July 22, 2018
I'm Not Getting an Enthusiastic Vibe
Now that things have settled down a bit, I'm getting caught up on my "to watch list" and looking for something current to watch...aside from MHA, the new season has nothing that really jumps out at me. So I went a-looking and I'm not seeing a lot of enthusiasm....
Pete over at アニ・ノートhas a long list of shows that he's dropped.
Then there's this...
I followed the manga, and perhaps I was poisonedWhich made me laugh, though it may not be entirely in context.
Medieval Otaku has related thoughts with a post titled "Skip the Summer Season".
I can’t think of a better opportunity for catching up with one’s backlog.
He does have a kind word for Stein's Gate 0 though.
Don over at Zoopraxiscope is similarly unimpressed.
I almost quit Asobi Asobase – workshop of fun – in five minutes, but I stuck it out and watched the entire first episode. I should have trusted my initial reaction.
He did have kind things to say about the educational show Cells At Work which Wonderduck also liked
...our main character is a red blood cell. That wears jean shorts and a cabbie hat. What's not to love?
For my own part, I'm still watching My Hero Academia, and am starting the original Stein's Gate, so as to be able to watch the new one, and am catching up on Yona of the Dawn.
I'm not watching much else in the way of fiction since The Expanse went off the air. OTOH since I'm not in college for the next month and a half, I can actually do some reading(!).
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July 20, 2018
49 Years
Over 300 thousand years after people first gazed up at our planets companion, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin strode across its surface. by 1973, 12 men from Earth had walked on the moon.
For 300 thousand years no one alive had been to the moon.
We are very close to that being true again,.
This would be a rather shameful and worrisome regression to the mean.
This worry is more profound than mere disappointment at opportunities lost. This, if it is indeed permanent marks the first time that western civilization has turned its back upon a frontier.
Ours is a civilization that has, over the last 300 odd years, been a most remarkable and generally hopeful deviation from the squalid norms of those 300 millennia.
A regression to the mean of human history is something to be truly dreaded, and if this ignoring of a new frontier is a leading indicator, then the future promises to be grim indeed.
Let's hope that the lunatics (hah!) that continue to dream big can provide the impetus for our society to continue its deviation from the previous cycles of human history...or at least provide a lifeline for some to escape its return to the norm.
Art by the late Roy Scarfo who understood that if, for some bizarre, illogical, reason, skirts.(especially miniskirts) were ever to become a thing in space, they would be closely associated with tights.
Because physics.
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July 19, 2018
Yet More Intersectionality
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July 17, 2018
Intersectionality: Am I Doing it Right?
Art by Mokerou
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July 16, 2018
49 Years Ago Today
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Well, Crap
While I was away, the president did his best Obama imitation both before and during a speech in Helsinki.
Lots of people are pointing out that Obama did comparable asshattery and the press batted not an eyelash and that the press are hypocritical partisan hacks and these people are, of course, correct. Indeed, anyone who has such a profound double standard is a partisan hack and deserves not one whit of respect....at least until they look into the mirror.
I was pissed when Obama was all obsequious and weak and went on his apology tour because it was wrong for a president to do and kneecapped America's foreign policy...and
an American Does.Not.Dis.America.While.Overseas.
This goes doubly for the POTUS.
Any POTUS.
Even one's that I generally like and was pleasantly surprised and impressed with up to this point.
If the standard is, "Well, Obama and Hillary did it, so it's OK!" then I suggest one needs higher standards.
So, anyway.
My take on recent diplomatic junket....
The trip was going great, until it wasn't.
Mr. President needs to apologize to us, not for us.
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July 15, 2018
I Hadn't Logged Into Twitter For Over Two Years
Today, after following a link I ended up hopping between random Twitter threads. I was able to draw some conclusions. First, the level of discourse has not improved. Second, that is an hour and a half of my life that I cannot regain. Third, differentiating between stupidity, simple ignorance, provincialism, malice, and the Dunning Krugger Effect is nigh impossible, but there's a lot of it, generally in combination with a lack of self awareness...
Then suddenly and quite unexpectedly, Chibi Thomas Jefferson showed up, and dispensed justice with three keystrokes and a mouseclick before vanishing to fight evil elsewhere.
I laughed...hard. Sadly, I closed the tab without screencapping it and I'll never find it again, but know this Chibi Thomas Jefferson...you made my day.
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News From the World of 'Splody!
One of the Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes brings us the delightful news that Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has declassified about 300 more above ground nuclear test films.
Both the above and below are of the same test of the SADM, nuclear backpack bomb (positioned 110 feet underground).
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More on Ross 128b
It appears that one of the planets orbiting Ross128 is not only in the habitable zone (as discovered last year), but it appears to be very similar in mass and temperature to Earth.
According to Wikipedia...
The planet is considered as one of the most Earth-like worlds ever found in relation to temperatures, size and rather quiet host star. Ross 128 b is very close in mass to Earth, only about 35% more massive, and is likely around 10% larger in radius. Gravity on the planet would be only slightly higher. Also, its host star Ross 128 is an evolved star with a stable stellar activity.
Other red dwarf stars have planets, notably Proxima Centauri, however recent analysis has shown that Proxima in particular is a flare star that would have stripped their planets of any atmosphere. In contrast, Ross128 does have flares, but it appears that they are quite mild by comparison.
Besides, being only 11 light years from Earth and the second closest exoplanet, there's one other thing interesting about the Ross128 system.
Late last year, some anomalous radio transmission were detected by Arecibo and seemed to be coming from Ross128. This phenomenon has not been observed again, and "top men" theorize that those transmissions were garbled bleed-over from an as-yet-unidentified satellite.
However, we can draw some different conclusions using the "Discovery Channel Method of Logic"..
"Or as we like to call it, Occam's Swiffer"
If translated properly, the signal actually says...
1: "It's too late for us! They are coming for you nex...."
Or
2: "Geb shagg stell'bsna ch' Tsathoggua r'luh llll, s'uhn hrii Nyarlathotep vulgtlagln hai nog nanw chtenff naChaugnar Faugn vulgtlagln grah'noth."
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July 14, 2018
So...Texas
Is everything OK down there?
It might be the heat...
Ubu..you're kinda close to Sugarland was there any, um, scorching near you?
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July 13, 2018
Fighting the Heartbreak of Triskaidekaphobia
Shortly before midnight, on Tuesday, July 28th 1914, The Austrio-Hungarian monitor Bodrog opened fire on a Serbian river fort on the outskirts of Belgrade.
That salvo started off one of the greatest catastrophes of human history, World War One, a conflict that the world has still not recovered from and killed millions.
Note the date; TUESDAY the 28th.
Arguably the worst thing to happen in over 200 years did not happen on Friday the 13th.
In stark contrast to that, today, on Friday the 13th this cool picture of a biplane by Youqiniang was posted in my Pixiv feed.
Biplanes are COOL!
So don't worry!
Today is, after all, a FRIDAY!
And it is no more dangerous than yesterday was.
So go outside and embrace the day without fear*.
*(unless you encounter a bunch of zombies, in which case be afraid, be calm and leave the area.)
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July 11, 2018
The Importance of Context in the Assessment of a Product's Desirability
Ammunition..
I like shooting it.
I like shooting it a lot.
And yet...
When I have to unload a 35 foot trailer full of it, ammunition dramatically looses its appeal.
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July 09, 2018
Heh...Well, This Works
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July 08, 2018
The Feng Shui of Superheroing
For most of this season, My Hero Academia has had amazing pacing. The stakes of the characters' actions have become steadily higher as the show has gone on and this superhero cartoon is one of the few shows that has really kept me on the edge of my seat.
This has been a really well done story in which our heroes witness what appears to be the denouement of an epic tale that has defined a previous generation of heroes.
The episode that wrapped up that arc (ep49) was just...EXCESLIOR!1!!!
Now, In episode 51 we are well into the "High-School Kids Decorate Their Dorm Rooms" arc.
This ought to be something of a let down but it works as a respite from the incredible tension of the first half of the season. Furthermore, these two episodes, which have been devoid of fights have had some serious character and plot development and have been eminently watchable.
In this sense the show reminds me of the old Claremont run on X-Men or some of the books like Young Justice where much of the important stuff was happening when 'nothing was happening'.
They've also looked at ethical issues that these kids are facing; namely the unnerving fact that there is no hard and fast Venn diagram comparing 'Law and Justice' or 'Legal and Right', which, as the late Steve Ditko might have said, is ultimately The Question.
I'm sure there will be some hemming and hawing about "FILLER ARC!" but the way they are doing these less action oriented episodes actually seems to me to be good storytelling. Furthermore, while this is definitely a Japanese Shounen type of show, it's clear that the creators really GET American superhero comics.
Besides, it looks like the down time will be of limited duration....
I'm an old fart and am enjoying the heck out of this show, but if you have kids they are the ones that should be watching it.
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One Room
What....did I just watch?
more...
Logging in to Crunchyroll revealed some new shows so I randomly picked a show that was at Episode zero.
I perused One Room's blurb and frankly read too much into it.
You are the protagonist. A new project in virtual anime from SMIRAL Animation that also brought you the "Anitore" series and "Makuranodanshi." This time, the project is about 3 stories that develop in your (one) room.
From that straightforward discription I somehow thought this was going to be experimental story telling. While it kind of is, it's less My Dinner With Andre' than How I Met Moe'. It says right there in the blurb 'you are the protagonist'...and indeed Episode zero involves "You" (presumably a mute) answering the door to find Yui Hasanaka, a young girl who asks "You" to help her study for her entrance exams.
The episode then proceeds to be a montage of her being...disturbingly...Moe'. By the time the show's four minutes was up I was thinking that Yui may need therapy. There's a LOT of codependency there.
It then dawned on me that there may be more to this show, because I never even made it to the refrigerator when a glaring inconsistency emerged:
Yui is from the country and is completely bewildered by life in the most pleasant and resident-friendly big city in the world. She's in need of remedial tutoring for her college entrance exams. She's a helpless waif...out of her element.
And yet....
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July 07, 2018
Prospecting Prospects
Issac Arthur's video this week is on the colonization of Ceres. This one is pretty neat. I had not realized that the gravity on Ceres was so low that spin habitats could be put on the surface and there would only be the equivalent to about a three degree list to port for the inhabitants.
The fact that sunlight is actually bright enough to grow plants and be marginal for solar power as far out as Jupiter is interesting as well.
I'm much more of the Dandridge Cole / Gerald O'Neal school of thought on space colonies. I'm skeptical of Mars settlement, especially when A Stanford Torus or O'Neal cylinder pretty much will have correct gravity. They can be anywhere, perhaps next to (or inside) mineral rich asteroids and potentially move if needed.
Art by Franz Blok
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Hey Ubu!
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July 06, 2018
An Absolutely Non-Relevant Post
Pixy recently posted the old Overstrike trailer which is one of the Best. Trailers. Ever. This thing really looked fun...
Warning: The following is an uninformed rant about a 5 year old video game I've never played.
Feel free to skip it and go to the previous posts (some of which have zeppelins).
In the post, Pixy mentioned that the game was a disappointment...which was news to me since I'd thought it had never come out. So I looked it up and it turns out that the game was released much later under the name Fuse and went in a completely different creative direction. Instead of a close nit team of surprisingly likable badass super-agents, the characters were re-imagined as misanthropic, brooding, psycho-murder machines in a dark, gritty, cynical crapsack world devoid of humor or mercy....
This is one of the worst cases of executive meddling I have ever seen. I have not been able to determine if Kathleen Kennedy was involved but I'm not quite ready to rule it out. According to the video, EA, the bigger company in the partnership intervened after they asked a bunch of 12 year olds what they thought of a game made for young adults and the 12 year olds thought it was too light hearted. Given that this wasn't even the games target demographic, this seems like an particularly odd decision.
I mean seriously...Look at first trailer and look at the iron age, emo, splatterpunk, murder fantasy that was actually made and explain to me how ANYBODY thought this was a good idea!
"I sense some wild, completely uninformed speculation is coming."
I do note that EA, inexplicably did a focus group of 12 year olds for a game that had an age rating of 16.
WHAT!?
Looking at the gorefest that was the actual game (in the video above) I asked myself, how on EARTH that got a 16 rating...I checked and Fuse is actually rated as "Inappropriate for Children".
Why did they need a focus group of 12 year olds?
I note that this sudden shift in tone from fun to sick happened in 2012, when Gamergate was happening and there was this big putsch from various corners to beat the drum that "gamers were dead". And that no one should cater to them. The first trailer looks quite fun...and it perfectly encapsulates everything that many in the PC crowd find toxic (fun, machismo as well as sexy and/or cute girls). Based on no information beyond the two videos above whatsoever, I suspect that the game was interfered with by people who hated the target audience and conciously or subconciously wanted to kill the franchise. Again, I don't know, but this looks like SUCH a dumpster fire of bad creative decisions that it approaches the new Star Wars reboot with regards to the sheer unbelievability of any good-faith explanation.
Of course that is a possibility. Robert Conquest suggested that a bureaucratic organization acts as if controlled by a cabal of its enemies. If this is the case though, this was some awards worthy acting.
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In Remembrance of the Glorious Flight of R-34
As noted in the previous post, today is R-34 day!
Sacred honor demands that we commemorate this technological milestone!
more...
However, we don't have many Zeppelins any more.
Also, due to the internet and the rules thereof, R-34 means something entirely different now.
Note though, that unlike our Fourth of July post this means our commemoration will be (mostly) following the rules, rather than breaking them.
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It's R-34 Day!
HMA R-34 was a British R-33 class airship completed just too late for the Great War, first flying in March of 1919. The class proved to be a huge improvement on previous British zeppelin designs. After a series of trials that included a patrol around the Baltic, R-34 was given a brief refit.
The ship's 3 inch gun as well as the depth charge/bomb racks were landed and additional petrol tanks installed in their stead. The crew was cut to 30 to save weight.. On July 2, 1919, the ship embarked Brigadier General Edward Maitland, an American naval observer (Zachary Landsdowne) a crew of 30 plus one stowaway (a William Ballantyne ) and his cat. The vessel then sailed into the Atlantic. Late on the first day, the crew discovered the stowaway (a rigger who had been one of those ordered off the ship as a weight consideration) as he was not discovered until they were well out to sea, he was given petrol pumping and head cleaning duty. The cat was not punished.
R-34 encountered a nasty storm on the fourth and faced heavy headwinds which pushed its fuel consumption much higher than had been anticipated. Nevertheless, despite running on fumes, the R-34 landed in Long Island on July 6th, 1919. It was the first East to West crossing of the Atlantic by an aircraft, and it happened 99 years ago today.
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