“I want your business”

 art, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 222020
 

Y’all may have noticed me dropping the odd hint here or there about my political leanings. One might from time to time assume that I have some strong views, things both for and against. And you might also have noticed me trying to sell stuff from time to time. And guess what: unlike some businesses… I don’t give a damn what your politics are when it comes to selling you stuff. For an alternate take, witness the wokeness of a particular publisher of a Cthulhu-base role playing game:

Yeah, yeah, Lovecraft had views that just wouldn’t fly in today’s climate. Cthulhu Man Bad. But so what: he was a writer of weird fiction, not a politician or government bureaucrat. But it has become a new trope, and already a tired one, that anyone who plans on making bank off the back of Lovecrafts ideas had better get on with the virtue signalling.

And where it gets interesting is after the predictable backlash to this publishers grovelling before the outrage mob, they crank this out:

 

“If you don’t like the politics included in our games, don’t buy them.
We literally do not want your money.”

Boggle. This “screw you” to half of their potential market is incomprehensible to me. Are you a socialist? A communist? A monarchist, fascist, ethno-statist, theocrat, or any of the wide, wide world of political systems that raise my hackles? Then… buy my stuff. I ain’t voting for you, but I will gladly take your money in exchange for my products.

I can only understand this sort of thing in terms of it being a form of PR. Perhaps they suspected that their product was not going to sell well because it didn’t have enough exposure, so they did something clickbaity and hatebaity. They knew they’d drive away at least half the potential market, but the half that remained would be larger than the 100% of the far smaller market that was originally aware of their product. But I don’t really think that’s the case. I find it more likely that these people really are this wacko, or they are really this grovelly before the might of the SJW hatemob.

 Posted by at 1:00 am

Rise of Skywalker… meh

 art, Crazy, Meh., science fiction, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 212020
 

I *finally* got around to seeing Rise of Skywalker this weekend. After decades of being a fan, seeing all the movies from Empire through the prequels to Clone Wars to Rogue One in the theater on Day One, Disney has managed the impossible: making me go “meh” and waiting a month to see the latest offering. In the faint chance that there’s anyone still uncertain about whether or not to go, I’ll say this: it’s not as bad as “Last Jedi.” But that is a phenomenally low bar. TLJ and Solo set expectations so low that Rise could well be the most hideously steaming pile of dung ever to have trained chimps smear across the movie screen, but it just comes across as something that a large number of skilled and talented folks worked very hard on just for a paycheck.  The acting is ok, but the story is straight out of a video game and the visual effects are basically just Lucasfilm shaking their box of existing digital assets out onto the screen and saying “eh, I guess that’ll do.”

It seemed to be very much *not* an effort to wrap up a story in the best and most satisfying way possible, but instead simply an effort to nail the coffin closed and dump it in the hole so that they can get on with other things. The film makers are no doubt as sick of the property as the fans are.

Entertainingly, the long-time fans of Star Wars including old farts like myself dislike this movie a lot less than a lot of new fans, the ones who came on board with Rey-For-Pay and company. Us olds are annoyed that these movies crapped upon the legacy characters and story; the latest generation of fangirls seem upset that their preferred romantic pairings didn’t happen. As an example, take this video someone shot of the last scene. There are a number of very vocal female-type persons in the audience who *really* don’t like what’s happening:

By all accounts “The Mandalorian” is some high-quality Star Wars entertainment product, proving that good Star Wars *can* be made today. It just needs the right people helming it. People who understand and *like* the franchise.

 Posted by at 11:56 am

Making “The Happening” not suck

 art, Hmm..., science fiction, youtube  No Responses »
Jan 202020
 

Eleven and a half years ago I reviewed “The Happening” (holy crap that sound like a long time ago…). It was in fact one of the first posts on this sad excuse for a blog. Anyway… long story short, I hated it.

Imagine my shock when this guy posts a video that links “Signs” (which I liked but had problems with) with “The Happening” and “After Earth” (which I absolutely loathed) in a way that actually winds up making them all better and *kinda* making sense now…

 

 Posted by at 5:29 pm

Risk

 art, awesomeness, history, rockets, spacecraft, youtube  No Responses »
Jan 202020
 

So, SpaceX lobbed a Dragon into the sky, willingly destroying a Falcon 9 booster system to prove out the abort capability of their capsule. This was a ballsy move; had anything gone wrong, their opponents in government, industry and media would have pounced, likely causing SpaceX to have to delay for months or years before daring to risk an actual astronaut. Boeing, in contrast, opted to replace a very visible, very public flight test of their capsules abort system with a mountain of paperwork that, if printed out, very likely would have massed more than the capsule if not the whole booster.

And so I was reminded of this old, old TV ad for the financial firm AIG. I’ve posted this video before (going on two years, also referencing SpaceX), but damn if it just doesn’t seem relevant.

Every time I watch this the room somehow gets dusty.

 Posted by at 11:29 am

Possibilities of New Business Growth: Military Spaceplanes

 history, projects, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jan 192020
 

In the 1980’s, military spaceplanes were all the rage… at least on paper. In 1985 Rockwell International considered the possibility that there would be a profitable business case for a relatively small manned spaceplane that could serve as a rapid-reaction launch system for missions such as recon. Thirty years later the X-37 finally accomplished something sorta along those lines, though without the crew and rapid reaction.

 

 Posted by at 1:27 pm

SpaceX Dragon abort test

 news, rockets, spacecraft, youtube  No Responses »
Jan 192020
 

Well, here they go (hopefully):

UPDATE: the flight seemed to go entirely successfully, from launch to engine shutdown, capsule abort, trunk jettison, re-orientation, re-entry, drogue chutes, main chutes, splashdown. The videos cut off prior to the rescue boats getting to the capsule, but at this stage I image everything is hunky dory within the capsule. As expected, the booster tumbled and kerploded quite spectacualrly.

 

 Posted by at 8:14 am

WANT!

 art, awesomeness, weapons, youtube  No Responses »
Jan 182020
 

While I want this, there are two things I want more:

1: Enough money to actually *run* one of these things

2: A change in the ridiculous laws that prevent me from owning one of these things.

 Posted by at 10:09 pm

Book deal

 blather, Book X, books, news  No Responses »
Jan 182020
 

An update: the contract has been signed. I now have until July to turn in my book. Until the publisher starts advertising it, I’ll shut the frak up about the details except to say that it’s along the lines of USXP, but on a tighter than usual focus… and a hell of a lot bigger. Currently have just shy of 70 diagrams finished for it (which explains the dry spell of aerospace on the blogs… I’ve been up to my eyeballs in aerospace, I just haven’t been sharing), and the spreadsheet lists just short of *200* diagrams.

 Posted by at 10:42 am

CCV-100 Model

 aircraft, models, projects  No Responses »
Jan 182020
 

A little while back I was contacted by someone who had an old display model of a Boeing Controlled Configured Vehicle bomber and wondered if I was interested in buying it. Interested? Yes. Able? No. But I was able to put the seller in contact with someone else who was able to procure it, so this Boeing CCV-100-2 wound up in a good home. More on the CCV-100-2 is HERE. Still no confirmation of the scale of the vehicle, sadly.

 Posted by at 4:22 am
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