Blue Checks Banned

 blather, Forward!, Hmm..., Meh., news, politics  No Responses »
Nov 072022
 

So the latest news freakout over Elon Musk buying twitter is that he is banning people impersonating him:

 

Furious Elon Musk Pledges to Ban Anyone Who Changes Their Display Name to “Elon Musk”

Twitter bans comedian Kathy Griffin for impersonating Elon Musk

And so on. Lots of lefties are screeching that this means Musk is opposed to free speech.

 

Here’s the thing, though. The accounts getting banned are “Blue Checks.” You will see a little blue check mark next to some Twitter accounts; these accounts have been verified through some process to be actually who they say they are. This might be a corporate account like Ford or Lockheed; this might be the President of the United States; this might be a journalist or an actor. For most people it doesn’t really matter. But if you’re making Big Money on Twitter and you want to make sure that people know that they can trust that You are in fact You, I guess that little blue check mark is important.

Great, whatever.

But the moment you take your blue check account and change the name to someone else’s – like, say, “Elon Musk” –  and then start making posts impersonating that other person, you are committing fraud. The blue check is supposed to say that You are You, not You are Some Other Person.

So, it’s simple. If you want to have a parody account, great, go right ahead. Just don’t use your already established “blue check” to try to fool people into thinking you are someone else. I’m not sure how this was even supposed to be controversial.

 

And there is another issue with the “blue check verification.” It is supposed to be proof that you are who you say you are, and it is supposed to be an impartial procedure. But there are accusations that the verification was refused sometimes unless you paid someone a bribe. And the bribes were reportedly not small. For a celebrity, fifteen grand might be chump change; but for journalists or “lesser” notables, it was a lot of money. But it would have been worth the price for that little blue check mark. It might even have been *necessary* in some fields, like journalism. In some respects, it’s like a drivers license… needed to do your job, open and available to everyone on a supposedly even playing field. So finding that *anyone* can be verified for a mere eight buck after you blew fifteen large? Yeah, that’s gotta grate.

 

 Posted by at 6:21 pm

Extended (early) ALCM

 aircraft, drawings, history, nukes, projects, weapons  No Responses »
Nov 072022
 

The model AGM-86 Air Launch Cruise Missile began life as a decoy missile, sort of an updated “Quail.” it was decided that the decoy could carry a nuclear warhead, and thus provide a lot more service; this began its development as a cruise missile. As originally envisaged, it had to fit in the some bays that could hold the AGM-69 SRAM missile; this made sense in a lot of ways but strictly limited its capabilities due to the short length. Efforts to increase the range of the missile included adding a droppable belly tank and stretching the fuselage for more internal fuel volume. The latter route was chose, along with making the nose much blunter and more voluminous.Both the external tank and the fuselage stretch meant that it could not long fit in internal SRAM bays, a tradeoff that was deemed worthwhile.

The illustration below dates from mid 1976 at the latest.

The full rez scan has been uploaded to the 2022-11 APR Extras folder on Dropbox for $4 and up APR Patrons/subscribers.

 

 Posted by at 6:17 am

There’s an engineering solution for every problem

 art, awesomeness, Hmm..., humor  No Responses »
Nov 052022
 

I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to Queen Elizerbeth of Britainland’s funeral a while back, so I don’t know if this was the approach that was selected… but it should have been.

@_richardparry_

Hi there just been working on trying to reduce wait times to view the Queen’s coffin at Westminster, let me know what you think I don’t see anyone else working on this #fyp #queenelizabeth #queen #westminster #london #uk

♬ original sound – _richardparry_

 

 Posted by at 7:15 pm

Early A-10

 aircraft, art, history, projects  No Responses »
Nov 052022
 

An artists rendering of the Republic A-10 circa 1971. This is very nearly the final design, but it differs in details; the cockpit canopy is a little off, for instance.

 

 Posted by at 6:51 pm

USNI having a sale

 aircraft, books, cats, history, sales & specials  No Responses »
Nov 052022
 

The US Naval Institute press is having a 50% off sale on their in-print, in-stock books. Sale runs through December 31.

https://www.usni.org/press/books

 

 

If someone wanted to take this opportunity to buy me half-price copies of Friedman’s revised editions of U.S. Submarines Since 1945 and U.S. Aircraft Carriers, I would not object.

 

P.S. What with Annual Mandatory Soulless Consumer Spending Holiday coming up in less that two months, there’s lots of stuff, useful and otherwise, available on Amazon that you can get without having to mingle with the degenerate weirdos who increasingly make up the public. If you start your search for stuff by going through THIS LINK TO AMAZON, a tiny smidgen of whatever you end up spending will get passed on to me, and by extension will be used to feed my cats. You don’t want to disappoint my cats, do you?

 Posted by at 1:06 am

Pelosi news coverage: bizarre

 Crazy, Forward!, Hmm..., news, politics, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Nov 052022
 

Huh.

But then…

There are a lot of weird aspects to this story, a lot of apparent contradictions and inconsistencies. Most news stories that initially seem like a conspiracy theorists wet dream fall apart once the facts come out (witness virtually *every* story related to “racial justice” over the past five or more years); I can easily imagine that this story could just as easily turn into exactly what the official narrative is if the evidence which *should* be available was released. The police body cams, the security camera footage, the identity of the mystery third person. These are not difficult things, like the results of some complicated chemical analysis; these are just “push a few buttons and upload” issues. And yet… that hasn’t happened. Why?

 

 Posted by at 12:18 am

Compare and contrast

 Crazy, Forward!, Hmm..., news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Nov 032022
 

So, yet another attempted political assassination attempt. Let’s watch the national news media fall all over themselves to report on this, shall we?

Midterms horror as Republican candidate’s daughters, three and five, are almost KILLED after gunman opens fire at North Carolina home – where Democrat rival filmed campaign ad – with bullet landing close to where they slept

And

Shot Fired at Family Home of N. Carolina US House Candidate

Can we expect to see the same talking heads and political animals yapping about how the Republicans and right wing rhetoric are responsible for the attack on Paul Pelsosi, now talk about how the Dems and lefties are similarly responsible for this?

 Posted by at 9:17 pm

Small ICBM Art

 art, history, nukes, rockets  No Responses »
Nov 032022
 

An Aerojet rendering, unfortunately not in color, of the Small ICBM (MGM-134 “Midgetman”) from the 80’s. This was a single-warhead missile meant specifically to be carried by and launched from an off-road truck/trailer capable of withstanding a reasonably nearby nuclear blast. The image hear focuses on the second stage; like all post-Minuteman US ICBM’s, the SICBM was solid fueled. The USSR gave up the ghost and as a consequence the SICBM program was cancelled in 1992.

 Posted by at 7:54 pm

Augmented reality contact lens

 Hmm..., science, science fiction, youtube  No Responses »
Nov 032022
 

Still a little clunky, but they’re getting close to a practical unit. The graphics it can place over reality remain monochromatic and low-rez, basically text (looks like circa 1980 home computer stuff), but the fact that they can get *anything* is impressive. I doubt something like this would be a good idea for fighter pilots; G-forces would doubtless suck the things out of place. But for commercial pilot or astronauts? Maybe. Though it’d probably be easier and all-around better for this sort of thing to be integrated into the faceplate of a space helmet. The Hollywood use for this would be communications with secret agents and assassins; an advanced version of this would look invisible and would automatically use facial recognition to spot targets in a crowded room. It would be handy for electricians, bomb techs, surgeons and the like, overlaying schematics and 3D models atop the thing/patient being worked on. For the civilian market, an obvious use would again be facial recognition: you get on a subway, look around, and you’re informed just which of the creepy weirdoes surrounding you have criminal records and for what. Some people might be dismayed to find that random people around them are suddenly maintaining a safe distance, out of pocket-picking and rail-pushing range.

 Posted by at 6:19 pm
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