The most hilarious screed you’ll read today

 Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., Hmm..., humor, news, politics, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 232020
 

The Dangerous Rise Of Men Who Won’t Date “Woke” Women

It’s pretty much what you’d expect: men who won’t date women who hate men are all far right racist misogynists. Rather dull and boring in it’s tired and cliched way. But it’s the responses that make the existence of this editorial worthwhile:

“The dangerous rise of men who won’t have sex with me.”
Careful Vicki, you’re sounding like an incel.

No one owes you a relationship, sweetie

Nobody owes anybody anything, much less a date or a relationship. So if you display a hateful ideology, such as modern straight-white-man-hating wokeness, then, yeah, a whole lot of guys are not going to find you too terribly desirable. *Some* people certainly go looking for a relationship specifically to make themselves miserable, because some people are masochists. But most people aren’t. Men look for partners who will make them feel happy and/or satisfied and/or wanted. Wokeness provides none of this.

 

And then this review of the article on YouTube, with a reasonably hilarious title: “Get woke, die alone.”

And Tim Pool, leftist non-white guy, is similarly unimpressed:

 Posted by at 11:35 am

It’s about time

 Hmm..., news, nukes, politics  No Responses »
Jan 222020
 

Greenpeace included with neo-Nazis on UK counter-terror list

The reason given for including Greenpeace here was not what I would have. I fully expect that in the fullness of time, the evil that Greenpeace has done to western civilization by setting back progress by the better part of a *century* through their anti-nuclear activism will be seen as an evil far exceeding that of the neo-Nazis and likely up there with the *real* Nazis. through fearmongering, intimidation and lies, Greenpeace has successfully served the interests of their dead Soviet masters and turned the western world into scientifically backwards fodder for conquest. Were it not for Greenpeace and their ilk, we could be several generations further along in nuclear power. The US could have several terawatts of installed nuclear electricity; coal and natural gas might well be on their way out. We could have nuclear reactors on the Moon and Mars powering manned bases. Our economy could be several times larger; our atmosphere substantially less loaded with carbon dioxide. Greenpeace ᚲᚨᚾ᛫ᚷᛟ᛫ᛋᛏᚱᚨᛁᚷᚺᛏ᛫ᛏᛟ᛫ᚺᛖᛚᛚ.

 Posted by at 11:06 am

Dis Gon Be Good

 Hmm..., news, politics  No Responses »
Jan 222020
 

Gabbard suing Clinton for defamation over ‘Russian asset’ comments

Usually being a public figure makes it so that people can pretty much say whatever they like about you. But when it comes to politics, public figures blatantly lie about each other *all* *the* *time.* It will be interesting to see how this shakes out. If Gabbard actually has any kind of success, expect to see Trump’s lawyers become happy, happy people.

 Posted by at 7:35 am

Lockheed Stowed Rotor

 aircraft, art, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, projects  No Responses »
Jan 222020
 

A piece of Lockheed concept art circa 1966 depicting a concept for a stowed-rotor helicopter, capable of efficient hovering performance as well as efficient high speed forward flight. This design is related to though distinct from the design depicted in artwork HERE. Note that the backgrounds of the two paintings share a lot of similarities… same ground structures, same leaves in the lower right. I don’t know if this means that one painting was copied from the other, or if one painting was painted *over* the other. In which case… as noted on the other post, I actually own that other piece of artwork. Buried under that upper layer of paint might be *this* image. Ain’t no way I’m going to scrape the paint off just to check, but the technology exists to X-Ray it to look for what’s buried underneath. Not that I’m going to do *that* either…

This aircraft is shown operating in Viet Nam, in US Army colors. This would have irritated the hell out of the US Air Force; by 1966, the USAF was to have control of all fixed wing combat aircraft. The role for this aircraft in Viet Nam would have been search and rescue rather than the transport of troops or ground attack, but still the USAF would have objected.

This piece of art came from a magazine article published in 1966. The full article has been scanned and saved as a PDF, made available to all $4 and up APR Patreons and Monthly Historical Document Program subscribers. it has been uploaded to the 2020-01 APR Extras folder on Dropbox for Patreons and subscribers. If interested in this piece or if you are interested in helping to fund the preservation of this sort of thing, please consider becoming a patron, either through the APR Patreon or the Monthly Historical Document Program.

 Posted by at 1:22 am

“I want your business”

 art, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 222020
 

Y’all may have noticed me dropping the odd hint here or there about my political leanings. One might from time to time assume that I have some strong views, things both for and against. And you might also have noticed me trying to sell stuff from time to time. And guess what: unlike some businesses… I don’t give a damn what your politics are when it comes to selling you stuff. For an alternate take, witness the wokeness of a particular publisher of a Cthulhu-base role playing game:

Yeah, yeah, Lovecraft had views that just wouldn’t fly in today’s climate. Cthulhu Man Bad. But so what: he was a writer of weird fiction, not a politician or government bureaucrat. But it has become a new trope, and already a tired one, that anyone who plans on making bank off the back of Lovecrafts ideas had better get on with the virtue signalling.

And where it gets interesting is after the predictable backlash to this publishers grovelling before the outrage mob, they crank this out:

 

“If you don’t like the politics included in our games, don’t buy them.
We literally do not want your money.”

Boggle. This “screw you” to half of their potential market is incomprehensible to me. Are you a socialist? A communist? A monarchist, fascist, ethno-statist, theocrat, or any of the wide, wide world of political systems that raise my hackles? Then… buy my stuff. I ain’t voting for you, but I will gladly take your money in exchange for my products.

I can only understand this sort of thing in terms of it being a form of PR. Perhaps they suspected that their product was not going to sell well because it didn’t have enough exposure, so they did something clickbaity and hatebaity. They knew they’d drive away at least half the potential market, but the half that remained would be larger than the 100% of the far smaller market that was originally aware of their product. But I don’t really think that’s the case. I find it more likely that these people really are this wacko, or they are really this grovelly before the might of the SJW hatemob.

 Posted by at 1:00 am

Rise of Skywalker… meh

 art, Crazy, Meh., science fiction, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 212020
 

I *finally* got around to seeing Rise of Skywalker this weekend. After decades of being a fan, seeing all the movies from Empire through the prequels to Clone Wars to Rogue One in the theater on Day One, Disney has managed the impossible: making me go “meh” and waiting a month to see the latest offering. In the faint chance that there’s anyone still uncertain about whether or not to go, I’ll say this: it’s not as bad as “Last Jedi.” But that is a phenomenally low bar. TLJ and Solo set expectations so low that Rise could well be the most hideously steaming pile of dung ever to have trained chimps smear across the movie screen, but it just comes across as something that a large number of skilled and talented folks worked very hard on just for a paycheck.  The acting is ok, but the story is straight out of a video game and the visual effects are basically just Lucasfilm shaking their box of existing digital assets out onto the screen and saying “eh, I guess that’ll do.”

It seemed to be very much *not* an effort to wrap up a story in the best and most satisfying way possible, but instead simply an effort to nail the coffin closed and dump it in the hole so that they can get on with other things. The film makers are no doubt as sick of the property as the fans are.

Entertainingly, the long-time fans of Star Wars including old farts like myself dislike this movie a lot less than a lot of new fans, the ones who came on board with Rey-For-Pay and company. Us olds are annoyed that these movies crapped upon the legacy characters and story; the latest generation of fangirls seem upset that their preferred romantic pairings didn’t happen. As an example, take this video someone shot of the last scene. There are a number of very vocal female-type persons in the audience who *really* don’t like what’s happening:

By all accounts “The Mandalorian” is some high-quality Star Wars entertainment product, proving that good Star Wars *can* be made today. It just needs the right people helming it. People who understand and *like* the franchise.

 Posted by at 11:56 am

Making “The Happening” not suck

 art, Hmm..., science fiction, youtube  No Responses »
Jan 202020
 

Eleven and a half years ago I reviewed “The Happening” (holy crap that sound like a long time ago…). It was in fact one of the first posts on this sad excuse for a blog. Anyway… long story short, I hated it.

Imagine my shock when this guy posts a video that links “Signs” (which I liked but had problems with) with “The Happening” and “After Earth” (which I absolutely loathed) in a way that actually winds up making them all better and *kinda* making sense now…

 

 Posted by at 5:29 pm

Risk

 art, awesomeness, history, rockets, spacecraft, youtube  No Responses »
Jan 202020
 

So, SpaceX lobbed a Dragon into the sky, willingly destroying a Falcon 9 booster system to prove out the abort capability of their capsule. This was a ballsy move; had anything gone wrong, their opponents in government, industry and media would have pounced, likely causing SpaceX to have to delay for months or years before daring to risk an actual astronaut. Boeing, in contrast, opted to replace a very visible, very public flight test of their capsules abort system with a mountain of paperwork that, if printed out, very likely would have massed more than the capsule if not the whole booster.

And so I was reminded of this old, old TV ad for the financial firm AIG. I’ve posted this video before (going on two years, also referencing SpaceX), but damn if it just doesn’t seem relevant.

Every time I watch this the room somehow gets dusty.

 Posted by at 11:29 am

Possibilities of New Business Growth: Military Spaceplanes

 history, projects, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jan 192020
 

In the 1980’s, military spaceplanes were all the rage… at least on paper. In 1985 Rockwell International considered the possibility that there would be a profitable business case for a relatively small manned spaceplane that could serve as a rapid-reaction launch system for missions such as recon. Thirty years later the X-37 finally accomplished something sorta along those lines, though without the crew and rapid reaction.

 

 Posted by at 1:27 pm

SpaceX Dragon abort test

 news, rockets, spacecraft, youtube  No Responses »
Jan 192020
 

Well, here they go (hopefully):

UPDATE: the flight seemed to go entirely successfully, from launch to engine shutdown, capsule abort, trunk jettison, re-orientation, re-entry, drogue chutes, main chutes, splashdown. The videos cut off prior to the rescue boats getting to the capsule, but at this stage I image everything is hunky dory within the capsule. As expected, the booster tumbled and kerploded quite spectacualrly.

 

 Posted by at 8:14 am
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