SpaceX’s “Starhopper” testbed for their Raptor engines, intended for use on the “Starship” fired up a single engine and*apparently* lifted off yesterday on a tethered flight. This probably means it got no more than a few feet off the ground at best.
Unmanned test flight *was* to be in may, now August.
Prolly shouldn’t’a cribbed the capsules flight control software from the 737 MAX program…
In these times of trouble and strife, solace can often be found in music. So… here ya go.
And because Diversity Is Our Strength (TM)…
Late last night the power went out during a mild rain shower. Turns out a power pole caught fire and trashed the transformer and such, cutting things off for most of the night. Fortunately the temperature was not an issue and most everybody was asleep, but having a house full of uninterruptible power supplies suddenly all beeping incessantly was a pain in the keister. But the situation did lead to some interesting sights, straight out of Project Blue Book: a few miles off, a few police vehicles with flashing lights along with a utility truck pointing spotlights up at the pole while the workers fixed it. The lights were reflected not only by the mist in the air, but also the low-hanging clouds.
When they mess with the origin story of Spock, I become annoyed. But comic book characters are necessarily different: there are dozens of different takes on, say, Batman, and even they though conflict and cannot be reconciled it is in the nature of comic book characters to be constantly re-invented and re-imagined. Sometimes they go too far, of course. Making Batman a poverty-stricken Puerto Rican woman in rural Alabama would not make sense. The “Suicide Squad” Joker really didn’t work for me, while the Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger versions did.
Joaquin Phoenix is the next Joker, and this one seems further removed than most. It appears that it will be set in the 1970s, and it appears that Batman will either be nowhere to be found or very, very minor. The Joker here is quite unlike any previously seen. And I gotta say… I’m intrigued. Prior Joker origins have usually had him start off as some sort of crime boss who ends up dumped in a vat of toxic chemicals. This one replaces “toxic chemicals” with “the people of New York in the 1970’s,” which, from what I remember of the 1970’s, is just about right.
I dislike April Fools day. I dislike hoaxes and practical jokes in general. Of the several reasons for this, one is that it might make you think that a falsehood is true… and that it might make you think a real event was a hoax. Case in point, this incident that hit a crazy persons Facebook on April 1. The story is straight out of a Trump supporters fever dream: an elderly man is wearing a MAGA hat and is set upon by a leftist whackaloon. A bemohawked woman-like creature spots him in a Starbucks and not only screams at him, she photographs him, posts his photos on Facebook and tells her followers to dox him and his children in order to harass and drive him out of her town. This story is *exactly* the sort of thing that sounds like someone would make up in order to make lefties look bad… sort of a reverse Smollet.
But it turns out that it seems to actually have been true.
And…
The second piece has some fun updates about the self-appointed anti-MAGA “hero,” such as “the internet has doxxed *her,*” and “her employer has fired her like a cheap Saturday Night Special.” She was an accountant for a music store, and they were probably barraged with nastygrams. Most companies have a “do not embarrass us” clause, and this would certainly seem to qualify.
I shudder to imagine just how nutty these replicants will get if Trump wins re-election. This sort of thing will probably help drive technological development… we already have body cams and GoPros and the like, but it seems to me that what the world is calling out for is a simple, affordable multi-camera system that you can wear that will not only record a full 360 degrees around you in high def, but stream that video to a server for storage and public posting, AND will be unobtrusive… preferably invisible to the people around you. Perhaps even a swarm of tiny, inaudible mini-drones that flock around you and capture every conceivable angle. Because if there aren’t already, I’m sure there will soon be a *lot* of people heading out wearing MAGA hats and surrounded by cameras *hoping* to create a disturbance.
And apropos of nothing, the self-portrait of the woman running the second-linked blog:
While here is the leftie:
When I was a kid, “conservative woman” could have been a euphemism for “fun-hating assassin of joy.” Now… why is it that conservative women always seem like they’d be a *lot* more fun to hang out with? While a whole lot of left-screaming women seem like spending time with them would be like getting a root canal while sitting buck nekkid on a belt sander.
Except for the length, this is some dandy propaganda. It has the merit of being pretty accurate.
Prepare to larf:
