I never quite “got” religion… not until I started reading HP Lovecraft and finally grokked the concept of “Cosmic Horror.” With that understood, I could finally kinda understand religion, just not as most religious folks would prefer it. I read tales of some god or other flipping his marbles and wiping out a family, a city, a world, and I see it as not a miraculous wonder but a Grade-A Cosmic Horror. And then when you get to the idea of a soul that can exist forever… yeesh. Couple that with the concept of damnation, or even just a soul getting twisted up to serve as little more than an MP3 player spitting out “holy holy holy” for all of eternity, and the horror approached mind-snapping levels.

But you don’t even need to deal with “God” to get to horrifically terrifying madness inducement. The Bible, for example, speaks of angels. These are often depicted as men or women with wings, but the Biblical descriptions of at least the seraphim – the highest “order” of angels – read like something Lovecraft would have dreamed up while tripping on an overdose of LSD.

HPL came up with some doozies. But nothing compares with the idea that you have an immortal soul and that you could spend an eternity being tortured because you did not follow rules that not only did you not understand, but were perhaps quite unaware of and perhaps they would have been impossible for you to follow (quick: don’t think of an elephant). In HPL’s world, for humans dead is dead, pretty much. But in religion, dead is just the start of an eternity of madness and agony. For HPL, the “gods” don’t care about you. In religion, the gods *do.* And chances are very high that they despise you. Wheeeeee.

Even the voice was synthesized.

Because can you honestly imagine anyone producing artwork as ridiculous, bombastic, hilarious and awesome as this featuring *Biden*? Or Harris?

https://www.aafnation.com/

Extra points for the US Space Force Colonial Vipers.

Doubtless there are those who oppose Trump who would see this sort of art as “fascistic” or “Trump worshipping” or whatever… completely missing the point that people who *don’t* hate Trump see this sort of stuff as *hilarious.*

Rejoice! The Sweet Meteor O’Death may be a bit delayed, but there is a 0.00067% chance of the asteroid Apophis slamming into the Earth on April 12, 2068. The question of course is whether there will be any functional civilization left by that point.

Asteroid Apophis Could Still Hit Earth in 2068, New Measurements Suggest

NASA’s Crew-1 commander to be sworn into U.S. Space Force from the International Space Station

USAF Col. Michael Hopkins will command NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission, scheduled for launch November 14. He will transfer to the U.S. Space Force while on the ISS.

That should prove to be an entirely popular and uncontrovercial event.

Ha!

Kate Mulgrew of ‘Star Trek: Voyager’ crashes Captain Janeway statue celebration via Zoom

https://janewaystatue.com/

I guess it looks ok:

So, what do we have here? A celebration of a person who:

1: Celebrated STEM and objective reality such as 2+2=4. This is pure white supremacy.

2: Traveled through and explored regions without the consent of those regions. Colonialism.

3: Wiped out or overthrew several species. Genocide.

4: Spoke English, chose to center old 19th-century European fiction (and 15th century European historical figures) for her recreation, with the local European characters portrayed by and depicted as ethnic Europeans. Erasure!

5: Showed prejudice against certain peoples/races. Racism!

6: Consumed a great deal of coffee without citing and celebrating the fact that it is a product of Arabia. Cultural appropriation!

7: She maintained a conventionally-accepted body mass index. Fat shaming!

Clearly Captain Janeway is problematic.

NOTE: This is sarcasm. Don’t attack this – or any other – statue, ya friggen’ animals.

Given some recent posts on this blog, this opinion piece is timely:

https://www.space.com/elysium-effect-billionaire-space-revolution

It’s fairly long (as such things go), but the summary is this: billionaires are working to open the space frontier… and Certain Groups are demonizing them for it. They believe that the Evil 1% will develop spaceships and take off and live in luxury in space while plunging the rest of us schmoes back on Earth into permanent dystopian grinding poverty. Th best evidence that these sort of people can come up with is that space flight will be expensive, that it’ll cost a couple hundred grand just to pop up above the atmosphere, millions to go to orbit, hundreds of millions to circle the moon. And this, for the first generation of truly commercial space tourists, will be true. But this is *always* the way of things. The first home computers? Blisteringly expensive. Now you have a 1970’s supercomputer in your pocket. Jet travel? it was originally so expensive that it gave us the term “jet set,” because it was so expensive that it was *necessarily* fancy. Space travel will start of expensive and, if allowed to progress through the normal course of evolution that the free market provides, will eventually become cheap enough that at least a sizable fraction of the public could at least reasonably consider a trip to Space Station V.

Given the current dismal state of public discourse, I can easily imagine a future where SpaceX gets Starship up and running… and the US government, perhaps under pressure from special interest groups, perhaps due to it’s own grasping nature, will throw up regulations and laws that demand that commercial spaceflight be cheap enough for everyone right then and there (likely impossible thus killing off commercial passenger spaceflight), or that passengers – especially colonists to Mars – demographically match the population (or perhaps some particular politically-chosen ratio), or that spaceflight be proven so safe that it’s impossible to actually be allowed. If this happens, it doesn’t mean that space won’t get colonized… I’m sure the Chinese and Indians will be happy to do it without us. From the standpoint of those who are protesting in the US, that’ll be just as well given how much they hate western civilization.

And given the trajectory that 2020 has been on, I *really* hope that SpaceX has a fantastic security system in place. It would suuuuuuuuuck if the CCP managed to convince their running dog lackeys in Antifa to swarm the place and burn down the Starship facilities.

What I find especially amusing is the title “The Elysium Effect,” taken from the now largely forgotten sci-fi flick “Elysium.” In that, the richest of the rich toddle off to a vast and physics-defying space station while Earth turns to garbage. The general understanding is that this is some sort of critique of capitalism and wealth inequality… but if you pay attention to the movie, it’s anything but. The rich left and live in luxury, yes. But Earth didn’t turn to crap because the rich made it so… but because the *poor* made it so. Los Angeles is depicted as essentially Mexico City North… vast slums, a population probably measured around a hundred million, the English language being a rarity on the ground. Enlightenment values have evaporated. Western civilization, engineering rigor, all the things that Certain People decry but that make a society rich and successful were wiped away in a flood of refugees and unassimilated immigrants. “Elysium” is not a cautionary tale of wealth inequality, but a cautionary tale of a society that doesn’t control its borders. *Of* *course* those who can will flee in the face of collapse. And we are all better off if the means of escape is available.

While nearly a decade old, this compilation video shows that no matter what a dumpster fire 2020 might be, it could always be worse: you could have to contend with the lunatics who populate the roads of Russia. Unless, of course, you *do* already have to contend with the lunatics of the Russian roads, in which case I guess you’re just SOL.