Jul 132021
 

First…

Jan. 6 riot suspect ‘fully constructed’ Capitol Lego model

The FBI seized a fully constructed Lego set of the U.S. Capitol and a notebook with local militia information in it from an alleged January 6 rioter, a court document revealed. Robert Morss, of Glenshaw, Pennsylvania was arrested by FBI-Pittsburgh on federal charges after investigators identified him from various photos and videos taken during the riot. On June 16, he was indicted on nine charges tied to the deadly insurrection.

So this guy had a Lego model of the Capitol. Which is… what?  Lego models are not exactly what you’d call “detailed and accurate.” And as for “deadly,” the only person to die due to violent actions that day was killed by a Capitol guard shooting her in the neck.

But wait! There’s more!

Capitol Lego set seized from rioter still in box, not assembled

The US Capitol Lego set that federal authorities claimed to have recovered from an alleged rioter “fully constructed” was actually not assembled at all, according to new court papers.

Well, that changes *everything.*

 Posted by at 1:04 am
Jul 112021
 

At the same time that Certain People want the citizenry to set their horizons low and small and accept Tiny Homes, high-density urban housing and public transport… I want me one of these. I’d prefer if it was out in the mountains, but if someone wanted to give me this out out in the middle of No and Where, I’d take it.

Finally enough shelf space!

 Posted by at 3:19 pm
Jul 112021
 

They say they’re going to fly passengers to space today. Livestream:

UPDATE 1: Stephen Colbert is hosting. It’s cringe. *Really* cringe. Oh-God-Make-It-Stop cringe. But the aircraft seems to be in flight anyway…

UPDATE 2: Successful launch, they’ve reached apogee. The rather chipper talking head is not as cringeworthy as Colbert, but she’s still cringey in a “Dear Leader” sort of way.

UPDATE 3: Landed safely. This would be the best space story of the year… if this was 2015 or so. As it is, “SpaceX launches it’s bajillionth re-flight of a Falcon 9 booster” or “SpaceX sends yet more people to the ISS” kinda has “a few people got a few minutes of microgravity” beat.

 Posted by at 9:45 am
Jul 102021
 

In this case, a punch. And seemingly a well deserved one: a whackadoodle was being arrested for acting like a violent jackass in a WalMart and decided that the way to avoid a “resisting arrest” charge was to *bite* the officer… who then clocked her upside the head and seeming knocked some calm into her. So, of course, the outrage ensues.

DARPA *Really* needs to get on the ball and develop that “phaser with a wide-angle stun setting.”

 

 Posted by at 11:39 pm
Jul 102021
 

One of the more imaginative and incredibly unlikely concept cars was the Ford Nucleon, a 1950’s idea for a nuclear powered car. Apparently this was pretty much a complete art and sales project, without much actual engineering; it was based on the notion that not only could nuclear reactors be scaled down small enough to fit in a car, they could be made not only wreck-tolerant, but that lightweight and virtually magical radiation shielding would be invented that would allow said reactor to hum away at full power mere feet from paying customers without roasting them or giving them explosive ass cancer. It was, let’s face it, wholly ridiculous… and entirely awesome.

Photos of models of the Nucleon have been available since the 1950’s, but diagrams have been lacking. An article posted online a few days ago included a few specifications for the proposed vehicle, finally nailing down some of the dimensions. And for reasons that seemed good to me (and which are probably obvious), I slapped together a quick side view. I think my side view is *reasonably* accurate based on numerous photos of the scale model Ford built and the dimensions given. What I’m not certain about is whether *Ford* truly understood their vehicle.

Here’s the side view using the 200-inch (16.7 ft) length specified by Ford, accompanied by two normal-sized humans:

The driver doesn’t even come *close* to fitting. So I scaled the Nucleon up until it seemed to look right, with the end result being that the car is now about 26 feet long:

That’s by no means a small vehicle… but then, it’s nuclear. Scaling it up by a factor of about 1.55 makes the cab big enough to fit actual full-size humans. But scaling it up that much makes the 77.4″ width (6.45 ft) into 120 inches, or ten feet. Good luck squeezing *that* onto the road; the Hummer H1, known as an uncomfortably wide vehicle, is a mere 87 inches wide.

Does anyone have any information to contradict and correct the Ford specifications? Or is it just another case of the art department kinda ignoring reality?

 Posted by at 4:28 pm
Jul 102021
 

“We’re coming for your children.”

“A Message From the Gay Community” Performed by the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus

Beyond the incredibly tone-deaf messaging here, what’s most disconcerting is the soulless gaze of the lead singer.

Maybe not *directly* linked, but… hmmm.

The poll was released by the SF Chamber of Commerce and based on feedback from more than 500 San Francisco residents who are registered to vote.

It found that more than 40 percent say they plan to move out of the city in the next few years.

Having nearly half your population deciding to leave is also not a good look. And if that 40% *does* leave, taking their property taxes with them, one wonders what San Francisco would look like *then.* Seems like that choir would be better advised to stop singing about grooming children and start forming defensive vigilance committees; San Fran going whole hog on falling into third world hellhole status like Detroit or Mosul would seem to make life a little uncomfortable for such as those in the choir.  If that exodus does happen, it’ll likely be a self-reinforcing spiral; as people leave the place will get worse; as the place gets worse, more will choose to leave.

With China and Russia getting aggressive, pandemics becoming a Real Thing, the economy going shaky, the administration wanting to lock up millions of law-abiding citizens, gas and food prices looking like they might explode… we could be standing on the edge of an abyss. An EMP attack or a Carrington Event would easily push us over. And while I’m confident that the United States would, barring a truly awful pandemic or a massive nuclear strike, be able to pick itself back up, it could be a decade of crap. And in that decade, a lot of things will disappear. Not just civil society, but most drug manufacture and distribution. Lots of diabetics will be in serious trouble. But you know who else will be in trouble? Everyone who has come to think of HIV/AIDS as no big deal. Everyone who think those “prep” drugs are a good replacement for common sense.

 

 Posted by at 12:47 am
Jul 102021
 

There are lots of “movements” that are kinda nutty. But outside of the religious or occult, it’s hard to get more downright delusional than “sovereign citizens,” especially the ones who base their bad behavior on patently ridiculous re-writings of history.

Man arrested after extremist group takes over Newark woman’s home, police say

Short form: a member of a “Moorish” sovcit group broke into a woman’s home in New Jersey, changed the locks and claimed that it was *his* because, as a “Moor,” he has ancestral rights to all the lands in the US and doesn’t have to obey US laws. He apparently thought that that would be the end of it, that the rest of society would accept his actions and let him keep the house. This is not just wrong, it’s loopy and stupid; anyone with a  functional brain would have told him:

The local police responded correctly: a bunch of guys with guns showed up to convince him of the errors of his ways. Fortunately they got him out without shooting up the joint.

I can easily see a lot of other homeowners being a whole lot less patient with this nonsense. It’s your home; I can’t imagine that there are legal issues with you breaking down your own door. If you break down your own door and find someone unwanted in your home, Castle Doctrine would now be in play, I would expect. If said homeowner is a popular person, gifted with many friends and family given to muscles and enthusiasm, the home invader may find himself in a spot of bother.

 Posted by at 12:17 am
Jul 092021
 

Sometimes things are incompetent because the people doing those things are incompetent. And sometimes it’s malicious incompetence. One wonders…

And just in case you think this might be some sort of fake… here is a link to the report. As of this posting, that craptacularly shopped stock photo is the cover image.

 Posted by at 1:56 am