If Disney really wanted to “subvert expectations” with their Star Wars movies, they coulda done something like this:
May 292022
May 282022
Ya may have noticed a dropoff in aerospace postings, and a reduction in yammering in general. This is largely due to being swamped… Book three is due soon, and I’m up to my eyeballs. I have barely enough time to write the book, take note of the world going straight to hell, and occasionally bitch about it. Health concerns, a major time-suck a few months ago, have largely (though not completely) evaporated; financial issues remain. Feel free to buy stuff, subscribe to stuff, hit that tip jar.
And once I’m done with Book three… Book four looms.
May 282022
May 262022
This is a damned odd thing: across London (and apparently much of the rest of Britain), an inexplicably vast number of shops have opened up that purport to sell American candy and treats and junk food. I say “purport” because the prices are apparently insanely high, and they seem to always be empty. This is not the sort of thing that can be supported by any reading of free market capitalism; it’s really only explained by either criminal activity or socialism (but then, I repeat myself). A lot of locals believe them to be some sort of money laundering operation, but it’s vague on how that works. Perhaps someone comes in now and again and buys an armload of Oreos for the street price of, say, a trunkload of Afghani opium. If so, fine. But why are all these stores almost the exact same thing, that close to each other? And if they are a front for a criminal enterprise, why aren’t the British cops doing anything about them? Oh, wait… these are the same police who were scared of the grooming gangs and let them murder and traumatize vast numbers of British children rather than risk being called names…
May 262022
This five minute fan film, entirely CG, is more entertaining than the entire sequel trilogy:
May 252022
This could prove entertaining as all get-out:
China Is 3D Printing a Massive 590-Foot-Tall Dam … And Constructing It With Without Humans
Because 3D printing is infallible.
May 252022
Oh Noes! AI are going to…
1) Take Yur Jerb
2) Overthrow humanity
3) Make truly effective Marilyn Monrobots, leading to the slow extinction of Man
And now…
AI Can Predict People’s Race From X-Ray Images, And Scientists Are Concerned
If machines can reliably tell White folks from Black at a 90% success rate based purely on just X-ray images, that would tend to indicate that “race is just a social construct” is as inaccurate a statement as reasonable people have known it is. The curious thing is, the researchers don’t know *how* the AI is able to figure this out. There is some difference that the machine sees that human experts can’t.
The “concern” here isn’t that “uh oh, this machine is smarter in some ways than we are,” but “uh oh, this machine might make distinctions that we’re are officially not supposed to notice unless the situation calls for it.”
The report seems to indicate that only White and Black races were included in the study. A whole lot more work would be needed, I imagine, before the AI can distinguish White from Black from Mayan from Pakistani from Japanese from Inuit from Berber.
May 242022
Here we go again:
15 killed in shooting at Uvalde elementary school; gunman dead, Gov. Abbott says
Rather amazingly, they’ve already released the ID of the shooter: 18 year old Salvador Romas. I suspect that might be an attempt to get ahead of the inevitable political narrative that pops up about this sort of thing. A narrative that’s usually wrong, but serves a purpose.
If you were thinking about buying an AR-15 and/or mags and/or ammo… it’s *really* time to get on that. The politighouls will be all over this; there’s nothing professional gun grabbers love more than dead children. It’s unclear what weapons were used… a handgun almost certainly and *perhaps* a rifle. He seemed to have at least two AR-15’s, based on the social media posts he made.
Salvador Ramos: Suspect in Uvalde Elementary School Shooting
May 242022
Well how about this:
World’s fastest passenger jet goes supersonic in tests
… a Global 7500 test vehicle broke the sound barrier during a demonstration flight last May, achieving speeds of more than Mach 1.015.
Huh. I would *assume* that a power-dive might have been involved, but it’s still impressive. The Bombardier Global 8000 is planned to enter service in 2025, have a range of 8,000 nautical miles, carry 19 passengers and fly at Mach 0.94 (top speed).
May 242022
This makes for an interesting read:
SFWA eats their own: Mercedes Lackey is made Grand Master, banned from Nebulas on same day
The SFWA is the formerly respected “Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America,” presenters of the formerly respected Nebula Award. Mercedes Lackey is a… well, I guess now *formerly* respected writer of left-leaning science fiction, quite popular and successful, and now her reputation and potential future career could be trashed because she off-handedly referred to a black guy as “colored” rather than “person of color.” She’s 72. I suspect she spent a good many formative decades in a time when “colored” was the preferred term. So now the SFWA and the baying ghouls who populate it and Twitter are out for the blood of an old lady who many of them, five minutes earlier, considered a hero because she had gay characters in her stories back in the 80’s.
According to her husband, whose Twitter account virtue signals at a professional level, she has been badly emotionally damaged by the treatment she’s received. You tear up old people, sometimes you break them. I wonder just how happy and proud these bargain bin revenants will be if they manage to bring her to an end. I suspect “a lot.”
Here’s a potential explanation as to why so much of modern science fiction seems so awful: the gatekeepers have changed from the people who know what they’re doing and are good at it… to just whoever. And that invites the political whackaloons.
As the creep of leftist identity politics has spread throughout the organization, a startling erosion of quality came with it. This is perhaps most objectively apparent in their membership qualifications, which were changed in May of 2014. Until then, to be considered for “Active membership”, an applicant had to have sold three pieces of short fiction at a 8c per word or one book for $2,000 or more in a Qualifying Professional Market (in other words, a top-tier publisher like Tor or Del Ray).
It was after this time that the “Associate Member” tier was introduced, which came with a gallingly low bar for entry – one paid sale of short fiction at a pro rate OR one that has been self-published, or published by an indie or small press for an amount equivalent to 8c per word. In other words, slap a thousand words or more up on Kindle, fork over your $90 annual fee, and you get to vote on the finalists for the Nebulas.