Once again craptacular cell phone photos showing (inadequately) the otherwise remarkable sunset colors.
And why not, here’s Buttons. He’s a top-tier adorable critter. Fight me.
Aug 162019
Aug 152019
CNN is on a roll. First Fredo Cuomo is caught on camera threatening to assault/potentially murder a man for calling him Fredo. Then Don Lemon gets sued for sexually assaulting a bartender. Now surveillance camera footage has come to light showing hired muscle for CNN talking head April Ryan stealing the camera of and physically shoving the body of a local reporter covering an event that the reporter was explicitly invited to.
Aug 152019
One sizable document I’ve scanned for preservation is a Rockwell presentation package from October, 1985, showing a large number of space programs that the company could capitalize on. These included everything from minor mods to the Space Shuttle to major changes… stretching the orbiter, stretching the tank, adding additional boosters. Heavy lift boosters to put SLS to shame; heavy lift SSTOs; small experimental spaceplanes; manned military spaceplanes; space-based weaponry; space stations; space based nuclear power. Figured this stuff might be of some modest interest. So why not, I’ll post little bits of it from time to time.
Aug 142019
We are rolling out our #KnifeFree chicken boxes in over 210 chicken shops in England and Wales, including Morley’s, Dixy Chicken and Chicken Cottage. They use real life stories to show people how they can go #KnifeFree. pic.twitter.com/vrG4WWa56v
— Home Office (@ukhomeoffice) August 14, 2019
I’m tempted to start making cyanotypes again just so I can occasionally ship items to Britain and use plastic knives from Burger McChicken King as packaging material.
Aug 142019
The “Simulation Hypothesis” holds that the universe you see around you is not “real,” but instead is a terribly advanced computer simulation. Presumably you (and everyone you meet) are also a simulation, as opposed to being a “real” person plugged into the Matrix. As goofy as the idea may sound, the math behind it actually does kinda hold up. Based on a few not-unreasonable assumptions – like the idea that advanced computers could in fact simulate an entire universe – then is becomes not just possible, not just likely, but a virtual mathematical certainty that our universe is a simulation.
Some people are kinda freaked out about the possibility that they aren’t “real.” But there have been religions for millenia that have taught at least the possibility that mankind or the world itself is just the dream of some god or other, to be swept away into oblivion when the god awakens. Personally, I gotta agree with Conan the Barbarian:
“Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.”
The universe may be simply a really advanced first person shooter. But it certainly seems real enough to me. it and I have the same basis. So… meh.
But other folk are, as I said, freaked out about the possibility. Take, for example:
Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Let’s Not Find Out
The author is a professor of philosophy. He discusses the possibility of physicists designing experiments that could potentially provide evidence that we are living in a simulation. He’s afraid of that, because if humanity realizes that it is, in fact, part of a simulation, and if the simulation is some sort of experiment with humans as the simulated lab rats, then humans learning that will ruin the experiment. And the experimenter will simply shut off the simulation, since it is ruined.
Well, maybe.
It seems unlikely to me that this universe is the *first* simulation. Conseqeuntly, the simulator probably has some experience. Thus if “if the puny simu-humans realize they’re simulated, the experiment is ruined” is an actual problem, you’d expect there to be some programming that would either prevent humans from dreaming up the simulation hypothesis, or from believing in it. Donkey Kong, after all, doesn’t realize the futility of hurling those barrels. He just keeps doing what he does… just like humans. Sorta.
So it seems to me that humans realizing they’re simulated is not a “shut off the machine” trigger. Hell, if the entire observable universe is simulated to the same fidelity as out little corner, then it’s a pretty ironclad certainty that many other civilizations elsewhere in the universe have realized it before us, and yet the model keeps running. As with the threat of a vacuum collapse wiping out the world in a flash with no warning whatsoever… it’s just not something that seems worth worrying about.
Aug 142019
As I write this, CNN in the form of Wolf Blitzer is breathlessly reporting on an active shooter situation in Philadelphia. Apparently someone is holed up in an apartment of some kind after having shot a number of cops (numbers are vague… apparently six cops have been taken to the hospital, but one of them seems to have been assaulted in the street by someone else. Nice neighborhood, it seems).
I turned on the TV with no knowledge that this event was unfolding. It took *much* less than a minute before one of the talking heads started yammering on about the importance of using this incident to further embolden the civilian enfeeblement movement, to make the ownership of modern sporting rifles or standard capacity rifles crimes punishable by summary execution. Hyperbole on my part? Not really. If you make the ownership of something a real crime, then you are empowering agents of the government to use force, including deadly force, to administer these laws. And when it comes to gun laws, history has shown (Ruby Ridge, Waco, even the Dornan case) that law enforcement agents who actually support the disarmament of civilians are quite willing to shoot first.
So far CNN has provided no description of the shooter, though they have from time to time suggested there’s more than one. So… it’s never too early or unwise to speculate wildly. Is it another Trump supporting white supremacist right winger who supports socialism, universal basic income, racial set asides and Elizabeth Warren?
Aug 142019
NASA Giving Away Apollo-Era Saturn Rocket to Anyone who Wants It
It’s free to a good home. Just pay the modest $250,000 shipping fee.
I have an obvious choice: SpaceX. The Saturn S-1 stage was, as we all know, originally intended to be recovered after flight via parachutes with an ocean splashdown; this option was eliminated as a mass and cost savings measure, as were plans to add Rogallo wings or parafoils for a horizontal runway landing. I suggest that SpaceX get this stage, refurb it, fix it up and fly it, using one of the several proposed recovery methods.
Why? Because it would be cool, that’s why.
Aug 132019
In 2006, CBS and Viacom split apart and, for reasons that evade me, the rights to Star Trek also got split apart. Since then, it has been essentially impossible for anyone to legally make *real* Star Trek because of the crazy licensing issues. But CBS and Viacom are merging again and the Trek licenses are all coming back together. So going forward there will be NO EXCUSES for why good, quality, canon Star Trek *can’t* be made. There will doubtless be lots of excuses why it *won’t,* including the wokification of Trek or the desire to trash viewer expectations, but it should at least be legally possible to make real Star Trek again.
‘Star Trek’ Poised To Become New Marvel? CBS & Viacom Merger Brings Franchise Under One Fleet
From now on, shows like “Star Trek: Picard” and “Lower Decks” should be able to feature actual Star Trek designs, iconography, canon, characters, etc. Shows like STD are of course a lost cause, and it would be in everyones best interests if the showrunners would just come out and say that “this is in a different timeline/multiverse/whatever from Canon Trek.”
Who knows what will happen. With an improved licensing environment and a possible shuffling of the suits, it *might* even be possible to dream of a future where CBS gives a damn about Trek, and we wind up with an anthology Trek series where “amateurs” such as the Axanar people are given a small budget to crank out an hour or two of product… that, if good enough, could serve as back-door pilots.
I’ll just get right on holding my breath for that, shall I…
Aug 132019
There’s something just absolutely fantastic about this story:
Monsters, men and magic: why feminists turned to witchcraft to oppose Trump
If you must have opponents, you want them to be ineffectual. And magic and witchcraft are about as ineffectual as you can get… what with them being non-functional bunkum. if someone hated me, I’d far rather have them placing hexes on me or burning effigies of me or jabbing needles into voodoo dolls, than having them taking up arms or even just voting against me. Come election day, stay in your prayer circle, light some herbs on fire and chant gibberish. Thanks. That’d be great.
What’s especially awesome is that the Guardian newspaper ran this piece, and either didn’t know or didn’t care that the author actually seems to think that witchcraft is a valid way of creating physical change in the world. That the author is an idiot is apparent right up front where she claims that witchcraft – here seemingly indistinguishable from Wicca with a fresh coat of third wave radical feminism slapped on it – is an “ancient pagan art.” Ancient rarely ever means “dates all the way back to the 1920’s,” but that’s what modern witchcraft is: a load of commercial spiritualism created in the 20’s and 30’s using some of the iconography of the older – and largely basically lost – witch-beliefs of Europe.
You wanna be a Wiccan, hey, knock yourself out. It is, for the moment, sort of a free country. Just don’t BS anybody, yourself included, that it’s more than any other religion: rituals and such that make you feel better, but which don’t work any better than examining bird entrails or praying viral infections away.
If you believe that your power comes from magic (or, more insufferably, from magick), then you have no power. Magic, conjuring, the supernatural… these are all less than useless when it comes to doing anything of use or value. They might make you feel good; but then, so might playing the slots or taking a drag. Time, effort and funds spent on honing your magical abilities is time spent becoming less powerful, more useless.
There is a fire on the horizon. You can see it burning, out on the edges of the world. The violence we have survived can be our guide to what needs to change. The fire that burned the witches can be the fire that lights our way. Our power is waiting for us, out in forbidden spaces, beyond the world of men. Step forward and claim it. Step forward into the boundless and female dark.
Hey, here’s a thought: maybe we can somehow convince the gun-grabbers that their years of legal and political efforts towards disarming the civilian populace have failed, and that they need to try magic now. Get them to devote their time and effort to hexing firearms to make them vanish.
Aug 132019
Some evening cameraphone photos.
“Belt of Venus” over the mountains to the south-east, moon above.
Might be a little hard to see, but with the naked eye these lines of clouds were fairly remarkable.
Again the camera doesn’t do it justice, but the contrast between the blue and the pink was kinda startling.