This will surely rescue Star Trek

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Forward!, Meh., politics, science fiction, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Sep 032020
 

Actual fans of Star Trek have been grousing for several years now (since either the beginning of STD, or the beginning of the JJTrek movies, depending) about the lack of quality Trek, how the garbage that’s being cranked out is poorly written, nonsensical and massively anti-canonical. While actual finances and viewership numbers for the streaming shows are impossible to come by, the fact that these shows have made approximately *zero* cultural impact (when was the last time you saw an STD toy, model, T-shirt or any other bit of merchandise for sale at WalMart… or *anywhere*?) indicates that other than hate-watching, nobody much cares about these shows. So, it is in the interests of the brand for those in charge to make good decisions. And by golly, looky here:

Star Trek: Discovery Introduces First Transgender and Non-Binary Characters

Yes, the bios of the two new acting units start off by telling us what their pronouns are, because that’s *all* they are. I’m sure all the fans who complained about Picard being turned into a useless, neutered shadow of his former self, incapable of accomplishing anything but meekly accepting abuse from every female character within a dozen light years, will line the frak up to watch *this.*

 Posted by at 6:56 pm

“Birds of Prey:” an incomplete review

 blather, Meh., ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Sep 032020
 

A lot of people don’t like the DC “cinematic universe” movies like “Batman V Superman,” “Suicide Squad” and “Justice League.” I like them… ok. They have flaws, but for the most part I find them entertaining enough that in the Before Times I saw most of them in theaters. But I didn’t go to see “Birds of Prey,” largely because:

1: It just didn’t look good or interesting

2: There was a lot of woke rubbish about it.

It is now on HBO/Hulu. So a few days ago i fired it up while doing CAD work. If nothing else, I have the TV on as background noise; I can binge watch half a season of some show or other while working and, when I finally look up from my screen, realize that X hours have gone by and I’ve absorbed absolutely none of what transpired on the TV. So with that in mind, judge for yourself what it means that I got something like 30 or so minutes into “Birds of Prey” and intentionally turned it off. It’s badness was so overpowering that it blew right through my ramparts of inertia, inattention and indifference. That is, in a way, rather impressive.

 Posted by at 2:23 am

Antique store MIRVs

 awesomeness, history, Monthly Historical Documents Program, nukes, Patreon, photography, rockets, weapons  No Responses »
Sep 022020
 

A while back I found two 8X10 glossies in an antique store. The owners had no information on the photos; they had come in a box of photos from an estate sale, the rest of the photos being completely unrelated. The store owners thought that the photos showed a test of a beam weapon of some kind. Not unreasonable for people not familiar with actual beam weapons or ballistic missiles. The photos are certainly evocative of death beams zapping targets in the sky. But what they actually show are missile warheads coming *down,* screaming towards the ground at incredible speed. When the photos were taken, I’ve no idea. *Where,* almost certainly somewhere in the South Pacific… most likely Kwajalein Atoll, a common target for ICBMs and SLBMs. *What* missile was tested, I’m also uncertain. One photo shows a single re-entry vehicle; the other shows three. The Minuteman III lobbed three warheads; the Peacekeeper, up to ten; the Trident, up to 14. This *probably* shows a Minuteman III… assuming that is actually a single test.

I’ve uploaded the full resolution scans of these photos to the 2020-09 APR Extras Dropbox folder for Patrons and Subscribers at the $4 level and above.

 Posted by at 12:51 am

Boy, those lines collapse *fast*

 art, awesomeness, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Hmm..., politics, wisdom, youtube  No Responses »
Sep 012020
 

Gee, when cops are actually allowed to do their jobs, those badasses in Antifa turn out to just be larping weenies.

Prepare yourself for the feel-good movie of the summer:

This whole summer of insanity could have been nipped in the bud if the mayors of Antifa-infested towns had simply allowed their police to police. Around here, the riots lasted… one night, maybe? The night it started, not only did the local cops show up to say “not just no, but hell no,” cops from nearby towns showed up. Cops from another state showed up. The police told the rioting morons that their nonsense would not be allowed and told them loudly enough and with sufficient backup. And what did the rioters do? Tucked tail and went home (after killing a few of their own, because of course they did). There have been threats and rumors since then, the odd door kicked in (one of the comic books shops near me got kicked in, as did the closest thing to a model kit-equipped hobby shop, because of course they did), but nothing like the nonsense in Portland or Chicago.

Watching this and other videos makes it clear that while Antifa and their ilk are certainly ready willing and able to carry out acts of violence and terrorism, they are themselves little more than cardboard cutouts. They truly are NPCs, programmed to make a loud noise and chuck the odd Molotov cocktail, but they largely seem ill prepared to stand up to even halfassed resistance from the good guys.

 Posted by at 6:35 pm

Camp Cretaceous

 art, Hmm..., science fiction, youtube  No Responses »
Sep 012020
 

When Jurassic Park was released lo those many years ago, one of the items in the *vast* checklist of merchandising that accompanied the flick was an animated TV series. Perhaps sadly, that never came to pass. A mid-90’s cartoon show set on Jurassic Park could have been awesome… or it could have been utter garbage.

So with that Schroedingers Raptor in mind, I present the trailer for Netflix’s “Camp Cretaceous,” a CG animated series that is meant to be set at the same moment as “Jurassic World,” just on the other side of the island. Unsurprisingly it will feature a group of Contractually Diverse children (including the standard “useless white guy”) as they try to reach safety after everything goes sideways with the release of the Indominus Rex.

This is a trailer for “Season 1.” My first question here is… “hey, didn’t ‘Jurassic World’ take place over a space of a few *hours*?” Hardly seems long enough for multiple seasons. My second question is “so just how rich are the lawyers for the families going to get suing the bejeebers out of whoever the hell is left of the company responsible for the dinosaur park?”

 Posted by at 5:18 pm

I honestly can’t tell if this is satire

 Crazy, critters, Forward!, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Sep 012020
 

It’s crazy enough to come off as something written by someone *pretending* to be a social justice warrior, but the website seems *kinda* legit.

Why White People Owning Dogs is Racist

The argument boils down to “since dogs were domesticated by Eurasians (evidence exists for both western Europe and southeast Asia being the point of domestication), it is cultural appropriation for white people to own dogs:

If you are white and own a canine, please consider donating them to a local POC family or non kill shelter so it can truly find the perfect home. 

The website *looks* like a legit animal welfare organization website. No obvious signs that it’s satire. However, the website has only three articles, all written by the same “person.” It *looks* good, but it’s pretty devoid of actual information about the supposed organization. Google turns up almost nothing about the “United Wildlife Union” other than their website and some people talking about how bonkers the racist anti-white opinion piece is. This might be an exercise in web design wrapped around some ham-handed satire. But given how Cuckoo-For-Cthulhu-Puffs people are these days, it wouldn’t surprise me that someone is actually this bonkers. The more I look at it, the more it seems like satire… but these days I Just Don’t Know.

 Posted by at 4:35 pm

Kerblammo in Siberia

 AARRRGH, Hmm..., news, science, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Sep 012020
 

Seems the tundra is exploding again:

Likeliest explanation is that global warming is causing the permafrost to be less frost and a whole lot less perma. Couples with subsurface methane pockets that have been trapped for millenia, every now and the the ground gets soft enough that the methane goes “pop.” I suspect a video of such an event would be interesting, to say the least. Unfortunately Siberia is kinda big, so being on the spot with a camera is an unlikely occurrence.

Well, there’s clearly only one country to blame: that’s right, the United States.

 Posted by at 9:10 am

Free Wifi

 art, awesomeness, humor  No Responses »
Aug 312020
 

This is certainly nice and generous of ’em: (in case it doesn’t embed properly, here’s the direct link)

 

For extra yuks, imagine that the actual password is “password.”

 Posted by at 7:44 pm
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