October 28, 2018

The Chances of Anything Coming From Mars Are a Million to One He Said

It's been a week from hell and you may be asking yourself "What next?!"


This is next...

For the past few weeks, while we've been distracted by hurricanes, lunatics and blacklists, astronomers have been observing plumes coming from the Arisa Mons volcano on Mars. 'Top Men' have concluded that this steam coming out of the top of a volcano is not, in fact volcanic. The leading publicly discussed theories seem to be the seasonal sublimation of a dust covered glacier or clouds condensing around water droplets blown off the volcano.



Of course, gentle readers, we have watched enough of the Discovery Channel to know that a fuzzy picture means Bigfoot, UFOs or worse and I think we are all well read enough to grasp what the sighting of anomalous plumes on Mars right before Halloween really means. 

'Uuu-Laa."

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 12:59 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 152 words, total size 2 kb.

October 27, 2018

That Could Have Sucked So Much More

In Fact...
It didn't really suck at all. 


Season 6 of RWBY is off to a rollicking good start.The production values are now almost movie quality and this first episode has best action scene the show has had since Monty died. The fight scene is so much of the episode that it arguably derails the story at one point, but the episode doesn't really suffer for it.. Regards pacing and plotting, this does not even look like it was done by the same people who did the end of last season. 

After the dumpster fire that was last season's finale, I'm on my guard, but this season is really REALLY looking promising.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 04:45 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 119 words, total size 1 kb.

The Suck Continues

 No the week is still not over. 


From radio and TV, It looks like an unknown number of people-shaped colostomy bags have blasted their way into a Pittsburgh Synagogue which, it being Saturday, was full of worshippers. Reports point to a lot of fatalities. There is still gunfire.

UPDATE: It may be just one guy. Gunfire persists.

UPDATE:
They took the bastard alive?!
It looks like there was a Bris ceremony being performed when the fiend came in.
8 dead at least.

UPDATE:
There are reports that the fellow, in addition to being a vile anti-semite, also despises the President with a passion. This makes perfect sense given the Presidents family ties and his actual policies. However, as far as I can tell, these reports, while being widely disseminated, all track back to one, rather dubious source. However, there is reportedly an archive of the murderer's Gab feed here



Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 12:48 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 152 words, total size 2 kb.

October 26, 2018

Whelp

Trump-supporting, bodybuilding, Native American, Florida strip-club worker and Chippendale is the 'MAGAbomber'.


It is exactly as we secretly suspected.


"Yep. Florida Man."

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 01:47 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 23 words, total size 1 kb.

October 25, 2018

First 2 Minutes


The last season of RWBY looking promising enough that the inevitable betrayal could sting quite a bit.

Just two days to go.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:50 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 25 words, total size 1 kb.

October 24, 2018

These Are Those Crazy Years Heinlein Warned Us About

It's not just Washington, there is crazy all over the country.

In Florida, some middle school girls decided to bring knives to school and were going to cause mischief. 

Well that's sad but not completely unhear....
WAIT WHAT?


When asked about motivation, the girls reportedly told police that they were Satan worshipers. According to police, the girls planned to drink their victims’ blood out of the goblet they were found with. They also discussed eating their victims' flesh and leaving body parts at the school's entrance before killing themselves."Killing all of these students was in hopes it would make them worse sinners ensuring that after they committed suicide ... (they) would go to hell so they could be with Satan," the arrest affidavit reads.

They were hiding in the bathroom to pounce on the first and second graders who they were confident they could overpower. 

Fortunately they were not the brightest bulbs on the tree so no one was hurt. 

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, some dude was caught trying to purchase radioactive material to use as a murder weapon. He is a career criminal and politician known to the police as Segway Boy.

There are those who believe that watching anime and reading comic books has no benefits or applicability to day to day life, but it is really beginning to look like the U.S. has developed a need for at least one Magical Girl and a costumed superhero.


Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:34 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 247 words, total size 2 kb.

Oh This Will Help Calm Things I'm Sure (UPDATED)

It looks like some creep has sent pipe bombs to prominent Democrats. I guess he/she decided that the actions of the Unabomber and James Hodgkinson are examples and not horrible warnings.


UPDATE

Oh good grief.

Also. Regarding today's outbreak of TwitterMadness: We really don't know anything about these things or who sent them other than the silly logo, so holding forth about False Flag ops, Incel edgelords or Larry The Cable Guy fandom is the exact opposite of helpful.



Remember, whoever did this was probably a nutbar. This would make trying to figure out motive via inferring who logically and rationally stands to benefit a fools errand since logic and rationality may not be in play. 

UPDATE 2:
Finally! Some actual facts from Pixy in the comments.
...those fake ISIS stickers are literal false flags.

So THERE! No matter how this turns out, certain people will be able to save face. Thanks Pixy!

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 02:13 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
Post contains 162 words, total size 2 kb.

I'm Sure This is a Story of Low Importance

...that has no ramifications for our national discourse whatsoever.


Also in Colorado, some of the voting instruction books are missing pages.



It's unclear if the Adams county ballots have been found or replaced, but according to the article, the Weld County Ballots were duplicated, meaning that there are thousands of extra ballots floating around in the wilds of Colorado.

Oy.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:29 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 83 words, total size 1 kb.

October 22, 2018

And Then, As I Stood Before the Refrigerator

It dawned upon me.

Don't they cremate people in Japan?

In related news, I watched the first three episodes of Zombieland Saga again.


Regarding some of the concerns brought up by cxt217 in the comments of the earlier post:

The agent/human beatbox/cosmetologist is actually a character trope of sports manga and to an extent idol shows as well.  He's rather over the top, but not by as much as one might think given the genres involved.

Regarding concerns about Hoshikawa,  

I wonder if, in addition to everything else the show is, this counts as Isekai?

Shipstorm  

Please use spoiler tags.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:29 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 36 words, total size 3 kb.

Astounding!

Via Pixy, comes news that researchers have discovered references to a novel length version of John Campbell's short story Who Goes There? (The literary basis for The Thing, The Thing and The Thing, that Hammer movie about the Russian train and ...this thing.)





It's Kickstarter and rewards are $7 for e-book, $12, for paperback and $25 for hardcover plus all three have 10 different bundles of classic sci-fi stories including the John W. Campbell megapack. 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 06:48 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 87 words, total size 2 kb.

Happy Ruger Day

10/22 is Ruger Day. Everyone celebrate! Sadly there were no format relevant 10/22 pictures that weren't nightmare fuel so here's a Blackhawk instead.




Image is Colt Revolver Tan from Girls Frontline, but if you look closely you'll note she's holding a Blackhawk complete with Ruger Logo.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 02:13 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 49 words, total size 1 kb.

October 21, 2018

ZombieLand Saga

I suddenly find myself at a loss for words. 

I read the blurb. But what the blurb describes...that's not what I watched.



From the Blurb...

A typical morning. The usual music. Their normal lives. The peace these seven girls experience will suddenly be destroyed. By the living dead... zombies. A reality that they never wanted a part of, an amazing and terrifying zombie world. They all share one wish: "We want to live." These girls will struggle through this saga, in order to achieve a miracle. MAPPA, Avex Pictures, and Cygames team up to bring you a juicy, 100% original anime. A timeless shocker for all audiences, a brand new style of zombie anime, will soon rise.

Now ignore the blurb. 

Completely.

Just go watch Zombie Land Saga posthaste.

No. I mean NOW!

Trust me.

This is the show to beat this season.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 03:05 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 145 words, total size 1 kb.

Thank You Mauser

If not for your post, I never would have watched this show.


It's not like the poster is devoid of appeal...



...but it and the blurb didn't really grab me. 

However, unlike the show reviewed below, this is not exactly what it says on the tin. While that poster is not, strictly speaking, dishonest, it does not adequately convey what this show is about.

Eight Word Title With Bunny Girl In It now has me totally  hooked. Despite the poster and an early scene with one of the characters running around in a bunny suit, this is a really creepy show and reminds me most of the Josei horror that was popular at the turn of the century. 

It's low key. It's well written and it's keeping me on the edge of my seat.

The characters are well done, likable and react to the just plain "off" things happening around them in rational but believable ways, while still trying to deal with day to day life.


" Yeah. I agree. Shadowbanning is a real problem." 


2 episodes in this is definitely looking like a keeper.


Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 01:08 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 189 words, total size 2 kb.

In Todays World...




This is an important component of one's last will and testament.



For...some people. 
...
 
I hear tell.

From That Time I was Reincarnated as a Slime, which, perhaps surprisingly, is a show about exactly what it says on the tin.

A slime, for those of you who don't know, is a low level monster in a lot of computer role playing games, in the fantasy genre 'inspired' by D&D. They are essentially a  carnivorous blob of jello for beginning and low level players to learn the ropes on. The lowest and weakest of monsters.

Our hero, having done a genuinely heroic thing which got him killed, is granted a request by the what appears to be the Samsarra AI. However, his dying requests are contradictory and the transmigration algorithm screws up, reincarnating him in a suspiciously D&D like  fantasy world....but as a slime.

Yeah, it's another Isekai show, but the loser wish fulfillment is somewhat tempered by... 

Our hero.

But he's not just a slime! He has an intellect and all of his memories of his education, his job in construction oversight...and playing D&D. 

He quickly becomes the most OP...uh slime... you've ever seen. 

This is genuinely odd.
It's not, necessarily good mind you, but it has potential and at episode 3 it is amusing me quite a bit more than it perhaps ought to. 

Still watching.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 11:08 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 230 words, total size 3 kb.

Follow-Up on that Hardware Hacking Story

A few weeks ago we noted that Bloomberg had broken a HUGE news story that involved China inserting small chips onto mother boards that were intended to allow back door access to ALL THE HARDWARE. 

A week or so later we noted that sourcing was rather....thin, and that no rice grain sized chips had been produced. 

Now it appears that Apple (who has vociferously denied it all along) is demanding a retraction and apology from Bloomberg.  

As Pixy noted in the comments to our first post on the matter, one of the reporters involved has a rather chequered history with computer spying stories.

To Wit:

one of the reporters on the Bloomberg story -- Michael Riley -- had also done a story back in 2014 making bold claims that the NSA had exploited the Heartbleed bug, and multiple other reports ripped that story to shreds, with multiple people denying it and no one else confirming it.
 

That TECHDIRT story goes on to suggest that Bloomberg has whittled away their credibility on this and "set fire to the scraps". 

For example people quoted in the original story are strongly contradicting it.
 
All of Bloomberg's sources on this are and remain anonymous. So as of now, the story seems to be a dumpster fire, that still hasn't produced any spy chips or any evidence whatsoever. 

None of this is to suggest that its a good idea to be subcontracting our most vital components to overseas slaves whose masters hate our guts, or that this isn't an obvious and even likely threat. However, IF this story is in fact bunk, (as now seems likely) the "Cry Wolf Effect" will make it harder to prepare for such matters. Furthermore if this is bunk then those of us who reported it credulously will find it harder to be believed when it does come to pass.

If I were the CCP, that would suit me just fine.


Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 02:03 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 327 words, total size 3 kb.

October 18, 2018

Ao Dais, Hoop Skirts, Cheongsams, Saboks and Other Things YOU Can't Wear For Halloween

So much appropriation here.

I don't think this video could be made in the U.S.A. without someone loosing their job.

 
Fortunately for all that is good and decent, South Korea doesn't care.

May Korea learn from and continue to avoid our society's mistakes.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:15 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 57 words, total size 1 kb.

October 17, 2018

11 More Days

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:39 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 3 words, total size 1 kb.

American Civilization and Where it is Headed

There are two essays by T.S.W. over at DeclinationThe first one looks at what American Civilization actually is and the second looks at current trends and does comparative analysis with historical examples.  Both are quite lengthy (over 4300 words for the second one) but thoughtful.


I strongly recommend you read them both in full.



"You should probably disregard his recommendation if you are easily disturbed, prone to anxiety or depression, are on any medication that can cause suicidal thoughts, or have a particularly frail constitution."

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 03:15 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 93 words, total size 1 kb.

Project H.A.V.O.C.

While the acronym does accurately convey the idea, the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept acronym might need some tweaking for PR reasons.


In any event,  the project is quite interesting and NASA's announcement Monday that it is seriously considering it for one of its upcoming manned missions is genuinely exiting.  Conceived by N.A.S.A.'s Langley Research Center, H.A.V.O.C. has actually been around for a few years, Scott Lowther did an extensive write up on it in U.S. Spacecraft Projects #5 earlier this year. 

The concept involves using a rocket to go to Venus, (which actually is easier to get to than Mars) which will drop a manned survey vehicle into the atmosphere. 

So far so good, except that as we all know, Venus's surface temperature is that of molten lead, its pressure is higher than in the Marianas Trench and after CO2 and Nitrogen, the most common atmospheric gas is sulfuric acid. Also it's gravity is about the same as Earth and so would require a full sized ( Titan or bigger) acid proof rocket to get the crew back into orbit in the unlikely event they weren't baked, dissolved, and crushed.

This is why Venus has not been on N.A.S.A.'s shortlist for places to visit. 

Fortunately there is an amazingly cutting edge technology that allows a manned survey of Venus. 

The Blimp!

The High Altitude Venus Operational Concept takes  advantage of the fact that temperatures 34 miles above the surface are around 80 degrees and the pressure is that of Boulder Colorado. However because the CO2 atmosphere is much denser than nitrogen, earth air is a lifting gas at that altitude. 


 "Dirigibles in space!"

So the idea is to inflate the "landing" party's ship on the way down and have it double as a 423 foot long airship, (Actually a manned, dirigible, rockoon) and then fly around the planet for a few weeks or months doing more detailed surveys than can be done from orbit and tele-operating probes on the surface. This also allows for detailed chemical analysis of the atmosphere, using sensors lowered on tethers into the dense lower atmosphere, much like a oceanographer uses Nansen bottles to sample the deep. 

After completing the mission, the Blimp will launch a rocket from high altitude (Like a Pegasus) and transport the crew into space, where they'll rendezvous with their mother ship and return to Earth.


Assuming an acid proof blimp, Venus is actually much safer than Mars for the astronauts. The gravity is about the same as Earth, the thick atmosphere plus the planet's weak magnetic field would protect the crew from cosmic rays even better than earth does. Venus is much easier to get to and launch windows open much more often than they do for Mars. Two precursor missions, one manned but confined to orbit and one using a 1 quarter scale drone dirigible to test acid proofing and demonstrate that the inflation/deployment system works would precede the crewed Venus blimp sortie..

This is a very good idea for an icebreaker mission. It's more advanced than the moon or asteroid missions currently in the pipeline but still far quicker, easier (and probably safer) than the upcoming mission to Mars. Such a mission would be far shorter in duration than a Mars landing and would be a nice stepping stone on the way to those missions as well as expeditions to the asteroids Mercury, Ceres and Callisto. Flags and footprints albeit without flags or dirty feet (but with a blimp!).

So, today we've discussed rockets, space travel, a manned mission to the planet Venus and an airship, nay, a rockoon even! The only thing that would make this cooler is a swordfight. 

Or floating cities...

The fact that air is a lifting gas means that large, long term settlements are theoretically possible, with all the advantages regarding radiation and gravity listed above. Even the sulfuric acid is not that big a problem as it is mostly below the altitudes proposed, where it is quite dilute. In fact, the temperatures while hotter than Death Valley are such that one could could probably do something one can do nowhere except Earth: step outside in a birthday suit and survive as long as one could hold one's breath (but run to the cold shower/eyewash station afterwards!). As an added bonus, unlike anywhere except Titan, due to the sheer density of the CO2, such cloud cities would also be far better protected against meteor strikes than any city on Earth. 



A 2015 study at Rutgers (preliminary draft here) published the above artwork some time ago to illustrate what a (very hypothetical) more permanent research station might look like and news reports on Monday's announcement almost universally featured the below N.A.S.A. image of a large floating outpost acting as a tender to several H.A.V.O.C. type airships. 



Both of these are very ambitious indeed and probably quite far term. For one thing, despite its advantages, Venus would seem to make little sense as a location for space cities, as they'd be far down a gravity well, there's no water except what one can crack from the sulphuric acid and no easy way to bring in supplies from asteroids. In an O'Neal cylinder or on the surface of a planet like Mars a major damage incident is survivable with space suits and repair teams, on Venus if you balloon deflates you're baked, dissolved, and crushed.

So unless the view of the clouds is SPECTACULAR and sufficiently so to somehow justify interplanetary tourism,  there's little reason to believe that there would ever be any kind of permanent outpost on Venus.  

I mean what could Venus produce that has real value and couldn't be gotten FAR easier somewhere, indeed anywhere else?



"PHOSPHOROUS!" 
Oh right...

One of our Crack Team Of 2-D Science Babes reminds us of this paper (PDF) we perused recently that reviewed what scientists know about Venus's atmosphere. Here's an interesting excerpt...

Venera 13, Venera 14, Vega 1, and Vega 2 descent probes all carried X-ray fluorescence instruments. These instruments measured elemental composition of the cloud particles and found not only sulfur, but also phosphorus, chlorine and iron – notably, as much phosphorus as sulphur in the lower clouds below 52 km [Andreichikov et al, Sov. Astron. Lett. 1986, 1987]. A chemical analysis by Krasnopolsky [PSS, 1985] con- cluded that the phosphorus could be in the form of phosphoric acid (H3PO4) aerosols, which would ac- count for the particulates observed by descent probes down to 33 km altitudes

Emphasis is mine.

Phosphorus, is not a trivial thing.
Phosphorus is absolutely vital to life and while theoretically common on earth is concentrated in useable forms mainly in living organisms and in phosphate rocks (mostly fossils of dead organisms). The amount of free phosphorous pretty much dictates the carrying capacity of the planet and it is a real concern for food production as phosphates are a finite resource. Furthermore, additional sources of phosphorus need to be found if humanity is going to expand into space. such deposits are presumed to exist, but on Earth they seem to have been concentrated by biological action leaving a bit of a chicken-egg problem finding it off planet. Even without off planet colonization phosphorous shortages represent a potential disaster for human food supplies. There is discussion of peak phosphorus here, here and here.  

Even if the perils of peak phosphorus are overstated, it IS a finite resource and most off planet settlements are going to require off planet sources of phosphorus if they are to expand. Phosphorus could well end up being something akin to the dilithium, quanticum 40,or spice Melange of the real future. The only extraterrestrial places that I've read that it exists in other than trace amounts is the above mentioned cloud layer on Venus and the red clouds of Jupiter (bound in phosphene). 

This moves the notion of a floating city on Venus from technically feasible to potentially practical and indeed desirable. See, if the Soviet probes were correct, then there is, in Venus's lower atmosphere, phosphorus (in gaseous form) in greater concentrations than the ubiquitous sulfur. You'd need to pump up atmosphere near the surface, filter out the undesirable stuff and if its phosphoric acid then you have to take out the water and oxygen (I'm sure uses can be found for those) I don't know what reagents might be necessary but this represents a steady supply of phosphorous.  

But wait...there's more. Venus has more sunlight than earth, a zillion times as much CO2, and about 4 times as much atmospheric nitrogen as Earth. There's also water to be had from the phosphoric and sulphuric acid. And remember you're better protected from meteor strikes and cosmic rays than on Earth. A Venusian phosphorus-gas mine could grow all its own food. 


Art from Technica Molodezhi TM - 9 1971 a Soviet Science Magazine

In the longer term, expanding upon such floating farms, Venus could be the breadbasket of the solar system. All that stuff that can be got so much easier on Luna, Mercury, Mars or The Belt? Well, the cloud cities of Venus ought to be able to just buy them. Of course you have solar power out the wazoo so it's at least conceivable that such an outpost might make something useful out of the carbon in the CO2. Note too that the referenced report also mentions the apparent presence of gaseous iron compounds in the lower atmosphere which might be industrially exploitable as well. Finally, Venus has, as mentioned, well more that three Earths worth of nitrogen in its atmosphere. If Venus sold Mars an atmosphere, there'd still be enough left over for thousands of O'Neal Cylinders. Venus has the potential to be not only self-sufficient but an exporter of food, fertilizer and air. 

Of course for any of that that to eventually come to pass we need to confirm the Soviet probe data and do close surveys of the planet. N.A.S.A. seems to be planning just that in the next decade.

This is awesome. Even putting aside the longer term speculations; the fact that N.A.S.A. is looking at innovative missions like this is truly heartening.

With regard to the more ambitious proposals, I think we should begin a movement to have high pressure gaseous phosphoric acid referred to by the trade name "Tibanna". 



UPDATE:
:Fixed some typos. 
:Added 2 additional pictures
:While trying to hunt down a picture credit I discovered that there is an extensive disquisition on the topic of Venusian settlement and even terraforming from 2014 here.  

UPDATE 2:
:Thanks to Pete Zaitcev in the comments there are some links to much earlier thoughts by John Goff on the matter regarding safe rocket recovery here and here as well as Venusian industrial chemistry here and here.


Crackerjack 2-D Science Babe is Rikka from Haganai 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:38 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 1799 words, total size 17 kb.

Apropos of NOTHING

That is our story. We are sticking to it.

If one is in an online forum and something involving an issue that is on the borderline of the established rules requires a decision from a moderator, a call by the moderator that is against one's liking does not make the moderator a marxist. It means they are moderating...that is their job. They don't get paid. And on a large forum they are having to make a LOT of calls and do a lot of work as well as tend to their own lives so if one is told to stop pushing the envelope (which will then entice a whole bunch of edgelord shitposters to shitpost on the edge and make the mod's life even harder) then one should probably not go all derp-chan & call them a Marxist. A Marxist is every bit as bad as a Nazi and we ought not to throw these words around higgly piggly. Yes. I know. Some people do. A majority of them are Marxists. They're also dicks. Don't be a dick. I have confidence that one is better than that. 


"And I believe in you too!"

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 05:40 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 196 words, total size 1 kb.

<< Page 69 of 246 >>
124kb generated in CPU 0.0695, elapsed 0.5464 seconds.
84 queries taking 0.5257 seconds, 457 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.