“Chrome Lords”

 art, awesomeness, history, Hmm..., science, science fiction, youtube  No Responses »
Jan 072023
 

The title of this YouTube video claims that “Chrome Lords” was a 1988 movie that ripped off “RoboCop” and “Terminator.” But in fact “Chrome Lords” never existed. The video is ten minutes of “stills” from a movie that never was… all the images were produced by an AI. And other than places where it looks like AI/CGI, it *does* rather look like one of those schlocky 1980’s crapfest movies. So, well done. But here’s the thing… give it a few years (5? 10? 20?) and someone will have an AI take a few text prompts and spit out a full script, feed these images and the new script into another AI… and shazam, “Chrome Lords” will exist as an actual 90 minute horrible movie. But who – if anyone – will own the copyright?

 

 Posted by at 11:53 pm

What the US gets from the Russia-Ukraine war

 Hmm..., politics, russian empire, weapons, wisdom  No Responses »
Jan 052023
 

A lot of people think that the US is simply throwing money away. These people are wrong.

 

The majority of the weapons that the US is giving to the Ukrainians are old stock, stuff that would have gone to the incinerator or the scrap heap pretty soon anyway. If you expend a million-dollar weapon that you were otherwise going to simply throw away, you haven’t lost money. But if you expend that weapon for a practical purpose, you not only affect the course of the conflict, you also *learn* things.

 Posted by at 11:06 am

So how are things going…

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., news, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 042023
 

A couple of tweets showing the spectacular state of American cities today…

Someone needs a tazin’…

And New York City? Don’t go there.

Here’s a fun related article:

Remote Work Is Poised to Devastate America’s Cities

People no longer *need* to live in big cities quite as much as they used to. The pandemic helped this process along by forcing people to work from home; and once people – and businesses – realized that people could work from *anywhere* and not have to deal with commutes and the nightmare that is the urban area, a lot of people *wanted* to bail out of big cities. Turns out Poop Central, AKA San Francisco, is seeing a *lot* of empty offices as people pull the D-rings and flee that rathole.

 Posted by at 1:40 pm

This is beautiful

 art, awesomeness, Hmm..., science fiction, youtube  No Responses »
Jan 042023
 

The last ten years or so have seen massive denigration of long-established fandoms. Star Trek, Star Wars, LotR, etc. These fandoms have deep and beloved lore, and many of the modern producers simply don’t care. Why respect the canon, when there is a message to deliver?

 

Fortunately, this is not always the case. Sam Witwer is an actor probably best known for voice acting. He’s voiced Darth Maul in the “Clone Wars” and “Rebels” series, and “Starkiller” in the “Force Unleashed” video game, where he also did motion capture. It’s that latter one that’s of interest here. Turns out that he was knowledgeable in Star Wars lore, and knew how to apply that knowledge… and the director of the game knew to respect that. (This was a 2008 release, before the modern age of garbage; but witness Henry Cavill’s love of Warcraft 40K secured him a post-DCU future.) Behold:

 

 Posted by at 3:41 am

Is there a polymer chemist in the house?

 AARRRGH, aircraft, art, Hmm..., models, science  No Responses »
Jan 032023
 

Something like 15-20 years ago I bought a 1/18 scale P-47D “Ultimate Soldier” toy. This line of large scale accurate fighter planes was sort of peak Golden Age Of Toys For Adults, even though they sold for a reasonable price at WalMart. They make great display pieces even without structural modifications or repainting, but they are generally screaming for such.

 

Anyway, the P-47D spent years on a shelf in my shop in Utah. From time to time it caught direct sunlight. This discolored the paint *slightly,* but it turned the originally crystal clear canopies milky white. I’ve left them in the dark for some years to see if that would help… nope. I boiled them… nope. I nuked them, if perhaps briefly, with UV; no change. Anybody got any ideas? Why did this happen? How can it be reversed? Scrubbing has shown that this is not a surface feature, but seems to be throughout the plastic.

At some point, recasting them with crystal clear resin might be the only solution, but it’s not one I’m fond of. None of the other canopies did this, so it would seem these two pieces of plastic came from a bad batch.

 Posted by at 8:56 pm
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