One hopes the robotrucks will do better

 AARRRGH, dumbassery, Gah., humor, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 132019
 

It seems they could hardly do worse. But then, the sign that’s supposed to light up in warning seems ineffective,so automation isn’t always a winner.

Note how a lot of these seem to be rental/moving trucks. Thus *perhaps* a majority of the drivers aren’t professional truck drivers, but schmoes who are driving vehicles they are unfamiliar with. I wonder who will be replaced by robotrucks first: pro truckers on “easy” long-haul routes, or amateurs who (seemingly) tend to drive around more complex and chaotic urban areas.

Bonus round:

 

 

 

 Posted by at 5:24 pm

What a nothingburger of a movie

 Meh., science fiction  No Responses »
Jan 132019
 

So I wake up today intending to do some work on the computer. Looking for background noise I fired up Netflix and saw that “Solo: A Star Wars Story” is now available. So, what the hell, I turned it on.

It barely even qualified as background noise.

I remain mystified about how a quarter-billion-dollar budget lavished on one of the most interesting and charismatic characters from the last century of filmmaking can so utterly fail to make an decent movie. It wasn’t good in the theater; it was even less good on TV. It’s really quite astonishing, like watching a respected and venerated diamond cutter turn a raw blue diamond the size of a chicken egg into a handful of dust and ash.

 Posted by at 2:15 pm

Agony

 AARRRGH, blather, cats, Gah., Meh., news, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 132019
 

Those of you who don’t like me… well, this is your happy day.

As previously mentioned, I was pretty sick there for a while. And while the illness is largely gone, it seems to have left a little present behind. One of the main symptoms of the illness was a substantial cough… frequent and powerful. It appears that all that coughing somehow or other caused me to damage my left shoulder, sprain, strain, torn ligament, something. *Holy**crap* does it hurt. It’s painful to the point of distraction and torpedoing productivity; it’s hard to type, to scan, to carve, to CAD, to *concentrate.* It hurts just hanging there. It *screams* when I cough. In retrospect I should’ve seen a doctor for it Thursday or Friday, but both days I woke up feeling fine, with the pain creeping up as the day went on.

A few years ago I had something similar that was finally fixed up by the simple expedient of the doctor jamming a needle the size of a railroad spike directly into the shoulder socket and pumping it full of steroids. I suspect that will have to be done again. Joy unbounded.

So if you’ve been waiting for me to do something or other… well, ooops.

At least the air quality has been spectacular. Nothing better for dealing with an illness than air with more hydrocarbons than a gas tank.

 

A truncated document scanning session ended early not only because my arm wasn’t working right (kinda important for feeding documents into a scanner), but because Banshee had other plans.

 

 Posted by at 12:08 am

Some are more equal than others

 dumbassery, Forward!, I'm from the government, Meh., news, politics, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 112019
 

Why Ald. Ed Burke May Have Been Allowed To Have 23 Guns In Government Building

Y’all will doubtless be shocked to hear that a Chicago politician is corrupt.

He’s been a staunch supporter of gun control measures for decades, but in a surprising twist, federal prosecutors revealed Thursday that nearly two dozen firearms were discovered in Ald. Ed Burke’s offices during their raids in November.

It’s still not known if the guns that were found in November were discovered at Burke’s ward office or at City Hall, but it’s hard to miss the irony of a staunch gun control advocate having to turn over 23 guns as a condition of his bond.

Things could be sped up by the simple expedient of simply arresting anyone suspected of being a Chicago politician.

 Posted by at 7:05 pm

This Presidential candidate annoys my cats

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., Hmm..., news, politics, THIS is why Trump won, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 112019
 

Kamala Harris is the junior Senator from California and is apparently positioning herself to run for President, because if 2008 showed us anything it was that good salesmanship, overpowering intersectionalism, generations of group-guilt and basic intellectual and ideological bullying can overcome a complete vacancy of resume. She was at some public event or other and a number of the people there started making a ridiculous sound, which surprised one of the reporters in attendance:

As it turns out, this horrible racket is a registered trademark of a racialist sorority, and lack of knowledge of this tripped the offended.exe subroutines of a number of NPCs.

So now we need to be educated in the childish cultural minutia of sub groups of sub groups, or else we’re racist. Note that the comparison is made to a reporter being sent to interview farmers needing to know something about farmers because farmers are as rare and culturally irrelevant as members of one sorority at one university.

In case you are unaware of what “Skee Wee” is, it’s this. Please note: a room full of sleeping cats suddenly became a room full of awake and spooked cats when I played this.

Basically, this:

Welcome to 2019.

Via the Althouse Blog.

 Posted by at 2:20 am

And so it begins… again

 Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., I'm from the government, news, politics, religion, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 112019
 

Diane Feinstein Proposes New Gun Ban

The bill bans the sale, manufacture, transfer and importation of 205 military-style assault weapons by name, but it does say existing owners may keep existing weapons.

Any assault weapon that accepts a detachable ammunition magazine, has one or more military characteristics (including a pistol grip, a forward grip, a barrel shroud, a threaded barrel or a folding or telescoping stock) will be banned. Owners may keep existing weapons.

Magazines and “ammunition feeding devices” that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition, which allow shooters to quickly fire many rounds without needing to reload will be banned.

Unlikely to pass the Senate or White House, but eternal vigilance against this sort of evil should nevertheless be forever maintained.

Full text and list of everything Feinstein wants to ban (for now) follows…

Continue reading »

 Posted by at 1:54 am

The Flickr of Broken Dreams

 Antidote For Nostalgia, history, Hmm..., photography  No Responses »
Jan 102019
 

Thanks to a snarky Fark photoshopping thread, here’s a Flickr page full of 1970’s 8X10 glossies of hopeful entertainers… who, I imagine, have been all of them all but forgotten by history.

the kriegsmann files

On one level they’re kinda funny… goofy lookin’ people in bad 70’s fashions with bad 70’s hair styles. On the other hand… here are people who had dreams of fame and glory, and who were they? But then look at any high school football or basketball tam, filled with kids with dreams of going pro: dreams that will come to a screeching halt with a broken ankle or a realization of a lack of adequate talent.

Still… go take a look and behold the wonders of the perm and the polyester leisure suit.

More than a decade ago NPR ran a piece on this:

Dumpster of Forgotten Musicians Launches Quest

 Posted by at 7:50 pm

Stratolaunch approaches

 aircraft, Hmm..., news, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jan 102019
 

Stratolaunch airplane nears first flight

On Jan 9, the giant Stratolaunch plane did a taxi test that reached a top speed of 219 kilometers per hour (137 mph), and the nosewheel rotated off the ground. Flight tests probably aren’t far off.

I remain a little baffled about the business plan for Stratolaunch, especially since the initial payload is apparently supposed to be *three* Pegasus XL launch vehicles. That eems an odd thing to do. But Stratoluanch intends to eventually build their own better-optimized expendable and reusable launch vehicles. And the more launchers, the better.

 Posted by at 3:02 pm

“Star Trek” cancellation speculation

 Hmm..., news, science fiction  No Responses »
Jan 102019
 

Doomcock presents some speculation on the rather truncated future of Star Trek.

1: “Star Trek IV,” the long delayed Kelvinverse flick, is pretty much certain to be cancelled. If Bad Robot doesn’t have a Star Trek movie in production by summer, they lose the license. No more LensFlareKelvinVerseNuTrek. I know a lot of people like those movies, but to me they’re … meh.

2: Rumors and evidence abound that season 2 of STD will be the *last* season of STD. Good.

The story on the “Picard” series now in development is tht it takes place not only after “Nemesis,” but after the Prime universe events that led to the Kelvinverse: a star goes supernova and wipes out the Romulan Empire (exactly how that happened has never been well explained) and Spock disappeared in an effort to prevent that. This would still be the Prime timeline; the kelvin timeline would have split off from it and could be safely ignored.

 Posted by at 2:04 pm
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