The saddest/funniest thing you’ll read all day

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Hmm..., humor, Meh., politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Aug 312019
 

As a followup to my previous post about masterfully crated puppet monsters, here’s a story about a haphazardly crafted monstrous puppet.

Racist troll explains how her former friends would do anything for her but give up their whiteness

One Saira Rao, famous in her little niche for reasons that escape me, recently went on a Twitter tirade about how she’d lecture and cajole and preach at her white female friends about how they have inherently evil whiteness in their DNA, then she was all kinds of shocked that they all decided that they’d be happier with her not being in their lives.

 Posted by at 7:13 pm

Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance

 art, awesomeness, science fiction  No Responses »
Aug 312019
 

RECOMMENDED.

Kudos to Netflix and the Henson company. They did NOT halfass this.

The puppetry fits *almost* seamlessly with that of the original movie… just better. There is substantial CGI here, but it is for the most part “invisible” CGI: the deletion of puppeteers and the like. There is also the addition of CGI tongues for the Skeksis… it works, but it’s a noticeable change. The story is good; it’s a prequel set years before the original movie when the Gelfling civilization is still a going concern. The story is not terribly silly, though there is some of that; instead, it is surprisingly dark at times. Death appears with some regularity. And of course there’s the knowledge hanging over the viewers heads that no matter what these characters do, they and their civilization are doomed. Sometime soon will come a genocide and the near-extinction (and perhaps eventual full extinction) of their race.

The voice acting was good. Simon Pegg – “Shaun of the Dead” – does a pretty good Chamberlain; Mark Hamill sounds different from the original “Scientist,” but that’s ok… he turns in a great semi-Joker performance. And the voice actress for Aughra is as spot-on as physically possible.

After the last episode is a “making of special” included in that is a 2016 screen test showing a puppet Skeksi and a CGI Gelfling… and, man, good thing they said “how about we just stick to puppets.”

 

Basically, if you liked the original, it’s a safe bet you’ll be pleased with this series. Here’s hoping it gets a few more seasons to finish the story they’re trying to tell. It doesn’t end on a cliffhanger as such, but it’s still far from being complete.

 Posted by at 6:46 pm

This should prove interesting

 Hmm..., news, politics, science  No Responses »
Aug 302019
 

Research Finds Genetic Links to Same-Sex Behavior

Full article is behind a paywall, but apparently the claim is that five genetic marker point towards a partial explanation of homosexuality. If borne out by further studies, this would go far towards putting to be the ridiculous notion that sexuality is a choice. And if it’s borne out, the next step will be to commercialize a simple genetic test for the newly pregnant. Which would lead to an increase in profits for certain companies and organizations. You might not like it, but you *know* it’s coming. And so some *quality* political chaps will come as all of a sudden people start switching sides on the issues of “abortion at any time for any reason” and “there’s never a good reason to abort a baby.”

 Posted by at 1:35 pm

Talking the audience out of the movie

 AARRRGH, Meh., politics, science fiction, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Aug 302019
 

The forthcoming movie “Ad Astra” is, so far, pretty mysterious. It has looked pretty interesting, dare I say intriguing. And then…

Brad Pitt: Space movie ‘Ad Astra’ also about toxic masculinity

For frak’s sake. “Ad Astra” is, to all appearances, a serious, science fiction/adventure/action movie. Who the frak do you think your audience is? My guess: exactly the sort of people who are quite sufficiently sick and damn tired of hearing about the supposed evils of “toxic masculinity.”

The article itself does not read as horrible as the headline suggests. But as”First Man” showed, it doesn’t take much to irritate the potential viewers. In a story where the hero has to save the world, where if he fails everybody dies, “emotional vulnerability” is a weakness you can’t afford. It may well be fine to have a main character who has the character flaw of emotional troubles, but he has to overcome, bypass, defeat that weakness and get the damn job done. Luke Skywalker? Just lost his family, left the only home he ever knew, just saw his mentor disappear in a puff of logic. So what does he do? Sucks it up, straps on a starfighter and blows up a few million Imperial noncombatants. James T. kirk was upset from time to time, but he’d die before displaying emotional weakness.

 Posted by at 1:20 pm

Sometimes the reviews are truly useful

 blather, Forward!, Hmm..., humor  No Responses »
Aug 302019
 

There are often massive differences between audience and professional critic scores for various movies. And then sometimes the audience and the critics agree that this movie was great or that movie sucked. It enough to make reliance upon critics a dubious prospect. You just can’t tell if the professional telling you that Entertainment Product you were interested in was good/bad is worth listening to, especially if you don’t have a track record with that critic.

But sometimes you don’t need to know a specific critic to be able to make a determination of whether that thing they’re talking about is worth your time. Behold:

Buzzfeed: Dave Chappelle Doesn’t Need To Punch Down

The Atlantic: The Fear in Dave Chappelle’s New Special

And Vice: You Can Definitely Skip Dave Chappelle’s New Netflix Special ‘Sticks & Stones’

The Woke Media basically *hated* the new Dave Chappelle special on Netflix. Why? Because he correctly pointed out that in todays culture you don’t dare offend The Alphabet People. Because he correctly called out cancel culture. Because he continued the long tradition of making uncomfortable humor. Being this cheesed off at someone who, politically, is one of their own (he is an Obama worshipper) honestly comes across like religious fanatics yelling “heretic” at a co-religionist who disagrees on some small matter of doctrine.

The plethora of *negative* reviews is honestly quite useful. If they were this angry at someone who had fallen from the true faith, but who wasn’t very good, they’d likely just mumble some stuff about “it wasn’t very good.” This level of effort at steering people away, though, tells you they *know* it’s good and they don’t want people being exposed to heresy.

If you have an hour and a half (an hour for the special,a  bit short of half an hour for an epilogue) and don;t mind being offended while laughing your butt off, and if you have Netflix, give “Sticks & Stones” a watch.

 

Note: I love the “he’s punching down” argument when it comes to making fun of the internet outrage mob. This amorphous vile entity is second only to the government in terms of power, and second to none in terms of striking speed and the ability to ruin lives at a distance for stuff that happened long prior to the term of the statute of limitations.

 Posted by at 9:56 am

Say what you will about Disney…

 art, awesomeness, blather, youtube  No Responses »
Aug 292019
 

… and there is much to say about how decisions the Disney corporation has made has squandered the legacy of Star Wars that they spent four billion dollars to acquire. But the *people* who work in the trenches at the Disney parks seem to be something quite a bit different. A while back I pointed out the fantastic “Evil Queen” they’ve got who brings the snark with verve and talent, but then there are these two incidents of the “talent” being *waaaaay* better people than those who decided to turn Han Solo into a bad joke and Luke Skywalker into a worthless dirtbag.

 

First: a non-verbal autistic kid went into sensory overload and started melting down. “Snow White” was on the job, it seems, and took care of the situation.

I am so emotional with these pictures !! Brody was having a meltdown . It was our turn to take pictures with her and he…

Posted by Lauren Bergner on Sunday, August 25, 2019

 

And then they’ve got a “Mary Poppins” who interacted with a blind girl. The blind girl, being blind and all, could not see “Mary Poppins” or her outfit… but “Mary Poppins” let the girl “see” her via touch. I would be large sums of someone else’s money that Disney has standing orders with the talent along the lines of “don’t let the plebes touch you or your costumes,” along with orders to the security to prevent the dirty, dirty masses from touching the talent. yet everyone involved here, from the “Mary Poppins” to the guards doubtless watching from the bushes, to the bored drone a thousand feet under the park watching the event via cameras hidden in “Mary Poppins'” hat, decided to let it play out.

 

I’m honestly stumped what a blind person would get out of most of an amusement park, but she seems happy, so who am I to argue?

 

I do wonder if there’s something wrong with *me* or something wrong with *society* that I’m frankly surprised to see basic decency out of people who are doubtless underpaid, overworked and subject to daily indignities from horrible, horrible park proles.

 Posted by at 10:43 pm

Possibilities of New Business Growth: Aft Cargo Carrier

 drawings&documents, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Aug 292019
 

In 1985 Rockwell pondered the business possibility of an “Aft Cargo Carrier” for the Shuttle. This idea, which received a fair amount of study by Martin Marietta, installed a payload shroud to the *rear* of the external tank. Doing this would allow the Shuttle to carry payloads too large in diameter to fit in the Shuttle bay; if the STS system was overall improved, this would allow the vehicle to carry payloads heavier than the Shuttle itself would be allowed to carry (the Orbiter has to *land* with whatever payload might be in the cargo bay; by moving the cargo away from the Orbiter, in an abort situation the orbit can land light and just let the aft payload go into the drink). The cargo carrier has to be insulated from a *lot* of heat, radiant energy coming from the solid and liquid rockets.

A common idea was that the Orbiter would carry some sort of satellite or other payload not capable of much self-propulsion, while an orbital tug would be carried in the ACC. The tug would be fueled with light & fluffy liquid hydrogen, which not only would be challenging to fit into the Orbiter cargo bay, it would also require new fuel line pass-throughs in either the cargo bay doors or the sides of the cargo bay… along with boiloff vents. Much preferable, went the argument, to put the LH2 in an ACC that you could poke whatever holes you want to in.

The configuration of the ACC shown in the sketch is noticeably different from all other ACC designs I’ve seen elsewhere. I don’t know if this is because Rockwell designed a rather ellipsoidal carrier, or the artist just sorta dashed this one out.

Next time: boosting the boosters

Continue reading »

 Posted by at 10:07 pm

Starship Mk1: Real soon now??

 awesomeness, Hmm..., news, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Aug 292019
 

Bah-bwuuuuuhhh?

That’s rather remarkable. It’s miraculously fast by NASA standards.

Also of note: Musk is saying the vehicle *after* Starship/Super Heavy will be 18 meters in diameter, twice that of SH. This would seem to put it well beyond Saturn v and into the Nova/Post-Saturn scale of booster. One might wonder if they’re thinking about a sizable SSTO vehicle that can serve as a boost-back booster for heavier upper stages.

 

 Posted by at 9:33 pm
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