Dec 132022
 

Huh.

 

Can anyone explain why a modern, rational nation concerned about the welfare and future of its people and culture would not respond to this sort of thing with mass deportations?

 Posted by at 1:22 pm
Dec 132022
 

And so Adam Savage goes to the Royal Society In England and gets to look at not only a first edition of Newton’s “Principia,” but the actual *manuscript.* And both he and the archivist handle them with their bare hands.

Shudder.

There are books that *I* own that I hesitate to actually touch without cotton archival gloves. But the Principia? Dude, I wouldn’t touch that unless I was fully sealed. I’d be deathly afraid of not just touching it, not just sneezing on it, but simply *breathing* on it.

 Posted by at 2:39 am
Dec 092022
 

Non-binary Biden nuclear official Sam Brinton accused in second luggage heist

Here’s a thought: if someone projects an image of being a weirdo… take them at their word. They’re a weirdo. Avoid.

Details about the alleged theft are scarce, but 8 News Now stated that Brinton, 35, was charged with grand larceny with a value between $1,200 and $5,000.

Stealing *anything* should be a career-ended for someone like this. Consequently, basic games theorizing should tell you that if you are going to put your future at risk for theft… make it worthwhile. Do like the Bidens or the Clintons and go after those multi-million dollar jobs. Then if you get caught, you can simply blow it off, because for some reason those sort of crimes get a pass. But stealing *luggage?* That’s just *stupid.*

Imagine being an expert in your field. Your field is nuclear fuel, processing, waste treatment, etc. And now imagine showing up for work and being told you have to report to THIS guy.

 

This is how you get underlings selling secrets to the Russians or the Chinese, because you are clearly disrespecting them directly to their faces. I would feel monumentally insulted if I was told that someone so clearly insane was just installed as my boss. Pretty sure I wouldn’t sell out the country, but I’m pretty sure my work ethic would suffer.

 Posted by at 10:26 pm
Dec 092022
 

I am going forward with the return to cyanotyping. I’m gathering the supplies needed to rebuild the capability; learning some lessons from before, this setup should be a little better and a little bigger. I should be able to make prints 24 inches by up to 7 feet. It’s a bit of a chore and certainly an expense, but the end results will, I hope, be an improvement over what I produced before.

 

As before, I plan on taking commissions. I don’t care what it is… aerospace diagrams, ships, architectural diagrams, sci-fi movie prop diagrams, gay wedding cake layouts… if it can be blueprinted, I’ll do it (for a fee). So if you have anything along those lines you’d like blueprinted in the old-school cyanotype fashion (white lines on a Prussian blue background), made by hand using chemicals, sunlight and effort rather than hitting “print,” let me know. Something I will try again is blueprinting onto linen. I ran off a few back in the day; interesting, but perhaps a bit niche.

 Posted by at 9:17 pm
Dec 092022
 

Not so much for the US.

WNBA star Brittney Griner released from Russian detention in prisoner swap for convicted arms dealer

She is an *acknowledged* drug-transporting criminal. Whether you agree with Russia’s laws on such things or not, those were the laws. And while the US went to the bizarre extreme of returning to Russia an arms dealer for Griner, the US has done doodly squat for other prisoners currently languishing in Russian penal colonies. Why? because Griner has various and sundry privileges that others don’t. see, for example, Marc Fogel. Very similar circumstances of bringing in a small amount of pot; almost no public outcry, no celebrities or TV NPCs shrieking about how the US needs to bring him back. Why? Feel free to guess.

But hey, at least the Russian get “The Merchant of Death” back.

 Posted by at 6:40 am