Dec 172021
 

A recent gang shooting in San Juan, Puerto Rico left six dead. While this sounds like your average night in Chicago or Detroit, the uncensored video (in the tweet below, because this is a family-friendly blog) video shows that the description “a hail of gunfire” doesn’t quite do it justice. The people who wanted the other people dead wanted them *really* dead. As in “the writers of Marvel comics will have a hard time bringing these guys back” sort of dead.

A discussion of the event with a whole lot of blurring is in the YouTube video below:

I can only assume that the drug trade was involved in some way. And as bad as this incident was… imagine it transported to the streets of some American city that has just defunded the police. Note that the hit squad here used fully automatic weapons (most armed with high-cyclic rate pistols, likely Glocks, while the probable leader had a gold-plated AK-47), which are just as illegal in PR as they are in the US. So… yeah, another gun control success story.

 Posted by at 9:45 pm
Dec 172021
 

Looks spiffy.This is entirely different from the Testors kits from decades ago; a number of improvements are apparent. Recessed panel lines and separate engines with considerable internal detail are major improvements.

I haven’t heard if they are doing a YF-12A or A-12; conversion kits would be a chore.

 Posted by at 6:30 am
Dec 162021
 

The Parker Solar Probe passed close enough to the Sun back in April to arguably be said to have “touched” the sun by zipping through the outermost layers of the solar atmosphere. It took months to get all the collected data back, and John Hopkins Applied Physics Lab  has just released the video below of the passage. The video quality is pretty potato, but it looks like it was a hell of a ride.

Once again, this moment of unutterable awesomeness has been brought to you by hard-nosed engineering rigor. STEM for the won… once again.

 Posted by at 10:40 pm
Dec 162021
 

The “Doomsday Glacier” may partially collapse. If it does, Earth’s sea level will rise by 2 feet

Is this bad news? I guess we’ll see. If the greens start pushing for nuclear power and *fast,* then this is bad news. If the world starts leaning on China and India to cut carbon emissions, then this is bad news. Lacking those two eventualities, then this won’t *really* be seen as *actual* bad news.

 Posted by at 10:23 pm
Dec 162021
 

Another progressivism success story. The chaos and havoc and human despair brought about (and at this point it can hardly be said “unintentionally”) by far leftist policies has opened a door for innovation. In this case, the many, MANY piles of human waste littering the streets of the formerly respected city of San Franciso has resulted in a shiny new interactive and zoomable map of the city, showing you where to NOT go, where to NOT shop, not live, not employ, not invest. Where to *leave.*

San Francisco Poop Map

Color me stunned that is seems to be circling United Nations Plaza.

 Posted by at 10:12 pm
Dec 162021
 

As a followup to the large-scale Tirpitz model, if you want a 1/20 scale X-15A-2, these folks can hook you up:

North American X-15A-2

It looks nice, it’s certainly detailed (I haven’t rivet-counted to assure that it’s *accurately* detailed). It’s just… a little pricey.

If they sell out, I might reconsider my abandoned 1/24 X-20 Dyna Soar…

 Posted by at 1:30 pm
Dec 152021
 

Those people are wrong. This 1/100 scale model of the German schlachtschiff Tirpitz is loaded to the gills with lights, smoke, sound and moving parts. It’s clearly a labor love, or at least of obsession. (Note: the video is over sixteen minutes long, but it seems to crap out just before 8 minutes)

Imagine if the pizza shop robber had decided to take up building model ships rather than robbing pizza shops. He might have avoided taking a bullet to the face and becoming a laughingstock for the whole human race. I hesitate to guess what this Tirpitz model might sell for if the builder was of a mind to sell it; certainly far more than robbing restaurants would ever net.

 Posted by at 10:11 pm