Aug 252022
Aug 252022
I’m all in favor of megaprojects. Hell, some years ago I made a pretty good stab at a book on the subject… half history of such projects, half illustrated manual of such projects, and half manifesto calling for mankind to plow ahead with such projects. Things like solar power satellites, O’Neill habitats, supra-mundane terraforming, orbital rings, terraformed asteroids (inside and out), Dyson swarms, all that. If mankind is going to make it long-term, we are going to have to do such things, and do rather a lot of them. We will eventually tear apart whole solar systems to rebuild them better. And to get from Here to There, we are going to have to do a lot of intermediate projects… and a lot of them will fail. I suspect that a fair proportion of the early space habitats will turn into disasters; early Mars colonies will be death traps; solar power satellites will fold up like origami. It’s sad, but it’s likely inevitable. It’s not like the history of Europeans colonizing the world was a history of unalloyed success from the get-go; there are whole colonies that just up and friggen’ vanished. But humans learn from such things and do better the next time… and soon enough, the same people who vanished like a fart in the wind at Roanoke have built New York City.
That said: not all megaprojects sound like good ideas. Some that seem like they are probably technically feasible sound like logistic or sociological nightmares. Such is the case with The Line, a whackadoo concept for a skyscraper taller than the Empire State Building… and hundreds of kilometers long. Worse, they want to build the thing in the desert. Worst, they want to build it in *Arabia.* No matter how bad your idea is, building it in a backwards theocratic superstitious cesspit will make your idea even worse.
Aug 242022
A 129-Foot Superyacht Worth Millions Sinks Off the Italian Coast
It’s not clear who owns My Saga, which sails under the Cayman Islands flag. It was built by Italian shipmaker Cantieri San Marco and designed by popular British superyacht designer Tim Heywood. The vessel, which had a teak deck and could accommodate up to 12 passengers, was one of only 1,068 motor yachts in the 35- to 40-meter size range, according to Boat International.
Nei giorni scorsi, la #GuardiaCostiera di #Crotone ha coordinato operazioni di salvataggio di passeggeri ed equipaggio di uno yacht di 40m, affondato a 9 miglia al largo di #CatanzaroMarina.
Avviata inchiesta amministrativa per individuarne le cause. #SAR #AlServizioDegliAltri pic.twitter.com/kezuiivqsM— Guardia Costiera (@guardiacostiera) August 22, 2022
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Not even remotely related, but substantially sadder:
The dugong, a marine mammal related to the manatee, is now functionally extinct in China 🐋 https://t.co/lAMZe2Gwmr
— Times Earth (@Times__Earth) August 24, 2022
China made their dugongs extinct. Good job, ya commie bastards. And pay attention you brain-addled reprobates who think that capitalism is bad for the environment: putting things into the hands of government is *worse.*
Aug 242022
As many have noted, there is a much greater demand for racism in the US than actual supply, so a lot of people simply invent it. This was the case recently where some kids from a little league team near where I currently live went to watch a game in the Little League World Series and caused a bit of a stir. What happened: one of the players on the Hawaiian Little League team, one Jarron Lancaster, has a blond-dyed mohawk haircut. Apparently the kid is good, so some of the players on the Davenport, Iowa, team wanted to emulate him. Being kids, that meant “look like Jarron,” which meant emulating his unique hairstyle. How did they do that? They yoinked the white stuffing out of some cheap stuffed toys and put it on some of their teammates heads in a *vaguely* mohawk-like pattern. They did this, again, to several kids. But what the national broadcast camera caught was them applying stuffing to a black kids head… which image was *promptly* leaped upon by race hustlers desperate for racism, because cotton + black kid = racism.
A new photo from the Little League Classic shows a white player had the cotton placed in his hair as well. https://t.co/fcihFiZgUI
— TMZ (@TMZ) August 23, 2022
Here’s the context. Lancaster from Hawaii is a straight stud baseball player. All the kids are getting his autograph. pic.twitter.com/pEuu1R8h37
— Author, K.E. Ganshert (@KEganshert) August 23, 2022
The kids on the Davenport team were promptly vilified by some of the worst, dumbest people online, the kind who are easily led and resistant to facts and explanations. Were the kids racist? Doesn’t seem so. The stuffing-mohawks were applied to white and black kids, in clear appreciation of a kid who appears to be native Hawaiian. This *should* be a vaguely heart-warming moment of cross-ethnicity good sportsmanship. But these kids just got a quick lesson in the realities of woke outrage culture. That might be rough for them now, but if they are smart, it will be a lesson they will learn and take to heart, knowing to never give the woke an inch, and to never, ever trust them.
The supposedly racist incident at the Little League World Series and the surprising truth
CBS Sports Anchor Lies About Little League Players, Calls Them Racists
Ugh.
Aug 242022
You've also got the waitress who couldn't afford to go to school, and maybe it's no longer an option, but her taxes till she dies will pay for the education for lawyers making a few hundred grand a year moving forward.
— Unacceptable Control Group 🇨🇦🇳🇱 (@Control_Group_V) August 24, 2022
So… people who didn’t go into debt getting unaffordable degrees in subjects they knew wouldn’t have a good rate of return will get bailed out by poor people who couldn’t afford college in the first place. Got it. This will incentivize not only academically useless students to take academically useless courses pursuing economically ridiculous degrees, it will incentivize colleges and universities to jack up their rates, because now Uncle Sam will be thoughtlessly paying the schools *even* *more.* This will make a higher education even more expensive to pursue, and more out of reach for those who aren’t rich.
The Dems hate you. They hate us all.
Aug 242022
I approve of how this small business owner handled this. Of course, this wouldn’t work in all cases; in the case of multiple thieves, you’re putting your life at risk confronting them. But if you can do so reasonably safely, especially if you have backup… then the more of this that happens, the less of this will *need* to happen.
@itssophiamilan The cops also found $300 worth of banana republic, stuff from target, and Adam and Eve….Don’t steal from small businesses like mine okay?! #fyp #thief #ftb #womenownedbusiness #karma #iknowilookamess #htx #houston #houstontx #montrose #montrosehouston
Aug 242022
So this guy says the dumbest thing imaginable:
In discussions of reducing car dependency, one often hears, "What about people in remote rural areas?" And my gut instinct is — people shouldn't be living there in the first place. The solution is to give them generous grants to relocate among other humans.
— Adam Kotsko (@adamkotsko) August 21, 2022
Yes, it’s a stupid take, and he’s apparently not kidding or spouting satire. But he’s just some random goober, who cares. What makes the post interesting are the *responses* to it. Go take a look. Many a sensible chuckle to be had.
Aug 232022
Monkeypox fears lead to changes in sexual behavior
The fact that this idea is newsworthy is a stunning indictment of just how monumentally, sociopathically selfish and downright stupid so many people are.
Aug 232022
A video calling out Republican mid-term election commercials featuring guns:
Now, *nobody* should be under the delusion that Republicans in general or these in particular truly have the 2nd Amendment at heart. I accept that chances are *really* good that for at least some of these politicians, the guns they’re shown holding are simply props. But they are holding these props knowing full well that by doing so they will annoy the sort of horrible people who are offended at the idea of American civilians having anything like the sort of right to defend themselves that the IRS’s new army will have.
Aug 232022
A video that starts with something VP Harris said back in January, something that every American politician *should* not only say, but believe and work to protect:
“Each country has it’s own identity, it’s own culture, it’s own history, and that should be respected…”
Yup. And “every country” includes *this* country.
But bypassing that for the moment, she then goes on to… well, is “lie” too strong a word?
Kamala Harris says she “rarely, if ever” refers to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador as the ‘Northern Triangle,’ out of respect for each country's "identity."
Seems like a weird thing to lie about ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/OLx9I8zIEi
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) January 28, 2022