YouTuber worth watching: Ragical the Unhallowed Knight

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Feb 282021

Ragical the Unhallowed Knight is a Dutch YouTuber who presents videos created by others, with a bit of his own commentary. In this case, what makes the videos worth watching isn’t so much his contribution, but the videos themselves… recently he has focused on interactions between “Sovereign Citizens” and the police. “Sovereign Citizens” are a particular brand of goofy who think that somehow they are outside the jurisdiction of the local law; that they can drive cars on public roads without having drivers licenses, insurance or even license plates; that they can invade and occupy someone else’s property and declare it their own; that, in short, the laws don’t apply to them Because Reasons. They think that bloviation will cause police to back away in shame and confusion and let them get away with their foolishness. Nearly inevitably, of course, they find out otherwise, typically after escalating a minor interaction into a full-blown crime.

On one hand, such videos are sad because they depict the marriage of arrogance and stupidity, some of the worst examples that mankind has to offer. on the other hand, such videos are a hoot for exactly the same reason.

This one is a dumbass American trying to claim that he is immune to Mexican laws while in Mexico. Guess how it turns out for him (note: sometimes these doofii get away with it):

Macaroni

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Feb 282021

“Yankee Doodle” is a song that has a line that, as a kid, always stumped me:

“Stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni.”

Why would someone call a cap with a feather in it a kind of pasta? Because the “macaroni” being referenced is *not* a pasta, but a type of fashion. A fashion we’ve all seen in period movies and old illustrations; a fashion that I suspect most readers of this blog looked at with some combination of confusion and disdainful amusement. Behold, then, this helpful video about the rise and fall of this ridiculous, mostly-English, fashion trend:

In short, it started as a way for the super-rich and “social betters” of the time to visually distinguish themselves from the plebs who could not hope to afford this sort of extravagant garb. It started off goofy enough, but eventually morphed into full-blown ridiculousness before disappearing into a cloud of universal mockery, replaced with much more modest fashions. During its life it saw the male practitioners make themselves look more and more feminine… until they were replaced with a vastly more masculine and respectable look.

As has been said, history doesn’t repeat but it does rhyme. So *perhaps* the history of macaroni fashion might be a useful guide to our own time. The fashion then was for ridiculous self-absorbed jerks to wear ridiculous over-blown and de-masculinizing fashions… until society simply had enough and laughed them out of existence. Today? Hmmm. Sound familiar at all? Difficulty: back then, practitioners of macaroni could scrape the makeup off their faces, take off the silly wigs and stupid outfits, and put on a practical wool coat and a simple tricorn hat. Today, they’d have to do more than wash the blues and pinks out of their mental-illness haircuts and take off the cringey woke T-shirts and the fifty pounds of drag makeup and dresses, they’d have to reverse various body modifications. Good luck with *that.*

In a way, though, this sort of goofy fashion trend is useful for sane people: you see someone done up in duds like this, you know that that person is not someone to take at all seriously except as a vague threat.

Greater Idaho

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Feb 272021

Will this happen? Naw. As memory serves, breaking states apart requires as much support by Congress and the states as passing a new Amendment. Still, fun to think about. And… let’s say the counties vote to leave Oregon and join Idaho. Let’s say the vote isn’t even close; it’s a landslide. If the people and county government just simply start *acting* like they’re part of Idaho, refusing to listen to the Oregon state government, keeping their own tax dollars, etc., what can the state of Oregon actually do?

Five Oregon counties to vote on leaving state, escaping to ‘Greater Idaho’

Note that the map also shows parts of California as part of Greater Idaho. Personally, if this sort of thing was even vaguely possible I’d recommend the relevant Oregon/California counties break off and form their own *new* state, and score themselves two shiny new Senators in the process. Then eastern California can break off from the coast; Illinois could secede from Cook County; New York State could break away from New York City.

Being too lazy to look it up, I don’t know offhand if it would be Constitutionally easier for a chunk of one state to join up with another than it would be for a state to break up into several new ones. If it is, then, yes, joining with Idaho makes sense: who in their right mind would want to be run by the same government that runs Portland?

It’s worth it just for the comments

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Feb 272021

The subject of this video is one of the most cringe-inducing people I’ve yet seen. His appearance, mannerism, attire… sure, cringey. But what pushes it over the edge is his proclamation that pagan white people should not add into their practices deities and whatnot from non-white religious traditions. Hey, screw you, buddy. If I want to worship Odin *and* take on Aztec practices of sacrificing my neighbors to chop out their beating hearts and build towers of human skulls, who are you to tell me I’m wrong?

But as the title of the post says, it’s the comments that makes it all worth while:

School boards: not the home of excellence, it seems

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Feb 272021

Oy. Another school board Zoom meeting that catches a monumental case of stupidity for all the world to hear. In this case, the drive to open schools is “white supremacy” according to the school board vice president, La Mesa-Spring valley board of education in California. Because education is only for white supremacists, I guess? One would hope that this would be another one of those instances where those involved resign in shame, but this time it seems to be not the whole group but just one person, tragically afflicted with a case of stage 4 wokitis.

Oh, but it gets better: she points out that these meetings *are* *not* being recorded, then gets snippy when someone contradicts here. Guess who turned out to be correct. Go on, I dare ya.

Similar to the Oakley school situation, she's seems unaware that the meeting is being recorded. "If our meeting were actually recorded for the public, we would know that." pic.twitter.com/bFWjaYlLfp

— Jorge Ventura Media (@VenturaReport) February 25, 2021

All these people screeching about racism: does it ever occur to them that if there was some shadowy cabal of Klansmen out there pulling the strings to ruin the future of non-white children, they’d choose the same strategies the woke do? Go ahead, declare science and skepticism and objective facts and falsification and western civilization and a work ethic and 2+2=4 to be “white supremacist concepts.” How well do your think kids will do when raised *without* those ideals?

Plus: ever notice that as awful as the people who seek high public office are (I’m looking at you, Beto and Pelosi and Swalwell and AOC and Cuomo and Jackson-Lee and Hillary and Schumer and …), if you want true balls-to-the-wall power mad nuttery, ya gotta look to low-end politics like school boards and neighborhood councils and the like? The people there are just as power-mad, but haven’t had to restrain their public insanity any.

BONUS ROUND:

pic.twitter.com/lSeuSMaTjM

— Biden Voters Posting Their L's Online (@BidenLs) February 25, 2021

Zenith Star Booster

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Feb 272021

This photo has popped up online before, but usually in pretty crummy resolution. It’s taken from “Aerojet – The Creative Company” and shows a mockup for a Titan-derived first stage booster rocket. It has double the engines of the standard Titan core stage, either two or four engines depending on how you want to count the LR-87 engines (one set of turbopumps, two combustion chambers) married to a 15-foot diameter core. This is described as a booster designed to loft the Zenith Star space-based laser weapon test system (the ZS was described and illustrated in US Spacecraft Projects #1). Documentation on this specific booster has always been somewhat lacking, though there have been quite a number of Large Diameter Core Titans designed by Aerojet and Martin over the years.

Higher rez scan in the 2021-02 APR Extras Dropbox folder for patrons/subscribers.

Old School Star Wars

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Feb 262021

Are you, like me, old enough to remember when “Star Wars ” was just… “Star Wars” and not “Episode IV, A New Hope?” If so… sorry, you’re old.

If you want to watch Star Wars the way you probably did back in the day… good news! Someone discovered a 16mm print of the original release, scanned it in – scratches and all – and uploaded it to archive.org:

Star Wars (16mm Preservation)

If you want a direct download of the 750 megabyte file, it’s here.

Superman: good news/bad news

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Feb 262021

First the good news: I watched the pilot episode of “Superman & Lois” and… it was *actually* *good.* It is not the usual Superman storyline; Clark Kent and Lois Lane have been married for near on to two decades at this point and have to teenage sons. The sons are of course non-canonical, but it works and is a perfectly cromulent extrapolation of the characters. The plot, acting and dialog were pretty good; the VFX were top notch. One scene that I thought was particularly well done was when Clark Kent gets a devastating phone call that causes him to dash across the continent in seconds. It was simple, but it worked.

I will continue to watch the show with interest, which is far more than any of the other CW shows can boast.

BUT THEN…

A Superman Solo Film Is on the Way From Ta-Nehisi Coates and J.J. Abrams

Oh, goodie. A race hustler and the guy who almost single-handedly set both Star Wars and Star Trek on the roads to ruin joining forces to turn one of the oldest American sci-fi IP’s into hot garbage.

I have a plot idea. Feel free to run with it. Hollywood: feel free to steal this plot and spend $200 million making it.

So, it turns out that Lex Luthor is the bagrillionaire behind the scenes puppetmastering various nefarious schemes, a process decades old. One of his leading efforts: manipulation of the press. Specifically: whenever a cop is involved in any tenuous way with the death of a black suspect, the press – under Luthors hidden influence – runs inaccurate stories calculated to drive up rage and violence. The BLM/Antifa riots and insurrections are being driven by Luthors schemes; aiming to sow as much chaos as possible in order to destroy faith in the government, police, institutions and America as a whole. Part of this is seeing to it that major political parties nominate senile old kiddie-sniffers and incompetent diversity hires for major offices. Part of it is manipulation of the tax code to make sure that major corporations offshore their operations; this not only unemploys millions of Americans but empowers the Chinese Communist government, further driving down the American publics faith in the government. Part of this is funding crackpots to infiltrate colleges, universities, high schools, middle schools, pre-schools and HR departments, filling them with anti-science, anti-engineering rigor, anti-objectivity nonsense so that STAR Labs and WayneTech and the like are starved of competent talent.

Superman, aided by a dark detective from Gotham City, finds all this out. But what Luthor is doing isn’t strictly illegal. So Superman goes to the public with what he’s learned… and he is promptly cancelled by the woke mob. Twitter and Facebook deplatform Superman for spreading politically incorrect “disinformation.” He is declared a Nazi and a white supremacist after he puts out a fire at a science fiction bookstore at the latest arsonriot.

Movie ends as Superman sadly says “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore” and flies off into the sky to find somewhere less insane and stupid. Post-credit scene: Luthor is now President of the US. The woke mob celebrates… for about five minutes, and then Luthor turns on them.

More efforts to debase science

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Feb 262021

The abuses of Popper

A powerful cadre of scientists and economists sold Karl Popper’s ‘falsification’ idea to the world. They have much to answer for

This long, rambling screed tries to make the argument that “falsification” is bad science.

I defy anyone who actually has done science to explain how science can be done *without* a focus on falsification. Note that the author here is not a scientist, but “is professor of science humanities and honorary professor in history.” Her arguments against falsification in science come from *philosophers,” not actual scientists. She seems to take issue with the whole notion of skepticism in science.

Bah.