OK, I’m four years behind the ball on this. Eh.
Behold, OK Go’s video for “Upside Down & Inside Out.” It was filmed on a Russian Vomit Comet and thanks to some pretty ingenious editing, it looks like a pretty seamless several minutes of freefall choreography.
Those “stewardesses” are *amazing.*
Why watch WokeTrek when there are vintage atomic testing videos available?
A related film about Operation Sailor Hat, an above-ground non-nuclear test that involved 500 tons of chemical explosives turning several Naval vessels into scrap metal.
If you’re tired of seeing Americans tear their own country down because their minds have been sucked into the muck and mire of “social justice,” then spend a few moments marveling at another front on the War On The West, Britain. Putin, the ChiComs and the Jihadis have got to be laughing their asses off.
What must it be like to be so filled with self-loathing, I wonder.
Late last year I saw “Ad Astra” in the theater and I was unimpressed. Blogged about it HERE. I watched it again tonight on HBO and, wow, does it still suck. All of my complaints remain in full effect.
I have a challenge for Hollywood: make a near-future Space Movie where:
1) The tone is hopeful and optimistic, not dismal
2) The science at least *tries* to replicate that of the real world, so that it doesn’t promptly yank you right out of the story
3) The characters aren’t miserable, horrible people.
You know, a “space movie” that people might actually want to see.
Ideas:
A) Someone making a bank full of cash with space tourism
B) Someone making a banking industry full of cash with space mining/industrialization.
C) Someone changing the world with space based solar power, either vast SPS or by paving the lunar surface with PV arrays
D) Someone fundamentally exploding the ecological paradigm by building kilometer-scale O’Neill space habitats in GEO and beyond
E) A manned exploration mission to Titan or Neptune or Pluto or some such.
F) The United States Space Force kicking ChiCom ass in GEO, on the Lunar surface, wherever
G) Musk 2.0 developing a FTL propulsion system
I have effectively non-existent hopes of seeing a major Hollywood movie along these lines. Even if a screenplay for a fundamentally optimistic story like these came along, I feel fairly confident that it would be tainted by turning the main characters either into complete friggen’ idiots, or by making everyone utterly miserable and screwed up… which seems to be the default for Hollywood, because the place seems to be infested with people who are fundamentally miserable and screwed up. The kind of people who celebrate rioting and looting, then retreat behind their gated communities.
Prove me wrong, Hollywood. I ᚠᚪᛣᚳᛁᚾᚷ dare you.
A Hispanic guy was fired from San Diego Gas & Electric for – at worst – making the “OK” gesture, though he claims he was cracking his knuckles.
Even better: Californians of A Certain Ideological Persuasion are pushing for a ballot measure titled “California Repeal Proposition 209 Affirmative Action Amendment.” The titles suggests that it would repeal Prop 209, which banned affirmative action. But what would it *actually* do? It would strike out a bit of text from the California Constitution. Just a smidgeoon of text. nothing much to worry your little head about. Just this:
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So… yeah. If this passes, California will be in the business of discriminating against, or granting preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting. That will doubtless work fabulously well.
No actual evidence for alien civilizations is provided or implied; it’s just another estimate based on assumptions. The conclusion reached here is that there may be around 30 intelligent, communicating technological civilizations in the galaxy right now… separated by an average of about 17,000 light years.
Which means there ain’t nobody to hear just now. If a powerful radio transmission was directed straight at us using a radio telescope, we could pick it up from tens of thousands of light years away, so long as we were listening at the right time and in the right direction. But transmissions such as commercial radio and television? Likely swamped by natural radio emission within a mere light year or two. Summary: unless and until some current-physics-defying tech comes available – warp drive, hyperspace comms, that sort of thing – the universe will likely remain empty-looking.
Trump may not be the prophet we need. He may not be the prophet we deserve. But he’s the one we got.
They did it, they really did it. Sucks to be George Washington right now… #Portlandprotest #statue #blacklivesmatter #PDXprotests #pdx #oregon #blm #acab #pdx #georgewashington #flagburning #StatuesMustFall pic.twitter.com/uwbTFoLUuq
— Garrison Davis (Teargas Glutton) (@hungrybowtie) June 19, 2020
I don’t like coffee. But I love their ads.
Sometimes people pushing a narrative for political reasons push too hard and too obviously. For instance, THIS NEWS STORY.
Ropes hanging from trees at a park in Oakland, CA, were reported to the local authorities who determined them to be nooses, a racist threat based on a long-passed history of lynchings. The FBI has been called in to help investigate. The Mayor is up in arms.
A few small problems:
1: Locals say that they know that the ropes were actually hung there, months ago, to serve exercise and recreational purposes.
2: There are apparently videos of them being used for that purpose.
3: A guy came forward to say that *he* hung the ropes for those purposes.
4: The guy is black.
So, in a rational world, this would be the end of it. Everyone officially involved would have a good, nervous chuckle and move on quietly, hoping that the story would quickly fade away. But then the mayor (Libby Schaaf) says this:
Schaaf said officials must “start with the assumption that these are hate crimes.” However, the mayor and Nicholas Williams, the city’s director of parks recreation, also said it didn’t matter whether the ropes were meant to send a racist message.
“Intentions don’t matter when it comes to terrorizing the public,” Schaaf said. “It is incumbent on all of us to know the actual history of racial violence, of terrorism, that a noose represents and that we as a city must remove these terrorizing symbols from the public view.”
“The symbolism of the rope hanging in the tree is malicious regardless of intent. It’s evil, and it symbolizes hatred,” Williams said.
Umm. I’m kinda sure that intentions *do* matter. We’ve all heard stories about someone carrying a golf club or a camera tripod and getting reported to the police by someone with bad eyesight for brandishing a rifle; under the good Mayors reckoning that person with the tripod would *still* be charge with “disturbing the peace” or some such. Under the Mayors system, people would live in constant fear of being ratted on by paranoid nuts, idiots, malicious jokesters. Every swing in the nation would have to be taken down, every vine hanging from a tree would have to be stripped away, lest some busybody decide to get offended.
Star Wars rumors are notoriously unreliable. But the one Doomcock brings up in the video below, while it seems *very* unlikely, could potentially be the best thing to happen to Star Wars since Empire.
In short, there is a canonical trick that Star Wars *could* pull that would wipe the sequel trilogy from existence, relegating it to “Legends” status and allowing some new, better canon to take it’s place as the story of what happened to Our Heroes after “Return of the Jedi.”