You wouldn’t normally think that you’d need a tutorial on how to wash your hands, but here we are. The PinkoPox has led to a re-evaluation of such things, and so here’s all you need to know in order to help stave off the Commie Cough:

“Willy Wonka” made grimdark. Hire these guys for the next season of Star Trek: DarkPicard!

Now this is interesting:

Opinion: 2 different ways of being an American; 2 different ways of being a human being

Way Number One: The AOC way, of *not* working and expecting the government to send you free money.

Way Number Two:

Workers finish 28-day stretch of living at factory making PPE nonstop for healthcare workers

Summarized thus:

More than 40 employees made the collective decision in March to leave their families and live at the factory for 28 days, where they would eat, sleep, and take turns working 12-hour shifts to produce protective equipment for healthcare workers fighting the coronavirus pandemic. They clocked out yesterday after their month-long shift.

I couldn’t help but notice that every one of these workers appears to be male (extremely problematic lack of gender equity!). And may I hazard a guess that most of these men were raised to be men.

They lived in a factory. For a month. Doing factory work in 12-hour shifts. They agreed on it unanimously.

Which approach would lead to a better America? A better world? Better *people?*

I Teach At Oxford, But I Don’t Want It To Win The Coronavirus Vaccine Race

Where the woke teacher decides that she’d prefer it if the development of a vaccine to a pandemic (and presumably *every* subsequent pandemic) was delayed because:

If my university is the first to develop the vaccine, I’m worried that it will be used as it has been in the past, to fulfil its political, patriotic function as proof of British excellence.

Because Goddess Forbid that Oxford be used to show the Britain might be somehow special.

Now, you may ask “what vitally important STEM field does this mastermind, this TITAN of intellectualism, teach?” Prepare to be shocked to your very core:

Dr Emily Cousens researches vulnerability and gender at Oxford Brookes university and teaches on the women’s studies masters course at University of Oxford.

A “masters course” on women’s studies. Yeah.

So one of the things I found kinda laughable about “Star Trek: The Next Generation” was the idea that in the 24th century *all* of humanity would be atheist (along with non-capitalist, and devoted solely to ‘improving” themselves, etc.). This was part of Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the future; utopian and wholly unrealistic. But… it’s canonical. So it is written, so it shall be.

When Roddenberry got shoved out of the role of Head Honcho Of Star Trek, religion started becoming a bigger part of Trek. Witness Worf’s spirituality in later seasons of TNG and Bajoran religion being of prime importance in “Deep Space Nine,” and even the wholly rational Vulcans started picking up gods and such. But even so, *human* religiosity seemed essentially nonexistent. The writers and producers knew it was silly that mankind would suddenly give up seventy thousand years of spiritualism in favor of rationality; that won’t happen until mankind undergoes mass genetic re-engineering to get rid of the apparently genetically encoded need to believe in *something.* Still… humanity’s lack of religion is canonical.

But then this:

‘Star Trek’ fan at Comic-Con adds a hijab to her Starfleet costume

The article was from July 2019 and is only about a single fan cosplaying as a gender-swapped Muslim version of Geordi La Forge. You know, it’s actually a pretty clever getup… but still, it’s just one fans non-canonical costume. Not the sort of thing to get worked up over, and in fact something that someone can nod at and say “whatever float’s yer boat.” If there’s ever a place where cultural appropriation should be celebrated, it’s cosplay. But then:

The official Star Trek YouTube channel takes time out to accept uncritically the idea that not only does Islam exist in the future, but Geordi La Forge is a Muslim. Note that comments are turned off for reasons that are as likely to include pointing out the anti-canonical nature of that as any naughty words.

So… if the corporate geniuses who took a giant dump on canon with “Star Trek: Discovery” and “Picard” (due to CBS All Access having been free for a month, I finally got around to watching all of STD and STP and… ugh) see fit to try to establish that long accepted popular characters who, IIRC, never once mentioned anything remotely like a religious preference are now to be declared to be members of such-and-such religious group… is there going to be a rush to establish the religions of everyone else? Is Picard a Catholic? Is Riker an Asatruar? Is Crusher a Wiccan? Sisko a Buddhist, Janeway Jewish, Paris a Raelian? Or are the suits behind modern WokeTrek going to basically just suggest that humanity shed all religions *but* Islam? Hell, are they going to suggest that Islam finally won and converted all of humanity and, against all historical evidence, continued forward technologically and culturally?

And this is as good a point as any to rail against one of the most popular misconceptions about Trek, both TOS and TNG: the idea that it shows the wonders of a “multicultural” future. It does not. Look at the bridge of Kirk’s Enterprise: you see a gloriously white straight male captain, a Russian, a Scot, an alien, an African, a Japanese, occasionally an Indian lady and a rotating Benneton ad of different ethnicities of humanity. Trek was spectacularly multi ETHNIC. What is wasn’t was multi CULTURAL. Everyone spoke the same language (even if there were accents), everyone had the same values, worked in the same hierarchical command structure, had the same goals. Everyone on the Enterprise and around the Federation had the same acceptance of STEM over woo and, as previously mentioned, all of humanity had the same lack of religion. Trek suggested that humanity would come together to form essentially a single culture with areas of slight differences, not a hodgepodge of non-integrating, non-assimilating unique cultures (in essence, the US versus the UN). In TNG, it has been canonically established the Geordi was indeed born in Somalia, but like Uhura, you’d never know that he wasn’t from heartland, USA, based on his attitudes and actions, his apparent ideology and culture. Monoculture FTW.

Back to the cosplayer: in Starfleet, there is a dress code for starship crew. Worf apparently got some special dispensation to wear his Klingon sash, but then, he was the first and only Klingon in Starfleet. Ensign Ro was told to remove her religious earring, but was eventually allowed to wear it; but then, she, too, was an alien. I do not recall any humans wearing anything but more or less stock Starfleet uniforms. If there were Muslim Starfleet officers, they certainly didn’t show it… anymore than the Sikh officers wore turbans and knives or the Catholics wore rosaries or the Orthodox Jewish officers wore their dreads and yarmulkes. And what of the human worshipers of Cthulhu and Slaanesh?

Go ahead and *try* to justify the monumental level of stupid that Bubbles displays here:

Only in America does "liberation" mean going back to work.@AOC sits down with @anandwrites to talk about why a return to normalcy isn't enough in a post-coronavirus world. SEAT AT THE TABLE premieres tonight at 10p. #seatatthetable pic.twitter.com/fNE9reHeKG

— VICE TV (@VICETV) April 22, 2020

I look forward to the day when she returns to the ranks of the unemployed.

Since Fingers the cat died almost two weeks ago, there’s obviously not much to say about her as far as updates. There is, however, possibly something to say Fingers-adjacent. After I took her to the vet for the last time and she didn’t come back with me, my other cats hardly seemed to react. This is not surprising… at the best of times cats are often not very demonstrative, and Fingers was hardly the most social of social butterflies. So there was doubtless some time when the other cats simply assumed that she was off on her own somewhere. But in the past week or so, Buttons has developed a quirk: he goes around the house calling out in the most mournful fashion, and will often run up to me and yell at me, demanding *something.* Exactly what that is, I can’t say, but it’s something new. His “I want attention” and “I want food demands” are well known. I have a suspicion that this *might* be a “bring Fingers back” demand.

Fingers was in the Utah house when Buttons gained entry. In fact, they interacted somewhat while they were still outside cats, if memory serves; it may be that Fingers is an older memory for Buttons than I am. So if any of the cats misses Fingers, it should be Buttons.

How much more Russian could this be and the answer is none. None more Russian.

Three cheers for the Leydenfrost Effect, where a bit of surface moisture promptly boils and creates a thin layer of steam that protects the underlying surface of the guys skin from the liquid hot magma attempting to turn his hand into a charcoal briquet.

Cool and all, but I suspect this is the sort of thing you don’t want to spend a whole lot of time demonstrating.

In 1974 Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm studied a twin-engine derivative of the F-104 Starfighter, largely because West Germany had themselves some F-104’s that were showing their age. At first glance the design looks pretty much like a stock F-104, but from above it’s clear that it has two engines.

This illustration came from a 1983 paper about the development of the TKF/J-90, an early competitor for what would become the Eurofighter.

The paper that the above illustrations came from has been scanned and made available to above-$10 APR subscribers and Patrons.

These old Aurora and Revell model kits are back in production under the Atlantis Models brand, for the first time in half a century in some cases. Click the images to go to the relevant Amazon page (the usual Amazon type of ad isn’t inserting correctly for some reason).

But wait! There’s more!

Sure, these kits are simple, not terribly accurate, in many ways kinda crummy in their terribly outdated way. But that is kinda what makes them interesting and fun to build. They are *cheap* and you don’t need to worry about a billion parts and photoetched bits and so much effort required that you are assured of giving up a quarter of the way through. Probably good kits to get kids working on.