Heh. Billie Eilish came outta nowhere less than a year ago, gaining fame with some seriously odd songs and videos. I’m seeing this one, “Bad Guy,” all over the place these days:
But you know she has really made it when there’s a Donald Trump cover of the song…
Snerk. Wall.
This story is just plain entertaining…
Short form: it appears that there *was* an incident in a grocery store. The Black Democrat Lawmaker was in the “express” checkout line with too many items in her cart, and got in a screaming match with another customer who was annoyed at either her inability to count, or her inability to not be a rude fill-in-the-expletive. This much everyone seems to agree on. Where stories differ: the lawmaker claims that the Racist White Man told her to “go back where you came from.”
How do we know that stories differ because when the lawmaker showed up back at the grocery store with local press in tow in order to raise some sort of a fuss, it turns out that the Racist whit man was *right* *there,* and got into it with her. And it turns out that the Racist White Man is a Cuban Democrat Immigrant who hates Trump and thinks that the lawmaker is embellishing the story in order to Smollett-up her career.
Heh.
What’s entirely predictable: a good chunk of the media ate up her story and ran with it uncritically.
Interesting: compare two videos of the lawmaker in question. The first, where she makes the claim, and plays up her victimhood status for all it’s worth:
I’m about to be very Transparent because this racism and hate is getting out of control! I feared for my life!
Posted by Erica Thomas on Friday, July 19, 2019
And now, a video where sh tries her best to pretend to Righteous Indignation, outraged that the guy she’s making apparently false accusations against had the temerity to disagree with her publicly:
Media machine has been blowing up story of @itsericathomas, who claims a racist white man told her to “go back where you came from.” Well, he returns during her presser to deny allegation. He says he’s a Democrat & she’s embellishing story for attention. pic.twitter.com/wh4uds2IKC
— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) July 21, 2019
This is one of those stories that has it all.
On one hand, it’s entertaining theater. On the other hand, it’s depressing that this is the quality of politician we have (not just this particular politician, but all the others, including Presidential candidates, who tried to ride the coat-tails of this incident until the facts started coming out). But on the gripping hand, this is just one more nail in the coffin of the political utility of unfounded claims of racism. This, Smollett, the Smirkening, the Goon Squad… all steps toward the public finally no longer paying any serious attention to this sort of nonsensical political theater.
The best seat in the house is the topmost perch in the living room cat tree. I’m honestly surprised that they don’t fight over it; instead; whoever gets there first gets it, and the rest simply accept it. Here we see Buttons surveying his domain.
I was looking forward to Season 3 of “The Orville.” But now…
I’ve yet to hear of a Blu Ray release for “The Orville.”
Now available… the newest and biggest issue in the US Aerospace Projects line.
Cover art was provided by Rob Parthoens, www.baroba.be
US Launch Vehicle Projects #06 is now available (see HERE for the entire series). Issue #6 is devoted to the launch vehicles proposed for the 1970’s Solar Power Satellite program. This required millions of tons of payload delivered into Earth orbit over a span of decades, with flight rates of several times per day for each vehicle. This program produced some of the largest and most ambitious launch vehicles ever designed, and was the last time that launchers of this size were ever seriously contemplated. Appropriately, USLP#6 is by far the largest issue of US Aerospace projects to date at over seventy pages, three times the size of a usual issue.
Topics in this issue include the Rockwell Star-Raker, several Boeing Space Freighters, the Boeing “Big Onion” Low Cost Heavy Lift Vehicle (antecedent and descendant designs), a Grumman two-stage HLLV, a Rockwell HLLV and “small” HLLV, NASA-JSC heavy lifters, a Boeing/Rockwell Personnel Launch Vehicle and a Boeing winged SSTO. Along with orthogonal views, a number of perspective diagrams are also included.
USLP #6 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $9:
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How can a person know if their religion sucks? Well… if your religion opposes building a world-class telescope, then, yes. Your religion sucks.
It would be one thing if this mountaintop was being used for a casino or a WalMart warehouse or a garbage dump. But a telescope that will show the universe in unprecedented detail? A *good* religion would welcome such a thing.
And it seems that his time in the Delta Quadrant didn’t do our favorite Ensign any good…
And the sickness has spread even as far as Utah:
There is, of course, a compromise: cancel the Mauna Kea telescope and build it on the Moon instead. Such an endeavor would of course cost a bucket of money, many billions of dollars. But there are many areas of US FedGuv spending that could have their funding slashed to fund the scope. During the period of time that say, some foreign aid (humanitarian, military, diplomatic, scientific, etc.) is zero-funded, simply tell the people to thank the Hawaiians for their opportunity to sacrifice for the greater good.
Another advantage of a Lunar relocation: you *can* build a casino next to it. Perhaps just a few miles away behind a hill to block direct impingement of the gigawatts of bright flashing lights. But by building the whole complex on the near side of the moon, those Mauna Kea protestors can squat in ignorance atop their mountain and look up into the night sky and see the bright lights of New Vegas shining down on them from 240,000 miles away, and they can know that they share in none of either the money being made or the knowledge being learned.
CBS has released the first real trailer for the Picard series. It shows a whole lot of unrecognizable characters and stuff, with no views of Starfleets ships, so it’s impossible to say if this is actually in the TNG universe or some mutant STD/Kelvin timeline. However, there are a few hints that it might actually be back to TNG. There are some glimpses of Starfleet uniforms that look TNG-appropriate, and there are two cameos. One is wholly unsurprising, and is clearly partially the result of digital de-aging. The other actually made me laugh out loud and took me wholly by surprise.
CBS burned through my my supply of trust with the execrable STD, so I certainly won’t be subscribing to CBS All Access for this. But it actually does look like it has potential. That one unexpected cameo… oh, yes indeed.
CBS new is again running a live stream of their historical footage, this time covering the landing of Apollo 11.
Back in ’69, they didn’t have the tech to run live TV from the actual landing. So CBS filled in the lack of footage with cel (cartoon) animation. They timed the animation to match the *planned* landing, but as is well known Armstrong had to divert to avoid landing in a field of boulders. so the animation depicts the LM on the surface well ahead of the actual event. Also of note: listening to the small sounds from the CBS news studio when it becomes clear that the LM is actually down. They (Walter Cronkite and Wally Schirra) maintain professionalism, but only just. Another minor note: I can think of two times when Cronkite took off his glasses on camera: announcing the death of JFK and just after the Eagle landed.
For real entertainment value, watch it with closed captioning on. I assume a computer is transcribing the speech into text… but it’s not doing a great job of it.
It looks like CBS didn’t include the vintage commercials this time. Additionally, there’s a time jump; it was more than six hours between landing and stepping out of the LM onto the surface, but the two broadcasts are welded together here. Until Aldrin turns on the TV camera showing Armstrong on the ladder, CBS filled in the lack of video with actors in fake space suits going through the planned motions. Also interesting: Cronkite jumped the gun on when he thought Armstrong was actually standing on the lunar surface, and missed the second half of “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
This was the most amazing event in TV history, and likely in *all* of history. What makes it more remarkable is how in such short order the same public that was so entranced by this became uttering apathetic to following missions. One might argue that Apollo 11 was the first, and the first time is inherently far more interesting. And yet… turn on the TV, and chances are fair that one or more channels will be broadcasting yet again another interminable baseball, football, soccer or basketball game. There’ve been *millions* of ’em, yet billions of people still gladly pay vast sums of money, time and attention to such objectively pointless activities.
Sigh.
This may come as a shock, but Broadway musicals (or any musical) are not my thing. So when I started seeing references to a trailer for “Cats” being released, I paid no attention. Until I began to notice that the references kept referring to the horrifying CGI *things.” This spurred my curiosity, and I’ve added the trailer below. You’re welcome.
I assume that “Cats” isn’t *supposed* to be a Cronenbergian body-horror fever dream, but here we are.
For all America’s troubles, there’s one bright spot: unlike Canada, we don’t have a “Human Rights Tribunal.”
Short form: a transgender woman went to a home-based business to receive a “Brazilian wax.” But the business owner did not want to carry out the procedure since the customer was equipped with male junk and felt uncomfortable with that (and her husband didn’t want her fondling another dudes tackle). So the customer took the business to the human rights kangaroo court in Vancouver, British Columbia, in order to ruin them, going so far as to compare the business owner to a Nazi. Which makes one wonder what kind of person wants a Nazi apply liquid-hot magmawax to their nads.
There’s just a whole lot of weird here. There’s also a lot of sad. Remember the story from a few days ago of the kid in Utah with a road-side “beer” stand, making money hand over fist with the jovial approval of the cops? Here we have a story of a woman who had carried out a cosmetic, errr… procedure on friends and family, apparently successfully, decided to make a business of it, and her very first customer put her out of business and has tied her up in an Orwellian thought-crime court.
Canada? Not even once.
Heinlein saw America devolving into chaos. But I don’t think he saw *this* sort of thing.