Hitler is rising to power in Africa, BidenHarris in the US. China likely to swarm over the South China Sea and Taiwan. Interesting days with totalitarians everywhere.
At least the footage is impressive:
Imagine being that drone operator. “Ummmm… boss… I got some bad news…….”
Ummm. I don’t know squadoo about these folks, but I have questions.
It seems they have a hangar and a mockup and some pretty graphics. I’m not sure they have a sensible business model. The idea is to launch a small rocket into orbit from underneath a newly-built fighter-sized UAV. Why not just launch from under a surplus fighter-sized fighter?
I’ve seen these lines pop up here and there recently:
The seriousness of the charge mandates that we investigate this.
Or…
Even though there is no evidence, the seriousness of the charge is what matters–Thomas Foley (D, WA)
The sentiment there has been repeated, in spirit if not in exact quote, many times over the last few decades. Witness, for example, the sexual assault witch hunt against USSC nominee Kavanaugh, the insistence upon investigating Trump as a Russian assert. Both were claims asserted without evidence, both were taken seriously enough to consume months to years of effort by many, many journalists and investigators and politicians.
Now it is being turned around to justify everything up to an including negating the recent election, overturning the results and calling for a new one. Granted, that just ain’t gonna happen. But once you accept the notion that simply *claiming* that A Very Bad Thing Happened mandates a full investigation and an assumption of guilt prior to an actual establishment of guilt, you can’t really argue that the claim that the election was fraudulent or tainted or stolen isn’t worth worrying about.
Thing is: I can’t quite seem to find a primary source on that quote from Rep. Foley. Closest I could find was this LA Times article from 1991:
“We have no conclusive evidence of wrongdoing, but the seriousness of the allegations and the weight of circumstantial information compel an effort to establish the facts,” said House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) and Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) in a joint statement.
This was in reference to the conspiracy theory that Reagan & Bush delayed the Iranians turning over the hostages in order to win the 1980 election. This same line of thinking asserted without evidence that Bush hopped on board an SR-71 and used it as a private SST to get to Paris to negotiate with Iranians without being missed back home.
So are the Foley “quotes” at the beginning of this post accurate, or are they paraphrases of the “joint statement?”
Some might consider it sad that a drunk YouTuber knows more about not only the history of heroic literature, but also the importance of heroic myths and tales, than the “professional” story tellers who are paid to actually tell stories about heroes.
The video starts off with appropriately smartasssed mockery of some questionable decisions being made by major comic book publishers, then turns serious and thoughtful on the subject of what heroes our culture celebrates. This is a subject that interests me greatly. In my own dabblings with writing literature I almost never include a Lance Squarejaw action hero, but try to write more or less normal folk who try, to varying degrees, to do what seems to need doing. But so much of modern culture denigrates even that, mocking the very notion of the “hero.” The very traits that in past generations would be seen as not only heroic but necessary for a vital civilization are now “problematic” and “toxic masculinity.” John Wayne is despised while the media celebrates Ellen Page rebranding her/himself as Elliot Page. Restraint and rationality are sneered at while children twerking is touted as high art.
I used to love the show “Adam Ruins Everything.” But when he got to the episode on “Cowboys” and the conclusion that tales of a heroic ideal should be wiped form our culture, I was out.
Ryan Reynolds made a commercial…
Amazon sorta randomly suggested a book to me:
I’m not generally an architecture aficionado, but somehow this does seem to kinda appeal to me. I suspect it’s the black and white diagrams, the sort of thing that has *always* appealed to me:
It sure looks interesting and well produced. but then you read the customer reviews and, man, some of them are brutal. It seems that for a lot of people the choice of silver ink on a black background was disastrous. Something that looks great in the photos apparently comes off as difficult to see in real life. This would not be the first time that a neato book project was damaged by a Cool Idea that turned out to not work as well as hoped.
Still… kinda interested.
2020 strikes again.
FYI: his first novel, “The Star Conquerors,” is available to read online HERE.
So, it seems that the Dominion voting machines that have become of such interest since Biden “won” the election… they’re apparently owned by the Chinese Communist Party.
“Staple Street Capital, which acquired Dominion Voting Systems in 2018…. On Oct 8, 2020, Staple Street Capital filed SEC Form D offerings and sales amount of $400,000,000 with the Sales Compensation Recipient identified as UBS Securities,” states the investigation, which also notes that another payment of $200,000,000 was received in December 2014.
And as for UBS Securities… they are 75% owned by the ChiCom government, 25% by a Chinese investment bank. But not being a business major… “Sales Compensation Recipient?” Does that mean “buyer,” “seller,” “loan shark,” what?
Ain’t no repairing it. The 900-ton instrument platform formerly suspended near the dish’s focus by cables, has fallen.
Imágenes históricas del colapso total del @NAICobservatory. Sobre 30 fotos aquí: https://t.co/t0cd7ZtbJB
Fotos: @NotiJuan / @noticel. pic.twitter.com/xp6SbwNq8I
— Juan R. Costa (@NotiJuan) December 1, 2020
Así quedó el Observatorio de Arecibo al colapsar hoy en la mañana el radiotelescopio.
(Fotos: Dennis Vázquez, piloto comercial/Facebook) pic.twitter.com/HKov1Fdmlg
— V. Torres Montalvo 🧼 (@Motinsitepegas) December 1, 2020
This was an inevitable result of the National Science Foundations divestment from Arecibo funding, indicating a desire to decommission the place as far back as 2015. it is not now repairable; it is only replaceable. And it really should be: the Chinese FAST scope is bigger, but not only does it not have Arecibos radar capability (thus is can;t search for things like incoming asteroids), it has also been horribly mismanaged in the way that only greedy communists can do 9they built a cell-tower equipped tourist city right next to the damn thing).
So the question would be *where* to build a replacement. Might make sense to build on the footprint of the old, right there at Arecibo. But politically it would be a good idea to take this opportunity to help shove Puerto Rico out into the world on its own as an independent nation… it has been an unincorporated US territory quite long enough. No, it is time to do what should have been done in the seventies: build radio telescopes on the moon. SpaceX’s Starship program will, if it works, provide cost effective lift capability of the kind needed for such a venture.
