I have one last copy of B-47 Stratojet and B-52 Stratofortress: Origins and Evolution. It is signed, numbered (#23 of 23) and comes complete with three bonus 18X24 prints, also all singed and numbered. The total *including* shipping within the US (I shudder to think what shipping overseas would be as the book is honestly fairly massive) is $62. If you would like this copy, the very last of this batch (and there’re no plans for a second batch), send me an email and I’ll send you a paypal invoice. First come, first served…
So Showtime has decided to excrete a “documentary” series based on the idea that white people are terribly racist and awful and evil (at least, that’s the impression the trailer gives). It starts off with the following in great big letters:
WARNING: THIS TRAILER MAY TRIGGER WHITE PEOPLE
Uh-huh.
Now, I’m sure there are a few white people who will get their knickers in a knot over the nonsense in the trailer and start firing off angry messages. But as a long-time white person, my reaction to it was… “Uhhh, *this* again.” And then I put it out of my mind, because it’s not worth ulcerating over. However, there are some people who watched the trailer, got triggered… and ain’t white. Perhaps their points of view may be of interest.
If you go to YouTube and search for “everything’s gonna be all white,” a total of twelve videos are returned (as of as I’m typing this) as top results. One of those is the actual trailer; the other eleven are reaction videos. Of those eleven, nine seem to be black reactors, two seem to be white… and ten of them think the trailer is racist trash. The eleventh is a white guy speaking foreignese, so I don’t know what his point of view was… but he didn’t freak out jump up and stomp around like the “documentarians” seem to think white people are supposed to do when confronted with racist non-white folks.
After *decades* of race baiters shrieking incessantly, rather than being “triggered,” this seems to be the most likely response:
Now, to go back to my life and continue to not pay for Showtime.
OK, so a school specifically for non-whites. Uh, sure, whatever. But here’s the “these kids are dooooooomed” part:
“We’ll focus on what’s in your community. Like, it’s a very strong entrepreneurial focus […] There’ll be a very strong hip-hop focus around our kids’ learning style,” explained Knox.
He said concepts from hip-hop would be utilized.
“[Like] what does it mean to keep it real? […] What does it mean the grind? How to handle your haters,” Knox said.
That’s kinda like teaching immigrants in their native languages. It will give them an education that will keep them on the outside of mainstream society; not only will their educational understanding be incompatible with reality, it will probably give them a conspiratorial outlook, making things *worse.*
The package of Shuttle II stuff (actually, “Shuttle Evolved”) arrived today and has been scanned and uploaded to Dropbox (some 350 megabytes). Enough funders came on board to drop the per-funder price to a mere $13. The artwork was particularly nice; it was scanned in at 600 dpi and provided both as-scanned, and with some process to de-age and brighten the art. The documents have been turned into PDFs, as well as providing the raw scans.
The collection of stuff was expensive, but crowdfunding it made it inexpensive for everyone. If you see anything on ebay or elsewhere that might benefit from such an approach, don’t hesitate to point it out.
Funders who have paid the $13 should have received a Dropbox notification about the uploads providing access to the files.
Few things more hilarious than groveling apologies by Hollywood types for *acting.* Plus, the idiots who screech about “cultural appropriation,” apparently unable to think more than one move ahead, failing to realize that if they got their way and the dominant culture suddenly stopped “appropriating” bits of this or that sub-culture, then soon enough those sub-cultures would, be *wholly* marginalized. Where would “hip-hop” be if only urban black people were interested in it? It would be essentially the modern minstrel show.
A book I’ve been looking for for *years* and have come to assume doesn’t actually exist is one that collects diagrams of Civil War era ironclads… diagrams useful for model makers. I’ve seen books with good diagrams of sailing vessels, but it seems like the moment steam engines come into the picture, diagrams dry up. Has there been such a book? Would there be a market for such a book? And is there even adequate documentation to fill out such a book?
Something that collects diagrams of not just the Monitor and the Virginia, but the less well known vessels like the Choctaw, Essex, Keokuk, Lafayette, Mississippi, Albermarle and all the other vessels from that transitional and important era.
In my lifetime there have been several noteworthy epidemics, but two stand out for their political nature. The Commie Cough, of course, has been wreaking havoc for a few years now, and opening the door for totalitarianism and mass Karening the whole time. But a generation earlier, another epidemic gained vast political clout and resulted in almost the exact opposite response. Where COVID has led to lockdowns of entire populations, mass testing and legal repercussions for not just ill-behaved people with the disease but well intentioned people without it… AIDS resulted in the opposite. AIDS is a disease that is 100% fatal barring the use of complex and expensive drugs that do not cure the disease but merely hold it in check; stop the drugs and not only do you probably die, you return to being a carrier. The entire planet was shut down to ostensibly deal with a disease that well over 90% of those who get it will survive. But AIDS? Go ahead and do what you like, because reasons.
Had the same policies now in place for the Pinko Pox been in place for AIDS thirty years ago – in particular, mass testing and quarantining of the infected – the disease would be a historical footnote, popping up about as often as Ebola. But no, any suggestion for doing such a thing is seen as homophobic, despite the fact that the bulk of the lives spared would have been that very demographic.
By allowing the HIV to persist, rather than wiping it out decades ago, it had the opportunity to mutate into an exciting strain that not only transforms the infection into full AIDS faster, it also results in a higher viral load and is much more transmissible. This strain has been around for a while but is seemingly becoming much more prevalent. Coming soon: an airborne strain as transmissible as COVID.
Some will argue against the need for testing and quarantining because AIDS “cocktails” have been around for a couple decades now that allow people with the virus to live seemingly healthy lives, apparently for a normal lifespan. And for those that have the virus, this doubtless is a good thing. But this is only a good thing for as long as the drugs last. A global war? A major economic meltdown? A Carrington Event? Complex, expensive drugs could easily become quite rare. How long does someone need to be off their antiretroviral meds before the HIV decides to become resistant to the meds?
