A tour of the utopia that Minneapolis has become in the wake of the protests and the police bugging out:
Coming soon to a street near you!
Jul 022020
Jul 012020
The orbiter for the “DC-3” referenced previously. This vehicle had relatively small wings, leading to quite low crossrange. The wings were also simple straight wings, not highly swept deltas; the vehicle could get away with this because it did not “glide” during re-entry, but “belly flopped.” To aid in crossrange and landing, each wing would have a single turbofan in a sealed pod. The payload bay is not shown here, but would be quite small and right behind the cockpit.
Jul 012020
After the occasional blog problem and a few days ago actually losing access to my email, I’m wondering if I should sign up for something like Twitter. It’s a cesspit of insanity, to be sure. But it would be an alternate way to maintain some sort of contact the next time some irritating technological flub takes out one or more of my existing systems. My thinking is that it would simply be used to post, say, one aerospace image a day, harvesting them from my blog, except for times when I need to communicate “I ain’t dead” or some such.
And if I do… do I sign on to Twitter? Gab? Parler? I signed on to Facebook *years* ago, but it is frankly a PITA to use. Twitter is someplace that I can’t see lasting too long… eventually I’ll get banned. Parler and Gab seem to obvious alternatives, but anyone there is automatically assumed to be alt-right or fascist or whatever, and there certainly do seem to be a lot of conspiracy and anti-Semitic whackaloons there.
Thoughts?
Jul 012020
“Cancel culture” is a cancer on our culture. But so long as it’s a thing, might as well cancel the violent extremists who threaten to harm people for their *opinions.*
Example:
She’s a HARVARD GRADUATE threatening to stab people for having the wrong political opinions. Perhaps surprisingly, the British company that had actually hired her prior to this decided that racist threats of murder just might not be the sort of thing they’d want to be associated with. And thus…
Harvard grad Claira Janover says she’s lost Deloitte job over TikTok ‘stab threat’
Her video reacting to getting fired is *precious.*
https://www.tiktok.com/@cjanover/video/6844619909612178693?lang=en
And her followup to *that* video where she doubles down on blaming “Trump supporters” for her getting cancelled (she doubtless would have gleefully supported the cancelling of someone she disagreed with, someone who might have simply expressed a flat opinion or told an off-color joke) is the most schadenfreudalicious thing I’ve seen in a good long while.
https://www.tiktok.com/@cjanover/video/6844625089997114629
Some people are truly delusional. But the young lady here (yes, I’m assuming her gender. Bite me) has her whole life ahead of her… time enough to wise the frak up and pull her head out of whatever liberalhole she has embedded it within.
Jul 012020
How else to parse this?
San Francisco Police End Common Practice Of Releasing Suspect Booking Mugshots
Police Chief Bill Scott said the department will no longer release booking photos of suspects to the media or allow officers to post them online.
He said the only mugshots released will be limited to suspect who pose a threat to the public. It’s all an effort to stop perpetuating racial stereotypes.
Hmm.
Jul 012020
An interesting read:
When it Comes to Missiles, Don’t Copy Russia and China — Leapfrog Them
The idea put forth is to build booster rockets akin to but somewhat smaller than the Falcon 9, optimized to launch, land, refurb, reload and relaunch quickly. Put an upper stage on them (called a “bus” in the article, for reasons clear to anyone who knows anything about ICBMs), and then load the bus with weapons. The author suggest scramjet-powered cruise missiles. When the Chinese start lobbing intermediate range ballistic missiles at American and allied targets around the western Pacific, start lobbing weapons at *them* not from ships at sea, but form bases in the United States. The boosters get the bus to hypersonic speeds… and then they return for reloading and relaunch.
Done correctly, the expense should be that of the weapons themselves, the bus, and the propellant for the booster. Thus the weapons lobbed all the way across the Pacific *should* be cheaper than the weapons lobbed just from China to, say, Guam. The United States should be able to rain down a seemingly unending hail of weapons onto Chinese military targets.
Jun 302020
It is well understood that you assume that *every* gun you come across is loaded. Make that assumption and keep the weapon pointed only at things you are willing to blow holes in, and you – and those around you – will be far safer.
A new assumption to make: every “protestor” should be assumed to have a gun. And each of those guns should be assumed to be loaded. And pointed at *you.*
Zoomed in and slowed down video clearly shows rioters pull a gun and shoot into the truck before it attempts to escape. Is this what #BlackLivesMatter is about? #DezNat pic.twitter.com/zN3DT3tHpy
— H O S S DezNat News Man (@NiasDiad) June 30, 2020
Antifa and Burn-Loot-Murder terrorists are out in the streets shooting at people. The same jackholes who under other circumstanc4es would be whining about the need for gun control laws are happy to plink away at people who dare disagree with them. Be forewarned.
Provo City Police were made aware of a planned Police Rally and a Counter protest scheduled for last night. Both events coincided without incident until 8:38 pm when a call was received regarding possible gun shots and a hit and run. pic.twitter.com/zVTUCCQm2T
— Provo Police (@ProvoPolice) June 30, 2020
Center Street. Several protestors began crowding around the vehicle. A male protestor ran to the SVU on the passenger side, pointed a handgun at driver and shot one round through the window.
The driver, who was struck by the bullet, hit the gas trying to leave the situation.
— Provo Police (@ProvoPolice) June 30, 2020
If anyone has video or photos of the incident at Center Street and University Avenue, please contact Detective Patterson at npatterson@provo.org.
— Provo Police (@ProvoPolice) June 30, 2020
Jun 292020
Ooh, scary, scary, don’t we look mean:
Chinese military reveals rifle-sized railgun prototypes
This video seems to be the original Chinese PLA video, with added music:
Looks cool, hits about like a paintball gun. Compare to this two-year-old video of a commercially available coilgun:
Jun 282020
When you see crap like this…
Black lives Matter attacking random motorists.pic.twitter.com/3kGU1aph0Z
— Scotty McGuire (@McguireScotty) June 28, 2020
… you realize you might need something like this:
Additional:
Jun 272020
It’s been a few hours since I’ve been able to access my main (netcom) email account. It’s run through Earthlink, and they seem to have completely vacated the internet. No variation of their website (earthlink.net) seems to be accessible, and their support phone number (along with several others I’ve found) rings once then goes silent but doesn’t actually hang up. With luck it’ll all be resolved shortly, but if you have attempted to email me recently, of if you’ve purchased something from me recently, there’s a reason why I’ve not replied.
UPDATE: seems a water main break took out an “upstream service provider” at Earthlink. Things are coming back and I have access to email again, though there seem to be a few gaps. So if you’ve not gotten a reply you think you shoulda, send me a note. And assuming I get *that,* I’ll get on it.
A regional municipality suffered a water main break that triggered a service interruption with an upstream network provider. This issue currently impacts our Email, DSL, and Dial Up customers. Customers using Cable and HyperLink high speed internet are not impacted by this event.
— EarthLink (@EarthLink) June 28, 2020
The break seems to be fairly substantial…
Massive water main break near Georgia Tech responsible for boil-water advisory throughout city of Atlanta. pic.twitter.com/eeCZLluBLl
— Brendan Keefe (@BrendanKeefe) June 27, 2020