Sanctions on Russia seem to be having an effect:
Looks like sugar is in demand. The way the grocery store staff here deal with it is… well, unwise.
Mar 212022
Mar 202022
He’s a software engineer with a history of operating anti-tank weapons in the US military. For some reason, his recent videos on how to go about taking out Russian tanks seem to have some sort of relevance. If you know anyone who might be in the market for enlightenment on how to convert a Russian tank into ex-Russian scrap metal, point them this way.
Ryan McBeth
Also some interesting general knowledge videos.
Mar 202022
Well, not *exactly* the one we always wanted. Starfleet vs Star Destroyers? Nah. But the Federation being taken over by the Dark Side? Yup, we’re there, thanks to the season 4 finale of STD which saw the President of Earth portrayed by current political villain Stacey Abrams. Her claim to fame is working for “voter rights,” which in the current usage is a euphemism for getting rid of any ability to maintain election integrity. Because she apparently believes that black people cannot be bothered to get and hold onto state IDs such as drivers licenses, her platform boils down to voting should be open to anybody, no matter who, where they’re from, whether they’re alive or not, citizens of the country or even if they are cross-dimensional multiversal copies of themselves. In a Star Trek context, when it comes down to a clash between the Federation fighting for survival against the Borg, her position would be that the Borg would get to vote on whether or not the Federation citizens should be marched off to assimilation.
At this stage, STD has been such a tragic parody of Star Trek for so long that this sort of nonsense is largely being met with shrugs of “well, what, am I supposed to be surprised?” from actual Star Trek fans. Of course the fake fans who think that STD is actually good are having a field day thinking that casting Abrams is some sort of historical coup. Witness, for example, the top comment at that wretched hive of scum and villainy, gizmodo, in an article on the cameo:
“I like my Trek finales the way I like my elections — garnished with conservative tears.”
There are two takeaways from that:
- The commenter actually thinks conservatives are crying about this
- The commenter is happy to see cultural icons being trashed as a way to hurt the feelings of those who disagree politically with him/her/it.
That latter point is hardly something new. Fellow travelers of this sort have spent several years committing acts of cultural and *actual* vandalism as a way not to improve society, but just to hurt people they don’t like. That’s a very Dark Side philosophy.
Anyway, here’s the scene. Having not actually seen the episode, I have the sneaking suspicion that the audio here might not be precisely what was broadcast, but, hey, it works.
There are those who argue that STD is canonical with actual Star Trek, that it’s in the same universe/timeline as TOS and TNG. This despite all the tonal differences, the fundamentally different Klingorks, the technology a century in advance of what was shown before, the different *history* on display. The season 4 finale, however, provides a final nail in the coffin to the idea that STD is set in the canonical Star Trek timeline. That detail is this: Earth is geographically, geologically a different *planet* than the Earth of reality or of actual Star Trek. In STD-verse, Africa is something like 50% bigger than elsewhere, stretching from nearly the arctic to nearly the antarctic. You can’t have continents being vastly larger and not have that make major changes to the timeline, going back millions of years. One might argue that this is due to lenses and the distance at which one films a sphere; if you photograph the Earth from the ISS, Nebraska about fills the view of Earth from horizon to horizon. But as you can see here, the “camera” has pulled back to several planetary diameters away, at which point the distortions become minimal. Earth in STD is a *very* different place.
Mar 202022
Ukraine suspends 11 political parties with links to Russia
I’ve seen the usual suspects claiming that the fact that Zelenskiy suspended parties that support the destruction of Ukraine means he’s a fascist. Let’s look at a little bit of history. Prior to World War II, there was a political party in Britain called the “British Union of Fascists.” What happened when war broke out between fascist Germany and democratic Britain? Britain banned the BUF in 1940 and interred some 700 or more of it’s officials for the duration of the war. Was Churchill a fascist? Nope. Kind of a ruthless bastard to be sure, but hardly a fascist. When your nation is being attacked by a more powerful enemy, you fight them. And that means fighting their supporters within your own borders. During the Cold War, the United States – which is pretty unique in its determination to not ban much of *any* political party – still sicced the FBI on our own commies… and rightly so.
I’ve seen some commentator claim that Zelenskiy has banned all opposition parties. Untrue: unlike the US, where you’ve got the DemRep uniparty and virtually nothing else of any real consequence, Ukraine has a *lot* of parties. See the list on Wikipedia. The only ones that got banned are the pro-Russian parties. For a nation under martial law currently being ground underfoot by a massively larger military constantly carrying out war crime after war crime, this is a perfectly reasonable response to the situation. Is it the *American* response? No. The US did not ban the Commies during the Cold War; did not ban the fascists during WWII (they, unlike the commies, had the good graces to evaporate on their own when war broke out); the US didn’t even ban the Democrats when they started a Civil War. But everyone who is not the US is not a fascist, despite what the lefties and the Putinfluffers will try to lead you to believe.
If the Cold War had gone differently, and “Red Dawn” or something like it had come to pass, it’s interesting to contemplate whether the US would have banned the communists.
Mar 202022
AAAAaaaahhhhh….
Best of luck buddy.
Mar 192022
California lawmaker found with loaded handgun in his luggage at Sacramento airport
Not just any lawmaker… this is Assemblyman Jim Cooper D-Elk Grove, who in 2016 authored a bill to ban the right to make your own firearm. He doesn’t want *you* to have a gun, but boy howdy he sure wants his own.
If this was *you,* you’d spend a good chunk of the rest of your life in prison. This guy? No charges. In fact, they held onto his gun for him, returning it as soon as he got back from his trip. Why? Because he’s former law enforcement, and they’re allowed to have firearms in certain areas of the airport. Where they’re *not* allowed to take a firearm is on an airplane, where he was trying to take his gun, stashed in his man-purse.
If these jackholes didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all.
Mar 192022
An ok-quality youtube documentary on the Inflatoplane (it caused me to twitch a few times, such as when the “airmat” material was several times called “airman” for some reason). The Inflatoplane was pitched as a way to rescue downed pilots, a role it could still serve. Also potentially useful as a way to infil/exfil special ops forces; if it could be made practical with a quiet propulsion system (electric motors? distributed propulsion?), then it could probably be *really* good for that role. At the end of the mission it could be fairly easily destroyed to keep it out of enemy hands. Another proposed role was as a light aircraft for the commercial market; this one I’m less thrilled about. A rubber aircraft would be necessarily not a long-lived aircraft; basic wear and tear, everything from scraping on the ground to repeated inflations, temperature cycling and ultraviolet light would cause the rubber to degrade over time. if the rubber parts could be made *really* cheap – a few grand, perhaps – such that the owner could swap out the rubber bits and retain easily-swappable propulsion, controls, avionics, seats and such, then maybe it would be ok. Might make a dandy battlefield recon/ missile platform if made to be unmanned… a sizable aircraft with a decent payload that is small on radar and IR, difficult to shoot down shot of a direct hit, and dirt cheap. Replace the original nylon and rubber in the original airmat material with kevlar, carbon fiber and, say, teflon, and you could have a *really* tough little airplane you could fold up and stuff into the back of a car. Might be interesting to study the design pressurized not with carbon dioxide and water vapor engine exhaust, by *hydrogen* for added lift. Sure, it’d be a risk of catching fire, but if enemy action is already poking it full of holes it’s lost anyway. Might as well have it burn up before the enemy can get to it.
Mar 182022
Anyone who has watched videos from Ukraine – or, let’s face it, Russian dash cams – could be forgiven for thinking that the Ukrainian and Russian languages are composed of nothing but the sounds “blyat” and “suka” arranged in various artful ways to convey the full range of human ideas and emotions, stretching the gamut from “angry” to “enraged.”
English has that same capacity, as these two Indian fellers demonstrated. This is far and away the funniest thing I’ve seen in *days.*
And the captioned version:
And because why not:
Mar 182022
… is that they’re *efficient.* Witness Russian cops sweep in to take out opinions they don’t like… and opinions they think they might not like if allowed to be expressed.
This is so much like a Monty Python skit that I kinda wonder if maybe it is some sort of skit. But if so, it seems to be a pretty substantial one, with a large cast. The sign the first woman holds up says “two words.” Which I gather is an allusion to “no war,” sort of a Let’s Go Brandon euphemism that clearly doesn’t get past the censors over there.
Here it is… pic.twitter.com/AEylc625AC
— Nikola Repin (@nikorepi) March 13, 2022
Mar 182022
Oh yeah. This is looking up.
Putin chillingly calls for ‘self-purification’ of Russia from ‘scum and traitors’
Going this far off the rails seems to indicate that the war isn’t exactly going to Putins plans. Yammering on about phantom Nazis and the like indicate an Antifa-like divorce from reality, which is just *awesome* to contemplate considering he’s got access to thousands of nukes.
