Apr 032022
 

One of the more shameful facts to come from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is how many Americans on the political right are siding with Putin. It is a minority, but the fact that *any* American right wingers would side not only with a dictator, but one who clawed his way to power within a communist system, is to some degree baffling and to a large degree irritating and stupid.

One of the reasons why some right wingers are siding with Putin is because Putin is “against the gay Agenda” and such. Yeah, well… Hitler liked affordable cars, good highways and dogs, but that’s not reason enough to side with him. Still, here we are. One of the big points against the “LGBTQAWTF agenda” is that they deny biology: men are not women, women are not men, and they’re not interchangeable. This is a fact which cannot be rationally denied; those who argue otherwise are arguing madness. Fine, whatever. How is this relevant to Ukraine? Well, Russian forces were driven out of the Ukrainian town of Bucha and left a bunch of civilian corpses in their wake. This is backed up not only by video from the scene, but interviews with eyewitnesses and satellite recon photos showing mass graves while under Russian occupation. The Russian Defense Ministry, of course, denies it all, blames everything on the Ukrainians, because of course they do. The “statement” is HERE. Again, how is this relevant to this post? In amongst the expected nonsense that basically boils down to “nuh-uh,” there’s this gem:

“Of particular concern is the fact that all the bodies of people whose images were published by the Kyiv regime, after at least four days, have not stiffened, do not have characteristic cadaveric spots, and blood has not turned up in the wounds.”

The argument is, in part, that the bodies aren’t stiffened. What causes corpses to go rigid? Rigor mortis, a chemical reaction that causes the muscles to tense up. But… rigor mortis doesn’t last forever. It typically starts up within a few hours… and it fades away, leaving the muscles slack, within another 12 to 48 hours. So bodies left in the street for *four* days? Rigor mortis is *long* since over. The Russian government is arguing that rigor mortis operates in ways that science says it doesn’t. As to the lack of blood: I’ve seen a lot of videos of people getting shot. Sometimes people *fountain* blood. And sometimes they hardly bleed at all. If the first shot stops the heart… the blood stops flowing. And all the civilians in the street kinda seem like a message: they were probably shot somewhere else and dragged there. Beyond the psychological value to displaying the corpses of your slain enemies, it’s a dandy way to delay pursuing forces: Not only do you not want to run over human bodies, you don’t want to run over human bodies that may well have been boobytrapped.

 

Virtue signalling time: most of the Russian troops I kinda feel sorry for. They didn’t sign up for this, and at least initially, you could see a reluctance on their part to screw with the Ukrainian citizens. But recently that reluctance seems to have evaporated. Whether that’s because the Russian troops have been traumatized by having their asses handed to them by Ukrainian forces, or because they’ve been forced into it by their leadership, or because the worst of what we’re seeing is actually being done not by run of the mill Russian soldiers but by Syrian, Chechen or other rather more barbaric forces, I don’t know. In any event, if the reports of slaughtering civilians and mass rapes are true… they gotta go. Off this planet, out of the food chain, evacuate the gene pool, ASAFP.

 Posted by at 7:14 pm
Apr 032022
 

Cool, but bad news for trustworthy news audio in the future. A commercially available bit of software will change your voice on the fly to closely resemble any voice from an extensive list of voice actors. These actors were hired specifically for this purpose, and apparently put in two or three hours of jibbajabba to collect sufficient information on their voice and accent and such. Which means that if you have enough recordings of some other person, you can copy their voice as well. Of course it might be difficult to get enough of the *right* stuff in adequate quality, especially if the “target” doesn’t regularly plop their face in front of a microphone. But actors should probably be copyable, as should politicians and other celebrities.

So about the Time Amazon decides to reboot Fellowship of the Ring, they can have Humphrey Bogart as Frodo and John Wayne as Aragorn.

 Posted by at 4:54 pm
Apr 032022
 

Only six ratings of my book, “Boeing B-47 Stratojet & B-52 Stratofortress: Origins and Evolution” on Amazon. Five of them are five-star… and one is two-star. No actual review, though, to back up that rating. Hmmm. Was that you, Putin?

Boeing B-47 Stratojet & B-52 Stratofortress: Origins and Evolution

 

Why not buy a copy or three and leave a review? Also available directly from the publisher in Britain.

 Posted by at 1:13 pm
Apr 032022
 

In a world filled with horrors like Russia/Ukraine, rapes, theft, murder and Star Trek Discovery, sometimes there’s good news… even if the good news is news only because it’s growing out of evil behavior.

‘Buddy,’ the cat viciously attacked on video outside of Philadelphia continues recovery, maybe finds a forever home: reports

… the vet who treated buddy, along with her husband, will serve as his foster home as he continues to recover from his injuries. And, that foster home could very well turn into a forever home for “Buddy,” because they — the couple did not want their names to be released to the public — have said they want to adopt him.

 

Still no word about the identities and proper defenestrations of the “kids” responsible for this story.

 Posted by at 1:01 pm
Apr 032022
 

The video in this news piece has it all:

A month ago I mentioned (I think… that was a lifetime ago) that I thought it odd how tolerant the Russian soldiers were of Ukrainian civilian protestors. That has clearly come to an end. With Russian military defeats, failures and frustrations, the soldiers are falling back on old school barbarism… rape and murder on a virtually industrial scale. Once again, reality teaches us that people who screech about Nazis are not to be trusted… they stared into the abyss and the abyss didn’t just stare back, it moved in and set up shop.

 Posted by at 12:52 pm
Apr 022022
 

So a security guard sees two suspicious characters head into a convenience store, decides to follow them in. As he approaches the door, he sees them climbing over the counter, sticking a gun in the clerks face. So the guard mosey’s on in, *promptly* shoots the bad guy with the gun, then plugs the other bad guy for good measure. And then he drops the sort of one liners Hollywood *wishes* they could write:

Bad Guy 1: “It’s fake! It’s fake!” (they used a fake pistol for the robbery)

Guard: “Oh well. Mine’s is real.”

Bad Guy Two: “Am I shot?”

Guard: “Oh ᚠᚪᛣᚳ yeah.”

BWAAHAHAHAHAHAHA

 Posted by at 9:28 am
Apr 012022
 

… but I understand.

Now Putin can bleat and whine about those awful, awful Ukrainians attacking Russia. Putin will be forced to respond/escalate.

That said, alternate take: this was done to *make* Russia retaliate, to throw more bodies into the war effort. Why might this be a good idea for the Ukrainians? The war so far has been so monstrously incompetent that it’s a safe bet that the retaliation for this will be even more filled with unthinkery and dumbassery, leaping into the fire without making the least bit of a plan. If the Ukrainians planned this far ahead, the Russians might dump a buttload of troops and equipment directly into a big woodchipper made of RPGs, Javelins, Stingers, NLAW and snipers.

More likely, thought, some Ukrainians just got pissed off and took their shot.

 Posted by at 7:13 pm