What *the* *frak* is this??? Anybody speak (I assume) Russian?
Jun 072020
Jun 072020
I saw a bit of video a little earlier that was top-of-the-line cringe. It was so awful that I wanted to immediately post and mock it… but it was *SO* awful that it transcended mockability into patheticness. Fortunately, Bearing is on the job:
These people are self-hating clowns. They are not to be hated, they are not to be debated, they are not even to be mocked; they are to be noted, remembered and used as object lessons in what happens when someone allows themselves to be browbeaten into hating themselves. This is sufficiently bizarre that it can be assumed to be a bug, not a feature, and is outside of normal human nature and logic. That it now assumes the trappings of a religion should thus not be surprising.
Jun 072020
So some new handrails were installed on the Golden Gate Bridge. They were designed to lower drag on high wind days. Not a bad idea, right? Well… the new railings sing, and apparently sing loudly.
Anthony J.:
“Engineers designed new sides for the sidewalk to help with wind resistance but didn’t take into account the EXTREME sound it creates when wind passes through it. The bridge sings crazy songs now it’s so trippy. It hurts the ears and unbearable it’s that loud.” pic.twitter.com/GWdVia1GNS— Mark Krueger (@markkrueg) June 6, 2020
It is apparently *painfully* loud on high wind days, and can at times be heard some miles away. Not only are there no plans to replace these, there are plans to add *more* of these guardrails. So… if you live in the area and are very disturbed by the noise what are your options?
1: Claim that minorities and the alphabet community are disproportionately negatively affected by the noise.
2: Claim that the “singing,” since there is no actual artistic merit to it or talent/skill required for its creation, is cultural appropriation.
3: Claim that your shaman confirms that the singing is actually the audible wailing of the spirits of alt-right white supremacist demons.
4: Claim that the railings are the result of western civilization and/or engineering rigor.
5: Claim that the noise is inherently pro-Trump.
Any one of these, if disseminated widely enough, *should* be adequate to assure either that the San Francisco city government will leap into action *or* that a sufficiency of Peaceful Protestors will arrive and set upon the bridge with fire and bricks. Soon the Golden Gate Bridge can look as gloriously woke as Minneapolis!
Minneapolis, looking like the aftermath of a war. pic.twitter.com/eEiF6gkJdL
— Mark Higgie (@MarkHiggie1) June 6, 2020
Jun 062020
I thought sure I’d posted this before but… shrug. If’n yer interested in the manned Orbiting Laboratory program of the mid-1960’s, you’ll want to take a gander at the website for the National Reconnaissance Office, which has 825 documents with a total of 20,861 pages on the MOL project:
Index, Declassified Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) Records
Jun 062020
Another Chinook derivative, the Model 167 was substantially further from the original. It was larger and had an additional turboshaft engines… and moved all three of them forward, *presumably* for balance reasons. This was from the era when it seemed like a good idea to operate commercial helicopter “buses” from rooftop heliports in major cities, generally to shuttle passengers either from one city to another nearby one, or from the heart of an urban area to an outlying airport. It’s a little difficult to be sure, but it looks like the Model 167 had retractable landing gear.
Jun 062020
Huh.
A plurality of Democrats would support calling in the U.S. military to aid police during protests, poll shows
In short: polling suggests that, rather than turning off the public by calling for using the military to help put down the rioting, Trumps call is largely supported by voters of both major parties.
New @MorningConsult poll shows 58% of voters, including a 48% plurality of Democrats, say they'd support bringing in U.S. troops to supplement city police forces amid the protests. pic.twitter.com/vaTygB5nAb
— Cameron Easley (@cameron_easley) June 2, 2020
Another approach would be to let the rioters have their way. And when those who don’t support active suppression of insurrection get their homes and businesses looted and burned, *then* they’ll support more active measures. And, heck, they might even change their voting patterns.
ADDITIONAL:
Riots: In the real world, Trump administration measures seem to be paying off
Jun 042020
A 1966 Boeing concept for a civilian version of the Chinook. Viet Nam veterans I’ve known who rode in Chinooks of that era have stories that make me suspect that *substantial* structural stiffening would have been required for such a craft to be fully accepted by the public; apparently, looking forward towards the cockpit and watching the while cabin twist back and forth was slightly disconcerting. A cruise speed of 200 mph seems slightly optimistic.
Jun 042020
For about two days a month ago, a tree near here bloomed.
Jun 042020
The original headline is always more impactful than the retraction. Which is sometimes why the headline is pushed before it’s known to be true… and sometimes when it’s known to be false (“Russiagate,” anyone?). Because even when the story is retracted with an “Oooopsie, turn out we were wrong,” the only bit that most people will remember is the original claim. Behold:
Retraction: “Hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolide for treatment of COVID-19: a multinational registry analysis”
Every damn body has been too fast to claim that hydroxychloroquine is either good for Kung Flu, or worse than useless. Formerly respected medical journal The Lancet (remember, the Lancet is where Andrew Wakefield published in 1998 his “paper” that claimed a link between vaccines and autism; it was only retracted in 2010, and the damage had long since been done and of course continues) published a paper that claimed that hydroxychloroquine was useless in fighting off the Commie Cough and actually made the patients health worse. And now they’ve retracted it because the original authors were not transparent with their data:
Our independent peer reviewers informed us that Surgisphere would not transfer the full dataset, client contracts, and the full ISO audit report to their servers for analysis as such transfer would violate client agreements and confidentiality requirements. As such, our reviewers were not able to conduct an independent and private peer review and therefore notified us of their withdrawal from the peer-review process.
Which sure reads like “we published *without* doing an actual peer review.” Because shouldn’t they have asked for this data *before* publication?
Jun 042020