The end of social media?

 Crazy, Forward!, Gah., Hmm..., news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Apr 012019
 

Australia and New Zealand want to pass laws making it a crime punishable by years in prison for platforms like Facebook to not promptly pull down violent content that they don’t like. Assuming this goes through and they actually try to enforce it, what would the result be?

A: Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, etc. would be forced to institute self-censoring so harsh that it would basically make them useless systems. Every Tweet would need to pass through some AI censor which would doubtless make a mess of the system or would be tricked by trolls who figure out how to beat the system… thus getting the head honchos of those companies in legal hot water.

Or…

B: The world of social media – nay, the entire internet -would somehow need to be Balkanized, with nations like Australia and new Zealand cut off from the civilized world in order to protect their fragile citizens from naughty words and dirty pictures and bad ideas. This is something that China is trying and Russia wants to do; the only way to really pull it off would be to actually cut off the cables and somehow prevent satellites from transmitting. I imagine this is possible, but what does it say about your country if they attempt this?

 

 

 Posted by at 5:15 pm

Half a billion

 blather, Hmm..., news, politics  No Responses »
Apr 012019
 

Because Honduras, Guatamala and El Salvador are responsible for the bulk of the recent mass influx of economic migrants trying to and often successfully crossing the southern US border, the State Department under Trumps orders is planning on cutting about half a billion dollars in aid to those countries. On one hand, it would seem better to focus on the road those people take to get to the US: Mexico. Make it painful for the Mexican government to let armies of colonizers cross their territory, then the road will close and the invasion will slow.

But then on the other hand, half a billion dollars per year isn’t exactly chump change. Compared to the whole US Federal budget it’s a drop in the bucket that will be simply lost in the shuffle, but I’m sure some good use could be made of that money. Obviously, the most important thing the US could do with that money would be to promptly earmark it for the express and specific purpose of establishing an interplanetary colonization and industrialization program; using SpaceX systems, the US could probably have a sizable little colony on Mars inside of a decade and corner the market on asteroid mining within two.

Sadly, the US government isn’t that forward thinking. But what *could* we do with that money for relevant purposes? I just looked up the cost of flights… Dallas-Forth Worth to San Salvador runs $164 for a one-way economy seat. At that rate, the United States could use that half a billion dollars to deport three MILLION people a year.

We are forever being told that vast numbers of economic migrants are a boon to the economy. Imagine what three million people a year being deposited into El Salvador could accomplish. It would be cruel, nay, racist and elitist to deny El Salvador and its neighbors that boon.

 Posted by at 4:29 pm

Bang, zoom, Falcon 9 to the Moon

 Hmm..., news, politics, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Apr 012019
 

NASA chief says a Falcon Heavy rocket could fly humans to the Moon

The launch vehicle would require a number of modifications, including the use of the ULA Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage and a larger payload fairing.

The article seems lean on some details. The launch vehicle thus modified with the ICPS and an Orion capsule would seem perhaps capable of sending men *around* the moon, but actually landing on the moon would seem to require a lot more capability. The obvious approach would be to go back to the original idea NASA had in the earliest Apollo days of launching multiple Saturn I’s, with separate vehicles and tankers, for a rendezvous in Earth orbit and an assembly and tanking. But beyond all that  there remains one over-riding problem: where the frak is the lunar lander?

 Posted by at 3:43 pm

The Day The Dinosaurs Died

 awesomeness, history, news, paleo, science  No Responses »
Mar 312019
 

A much longer and more detailed and generally just plain interesting story about the discovery in Hell Creek:

The Day the Dinosaurs Died

The following day, DePalma noticed a small disturbance preserved in the sediment. About three inches in diameter, it appeared to be a crater formed by an object that had fallen from the sky and plunked down in mud. Similar formations, caused by hailstones hitting a muddy surface, had been found before in the fossil record. As DePalma shaved back the layers to make a cross-­section of the crater, he found the thing itself—not a hailstone but a small white sphere—at the bottom of the crater. It was a tektite, about three millimetres in diameter—the fallout from an ancient asteroid impact. As he continued excavating, he found another crater with a tektite at the bottom, and another, and another.

SHAZAM!

Finding not only the tektites but the *craters* they made in the mud? That. Is. AWESOME.

Can you imagine what one of those little fossilized mud craters would go for at auction? Every museum in the world and a *lot* of private collectors will want a piece of this place.

 Posted by at 7:32 pm

This looks painful

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Hmm..., russian empire, youtube  No Responses »
Mar 312019
 

Somehow I suspect there’s not a “soyboy division” here.

Russia’s ‘Male Slapping Championships’ need to be seen to be believed

This is a silly thing. But there is, I think, value to be placed in a competition where your job is to just stand there and take it. I bet an argument could be made for competitive taser-holding.

The real question now that it is Current Year: are they going to open the competition up to women? I didn’t see any there facing off against the men. Clearly that’s due to the patriarchy preventing women from competing on an even level with the men.

 

 Posted by at 6:31 pm

Nuclear-electric spacecraft

 art, history, models, nukes, projects, spacecraft  No Responses »
Mar 302019
 

A Pratt & Whitney magazine ad from 1964 illustrating a spacecraft using a nuclear powerplant. This seems to depict only the actual powerplant, rather than an integrated vehicle. Some details of note are the large thermal radiators and the nuclear shielding. The reactor itself is the structure on the near end of the boom. Flanking it are two someone oddly shaped boxes; these are radiation “shadow shields” seeming placed and shaped to keep radiation from the reactor from impinging upon the radiators. The conical structure just beyond the reactor is another radiation shield , designed to shadow the main structure.

This appears to not be a painting, but a physical model… one seemingly made from metal. Accuracy is perhaps not 100%.

 Posted by at 10:16 pm

Who do the woke hate today? Survey says: Spain

 Crazy, Forward!, history, Hmm..., Meh., news, politics, religion, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 302019
 

So a few days ago the new President of Mexico demanded that Spain apologize for conquering the Aztecs nearly 500 years ago (note: in reality, Cortez and his 200 guys didn’t so much conquer the Aztec empire and they showed up and led tens of thousands of *other* people to conquer the Aztecs, because the Aztec empire sucked and everybody around them hated them). And so now who is jumping on board the demand-Spain-apologize gravy train?

Via Google Translate:

The Ishbilia Mosque of Seville demands that King Philip VI ask for forgiveness for the Reconquest

A Spanish Mosque is demanding that Spain apologize for conquering… Spain.

So far, the Spanish government has told the Mexican government to get bent. I imagine they’ll do much the same with this more recent demand that Spain apologize for taking back its own land from foreign invaders.

 Posted by at 5:29 pm

“This is a system wide collapse”

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Forward!, Gah., news, politics, THIS is why Trump won, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 302019
 

Donald Trump ran and won on one goal more than any other: “build the wall” and control illegal immigration, because a nation that cannot control it’s borders and determine who it lets in is no nation at all. But he has not accomplished that goal. If he wants to win in 2020, he needs to do a bit better than simply relying on Democrats to run crazed idiots… and stories like this are not helping:

‘We’ve never seen anything like this’: As Trump threatens to close border, migrants overwhelm Texas cities

Hundreds of “migrants” are invading individual border cities each day, swamping the ability of local resources to deal with them. While it is of course entirely true that a perfectly impenetrable wall on the southern border would not stop the invasion of illegal immigrants – a great many of whom enter legally and simply overstay their visas – the ability to control the southern border is vital not only to the locals but also the the perception that the United States has no border controls.  Just as with other forms of criminality, weakness invites attack.

Border Patrol officials were on pace in March for more than 100,000 apprehensions and encounters with migrants – the highest monthly tally in over a decade, he said. Around 90 percent of those – or 90,000 – crossed the border between legal ports of entry.

 

 Posted by at 1:16 pm

What do vegans eat?

 blather, Crazy, Hmm..., Meh., politics, science fiction, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 302019
 

Each other, it seems:

The Weird World of Vegan YouTube Stars Is Imploding

Short form: veganism is like any religion… they reserve a special hate for those who are like them but fall *slightly* short of the pure faith.

The article discusses not only vegans going ape over “vegan YouTube stars” caught eating some animal-based food product, it also mentions, rather casually, that rather a lot of the vegans suffer health issues from their diets. Now, honestly, I don’t care what diet you choose, so long as it’s legal; you eat humans or cats, you and I are gonna have some words. If you only want to eat rabbit food, hey, great, more real food for me. But what gets my goat are all the vegans boasting about how they’re morally superior while at the same time demonstrating that their diet *isn’t* what humans were meant for. Look at the latest developments in vegan food products: vegan hamburgers that taste, feel, even “bleed” like real hamburgers. Why go to all that trouble if eating meat is wrong? Shouldn’t you be satisfied eating vegan food that tastes like plants? The thing is, meat is tasty because humans are *supposed* to eat it, just as sugar is tasty because we are *supposed* to eat it. Cats are *not* supposed to eat sugar, and therefore they don’t seem to have an ability to appreciate the taste of sugar. Humans are omnivores, and while it’s certainly possible to survive on a diet wholly of plant products, it’s neither easy nor necessarily all that healthy in the long term. We have fangs for a reason, people.

I have no doubt that at some point humans will develop machines that will be able to take water, electrical power and basic chemicals – perhaps raw elements – and “replicate” perfectly cromulent foods of any type. Anything from tea, Earl Gray, hot, to a nice juicy steak covered in chocolate sauce and diced grasshoppers, stuffed with basil, bananas and crawdads, all without having to kill one single organism. And when that day comes… will vegans still avoid “meat” for ethical reasons? Will the subspace communications lanes be filled with replicator-vegans sniping at each other about what a “true” vegan diet is? Will HoloTube be filled with people trying to one-up each other? I bet it will be. There will doubtless be people who go that extra step and have the replicator surgically implanted in thier GI tract, with the end result that they neither eat nor poop, but simply reprocess their own waste and survive on water, sunshine and absorbed carbon dioxide. And won’t *those* people be fun at parties.

 Posted by at 12:35 pm

Ain’t exactly the King’s English

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Forward!, Hmm..., news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 302019
 

‘Ching, wap, ox’: slang interpreters decipher texts for court evidence

Seems the London police are having difficulty understanding the people they deal with. “A Clockwork Orange” was only wrong insofar as it underplayed the issue, and actually assumed that England of the future would be populated by English people speaking some form of English.

 Posted by at 12:02 pm
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