CNN has a handful of “before and after” satellite photos showing the destruction wrought a few days ago in the Kentucky region. Some of the destruction is straight out of Tornado Cliche Central, like lightly constructed farm outbuildings turned into confetti; others are more interesting, such as a heavily built courthouse largely trashed and an Amazon warehouse ripped in half while two identically built nearby buildings seem intact.
I can remember a scene from an *early* (late 40’s, early 50’s) novel about nuclear war that has a nuclear bomb going off in or just above an American city. The scene in question goes into some detail about the effects of the blast; I recall being impressed with not just the detail, but the grimness of the description. But for the live of me I can’t recall what the book was. I *thought* it was “Alas, Babylon,” but I’ve gone back and forth through the book, and it doesn’t seem to be there.
I know that’s vague, but does this sound at all familiar to anyone? Sadly my collection of fiction books got thinned out after Utah (and will thin out some more shortly). I used to have a great big dedicated “apocalypse” section, but it’s scattered and tattered now.
It’s late in the season for tornadoes, but boy howdy they came out in force yesterday and stomped Kentucky. The videos of the damage are remarkable:
Of course, there’s no disaster that can strike regular American citizens that political hacks won’t squat on and cackle like glee-filled ghouls. For example, one “Nell Scovell,” a supposed comedy writer and producer who created the TV series “Sabrina the Teenage Witch.”
Note that she attributes this tornado outbreak to climate change, which may be the case at least in part. But she lays the blame for this not just on Americans but on a few American politicians in particular. She leaves the Chinese, the greatest polluters and carbon emitters in human history, wholly blameless. If the FBI was actually doing their job, they’d be well advised to take a look at Ms. Scovell’s finances to see whether and how much the CCP is providing her to deflect attention from their responsibility. It would be worthwhile to see if she belongs on the same page of the history book as Swalwell and the Biden crime family.
I’d love to see this catch on in grade schools. It would be a hoot to see how teachers who screech on about their pronouns and end up on Libs Of TikTok would react to a lil’ dickens busting out with this version of the song…
So a guy bolted three miniature turbojets to the back of his Tesla. Sure, why not. But he then took it out onto a busy freeway and fired them up amongst the other traffic, shooting a few feet of flames in the process. Umm…?
That said, he seemed to get surprising performance from those three bitty engines. I don’t much care for the structure he built, though… especially the third engine, there’s a *lot* of wobble. It’s nowhere near as rugged as I’d’ve like to have seen.
YouTube decided that I needed to see the video below. It’s from a channel I’d not previously heard of, one that seems to be a pro-Lutheran satirical religious channel. Most of the time, that’s a description I’d generally pass on… but hey, the Babylon Bee pushes a religious agenda that I generally don’t agree with or have much use for, and they’re funny as hell and generally politically insightful. So i took a look. It’s not hilarious, but it makes a valid point: if you are going to try to batter someone for their political views based on what you think their religious views are, maybe you aughtta have some understanding of them. And there is a case to be made that if you think their religion is bunk, using their religion to batter them for their politics does at least to an extent not make much sense. Because if Jeebus is fictional, his opinions on this that or the other are kinda pointless.
Of course there is also the possible valid counter-argument of “you’re being hypocritical.” If your religion clearly and distinctly says Pro-X, and your politics says Anti-X, then the two are in conflict. And if you use your pro-X religion to buttress your anti-X politics, then… well, that ain’t right.
Example: politicians who claim that their Christian faith causes them to be opposed to the personal ownership of defensive weapons.
Ahem:
King James Bible Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.
One would hope that someone who tried to foment violence against people whose politics he doesn’t like would get to spend a good long while looking at gray walls and gray bars, but I guess we’ll find out soon enough:
Like many nerds, I loved the original anime. Nothing I saw in the leadup to the debut of the remake on Netflix inspired me to re-subscribe to the “Cuties” streamer, and once it started airing and bits of it made it to YouTube and such, my lack of interest intensified. Now that it has been cancelled less than three weeks after debuting, my overall response is… “meh.”
Netflix screwed this up. But I gotta hand it to them: unlike the monsters who screwed up Star Trek with Discovery and Picard, Netflix at least had the *decency* to terminate this cultural abortion.
If you are going to remake, reboot or sequelize a beloved property, at least *consider* the possibility of not making a mess of it. Just a thought.
