Advanced robotics meets third world transport tech:
Feb 152020
You know, he ain’t wrong
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Feb 152020
Neel Kolhatkar explains how everyone is a victim.
Feb 142020
Not only dimming, but it even *appears* to no longer be terribly spherical.
ESO Telescope Sees Surface of Dim Betelgeuse
Possibilities: the surface is asymmetrically cooling. Or it spat a fat blob of dust in our direction, blocking some light and not only making the star look asymmetrical, but dropping apparent brightness down to little more than a third of normal.
Feb 132020
Here’s a recent news story to add to the pile:
Suspect back out on the street after arrest for attempted arson at Eureka GOP office
Short form: yet another Bernie Sanders supporter committed an act of political terrorism, this time by breaking windows at a GOP office and apparently (incompetently) trying to burn it down. This follows after leftists attempted mass murder by ramming vans into GOP voter registration events and another tried to commit mass murder with an SUV at Mar-A-Lago and Bernie workers were caught on tape suggesting democide. And let’s not forget James T. Hodgkinson, the poster child for Bernie Bros, who shot multiple people a few years back in support of Sanders’ politics. Many more stories out there of Sanders supporters committing acts of political violence great and small. Why are so many of Bernie supporters so ready to carry out acts of violence?
It’s probably simple: Bernie is a communist. Sure, he and his supporters often try to soften the blow by claiming that he is a “Democratic Socialist” and not a communist, but as has been clearly explained hereabouts before, the express aim of the Democratic Socialists is to bring about actual, factual *communism.* So Bernie claiming that he’s a Democratic Socialist and not a Communist is kinda like me explaining that I’m not a fabulously wealthy author, I’m really just a dirt poor author. While this is true, being a dirt poor author does not negate the fact that I want to be a fabulously wealthy one… just as Bernie wants actual communism. The policies he advocates for, such a limits on income that would essentially end innovation in the United States (just how much investing in Tesla and SpaceX would Musk have done had he been limited to selling PayPal for, say, a million bucks) and nationalization of major corporations, speak strongly and clearly to a worldview that is close enough to communist as to make no difference. This is clear not only to his political opponents, but also those who agree with him and his policies. And if the history of the last century taught us anything, it’s that socialist economics, from Venezuela to Zimbabwe and Cuba and Nazi Germany and Red China and the Soviet Union, lead to governmental mass violence against the public. After a century and well over a hundred million dead, no honest person can believe that this is just an accidental byproduct; instead, violence is baked into the belief that some group has the right and obligation to tell others how much they can make, what they can make, how well they can live based on their own labor. Communism and Socialism *are* violence. Communism and Socialism attract the violent. Sanders, coming off as a communist, attracts the violent.
If you find yourself near a Bernie supporter, do not let your guard down. It seems that they want to take your stuff and will use violence to get it. Someone publicly proclaiming their support for Sanders should be viewed in the same light as someone publicly proclaiming their support for anti-semitism or their support for pedophilia or Star Trek: Discovery or gulags. These people are not to be trusted.
Feb 122020
Below is an image taken from a history of the B-52, artwork depicting the YB-52 configuration packing a single Navaho cruise missile. Cool and all, but there’s something bugging me: I could *swear* that a year or three back I came upon or was sent a passel of images showing, among other things, the B-52 carrying Navaho missiles, in the form of both artwork like this *and* diagrams. But I have been unable to locate these images, whether due to them getting separated during the move, or misplaced/misfiled prior to the move… or them not having existed in the first place because my brain is having a little joke at my expense. Unfortunately my tiny little brain is incapable of letting go of missing things like this and it’s driving me buggo. Does this sound at all familiar to anyone?
Feb 122020
Scandinavian Airlines has decided that the best way to sell their services to Scandivanian people is to insult Scandinavian people and culture. This wokist piece of garbage commercial plays into the latest anti-European trope that Europeans – in this case, Scandinavians – have created and are *nothing.*
Gillette, eat your heart out.
“Scandinavians, you people are nothing special. Your culture and heritage and technological and biological distinctiveness are nonexistent. Fly with us.”
Some commentary on this atrocious self-hating racist insult.
Do Chinese companies try to sell stuff to Chinese people by insulting and dispiriting the Chinese people? Indians? Iranians? Mexicans? Nigerians? Seems unlikely. Cultural Marxism seems to focus solely on tearing down successful western cultures. I bet that if there were coordinated campaigns such as this to convince Zoroastrians or Uighur or whatnot to forget *their* cultures, the UN just might step in. Granted, not in a truly meaningful way, just with a bunch of tut-tutting and hand-wringing, but here? Nada. Niente. There’s no such thing. Cultural genocide is just fine so long as it’s *western* culture that is being denigrated, torn down and replaced.
Grrr.
Feb 122020
Do you want to see what happens when an angled slab of metal hits a nuclear weapon at Ludicrous Speed? Of course you do.
Feb 102020
House Bill 753
AN ACT TO AUTHORIZE THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI TO ENTER INTO AN INTERSTATE COMPACT WITH SOUTHERN STATES FOR THE PURPOSE OF OPERATING AS SECOND AMENDMENT SANCTUARY STATES; TO ESTABLISH THE INTERSTATE COMMISSION ON SECOND AMENDMENT SANCTUARY AND PRESCRIBE ITS POWERS AND DUTIES; TO EXEMPT CERTAIN FIREARMS, FIREARM ACCESSORIES AND AMMUNITION IN THIS STATE FROM FEDERAL REGULATION; TO DECLARE CERTAIN FEDERAL STATUTES, REGULATIONS, RULES, AND ORDERS UNCONSTITUTIONAL UNDER THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES AND UNENFORCEABLE IN THIS COMPACT REGION; TO REQUIRE THE ATTORNEYS GENERAL OF COMPACT STATES TO FILE ANY LEGAL ACTION TO PREVENT IMPLEMENTATION OF A FEDERAL STATUTE, REGULATION, RULE OR ORDER THAT VIOLATES THE RIGHTS OF A RESIDENT OF A COMPACT STATE; AND FOR RELATED PURPOSES.
Huh.
I would have preferred it had they actually spelled “Sanctuary” correctly in the title…
Other than that, it seems like a good enough bill. Well, that and the specifically setting out “Southern states” and seemingly limiting the Compact from future growth. It would be best if *any* state could sign on.
Feb 102020
In 1985, Rockwell International considered the business case of an advanced single stage to orbit vehicle. The design illustrated was a manned, winged horizontal launched, horizontal landing design with, oddly, air inlets on the upper surface. Unlike the “Orient Express” or NASP designs of the time, this design was not meant to lift off and accelerate to Ludicrous Speed using scramjets, but was to lift off and rather sedately rendezvous with a tanker aircraft. This… is a bit familiar.
In the late 1990’s I worked for Pioneer Rocketplane. Our plan was to design and build a spaceplane that would lift off from a runway under turbojet power, with fuel tanks full of RP-1 and oxidizer tanks full of very little. The vehicle would rendezvous with a tanker aircraft which would transfer not jet fuel, but liquid oxygen. This is because for best performance an RP-1/LOX rocket system needs a far greater mass of LOX than RP-1. So leaving the LOX tank basically empty (a small amount was carried to keep the tank pressurized and chilled) would allow the vehicle to lift off at lowest practical mass. This lowered the mass needed for the landing gear, and lowered the surface area needed for the wings, which of course lowered the mass of the wings. The rocketplane would tank up, separate from the tanker and fire its rocket engine. In the case of the Pioneer Rocketplane “Pathfinder,” the spaceplane would reach orbital altitude, but not orbital velocity. An upper stage would boot the payload into orbit; the spaceplane would return home, either gliding or under jet power. The Rockwell design illustrated below *seems* to have been meant to operate in a similar fashion, but with the spaceplane intended to put itself directly into orbit. Most likely it would have been LH2/LOX powered, probably with SSME derivative engines.
The description in the text, though, describes very different vehicles, using propulsion system best described as highly steeped in the hypothetical. Atomic hydrogen and metastable helium are great stuff if you can get them… and, basically, you can’t. Not with 1980’s tech, not with 2020 tech. Someday, maybe.
Feb 102020
Democrat Bre Kidman is running for US Senate in Maine. Her chosen symbol makes her desire for murder of the opposition obvious:
I was gonna wait until tomorrow to show off these beauties, but Trump got acquitted and I feel like folks could use something to look forward to. So.
Get ready for Merch-You-Can’t-Buy! You shouldn’t buy elections, so you can’t buy our locally silk screened, upcycled merch. pic.twitter.com/B0A4HSvDIw
— bre🏳️🌈kidman🇺🇸for🦞Maine🌹(D) (@BeeKay4ME) February 5, 2020
Remember when her side got all snippy when Sarah Palin’s people showed a map that had little cross-hairs on it showing “targeted” districts. Now they’re showing tools of revolution, mass murder and terror.