A Story Idea

 art, blather, Hmm..., My Fiction, religion, science, science fiction, youtube  No Responses »
Aug 242023
 

So, there’s this movie coming:

It looks like your bog-standard Supernatural Entity Scary Horror Movie, with the twist being that the main characters are Indian immigrant and the Entity is something out of Indian folklore. OK, sure. We’ve all seen this before, with folk monsters from various ethnicities/nationalities/whatever pestering the appropriate people.

Here’s my idea, though.

Main characters are Popular Ethnic Minority Types… Indians, Japanese, Native Americans, Nigerians, whatever. They end up plagued by some magical critter from their homelands folklore. 80 to 90% of the movie is them on the run from Scary Monster, occasionally bumping into Clueless Standard White Americans. You know, the people who in these stories can be relied upon to be of no help whatsoever, because they have no knowledge of Diverse Supernatural Entity. But one member of the Doomed Ethnic Cast – let’s say a small-ish child, willing to talk to outsiders – explains the problem to Clueless White Guy. The Ethic Cast then runs off, leaving Clueless White Guy to look after them with a look of confusion. But then at the end of the movie, when Scary Monster looks about ready to pounce and kill everybody or send them all to Hell, or whatever it does, Clueless White Guy shows up.

I see two possibilities that I’d like:

1) Clueless White Guy shows up and sees Scary Ethnic Monster about ready to pounce. “Huh,” he says. Then he looks to the empty space to his right and says, “Hey, can you help out here?” Then there’s a rumbling sound that transitions to deep laughter. Scary Ethnic Monster Turns to look at Clueless White Guy, turns to eat *him,* but then stops. Because something from Clueless White Guys ethnic folklore, in this case Thor, manifests, whips out Mjolnir, and proceeds to beat Scary Ethnic Monster into a mess of ectoplasm. When Scary Ethnic Monster is finally destroyed, Thor hefts Mjolnir, leans, back, laughs some more. Winks at Little Kid, turns, pats Clueless White Guy on the shoulder (who hands him a bottle of beer), says, “I haven’t had that much fun in ages,” then walks off/fades away.

Or…

2) Clueless White Guy shows up and sees Scary Ethnic Monster about ready to pounce. “Huh,” he says. “You know what my cultural heritage is?” he asks the monster as it begins to pay attention to him. “Science, bitch!” Whereupon he whips out something akin to a proton pack and converts said monster into nonexistence. I would also accept “Doing some basic research,” whereupon he hits the monster with holy water, garlic, salt, holy books, silver, electricity, UV, ashes, tax forms, white oak, a handful of gerbils, a pissed-off housecat… whatever it is that is appropriate for the particular threat in question.

 

 

 Posted by at 1:02 pm

Conditional Hypotheticals

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., Hmm..., politics, science, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Aug 232023
 

A few years ago a lot of people were blown away to find out that a sizable fraction of the population has no inner monologue. Some people can’t “hear” themselves think or “hear” remembered music, movies, things loved ones said. Related, some people can’t envision things: they can’t see an apple in their minds eye, because they don’t have a minds eye. For those of us who can, this is a bit mind blowing; I honestly can’t imagine how I’d go through my day. But for those who can’t hear or see within their minds, finding out that others can sounds like insanity. “You have voices in your head?”

 

Now here’s another way in which people differ: “conditional hypotheticals.” Take for instance, if Person A were to ask Person B:

“How would you feel if you hadn’t eaten yesterday?”

 

Most of us, I would assume, would respond with something like “I’d be hungry,” or “I’d be happy to be on my diet,” or “I’d be filled with an unquenchable rage to destroy my enemies and see their women driven before me.” You know, normal stuff. But there are those people who simply cannot understand the question. “But I *did* eat yesterday.”

 

In retrospect, over the years I’ve encountered this sort of thing *a* *lot.* For example, a few years after the invasion of Iraq and the taking out of Saddam, I got into a pointless online argument. My argument went along the lines of “What if we *didn’t* invade?” The point being that the inspection regime was coming to its end. Within fairly short order Saddam *would* have been able to restart his WMD programs. That could well have led to a far, far worse war. Or not, who knows, it can be fairly argued either way. But what astonished me was the other guy, when I asked my hypothetical: “But we did invade.” No amount of trying to get him to see alternate histories would budge him past the fixed point of “it happened, that way.” I thought he was just being a jackass. Now… perhaps he was just *incapable* of seeing alternatives.

 

Perhaps this issue is a feature of lower IQ. Perhaps, like the lack of an inner monologue, it can hit just about anyone. But whatever, such people should probably be kept from important roles dealing with planning for the future, especially when future plans are dependent upon learning from past mistakes. Someone with this issue would seem to make a *terrible* strategist.

 

 

This issue has arisen before in popular culture…

 Posted by at 10:03 am

Wow, this sounds awesome

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Hmm..., news, politics, russian empire, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Aug 222023
 

US citizens urged to leave Belarus immediately

The State Department, in its warning, encouraged Americans still in Belarus to depart the country immediately and categorized the country as a Level 4 risk, the highest security warning.

Two possibilities spring immediately to mind:

1) The US Government knows that something is about to happen

2) The US Government *wants* Putin to think that something is about to happen

 

There are of course less charitable explanations for seemingly random proclamations:

 Posted by at 4:43 pm

Recent acquisitions

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, drawings, eBay, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, news, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Aug 182023
 

Thanks to ebay and my fabulously lean bank account, I have recently procured a number of items of potential interest:

“NASA Earth Orbital Space Station,” a poster-sized lithograph from McDonnell Douglas depicting a space station that tumbles for artificial-G.

“Re-Entry Payload Launch Vehicle,”  A *brief* General Dynamics presentation on a vehicle to launch re-entry vehicles such as MIRV warhead shapes

 

“Proposed Development Program on Rocket-Type Missiles,” a 1948 Convair report on early ballistic/boost glide missile concepts, that would lead to Atlas. Includes some fantastic large format layout diagrams.

 

“Detail Specification for Consolidated Vultee Model 117 Airplane Class VR Transport Flying Boat,” August 1950, all the details on the then-brand new Tradewind.

 

 

“Detail Specification for Class VP Long Range Patrol Seaplane,” Consolidated Vultee 1946, all the details on a proposed flying boat patrol/bomber

32 issues of “Astronautics” magazine from 1957 to 1969, mostly 57-59 and 63 or so.

The lithograph and the reports will be scanned and put forward for consideration for monthly rewards; the magazines will have the interesting bits scanned and made available to the subscribers/patrons.

 Posted by at 11:02 pm

AI: taking down the actors

 art, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Hmm..., news, politics, science, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Aug 172023
 

So a lone 23-year old decided to make a Scooby-Doo fan film. To do this, he used computer generated stop-motion to replicate the look of a Rankin-Bass holiday TV movie from back in the day… and an AI voice generator. This latter was due to the fact that this project had no budget to afford voice actors. The resulting dialog is a *little* stilted and stiff, but it really does sound like the original Scooby cast, and if you didn’t know it was done by AI, you might not pick up on it. Well, ok, who cares. It’s just a little fan film. However, some professional voice acting units got in a snit, pitched a fit… and basically ticked off the majority of those who gave a damn. The result of *that* is some blowback against the actors strike. The end result will likely be *more* acceptance of the use of AI for voices.

Heh.

A Fan Wanted To Make a Scooby-Doo Cartoon, But Ended Up Sparking an AI Debate

The fan film in question:

 

Right now the professional writers and actors don’t want to write or act. But they also don’t want the *amateurs* to do their thing, either. This sort of attitude is exactly the sort of thing that irritates the public. This sort of thing will accelerate the obsolescence of actors and writers… and studios as well.

 

 Posted by at 10:50 am

This trope should be retired

 AARRRGH, aircraft, art, blather, history, Meh., science fiction, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Aug 162023
 

“Our heroes aircraft is falling from the sky! Will they pull out in time to avoid a firey crash and bring the episode, nay, the entire series, to a screeching and unexpected halt, requiring not only clever writing but also difficult actor contract negotiations with the attendant risk of turning off the existing fans?”

Bah. No, of course the aircraft will pull out at the last second. Of course.

Lazy.

 

 

Those old enough to remember TV from the 80’s will doubtless *vaguely* recall any of a number of the same scene: the *enemy* aircraft, often a helicopter, has been struck. Gun, missile, onboard explosion, someone whacked the pilot, whatever, the vehicle is going down. Will it crash? Well, since these are the bad guys and, what’s more, *unimportant* bad guy characters, yes. It’ll crash. But at the last moment it’ll go down *behind* the nearest hill. You’ll know it crashed because a fireball that sure looks a whole lot like some combination of back powder and gasoline will go FOOOOM from behind the hill. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper than crashing an actual aircraft on camera, and slightly less visually awful than using bad scale models or, perhaps worse, stock footage, to depict the event. But it still got to be an incredibly tired and predictable shot.

 Posted by at 11:46 pm

$200 a round rocketgun

 awesomeness, blather, history, Hmm..., rockets, spacecraft, weapons, youtube  No Responses »
Aug 162023
 

Here’s something you don’t see too often… someone firing *numerous* rounds from a Gyrojet. Each of these .45 caliber rounds are solid propellant rocket units, last manufactured in the 70’s or so. They apparently run about $200 *each,* which makes me wonder if there might be a market for newly manufactured ammo. As a practical  home defense, police or military weapon… the Gyrojet basically wasn’t. It took something like 50 feet for the round to reach maximum velocity, which means at close range it might just bounce off an opponent. But as a range toy they might be fun, especially if the cost per round could be dropped substantially. And there’s no reason why it can’t… sure, each round is more complex than an equivalent conventional bullet, but they are just some basic parts with 1960’s rocket propellant. And that last could doubtless be improved; better propellant, better grain design and better manufacturing of the nozzle plate could *really* boost performance.

The claim is made here that the Gyrojet was designed to be used in space because they were uncertain if conventional gunpowder firearms would work in a vacuum. This is untrue; nobody with the least bit of understanding of the chemistry of gunpowder and how guns work thinks that guns *won’t* work in space. However, conventional firearms do have three major issues for space applications:

  1. Recoil.
  2. Thermal issues: exposure to sunlight and vacuum means that small metal devices like guns heat up *fast.*
  3. Vacuum issues: grease, gun oil and the like boil off quick, meaning they can’t be used in space.

 

The Gyrojet has far lower recoil than conventional firearms. And the Gyrojet is a far simpler mechanism, made largely from stamped metal sheet to far lower specifications. This means it can heat up without jamming, with virtually no need for lubricants. So the Gyrojet seems like it’d make a dandy sidearm for the USSF. Bump it up to .75 caliber and you have yourself a light bolter. And perhaps best: home manufacture of Gyrojets would be *easy.* A 3D printed Gyrojet, with some *basic* metal parts, would not only be easy to make, but with vastly lower forces imparted on it than a conventional firearm, it’d be far less likely to explode.

 

So… where are the new-manufacture Gyrojet rounds? At $200 a round for the vintage stuff, you can start off *real* expensive and still undercut the current market.

 

 Posted by at 6:52 am

Yeah, but it’s fake

 AARRRGH, aircraft, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., Hmm..., politics, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Aug 142023
 

A video started making the rounds online a day or two ago. It shows an airline passenger nightmare: the little kid behind you not only kicking your seat, but the lil’ monsters mother not only doing nothing to stop that behavior, she’s aggressive in preventing anyone else from stopping it.

A number of commenters are using the video to discuss this or that: race relations, the lack of fathers, the lack of discipline, the power and arrogance of the matriarchy, etc. All valid issues to discuss, but there’s one little issue: that ain’t an airplane. Jetliners don’t have slab-sided walls, nor do they have support columns. It’s a set, and they’re actors.

 

It’s a “comedy” video, though nothing about it seemed all that funny; it just doesn’t seem to be played for laughs, but for realism. The “Beverly Hills Comedy Team” has a number of airliner-based vids using the same set. The full length vid is on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/beverlyhillscomedyteam/videos/261172053373780/

 

 

 

 Posted by at 2:39 pm

I’d vote for him…

 awesomeness, Hmm..., news, politics, weapons, youtube  No Responses »
Aug 122023
 

Since I live in the horribly, hilariously politically corrupt state of Illinois, “voting” is something that on one hand, doesn’t really count, and on the other hand, you can do as often as you like. So voting for a guy running for Congress in Texas, for the equivalent seat from Illinois? Sure, why not. Perhaps some of the people who facilitated Gropey Joe’s “win” in 2020 can be persuaded to use their talents to convert votes for Herrera in Texas into votes for Herrera in Illinois. Heck, maybe they can install him not only as an Illinois Congressman, but an Illinois State Supreme Court Justice and also Governor.

 

 Posted by at 4:45 pm
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