Gotta hand it to ’em, this aircraft is substantially badass.
Nov 252021
Nov 252021
Well, it’s kinda like a turkey…
Nov 242021
A few weeks ago SpinLaunch managed to spin up their demonstrator and lob a projectile into the sky. I did not give it a whole lot of thought; it just doesn’t impress me a whole lot. There are easier ways to accelerate a projectile to the speed of sound.
However, Thunderf00t *did* give the concept a lot of thought, and he’s anti-impressed. One detail that I’d noticed was that the projectile emerges from the “muzzle” of the launch tube crooked. One thing I *didn’t* do was closely examine the faint and blurry in-flight footage of the projectile. And I should have, because the projectile is *tumbling.* In retrospect this makes sense: while attached to the rotating arm, the projectile is rotating at about three revolutions per second. Once released, it will retain that angular momentum; since it’s not touching anything – it’s not riding rails, or sliding down a barrel, nor at its fins reacting against air since it’s in a vacuum – there is nothing to arrest that rotation. So it leaves the “barrel” tumbling. This would be *disastrous.* Even if the fins could stabilize the projectile in flight, a massive amount of launch energy would be wasted in the process, the trajectory would be virtually randomized, accelerations would be massive and all over the place.
In short, this thing seems to be a whole lot of nothing as far as being practical.
Nov 242021
Sweden’s first female PM resigns hours after appointment
Magdalena Andersson, was announced as leader on Wednesday but resigned after her coalition partner quit the government and her budget failed to pass.
Wow. Way to stand up for your beliefs, with a whopping lack of work ethic and sticktoitiveness.
Nov 242021
Where we watch a guy react to “Moonraker” for the first time:
By many metrics, “Moonraker” is a bad movie. By any metric it is the goofiest, most ludicrous Bond movie. And yet it’s my favorite Bond movie; I have watched it *many* times. First on HBO back in the day, then on laserdisk, then VHS, then DVD, then Blu Ray, then streaming and one of these days on 4K if it’s ever released on that format. It’s bonkers, it’s dumb, the physics is just *awful.* And yet it has some of the awesomest bits of Bond ever: Hugo Drax is far and away the best Bond villain ever; Jaws returns and steals every scene. And Jaws’ love interest Dolly? The two make the best couple in all of the Bond movies with a love story for the ages.
And the Space Marines? Stupid, but I love it.
I have a 1/72 “4D Vision” cutaway model of the Space Shuttle (purchased long, long ago when they were affordable) set aside for the specific purpose of turning it into Moonraker 5, complete with laser and ark cargo. Some day…
Nov 242021
These here videos looks nice on a laptop monitor. They look astonishing on a big screen high def TV.
Let’s see “other ways of knowing” produce *anything* a tenth as cool, awesome and inspiring as this. Bring it!
Nov 242021
A couple of interesting stories out today:
At least 31 migrants dead and others missing after boat sinks off French coast
More than 25,700 people have crossed the English Channel to the UK so far this year in small boats, according to data compiled by Britain’s PA Media news agency. This is three times the total for the whole of 2020, PA reports.
The coast guards and volunteer rescue services of both Britain and France are being taxed to the breaking point by “rescuing” illegal colonizers, rather than capturing and deporting them. You’d think that the Royal Navy would be out there defending Britains shores.
And then there’s this…
Migrants Trapped at Poland’s Border With Belarus Face Snow, Drones and Wild Boar
It seems somehow ironic and yet appropriate that Europe is apparently being defended from invasion with the help of wild pigs.
Nov 242021
So, we have this now:
Jury finds Unite the Right defendants liable for more than $26 million in damages
$12 million of the damages were against James Fields, the guy who rammed his car into a crowd of protestors and killed a woman (and who seems rather unlikely to have $12 million in spare change). So that leaves around $14 million levied against the organizers of the rally due to the damage and injuries that occurred.
This… this precedent has potential. For example:
Widespread vandalism and looting during BLM protests will cost the insurance $2 BILLION after violence erupted in 140 cities in the wake of George Floyd’s death
I have little doubt that there’ll be a whole lot of “yeah, but, no, see, the thing is…” from those trying to deflect responsibility from those who spent a year or more fomenting violence and arson and death on a nationwide scale. And I’ve little doubt that there will be few city, county, state officials with the integrity and courage to bring these suits. But those suits that are brought *should* be enough to bring historically vast damages: a billion or more in compensation to cover the property that was destroyed, and a few dozen billion in punitive damages for being a bunch of hatred- and violence-spewing dickheads.
And there is also this potential source for a massive lawsuit:
‘It sounds like the revolution has started in Wisconsin’: Black Lives Matter activist says Waukesha Christmas parade horror that left five dead was linked to Rittenhouse verdict
It’s actually *six* dead with the passing of an eight year old child: https://www.gofundme.com/f/waukesha-parade-attack-sparks-family
If the racist hate crime in Waukesha turns out to have actually been a result of anger over the Rittenhouse verdict, the families of the injured and the dead would seem to have a massive case not only against the perpetrator but also the same news outlets, celebrities and polticians who spent a year lying about the facts of the case in order to gin up hatred.
Nov 242021
Can’t speak to the plot, but it sure looks pretty:
Finally gave the t rex some fuzz.
At the end of the last movie, a bunch of dinosaurs were released in the forests of northern California. This would be a problem that would last a very short time: most of the dinosaurs seemed to be lone examples of their species, so breeding will be minimal. In this world, people have known about real live dinosaurs for decades, so there would not be a lot of time lost on disbelief. And once people found out that there are velociraptors and Tyranosaurs running around, every hunter in a 2,000 mile radius would race to the scene.
Nov 232021
Dashcam compilations of Exciting Incidents can be entertaining. Up until recently, the great majority of the compilations I’ve seen have featured either largely American videos, or largely Russian/Eastern European videos; random European, Australian and Asian vids tossed in. But I recently stumbled across a channel that seems to be entirely east Asian… I *think* Chinese, but I don’t know for sure. And after having watched far too many of them, I noticed some distinctions from the US/Russian vids.
First and most obviously, these Chinese videos feature a *lot* more direct human involvement. The western videos seem to be largely one machine hitting another, but the Chinese vids have far more pedestrians getting plowed over. And part of the added human element is the presence of *far* more two and three wheeled scooters and bikes. You hit a car, all you see is metal and glass. You hit a scooter, the human is hard to ignore.
More subtly are the differences in the people. In the western vids, you get a lot of reaction from the people in the dashcam car, whether they are actually involved or not. Ranging from laughing at what they’ve just seen to screaming about it, to yelling between driver and passenger to drivers yelling at other drivers, westerners have a lot to say (even if much of it is utterly meaningless in the end). But the eastern videos are shockingly silent. There are reactions of course, things that I assume to be akin to “look at that” and “uh-oh,” but most of the time the driver says nothing at all. At first I thought maybe they were shocked into silence… but now I suspect it’s due more to being quite blase about it. And that I suspect is related to another thing I noticed: many to perhaps most of the incidents are caused by one or more of those involved being utterly oblivious to their surroundings. The lack of situational awareness on display can be astounding. If I was on a scooter surrounded by cars and semi trucks capable of 70 miles per hour, my head would be on a swivel; these people seem to live in their own little worlds, unaware that other vehicles – or rules of the road – even exist. Pedestrians step out into major highways without looking. Bikes blow through *busy* red lights. Scooters stop in the middle of a fast, busy street for no apparent reason. People on bikes and scooters plowing directly into giant stopped trucks. I saw one where someone was driving a scooter with an umbrella open *in* *front* *of* *them.*
Most of the individual clips cut off within seconds of the incident. But those that go on a little longer demonstrate something else: bystanders often don’t seem to care. In the US or Russia, a wreck would be followed promptly by people rushing in to help (or perhaps to take pictures), but in what I assume to be China, the response largely seems to be “that’s not my job.”
So if you want to see people on mopeds getting clocked by cars and tossed all over the road to the complete indifference of their fellow man, this channel is for you.
Stereotypes:
Russian dashcam vids are the result of vodka (and ice). American dashcam vids are the result of assholes. Chinese dashcam vids are the result of obliviousness.