We have all, I’m sure, seen the videos of the Boston Dynamics humanoid robots being put through their paces. in a umber of these videos, the robot is doing its thing when a human comes into the frame and kicks, shoves or otherwise slams the robot. The robot recovers, and the demonstration of just how capable and versatile the robot s is complete. but there’s always something rather disturbing about humans merrily pummeling the poor defenseless robot. It’s not far off from seeing someone kick a dog.
What will be the end result of this practice? Let’s find out…
Still busy beyond belief just trying to restore order, but I should at least be capable of filling orders for downloadables. So don’t hold back. Order a couple of everything.
Blogging will resume the previous level of inane snark whenever the hell I feel like it.
Unpacking continues, good and slow. Even though I shed a sizable fraction of all my stuff, I still ended up with a big pile. It will take a good long while before I’m back up to speed and functional. I don’t have internet yet (hopefully soon) so I’m tapping this screed out on my phone. Functionality is limited. Can’t fill download orders with this. Dunno about posting pics and bids, even basic links are a pain. Lets see if this one works…
After twenty hours of driving, spread over little more than thirty, I have arrived. My cats are upset but otherwise seem ok. My stuff sent ahead seems to be ok, but 250+ boxes of books and files will take just a little bit of a while to unravel, especially in a new and smaller space. I don’t have internet access, so this post is via my five year old phone.
So, at least so far things are about as good as could be hoped under the circumstances.
The post from yesterday bemoaning the dire fate of a big pile of books? The post actually bore fruit. Someone posted a comment linking to the post over at http://accordingtohoyt.com/, someone else reasonably local saw it and decided that those books deserve a better fate. My house is now *far* less loaded with books; a small minivan left here a few hours ago loaded to the gills with books. So, huzzah! On rare occasions, something akin to social media actually results in good things.
This was all the more gratifying after watching the new homeowners this morning, who didn’t know I had just walked in the room, talking smack about sci-fi and dumping several shelves of my childhood collection of Star Trek paperbacks directly into the trash. They would not even entertain the notion of trying to sell them (one I talked to seemed baffled by the concept of doing anything with the books *other* than trashing them). They have their one book, it seems, and anything beyond that is intended to lead them from the True Path. Grrrr.
In other news: in a few hours, I’m out. I will likely be out of meaningful communications for a couple days as I cross the land in a car loaded with cats and stuff, and then out of regular communications for some time after that as I try to stabilize and find regular internet access.
Three movie critics discuss “Return of the Jedi.” Siskel and Ebert enjoyed the Star Wars movies for what they were… and John Siimon completely misses the point.
Way to miss the point, buddy.
Comments from YouTube:
“John Simon seems he would be a blast with kids. Probably buy them a puppy then kill it so they can experience real human loss.”
“This “Simon” guy has about as much imagination as a brick.”
I can only assume that John Simons was an inspiration for Kutzman & co. It would explain the dire, dour, desperately depressing downhearted dumpsterfire that is modern Star Trek.
The phrase “leaving money on the table” has, for reasons I can’t articulate, always set my teeth on edge. But it seems an apt comparison for this:
Here we see about *half* of the books that I couldn’t, for cost and space reasons, ship onwards… and that I proved unable to sell. Quite a number of used book stores and dealers were contacted, with shockingly (to me) little interest in them. So they are being left behind for the new homeowners to deal with. Which process will, I suspect, involve that giant dumpster in the driveway. Better them than me… the idea of tossing a 30-volume set from 1897 of “The World’s Great Literature” into a landfill fills me with a sense of ick. I suppose that it is truly no *real* loss; I got that set more than a quarter century ago when the library of the community college I was attending was themselves desperately trying to give it away. It’s virtually pristine, having spent more than a century going unread. And I imagine everything it it is available online; the set itself has quite possibly been scanned by some library or other and posted online in its entirety. Still… ick.
Confirmation that my decision not to spend money signing up for CBS All Access just to watch the hyper-funded anti-canonical amateur fan film series “Star Trek: Discovery” was the right decision.
Yeeeeesh.
You know, I was always more TOS than TNG, more Kirk than Picard. But the STD Captain shown here makes Picards traditional moralizing and lecturing seem downright appropriate. From Doomcock’s review of this little episode, the STD writers have decided that Tribbles aren’t some interesting little organism that evolved to breed fast, but instead are the products of not only unwise genetic engineering by a Starfleet officer about ten years prior to “The Trouble With Tribbles,” but he also injected them with magic: apparently they reproduce without the usually required step of *eating,* they gain mass without actually ingesting any mass.
Also note the serious overtones of modern woke fictioneering: the female character is right, the male is wrong. But more than that, the white male (and undoubtedly cis hetero) character is an *idiot,* and the female character sneers at him, undoubtedly to a chorus of cheers from the mental illness haircuts who actually like this show.
OK, the sale is over. Most items did *not* sell out, but I am now no longer in a position to package and mail stuff off. Perhaps sometime in the future I will try again with what I have left, but for now consider this an archive post.
