Clones from stem cells

 critters, Hmm..., news, science, science fiction  No Responses »
Aug 022022
 

Using only skin cells, Israeli lab makes synthetic mouse embryos with beating hearts

“Synthetic embryo” is an odd turn of phrase. They got them to grow for eight days outside of a uterus, getting to the point of having brains and beating hearts.

They are similar to regular embryos, but are not viable for implantation.

He foresees a day when sick patients may give skin or blood cells for the growth of artificial embryo-like structures, which could in turn yield the cells needed to grow organs.

I saw that movie… had Boromir, Black Widow and Obi Wan.

In any event, if this line of research continues successfully, the implications could be remarkable. never mind growing organs: this will allow people to clone themselves. This also involves “incubators” that are effectively artificial wombs, allowing people to have babies without the bother of carrying babies… no need to put the mother life, health, comfort at risk. No need, in fact, for a mother at all: this sort of thing will allow a man to grow a clone of himself.

How long before the *ability* to grow clones becomes the *expectation* to grow clones? As in… when this technology is made practical, how long before “non-traditional” people start demanding that insurance companies and the government pay for this so they can have babies that nature would not otherwise allow?

 Posted by at 10:08 pm

A rejection of garbage

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Aug 022022
 

Now this is funny:

‘Irredeemable’ ‘Batgirl’ movie gets ‘shelved’ by Warner Bros. despite $70M price tag: source

A lot of movies get green-lit and then stopped before production because the studio realizes it’s too expensive, or the script is trash, or the actors/director are just not going to work out. It’s kinda rare for a studio to spend $70-$100 million on a movie, nearly complete the thing, show it to test audiences and then go, “Nah, hide this damn thing, let it never see the light of day.” Seems weird that they probably need to spend a dozen million more to complete it, then they can release it to whatever income it’ll get, but their math suggests that they’d be better off just eating what they’ve already spent and calling it a day.

Warner Brothers seems schizophrenic with its DC-comics properties. Non-DCEU movies like “The Batman” and “Joker” do ok, but the main-line DCEU films have had a tendency to flop. “Batgirl” had Leslie Grace (who?) in the title role, along with JK Simmons as James Gordon (as he was in “Justice League”) and Michael Keaton as Batman… you know, from 1989, not Ben Affleck from “Justice League.” Buh? It also has Brendan Frasier as the villain. But looking at the IMDB page… everyone else is a “Who’s That?” of Hollywood Z-listers.

One can hope that Warner Brothers – and Hollywood as a whole – will learn to not make trash in the first place. I’ll believe it when I stop seeing garbage on screen.

Lookin’ at *you,* Star Trek, Star Wars, Dr. Who…

 Posted by at 4:48 pm

Poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke

 blather, Hmm..., news, politics  No Responses »
Aug 022022
 

Pelosi arrives in Taiwan, vowing U.S. commitment; China enraged

I’m torn. Telling West Taiwan to go pound sand, that the United States can have business and diplomatic relations with whomever we want? I’m all for that. On the other hand, the current administration has shown itself to be so weak and incompetent that the ChiCom junta were probably already itching to start something, and now the administration has given them one more thing to get in a snit over. On the gripping hand, if China pouts and throws a loud tantrum but *doesn’t* actually do anything, they will be in some sense weakened by this.

 Posted by at 3:21 pm

This would have been a model collection to have

 art, awesomeness, eBay, history, models, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Aug 022022
 

Currently on eBay is a photo of a to-scale collection of NASA rockets from Redstone to Saturn V. This must date from the early 70’s… late enough to capture the damaged Skylab, early enough not to include Shuttle. The photo is ok, I suppose… what I would have wanted are the actual models. I’ve seen some of these, scattered here and there across museums (of course, more than one of each were made, probably at the Marshal or Johnson model shops), but to my knowledge I don’t think I’ve seen all of them together like this.

The same seller also has a Rocketdyne H-1 manual for sale that I’d snap up in a heartbeat if he didn’t have a four hundred dollar pricetag on it…

 Posted by at 1:39 pm

Looks like somebody needs to be in prison. I mean, *under* prison.

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Aug 012022
 

28 women file suit over ‘night of terror’ in Indiana jail, alleging incarcerated men bribed jail officer for keys​. Two women say they were raped

Short form: nearly 30 women in this jail claim that male prisoners bribed a guard to give them keys that gave them access to the womens part of the prison, and spent *hours* assaulting and raping all the women they could.

If this is true: the guard, who was fired and will stand trial in November, needs to become a permanent guest of the state. The male prisoners who were involved with this… we don’t need them, nor their contribution to the carbon footprint. Other prison guards seem to have been aware of what was going on and did nothing. They also need to be given the opportunity of spending a few years looking through those same bars but from the other side.

What the frak is wrong with people?

 Posted by at 11:28 pm

Looking for: Weber F-106 Ejection Seat diagrams

 aircraft, drawings, history  No Responses »
Aug 012022
 

This is not for me. Instead, I was contacted by Someone Some Of You Might Know (and whose work *all* of you should know), who is working on a project and needs a bit of help. Specifically, dimensioned, accurate, detailed diagrams of the Weber ejection seat used on the F-106:

Sadly, this is the best I seem to have on hand:

Anybody have anything they can share or point to?

 Posted by at 10:38 pm

This robbery did not go to plan

 awesomeness, dumbassery, news, weapons, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Aug 012022
 

The most “BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA” thing you’ll see today:

Elderly store owner opens fire on would-be robber armed with rifle in Norco

Justin Johnson, 22, of Inglewood, Jamar Williams, 27, of Los Angeles, and Davon Broadus, 24, of Las Vegas, were each taken into custody in the hospital parking lot and booked into the Robert Presley Detention Center for robbery and conspiracy. They are being held in lieu of $500,000 bail.

The primary suspect, a 23-year-old male, remains hospitalized in critical, but stable condition, and his identity has not been released at this time. He will be booked into a Riverside County jail upon his release from the hospital, authorities said.

Heh. Weird that the guy who served as a buckshot sponge wasn’t named.

Seriously: screw those guys. Best possible outcome would be if that “critical but stable condition” upgrades to “room temperature.” Then not only is that oxygen thief deleted from the timeline, but his three buddies now get sent up on felony murder, hopefully staying in prison long enough to no longer be a threat to the gene pool.

UPDATE: the store owner is an 80-year old guy. A guy who had a heart attack not long after this, so the criminals should be charged with *that,* too. On the raw security footage you can hear the criminal screaming something; I couldn’t originally make out what it was, but now that I know it’s “He shot my arm off,” I can hear it clear as day. You can see on the video that his arm is still there, so the criminal might be exaggerating. Or, with luck, he’s not, and now he’s down one limb.

 

 Posted by at 6:18 pm

The flip side of Engrish

 AARRRGH, art, dumbassery, humor, wisdom, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Aug 012022
 

I don’t care who you are, this right here is *funny.*

If you think it’d be just neato-keen to get a tattoo in some foreign language, go right ahead. But is it really so much of a bother to put some actual thought into it first? I checked out a number of these, both Chinese and Japanese, on Google Translate, and the video seems to be generally correct in the wacky translations of the ones that are shown. Which means that if you want, say, “courage” tatted on your arm in Chinese, you could get 勇氣  (Yǒngqì) and feel *reasonably* confident that you won’t come off as too much of a fool. Heck, at least you could do your translation, print it out and show it to a Chinese speaker and see if they say it means what you think it does. Is it really *that* friggen’ hard?

I bet a lot of Chinese-speaking tattoo artists are tempted to slap “愚蠢的白人自由主義者” on their customers.

 

 Posted by at 9:01 am
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