Tolkein rights: oh, boy! Chaos!

 art, Hmm..., news  No Responses »
Aug 192022
 

Swedish entertainment company buys rights to ‘Lord of the Rings’ films and other Tolkien intellectual property

The deal gives Embracer the rights to “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” film trilogies and any Tolkien-related movies, video games, board games, merchandising, theme parks and stage productions.

Article doesn’t make it clear how this interacts with Amazon’s billion-dollar forthcoming fan-film series. It *seems* like they’ve got the rights to the same thing Amazon has the rights to, so when Amazon’s little project turns out to be terrible, in theory this new company could come along and make a series set in exactly the same time frame and region, but do it properly and completely erase “Rings of Power.” Not that they necessarily will, mind you… but if “Rings of Power” turns into a complete disaster (as all evidence to date suggests rather strongly), that’ll be incentive to not screw with the lore and insult the fanbase. Being a Swedish company, one cautiously wonders if any future enterprise might cast Scandinavians as elves, as would seem utterly appropriate.

 Posted by at 12:16 am

Me 163 with a jet engine

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, history, models, youtube  No Responses »
Aug 182022
 

Sure, it’s only 1/3 scale, but it’s still quite impressive. The inlets for the jet engine are relatively well hidden… NACA-style flush inlets below the wing roots. It can be yours for the low, low, incredibly low price of only € 2.995 9not counting the jet engine). And when you crash it on your first flight… well, you’ll have that authentic “aww, scheisse” experience the Luftwaffe so often enjoyed.

 

 

 Posted by at 5:53 am

This week on “Bass Masters”

 AARRRGH, awesomeness, Crazy, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Aug 172022
 

This video is from Ukraine, but is actually a few years old. Rather than depicting the aftermath of a missile or bomb strike, there was a nearby quarry and an explosion went a little “funny.” One thing that I *would* like an explanation on: at right about 26 seconds in, on the right side of the screen there’s a sizable plume.. and something large and dark seemed to *jump* out of the water. Theory: a very large chunk of rock finally fell out of the sky and hit something in the water, perhaps a log, and the thing that got hit see-sawed out.

 Posted by at 11:49 pm

Rain Of fire: updated

 AARRRGH, Hmm..., news, politics, russian empire, weapons, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Aug 172022
 

It seems the Russians are dropping air-burst incendiary weapons onto Ukraine, videos linked below. This is certainly visually impressive and doubtless monumentally intimidating… but damned if the engineer in me doesn’t wonder about how incredibly inefficient this seems to be. I mean… it looks like a *lot* of the WP magnesium is burning up while still in the sky. What’s you’d want is for it to burn in the *ground,* where it could do some damage. Clearly a lot of it is making it to the ground, but every bit that combusts Up There is that much less to do actual damage Down Here. Clearly these sort of weapons need to be set off somewhere above the ground for maximum area effect, but these seem to be getting set off way too high. I’m fuzzy on the legality of using incendiary weapons like this against civilian areas. I know it was a popular pastime during World War Two, but it was my understanding that the rules have changed a bit since then. But then, invading a sovereign nation in order to annex their territory is *also* supposed to be disallowed, and yet here we are.

UPDATE: more vids

Yeah, it’s visually damned impressive. It just seems like a *lot* of the incendiary potential is getting wasted. Which, under the circumstances, is a good thing, since these seem to be attempts to turn neighborhoods into firestorms.

 Posted by at 1:47 am

The pandemics march on

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., news, politics, science, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Aug 162022
 

How thrilling.

Texas toddler presumed positive for monkeypox

Regardless of how the kid contracted the disease… A) it’s not the kids fault and B) kids tend to crawl all over each other. The more morons who couldn’t control their baser actions get the disease, the more likely they are to pass them on to kids, and then the more likely those kids are to pass them on to *other* kids. And soon enough… BAM, the schools shut down again.

A dog tested positive for monkeypox, and may have contracted the virus from his owners, raising questions about human-to-animal transmission

One more reason for the barbarians in charge of China to whack all their pets. If I lose pets due to this nonsense, I’m at the very least going to join a  class action suit against any organization that put on “Pride Month” events that spread this. My cats busting out on pustules because a bunch of perverts and weirdos could keep it in their pants for a few weeks would be the sort of thing that I would not forgive.

Polio May Have Been Spreading in New York Since April

Yay. I know Progressives think that FDR was actually a good President with a lot to emulate… but come on.

And it’s good to see how well Our Leaders  follow the science:

 Posted by at 11:52 pm

Sometimes the kids get it

 art, awesomeness, history, youtube  No Responses »
Aug 162022
 

The video quality is terribly potato, but the reactions are remarkably spot-on. I’ve watched these two from time to time and their reactions to things can be hit or miss (they just didn’t *get* “Airplane”), but their response to “Field of Dreams” is precisely as it aught to be. It’s aided by the fact that they went into this apparently cold, having no knowledge of the movie.

This was a remarkable movie. “Is this Heaven? No, it’s Iowa” was all over the place back in the day… of course, I lived right next to Iowa when this came out and soon enough spent four years getting edumacated there.

 

 

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Field+of+Dreams+Movie+Site/@42.498182,-91.0547428,301m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x87e34d88d2d4f709:0xc7f292cb89e201ed!8m2!3d42.4976182!4d-91.0542824

 

 Posted by at 12:43 am
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