make a TV series about Tom Swift Jr… it could have been good (I mean, it’s not beyond the bounds of the physically possible), but CW decided instead to make an abomination. The series began airing on May 31, 2022. It was promptly cancelled on June 30, 2022, due to low ratings. And of course: Tom Swift had been turned from a no-nonsense STEM-focused blond blue-eyed teenager with a girlfriend into a flamboyant gay black adult. Thus assuring that the existing fanbase would be uninterested. And who among that fraction of the population for whom “flamboyant gay black man” is a draw would be interested in a crappy sci-fantasy show?

From the Wikipedia article on the series:

Lead actor Richards said of the adaptation, “The original Tom Swift was great for his time and what he represented. At the time, that was the face of young boys, All-American kids full of possibilities. But in 2021, that can look so different. It can look like someone like me—a Black guy who is chocolate, who is queer, who is all those things that we’re told aren’t the normal or the status quo.” He added, “We’re going to dive into so many sectors of identity. We’re going to talk about Blackness—and a different kind of Blackness than we’re used to seeing, which is the Black elite, the 1 percent, the billionaires. We’re also going to talk about a queer boy’s journey into becoming a queer man. Not only self-acceptance, but acceptance as a whole, having the community and people around you.”

Gosh. I wonder why it failed to grab ratings.

 Posted by at 8:44 pm

“The Russian Grab”

 AARRRGH, blather, history, Hmm..., news, politics, russian empire, Worldwreckers, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  4 Comments
Mar 162023
 

This video from at least 7 years ago lays out some of the reasons why the Russians may well have gotten rather adventurous of late: they are running out of Russians, but they’re not running out of routes to invade Russia. So rather than cultivate good relations with the surrounding nations or get on about the task of making more Russians, they seem to have gone the other route of trying to seize all the invasion routes while they still have a military with which to do it. As the last year of their little two-week “military operation” has shown, that hasn’t gone so well.

 

Note the “demographic pyramid” he shows here. It lays out the population of Russia by age; a growing population has a wide base of young people, but back when this video was made (circa 2015) Russias base was looking kinda weak. However, it did seem to be growing somewhat:

So how is it looking today?

Oh, dear. It looks like baby-making fell off a cliff right after this guy made his video, so instead of things maybe getting better they’ve gotten much worse.

 

“Population pyramids” are interesting things to consider. Nations like this with shrinking young uns are in serious trouble; the pyramid for South Korea looks especially dire:

China’s not looking so good:

Nor is Japan:

Iceland, in contrast, looks kinda ok:

but if you really want to see where the population of the future is coming from, you need pyramids that look like this:

Or this:

 

The nations with wide bases will have greatly increased populations, with greatly increased pressures for those populations to leave and colonize low-population regions. The dying nations will, like Russia, likely try to defend themselves with constantly diminishing human resources, or they will, like much of Europe is currently doing, simply allow themselves to be colonized and replaced, culturally, religiously, ethnically.

Gonna be an interesting century.

 Posted by at 8:30 am

Say goodbye to South Korea

 blather, Crazy, Forward!, Hmm..., news, politics, Worldwreckers  6 Comments
Mar 152023
 

Apparently life is bad for women in South Korea, with a heavily patriarchal society that treats ’em like garbage. So, perhaps not surprisingly, a lot of South Korean women are doing what they can to avoid the worst of it. And for some number of them, that means avoiding men entirely:

A World Without Men

The women of South Korea’s 4B movement aren’t fighting the patriarchy — they’re leaving it behind entirely.

The “4B” movement is essentially the “Men Going Their Own Way” movement of South Korean women, separating themselves from any relationships with men, including family and male friends. They’re cutting their hair short (or bald) and avoiding makeup in order to be less attractive, and are either living alone or shacking up with other women. And according to the article, a lot of these women seem satisfied with this arrangement. There is, of course, the inevitable result:

In December of that year (2016), as Korea’s fertility rate hovered at 1.2 births per woman (it has since slid to 0.78, the lowest in the world)

The birth rate has plummeted from 1.2 to 0.78 in well under a decade. And 1.2 was *well* under replacement rate. South Korea will soon begin to run low on young people, though likely not on old people. This will mean that the burden of caring for an elderly population will fall more and more on fewer and fewer younger Koreans, likely driving some kind of an exodus… And quite possibly driving an *influx* of cheap, low-paid “migrants.” This will lead to South Korean culture being gradually replaced with some other culture. And the question will be… what is this other culture’s views on such things as women’s rights? Just as Europe celebrates gay and trans while not making their own babies and importing *vast* numbers of people from cultures that not only like to make babies but also like to throw gay people off rooftops, there will be an inevitable clash. A South Korea filled with elderly Koreans and young non-Koreans seems like a poor force to stack up against an invasion of young, armed North Koreans. All the Norks needs to do is wait and keep making babies, and the peninsula is theirs.

If you won;t make the next generation, someone else will. That might well suck… but there it is regardless.

 Posted by at 10:06 pm

Meanwhile, in “England…”

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., news, politics, religion, Worldwreckers, ಠ_ಠ  1 Comment
Mar 122023
 

English traditions confuse me:

I guess that slots in somewhere between “Cricket” and “Blimey.”

Oh, and something to look out for in the future of a culturally enriched Britain: “Taharrush.”

Such as:

Get used to it, Brits. It’s the future you chose when you installed (or at the very least allowed) a government that took your guns and decided to replace you and your culture.

Americans: witness this. Keep it in mind when you vote.

 Posted by at 6:07 pm

Priorities!

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., Hmm..., news, politics, Worldwreckers, ಠ_ಠ  1 Comment
Mar 122023
 

So it looks like Silicon Valley Bank employed people to do fundamentally pointless time- and resource-wasting stuff. This, sad to say, is hardly unique; lots of companies devote surprising amounts of effort end employees time to things that have nothing to do with the companies business or mission. Company baseball teams, for example, have nothing to do with, say, an auto manufacturers core function; claims about “building morale/cohesion” *might* have some validity, but if the company is in dire distress, spending resources on that is a bit unwise. However, a baseball team is unlikely to be a major source of revenue drain.

DIE (Diversity, Inclusion and Equity) initiatives, however, CAN be a major drain on a company. Not only directly by consuming payroll in hiring these people, but in consuming productivity in redirecting employees to do stuff on company time. And probably more importantly, indirectly by tearing apart the fundamental cultures that promote productivity and setting employees at each others throats and by causing HR departments to drive away – or not hire in the first place – good employees due to them not filling Enough checkboxes, and retaining less qualified employees because they identify with the current politically favored victimhood groups.

So, any time, money, resources devoted to “woke” policies is of course a bad thing. But how bad it was for SVB is yet to be determined, but it looks like they were at least at the standard American major corporate level of wokist self-sabotagery.

While Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, top executive pushed ‘woke’ programs

Perhaps this will serve as a valuable lesson to other companies to avoid this sort of nonsense. I’m not optimistic, though… a century of blood driven by big-government collectivism, from the socialists to the Nazis to the Commies, has hardly stopped people from “but this time we’ll get it right.” Additionally: since the list of “conspiracy theories” being proven right seems to grow day by day, conspiracy theories that hold that failures like this are all part of some long plan to centralize power into fewer and fewer institutions seem undismissable.

 Posted by at 3:40 pm

Well, this is all depressing

 AARRRGH, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., news, politics, science fiction, Worldwreckers, ಠ_ಠ  3 Comments
Mar 102023
 

Yeesh. Bad news on the culture *and* economic fronts:

‘You’re probably going to see a dumbed down version’: Amazon Diluting Henry Cavill’s Warhammer 40K Series Like They Did With ‘The Rings of Power’?

Nobody knows *anything* about Amazons 40K adaptation yet… but basically everyone assumes that it’ll be trash. not because of the soruce material, but in spite of it.

– – –

William Shatner on ‘Star Trek,’ Space Travel and Mortality: ‘I Don’t Have Long to Live’

He’s 91 so, yeah, he’s probably not wrong. But he seems depressed. And not just because of the impending inevitable, but because society is going to hell.

– – –

Silicon Valley Bank collapses after failing to raise capital

Oh, goody. Bank failures.

 Posted by at 11:19 pm

Shut the F Up, Nerd

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., news, politics, religion, rockets, spacecraft, Worldwreckers, ಠ_ಠ  2 Comments
Mar 082023
 
Are you ready for the *dumbest* thing you’ll read today? Prepare yourselves…

End ‘colonial’ approach to space exploration, scientists urge

Short response: eat me.

Longer response: let’s take a look at what this idea is, shall we?

But Dr Pamela Conrad of the Carnegie Institution of Science said the focus should shift away from seeking to exploit discoveries.

Speaking ahead of a panel event on Saturday on the ethics of space exploration at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in Washington DC, she said: “If we were willing to seize that as not just a possibility, but an imperative then oddly enough, the Star Trek series and culture becomes a prime directive for how we could explore space: seeking not to interfere.”

In the Star Trek series, the Prime Directive, or General Order 1, of Starfleet Command sets out that the Starfleet should not interfere with the social, cultural or technological development of any other planet.

Conrad said that rather than setting out to own or take resources from space, humans should endeavour to be “gentle explorers”.

Tell me you’ve never actually watched Star Trek without telling me you’ve never actually watched Star Trek. The Prime Directive – which they broke all the freakin’ time – said not to interfere with the development of an intelligent species. but strip mining moons and asteroids? Hell, yes? Starfleet and the United Federation of planets were *all* about resource extraction. Hell, they were in favor of the damned Genesis Device which would completely pave over entire solar systems to build brand new ones with shiny new planets. Because of course they were: the UFP weren’t stupid.

Oh, but it gets worse. So much worse:

What’s more, he said Indigenous people had deep connections with bodies such as the moon.

“Part of that connection is inherent to the culture and the way of living and way of knowing,” he said, adding any damage to such bodies was therefore a concern.

As a result, Neilson said those working on space missions, such as the Nasa Artemis programme – which seeks to establish a long-term presence on the moon and eventually send humans to Mars – should engage with Indigenous people in advance.

Haha no. Why the frak should NASA give a damn what a bunch of ignorant boobs who think the Moon is a space fairy think? When they build their own rockets, then they, too, can have a say.

Around a week ago I read yet another article about how cloning the woolly mammoth was right around the corner. Well, maybe. But what stuck with me were some of the comments: the scientists were “playing God,” and the mammoths being extinct were part of “Gods plan” and that it was wrong to try to upend that. Well, here’s the thing: if one assumes God exists, then humans de-exticting the mammoth would either:

1) Also be part of Gods plan

2) Be proof that God ain’t so great; mere humans can reverse what a supposed omnipotent being did.

So if some “indigenous group” thinks the moon is some neato-keen religious symbol that should not be tinkered with, and the United States and China race to pave the place with mines and solar panels… maybe those indigenous groups need to rethink their religion.

Leaving the future of humanity in the hands of people who are stuck in the past is not just dumb, it’s criminal.

The United Federation of Planets didn’t screw with primitives. But they also didn’t put primitives on the Federation council.

 Posted by at 6:09 pm

Dr. ᛞᛁᛇᛋᚻᛁᛏ

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., Hmm..., rockets, science, Worldwreckers, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  0 Comments
Mar 052023
 

Sir Sic (the Social Inequality Crusader) mocks a “college professor” who claims to have a mechanical engineering degree and who claims that rockets cannot work in a vacuum. Because he not only doesn’t understand basic science, he thinks it’s all a conspiracy.

The original video seems to date from quite some time ago; the version I found was uploaded to YouTube in 2017, and was apparently in existence some time prior to that. Unfortunately, no information is given about who this guy is, and whether he’s *actually* a college professor. Given the accent, he’s clearly not a westerner… which is a relief. There are already quite enough shrieking morons in American academia. And while I’m appalled at anyone claiming to be an engineer talking uneducated and factually wrong smack about science, it’s much less offensive to me if they are from a competing or even adversarial land. However, since he’s speaking *English,* it’s not impossible that he’s an enemy agent come to the US in order to dumb down American college students.

Another possibility is that he not only knows he’s full of BS, he’s actually trolling. Perhaps his purpose is to confuse the kiddies, and then get them to correct him. Teach them critical thinking and skepticism. Teach them to not trust The Man, but instead to apply the lessons of science and arrive at the facts. However, “he’s a moron” is a hell of a lot simpler explanation.

The difficulty with this guys world view is that he lives in a world where rockets exist in space and perform just fine. Of course the conspiracy theorist would argue that that’s all just a scam; there are no space rockets. But then the counter to *that* is “go outside at night and look up. You’ll see satellites.” And doubtless there are terribly clever and fundamentally stupid counters to *that.* Robert Goddard encountered just this sort of dumbassery more than a century ago when the New York Times mocked him for claiming that rockets would work in a vacuum. Not only did he have the math behind him, he actually demonstrated it. On ground level, by firing a rocket in a vacuum “track.” Nothing stopping people from replicating this today. A long length of plexiglas or polycarbonate clear pipe, with a model rocket motor at one end, pumped down to very low pressure, then fire off the rocket and watch it zip down the tube. Do that a couple times, both with vacuum and with air pressure. It’s a safe bet the rockets in vacuum will move faster.

This “professor” is an exemplar of “other ways of knowing.” I fully support his ambitions… for other countries.

 

 Posted by at 11:21 pm

Yes, it is.

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., news, politics, Worldwreckers, ಠ_ಠ  4 Comments
Feb 242023
 

‘This is NOT this child’s fault. He is NOT a threat’: Mental health advocate launches defense of 6’6″ thug, 17, who had to be dragged off unconscious female teaching aide who he knocked out for confiscating his Nintendo Switch

Since when is a 17-year-old actually a “child?” Especially one who is six and a half feet tall and weighing 270 pounds?

Watch the video and determine for yourself whether he’s a threat. You want him in school with YOUR kids?

Every day I become more and more convinced that homeschooling, formerly the province of religious weirdos, is the answer for parents who don;t want to be complicit in child abuse.

 Posted by at 11:10 pm
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