Aaaaaaand here’s your new pandemic

 AARRRGH, Crazy, news, politics  No Responses »
Jun 242022
 

UKHSA: Poliovirus detected in London sewage

Monkeypox didn’t quite work out. Maybe polio will finally allow the British government to start welding British people into their homes so they won’t see the millions of third-worlders that the British government will bring in…

In seriousness, this is unlikely to amount to anything. Polio isn’t particularly fatal, and finding polio in the sewer is unlikely to mean many infections except for those darn kids who swim in it for fun. But any excuse to cause a panic that can be engineered to increase government power will be taken.

 Posted by at 12:42 pm

Oh boy! Mayhem!

 awesomeness, blather, Crazy, history, Hmm..., news, politics, science fiction, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jun 242022
 

Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade in landmark abortion decision

This will be an *endless* source of entertainment. Stand by for craziness from the whackjobs PO’ed that they might have more difficulty in killing unborn children.

Gonna be a lot of this:

 

And on the subject of abortion: last nights episode of “The Orville” briefly touched on it. Our Hero Captain Mercer goes to the Krill homeworld on a diplomatic mission. You know going in that this is going to turn out poorly; the Krill have been central casting stock sci-fi badguys from the get-go, driven by a whackadoodle religious ideology. You can tell it’s going to get worse, because an Orange Man Bad stand-in is shown early on gaining political power among the Krill. And, inevitably, the Krill government is taken over by Even Worse Krill, and the diplomatic mission goes straight to hell. Mercer is taken somewhere to witness the evils of Krill civilization: he is taken to see what happens to Krill citizens who abort their unborn children. The leadup makes it pretty clear that the parents of the aborted are going to be badly treated; and when it’s shown, Captain Mercer recoils in visible and audible shock and horror. So, what do the Krill do to the no-longer parents? Do they feed them to monsters? Dissolve them in acid? Set them on fire? Flay the flesh from their bones? No. They put them into a holodeck and project an image of the child that would have been, based on the DNA. The child interacts with them, saying something along the lines of “I would like to have been born.” THAT’S IT. We’re supposed to view that as a monstrous evil.

Yes, I know “The Orville” is written by lefties, because lefties own Hollywood. But really? You kill your unborn child, and you think the greater evil is someone showing you what that child might have become? Shoot, if we had that technology today, I’d recommend it for all abortion *and* pregnancy clinics. Imagine the smarter choices people could make if they could see what sort of child – good, bad, evil or indifferent – they could get.

 Posted by at 12:29 pm

Boeing Model 733-606 art

 aircraft, art, history, Hmm..., Monthly Historical Documents Program, Patreon, projects  No Responses »
Jun 232022
 

The Boeing 733 is *reasonably* well known as the designation for the Supersonic Transport before it got re-designated the 2707. However, Model 733 was sort of a catch-all designation for a long (numerically and temporally) series of designs covering the gamut from giant Mach 2+ SST’s down to bombers, strike aircraft and fighters. The link seems to be that the 733 started off specifically as an SST designation; but other aircraft types were designed using the same aerodynamics. A fighter that was basically a scaled-down SST might be a model 733 (such as the Model 733-605). Shown below is a reasonably commonly reproduced piece of art from the 80’s depicting what is sometimes called the Model 606; it’s actually the Model 733-606. I’ve seen diagrams for a number of aircraft based on this basic geometry; the 733-606-11 and 733-606-12 were strike aircraft. The aircraft below is generally described as an interceptor, sometimes as a supercruise research platform.

The full rez scan of this artwork has been uploaded to the 2022-06 APR Extras folder on Dropbox for APR Patrons and Subscribers.

 

 Posted by at 8:22 pm

Looks grim for the big-ass Enterprise

 AARRRGH, art, Gah., models, science fiction, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jun 232022
 

Halfway through the crowdfunding effort, Tomy only has 14.9% of the backers needed. Unless there’s a big surge, I can’t see how this is going to happen. And it’s a damned shame, it looks like a nifty thing. So if you have an extra $600, give it some consideration. If you have an extra $600 but don’t want a big die-cast Enterprise, buy it anyway and send it to me. I’ll give it a good home. Or you could just send me $600 directly. I’d be fine with that too.

32 Inch Star Trek Enterprise – Die Cast Metal Replica

They’ve recently updated the description to include three shuttlecraft as well:

I think they just butted up against some historic bad luck. An expensive luxury item in the middle of Bidenomics? That’s just tragic; they’ve likely been at work on this project for a few years, and the timing just plain sucked. I just hope that if this doesn’t go through they don’t throw it all away, but store what they need to safely and try again when things are better. Not sure when that’ll be… maybe year two or three of the DeSantis administration?

 

 Posted by at 8:08 pm

Ladies and gentlemen, the future is secure

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., Hmm..., news, politics, Worldwreckers, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jun 232022
 

Here’s the proof a NYC high school diploma is worthless

“‘The Three Little Pigs’ story was read round-robin style in a grade 11 classroom, which demonstrated limited student access in this class to grade-level text,” according to the department’s Office of Accountability. … At Brooklyn’s Boys and Girls High School, more than one-third of all classes were being disrupted by students’ chatter …

Sure, society needs people who are no more skilled than required to dig a ditch. But the problem is, these kids are doubtless also being taught that they are special snowflakes and that anything less than a lavish lifestyle of hookers and blow is a sign that The Other People are oppressing them. So these “students” will not only leave school utterly incapable of performing any but the most basic tasks… they’ll be unwilling to do them. One might wonder why this sort of thing would be promoted. Well… one might wonder that if one had not been paying attention. Why would this sort of thing be promoted?

1) These kids will be useless, sure. But they’ll still be allowed to vote. And who will they probably vote for? The people promising to make their lives easier without effort on their part.

2) They will consume resources without contributing. Thus they will be a net drain, requiring someone to fill in for them. And who better to fill in for them but similarly low-skill, but less offended foreign workers of dubious legality? And who will they and their offspring and their enablers probably vote for? Why, most likely those politicians who promise to not deport them.

Maybe Congress should spare a moment from the January 6 show trials to look into the matter of politicians whoa re *really* working to damage the United States. It might be worth seeing who’s getting paid or influenced by, say, the ChiComs. The Rosenbergs sizzled for doing less damage to the US.

 Posted by at 7:24 pm

Constitutional Rights Recognized: Usual Suspects Outraged

 awesomeness, Crazy, dumbassery, history, Hmm..., news, politics, weapons  No Responses »
Jun 232022
 

Supreme Court expands gun rights, with nation divided

In short: the USSC recognized that New York’s law prohibiting citizens from being able to defend themselves when they are not huddling in their home fortifications is unConstitutional. Unsurprisingly, it was a 6-3 decision, with Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan caming down on the side of authoritarians and civilian enfeeblement.

And speaking of feeble:

President Joe Biden said in a statement he was “deeply disappointed” by the Supreme Court ruling, which he said “contradicts both common sense and the Constitution, and should deeply trouble us all.”

Justice Thomas was a voice of reason:

…wrote for the majority that the Constitution protects “an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.” That right is not a “second-class right,” Thomas wrote. “We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need.”

The garbage human-simulators currently plaguing society are predictably upset that civil rights supersede authoritarianism:

 

I imagine Libs of TikTok will have a bunch of entertaining meltdowns from the NPC crowd.

 

 Posted by at 2:01 pm

Meritocracy Bad

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jun 232022
 

Well, here it is, the dumbest, worst thing you’ll read today:

A Belief in Meritocracy Is Not Only False: It’s Bad for You

The author believes that merit is a terrible idea, and that it should be abandoned. And replaced with what, exactly? I know you’ll be stunned: he doesn’t say. Because repalcing the concept of advancement through merit – intelligence, hard work, determination, talent, whatever – even if a lot of the time it comes down to random chance (i.e luck) with *anything* else is self-evidently an awful idea.

Consider: some singers rise to *billionaire* status. Most singers end up singing in the shower, and not much further. Some shower-singers are probably objectively better than the billionaire singers. Well, so the fabulously successful ones may have gotten there through luck. What of it? Got a better way? Lotteries?

 Posted by at 12:37 am
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