A Chinese armed robot, a ripoff of the Boston Dynamics “Spot.” Slow, not very maneuverable, limited elevation, and LOUD.
PLA robot dog 😎 pic.twitter.com/fBZgqw5h6Q
— 彩云香江 (@louischeung_hk) July 29, 2022
A Chinese armed robot, a ripoff of the Boston Dynamics “Spot.” Slow, not very maneuverable, limited elevation, and LOUD.
PLA robot dog 😎 pic.twitter.com/fBZgqw5h6Q
— 彩云香江 (@louischeung_hk) July 29, 2022
This video is *claimed* to be some sort of official bit of Russian governmental propaganda, extolling the supposed virtues of Russia to get westerners to move there. But it comes off more like satire. When it says “beautiful women,” if shows two pre-adolescent girls. It claims “no cancel culture,” for the same country that’ll throw your ass in jail if you call the current war a “war.” It claims a “rich history,” but fails to mention that that richness is soaked in blood. It’s just *weird.*
Wow. This is how #Russia 🇷🇺 is trying to attract people to go and live there. And no. It’s not satire.pic.twitter.com/C9VMGacIXJ
— David Patrikarakos (@dpatrikarakos) July 29, 2022
This does not seem survivable.
Oh yeah. Lawsuits incomin’.
Taking a dead spider’s lifeless body and reanimating it as a robot is an idea that would be the stuff of nightmares for most people. But scientists aren’t most people. Recently, a team of researchers turned the corpses of wolf spiders into arcade-style claw machines that could pick up and move a variety of objects — including other dead wolf spiders.
Because it’s creepy as hell, I moved the gifs of this scientific abomination below the break…
A few weeks ago I posted a link to a video about a “flying Winnebago,” helicopters converted into recreational vehicles. Those were cool. But what I’d *really* want: a PBY Catalina converted into a flying yacht, such as the “Landseaire.” These were glamorous examples of a sadly now bygone era.
The video points out that just because you’ve got buckets of money and a really cool flying yacht, there are some places you just shouldn’t go. There are places on this Earth – Arabia, Detroit, Central America, New York City – where your chances of encountering violent uncivilized barbarians is just too high to risk, and your flying yacht will end up a bullet-riddled wreck slowly corroding away over a span of decades.
It is of course far to much to hope for that production on an aircraft much like the PBY could begin again (as I asked for a short while ago). With modern design and materials, a modern PBY would be lighter and stronger, cheaper to maintain with far better fuel economy and range. But it’s about as likely as restarting the B-17 production line. Eventually 3D metal printing will advance to the point that you can print yourself a PBY kit for little more than the cost of the raw material and the energy needed to melt it all, but even then you’ll still need to assemble it. It’ll be a *long* time before industrial replicators can fab you a complete aircraft in one go.
The one where Brandon Herrera tries to replicate the home-made piece of junk firearm that was used to assassinate Shinzo Abe. The result works, but would likely be fatal to the shooter. This indicates that the assassin either somehow found a way to test and perfect his design (which seems unlikely in Japan), or he thought it through better than Herrera from the get-go.
I bet this one ends up getting yeeted by YouTube, since it shows how a disarmed populace can arm itself.
UPDATE: Yeeted. One might consider it odd that an American company would ban videos that kinda-sorta a little bit show how to make things that are legal for Americans to make. Odd, that.
Looks like Sylvester Stallone finally has himself a superhero movie:
Sure, he was in “Judge Dredd” and “GotG2,” but he wasn’t superpowered in either of those. I don’t recall him having been a superhero before, though I could be wrong.
I suspect the superhero genre is going to run out of steam soon enough…it’s been done to death. Marvel has recent;y announced their spate of new TV/Movie projects, and they are a whole lot of “who the hell is that, and why should I care” characters.
Marvel also recently released the trailer for “Black Panther 2.” I was unimpressed with the first one… the effects were dodgy, the story meh, the worldbuilding bizarre. We were supposed to root for a fascistic ethnostate that was essentially a high-lech primitive civilization… they select their rulers *only* from a single family, and then using trial by combat. They have antigravity and practical energy weapons… and they charge into combat atop rhinos bearing swords and spears. One thing I would like to see from the sequel – and suspect I won’t – is the actual geopolitical fallout from the effects of the first: at the end of the movie, a sci-fi-advanced hidden civilization in central Africa is revealed to the world. They’ve been hidden for centuries behind a cloaking device and holographic projectors; now that’s over. Great, fine, wonderful. But, ummm… right now, hundreds of thousands of sub-Saharan Africans are flooding into Europe annually in the hopes of grabbing themselves a better life. What do the borders of Wakanda look like? Now, a few hundred million poverty-stricken Africans can simply *walk* to a higher-tech better life. Did Wakanda open the doors, and now their original population is a distinct minority in their own land, buried under a crush of migrants? Or did they erect walls? Did the walls/deflector shields/whatever effectively prevent invasion, or are there long rows of corpses along the border, shot down as they tried to climb in?
Or, given the direction of food shortages and supply chain collapses, expensive beyond the point of even considering?
This and the APR Blog. Maybe the security systems will deal with it, maybe not. Don’t be surprised if one or both suddenly go funny or vanish again.
When the hammer falls and Twitter is finally swept from the public consciousness… one account shall remain:
Singin' in the Rain (1952) but with a Velociraptor pic.twitter.com/LugHQSvaPD
— But With Raptors (@ButWithRaptors) July 25, 2022
he wants the truth pic.twitter.com/YLrv2SPl84
— But With Raptors (@ButWithRaptors) June 18, 2022
Ghost (1990) but with a Velociraptor pic.twitter.com/Qft5dwX1Et
— But With Raptors (@ButWithRaptors) May 24, 2022
Top Gun: Maverick (2022) but with a Velociraptor pic.twitter.com/hsS7CviLIm
— But With Raptors (@ButWithRaptors) May 23, 2022
Cats (2019) but with a Velociraptor
🔊Sound on🔊 pic.twitter.com/n4y7QONEqM— But With Raptors (@ButWithRaptors) May 5, 2022
But With Raptors. heh.