Lots of people think we’re on the cusp of ditching fossil fuels in favor of an all-electric “renewable” and “green” world. There are of course a vast number of problems with this… when they say “all electric” they almost never mean “all nuclear,” but instead want to pave over the fields with a million acres…
Russia’s war in Ukraine has driven home the usefulness of dropping things from quadcopters. They can carry surprising payloads a good distance and place them with some fair accuracy; in war, payloads such as grenade, mortar shells, RPG warheads are obvious and useful choices. But then there’s this: It’s not immediately obvious why the owner…
It sure seems like the era of “superhero movies” being a license to print money is over. Granted the DCEU flicks have not had a great track record, but the latest outing, “Blue Beetle,” seems to be shaping up to be a *disaster.* The production budget was $104 million. The marketing was probably the same,…
Airline pilots have a mandatory retirement age of 65. But the people holding the reigns of power in the US can be old enough to have witnessed the rise of multicellular life. Sure, many very elderly people are perfectly functional. But many… aren’t. Having a position in the government is not a right.…
Apparently it has been 20 years since “Badger Badger Badger.” Released on September 2, 2003, this was a looping Flash animation of dancing badgers. This was an early internet sensation kinda like the “Hampster Dance.” The Flash format was, compared to modern software, somewhat limited, but the end result was crystal clear. This was evident…
Methane levels in the atmosphere seem to be rising steeply. Since methane is a much more potent “greenhouse gas” than CO2, this could, perhaps, maybe, result in the end of the ice age that we’re currently in… within a few decades. The one good thing is that methane does not have a long lifespan, getting…
A sad percentage of my cyanotypes fail… faded, blurry or spotty. Sometimes these failure are due to bad craftsmanship; sometimes to material deficiencies, and surprisingly often, environmental factors (humidity has wreaked havoc, see the “spots”). Mostly these get simply tossed, meaning a lot of material, time and effort are wasted. But it occurred to me…
The rewards for August, 2023, have been released. They include: Document: Report No. ZD-013, “Preliminary Detail Specification for United States Navy Class VP Long Range Patrol Seaplane,” Convair, 1 April 1946 Document: “Space Shuttle: What Will It Do?” A 1970’s brochure describing the Shuttle, with six full-color full page illustrations Art: McDonnell-Douglas lithograph of “NASA…
It’s well known that a lot of cops are not great people. Ill tempered, quick to anger and violence, ready to smack someone around, break rules, break laws, corrupt, willing to enforce unjust and unconstitutional laws. Why are they like this? Well, part of it is doubtless due to some of them having been not…
Before there was the Budweiser Disaster, there was Gillette. Back in 2019 they released one of the worst ads in history… a company whose primary market was men used an ad to tell men that they were evil for being men. This, unshockingly, did not result in an increase in sales. It did do some…
