Elishjah Dicken is a *man.* He shot a murderer 40 yards away with a pistol. Well done sir.
EDIT: Video below is a local news interview with the grandmother of Dicken’s girlfriend. It’s worth a watch; nothing NSFW, just news. Dunno why they’ve blocked playback on other sites.
When seconds count, the police are only… what, like, 45 minutes away?
Yeah, turbine engines for cars ended up not making sense, and probably never made sense. Certainly not in a world where gasoline was fairly cheap and environmental regulations demanding. If the world allowed for the economic use of, say, vodka or wax as a fuel, and didn’t give a damn about what came out your tailpipe, then, sure. But that’s not the world. And unless some major advancements are made in turbine powered electrical generators, meaning you could put a *small* turbogenerator in your electric car to top up your batteries by pouring a mix of old turpentine and a case of Schlitz into the tank… the turbine engine will likely remain inappropriate for automobiles.
The publisher is not yet ready to publicly disclose the title of Book 3. But what the heck, here’s a peek. One of these should be blisteringly obvious to the kind of person who buys my stuff. Another should *probably* be recognizable. The other two *may* be recognizable. These four are linked for a valid reason.
Ballet has been dropped from auditions at leading dance schools as staff say it is rooted in “white European ideas”.
The Northern School of Contemporary Dance (NSCD), which aims to be a “progressive institution”, has reviewed the “elitist” art form as part of a diversity drive that has seen the introduction of new policies relating to gender and race.
Say, that’s neat. The school has a problem with ballet because:
1) You have to take classes to get good at it (what art form *doesn’t* require buttloads of practice???)
2) It has problematic ideas of body forms (imagine someone morbidly obese as a ballerina. Outside of “Fantasia,” it ain’t happenin’)
3) It has distinct gender roles. Because I guess it makes all kinds of sense for a petite ballerina to pick up a… ummm… ballerdude, whatever they’re called, and spin ’em around overhead.
4) Perhaps most importantly, it’s “European.” I guess that’s a problem in FRIGGEN’ BRITAIN.
So what they’re after is a form of dance where you can’t tell who’s a guy and who’s a gal, where someone extremely out of shape can perform as well as an athlete, and where you can pick it up without any sort of professional training.
It looks pretty doom-laden for the Tomy 1/350 scale die-cast Enterprise… with one week to go, they’re still at only 63% of their funding goal. If, as seems likely, this doesn’t come to pass, a bunch of potential buyers will be disappointed… but they won’t be too likely to be *angry*. This is not the case for *all* buyers of large scale Enterprises, however.
In December 2020 Eaglemoss announced their 27-inch long Enterprise D model. I posted about it HERE. This is a large and complex model kit, not a finished product. And Eaglemoss has an unusual way of releasing these things… instead of one big box with all the parts, you get a packet every two weeks with *some* parts. It’s a subscription service, you pay as you go. And the cost of the model stacks up… looks like over the length of time it takes to get all the packets, you’ll end up spending over $1700. Youch. But I’ve been watching some YouTubers as they’ve been getting the bits and gradually assembling the thing, and it looked promising (with some issues here and there).
It seems Eaglemoss is in a bad way. Due to Covid lockdowns in merry old England, their ability to do business was massacred and they are in a deep, deep hole… one it looks like they might not climb out of. They seem to be already out of business.
That’s bad.
It’s especially bad not only for their employees and stockholders, but those working away on the Enterprise D (and other subscription kits of similar scale and cost). Because the Enterprise D is distributed over *30* *months.* Which means if you started in January of 2021, you’d currently be about 18 months along… with 12 months to go on your kit. Twelve months worth of parts it seems unlikely you’ll get. You won’t be charged for those parts, of course… but you will have spent over a grand for sixty percent of an Enterprise, plus however much time you spent on a model you’re now unlikely to ever finish, display or sell.
This looks to be about the current state of the Enterprise. It’s… sad.
I’ve never liked getting big, expensive things via subscriptions spread out over years. This only reinforces that.
This makes for some interesting reading. Turns out one of the leaders of the “Proud Boys” *wants* to get hauled before the January 6 kangaroo court, because he *apparently* has the receipts showing there was no conspiracy to do anything but show up and protest peacefully.
Let’s see how this goes…
Piece above is based on this newspaper article/interview:
Last few days I’ve seen a number of references to “Technoblade,” which struck no chords with me. Apparently a “Minecraft” YouTube streamer… not my area of interest. Nevertheless, the references came often enough that I looked this up. It’s… something. It’s kind of “Iron Giant says ‘Superman'” in its impact.
