Hardest I laughed all day.
Boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooozzzzzzzzzzzzzzzze.
She talks like someone who votes a certain way. See if you can guess which way.
Dec 282021
Dec 272021
So, you’re a Finnish guy with a 2013 Tesla Model S with a bad battery. Tesla tells you replacing the battery will cost $22,000. What do? Well, wire that sucker up with dynamite and turn it into confetti, that’s what.
Dec 272021
Maybe Patriot Dirt would like to sponsor my blog?
Dec 272021
This looks like just the thing for home defense:
Dec 272021
Something ain’t right with the spar…
Footage showing the accident of an Embraer EMB-202A, #Brazil registration PT-UZI (C/N 20001133), that took place earlier today, at a farm near Lagoa da Confusão, in Tocantins. According to witnesses, the pilot survived. pic.twitter.com/9IUuAa2KjV
— The Latin American Aviation Historical Society (@The_LAAHS) December 10, 2021
Dec 262021
A video of a guy messing about with a demo version of a “virtual Titanic” that let’s you wander around something like a quarter of the ship (the rest of the vessel coming later). Seems like a *spectacular* way to blow a bunch of hours.
This project dates back to at least 2016 (I posted a link to a YouTube video of theirs showing a real-time sinking of the ship back in early 2016, a lot of the website doesn’t seem to have been updated since 2017). The demo is downloadable here:
Titanic Honor and Glory
Those of you old enough to remember when James Cameron’s “Titanic” was released in 1997 (yeesh, nearly a quarter century ago) will doubtless recall how a good fraction of the public went bonkers, to the point that at least two efforts were made to produce a “Titanic II” ship designed to replicate the look and opulence of the original… but with a better hull and more lifeboats. Sadly these didn’t come to pass, but I’m pretty sure that if someone were to build a faithful replica of the Titanic, even as a land-locked hotel, people would line up around the block. Shoot, people throw money at Disney for their half-assed “Star Cruiser” Star Wars knockoff, so a Titanic “experience?” A license to print money.
As an aside, a story idea: turns out that the iceberg impact did not produce enough damage to sink the vessel. What caused it to sink was the sudden increase in weight on the ship as tens of thousands of time travellers arrived to witness the sinking.
Dec 262021
Who knows for how long, but Amazon has my SR-71 bookazine in stock again with free shipping and for low cost. Buy now! Buy often! Consume in mass quantities!!!
Dec 262021
Gotta give props to a supervillain who is good at what he does. Witness what’s going on in formerly great Britain:
Dec 252021
Russian Citizens Are Now Being Prepped for Nuclear War
Neato.
In short, Putin is demanding that NATO stay out of former Soviet vassal states like Ukraine and Lithuania, because he wants a buffer. But what buffer do those states have against the Russian military? Perhaps a good compromise would be if NATO stays out of the Soviet states while the Russian military pulls back behind the Urals.
Russian state propaganda somehow feels that Ukraine or Poland being secure is a threat to Russia. Why that would be is not clear. Does Putin think that Estonia is going to suddenly start baying for Russian blood and then sweep across the border? Will Latvian special forces take Moscow?
So, now Russian propagandists are promising to nuke American and European cities if former slave states cozy up to the West. Doesn’t seem a particularly effective way to calm everyone down to the point that Ukraine and the like no longer have a desire to have military backup, but maybe that’s just me.
I’m just glad we have such competent, on-the-ball leadership in Washington.
Dec 252021
The James Webb Space Telescohas successfully launched
There will be no Hubble-like servicing of this when things go wrong. Much of that is due to the fact that it is being launched towards the Earth-Sun L2 LaGrange point, about 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth (further out from the sun). NASA currently has no manned spacecraft that can reach L2. Eventually such spacecraft will become available… modified Dragon capsules, Starship or even the laughably over budget and behind schedule Orion and Starliner capsules should be able to get there. But even when such spacecraft become available, Webb wasn’t designed to be maintained, so when a part breaks and needs replacement it likely won’t actually be replacable. Consequently, much of the mission risk for Webb remains even though the launch was successful.
It will take about a month to reach the L2 point. While l2 is a stable position, it will still require perhaps 4 meters per second of station keeping per year. Total delta V budget is 150 meter per second, so if all goes well lifespan could still be as short as 37.5 years. Development began in 1996, with an initially planed launch of 2007, so it took a quarter century to actually design, build and launch; any conceivable improvement/replacement using the same bureaucracy could *easily* take far longer than Webb’s actual lifespan. There is cause to hope that if Starship is successful that the whole paradigm that resulted in Webb taking 14 or so extra years could be replaced by a much more rational world of spacecraft development. If it really does become possible to launch large and heavy spacecraft quickly and orders of magnitude more cheaply, then it will be possible to design and build spacecraft more capable than Webb, much cheaper than Webb, because they won’t need to shave off every last milligram like Webb.