The Crazy Years: German Edition

 AARRRGH, art, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., Hmm..., news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Oct 222020
 

I *guess* it’s a bit comforting to know that insanity is world wide, not restricted just to the likes of Portland and Chicago…

Dozens Of Artifacts Apparently Vandalized At Berlin’s Museums

On or about October 3 someone, or several someones, squirted an “oily liquid” onto objects such as ancient Egyptian sarcophagi, 19th century paintings and stone statues. Why? Authorities aren’t sure, but they seem to be linking this weirdness to a German vegan chef conspiracy theorist who believes that the Pergamon Museum is the “throne of Satan” and that Angela Merkel is a Satanist who conducts human sacrifices.

One of the museums was also the site of a theft in 2017 of a gold coin worth $4 million. What made this coin so valuable? because it was *220* pounds of solid gold. The coin has not been recovered… and doubtless never will be. Damn thing was certainly chopped up and melted down about ten minutes after it slipped out the back in someone’s pocket. A photo of this trinket is HERE.

The conspiracy theorist in question is an odd one. He’s a German nationalist who thinks that Bill Gates is trying to use WuFlu to take over and Da Jooooooooz are out to exterminate the German people, but he’s actually ethnically Turkish, adopted by a German family. He was originally an omnivore but became a passionate vegan. Hmmm. I wonder if there were ever any other “German nationalists” who didn’t actually match up to their ideal of German ethnicity and who became vegetarians and went bonkers? Maybe there’s some combination of the German language with veganism, or perhaps being a vegan surrounded by people eating tasty sausage that makes some people go a little “funny.”

 Posted by at 1:01 am

Life/NACA SST

 aircraft, art, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, projects, US Transport Projects  No Responses »
Oct 202020
 

Two years ago I released US Transport Projects #8 that had a piece on an SST designed by staff of the NACA for Life magazine. To make the best possible diagram I did the best job I could of scanning and stitching together several pages from a vintage issue of Life. I’ve finally gotten around to uploading the full-rez version of that to the APR Dropbox, into the 2020-10 APR Extras folder. This is available to any APR Patron or Subscriber at the $4 level and above.

The full-size version is six times wider than this one:

If this sort of thing is of interest, sign up either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. If you know of someone who might be interested, be sure to nudge them this way… I could do with an infusion of new patrons/subscribers and as is blisteringly obvious I stink at marketing.



 Posted by at 10:04 pm

The Divide

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Forward!, politics, THIS is why Trump won, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Oct 202020
 

It’s views like this that make it clear that we have a problem in this country:

The Constitution Is the Crisis

For the author, one Osita Nwanevu, the fact that the Constitution doesn’t give him everything he wants, exactly the way he wants it, is enough for him to stamp his feet and demand that it be done away with:

The American left should work toward abolishing the Constitution someday—either for a new document or a new democratic order without a written constitution.

Uh-huh. He makes it plain that his goal would be court packing and the destruction of the Constitution specifically to make it impossible for the Republican party and conservatives in general not only to hold a majority, but to even *exist.* A nation that sets up a government specifically to lord it over half the population, and decided to unencumber itself with constitutional rules, is a nation on the road to death camps.

If it is given the opportunity, the Democratic Party—without hesitation, guilt, or apology—should pack the Supreme Court to its advantage.

So who is this guy? Frak if I know. Some crank of no real power or importance, quite possibly. But the “New Republic” magazine pays him to trot out his gibberish, and the New Republic is, sadly, not considered far beyond the pale.

 Posted by at 1:44 pm

Tsunami warning for Alaska

 AARRRGH, news  No Responses »
Oct 192020
 

Tsunami warning issued following 7.5 magnitude earthquake off Alaska Peninsula

The earthquake triggered a tsunami warning for areas along the Alaska Peninsula coastline, according to the U.S. Tsunami Warning Center.

The warning extended from Kennedy Entrance, 40 miles southwest of Homer, to Unimak Pass, 80 miles northeast of Unalaska.

The warning does not include Cook Inlet or Anchorage, according to the warning center.

 

 Posted by at 5:01 pm

SPS Art

 art, history, projects, spacecraft  No Responses »
Oct 192020
 

A late-70’s NASA rendering of the solar power satellite. Not exactly shown to scale… the satellite, approximately the size of Manhattan, would actually reside in geosynchronous orbit some 22,000 miles up. But the size of the receiving station, located outside of a probably fictitious city (gotta love the H-shaped skyscraper), seems about right. Such stations, which would approximate fields of chickenwire suspended atop telephone poles, could be located over farms, fields, lakes and ponds. The wire would intercept the incoming microwaves beamed down from the SPS with the same efficiency as the wire mesh in the door of your microwave oven keeps your face from getting fried while you watch your popcorn or soup getting nuked.

 Posted by at 4:36 pm

Well, that’s ironic

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Oct 192020
 

Philip Anderson, the guy who tried to host a “free speech rally” to protest Big tech censorship and got his teeth beat out by leftists… has been suspended from social media by Big Tech.

Fortunately a GoFundMe has been set up to help him with his medical/dental bills. I would not be surprised if *that* gets yanked as well.

Help Philip Anderson fix his teeth

The leaders of the Proud Boys, slanderously called a “white supremacist” organization, were not impressed by Andersons rally. Not because they disagreed with his point, but because he failed to recognize just how violent and dangerous and flat-out unhinged the modern left is.

 Posted by at 2:32 pm

Drum Monster

 art, awesomeness, youtube, YouTubers worth watching  No Responses »
Oct 192020
 

This Japanese guy(?) “Nyango Star” plays the drums. And he plays them like a *beast.* But he plays them while wearing this silly mascot costume. Which on the one hand makes the whole thing seem rather silly, but on the other hand it clearly adds a couple extra layers of difficulty. both mobility and vision are compromised with this costume, yet the guy(?) is still able to do things with a drum that even if i had any musical talent or givadam about playing the drums I could never hope to approach.

Nyango Star has a YouTube channel with a dozen videos.

If, like me, you look at all this and go “WTF,” THIS ARTICLE kinda explains the deal.

 

Stay weird, Japan.

 Posted by at 1:03 pm

One Hundred

 Book X, books, news  No Responses »
Oct 182020
 

As of yesterday, the diagram count for Book Two surpassed one hundred. The spreadsheet lists a bit short of 160,  but I think it’ll realistically top out at 120-ish. The final product may have notably fewer; many of the designs feature two and even three separate diagrams (for 2 to 3 separate pages), including not only general arrangements but also inboard views, sections, undersides, scrap views and the like. The publisher will decide whether or not to include them all, trading off size vs. cost. But progress, while slower than I’d hoped, is still moving forward.

 Posted by at 11:46 pm

Hardcore Bardcore

 art, awesomeness, history, Hmm..., youtube  No Responses »
Oct 182020
 

I mentioned “bardcore” a while back… modern songs sung/played in medieval style. The ones I linked to previously were in more or less modern English… but a few go the extra mile to translate the songs into actual medieval languages. Whether the results are good music that you’ll listen to over and over is up to you, but they are clearly the results of considerable craftsmanship.

 

 Posted by at 5:29 pm
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