Prizes like this are how some of the big advances in aviation were accomplished.
* * *
It worked fine for Stratos 4, though. Remember Stratos 4? Very similar to the planes used in that series.
Neat idea, anyway: putting a fighter on a rocket booster to launch it, essentially, straight up and get it to flight speed fast. In the anime series it was because they needed to get the things into the ionosphere as quickly as possible.
* * *
Oh, wow: it's even worse than I thought. All kinds of Illinois Democrats are coming out and apologizing and/or denouncing the stupid stunt at a Democrat state senator's fundraiser over the weekend. How bad does the backlash have to be for all these other turkeys to be saying these things, when you know they'd probably rather drink a pitcher of warm saliva than denounce anything anti-Trump?
* * *
The Babylon Bee continues to score points against Snopes.com. "Snopes Strikes Deal With Netflix to Provide On-screen Fact Checks of Fictional Shows, Movies" goes the headline.
I can't help but imagine the offices of the two publications. Snopes.com seething with rage; Babylon Bee laughing every time Snopes says something. And why do I think that?
Snopes.com is acting like the very definition of the humorless leftist. "How many communists does it take to change a light bulb?" "That's not funny!"
Of course, the reason is, the Babylon Bee is effective. In order to work well, satire has to be believable, and the Bee has had me halfway to posting about one of their stories before I realized what I was doing.
You're not supposed to satirize leftists. They have no sense of humor, particularly about themselves. Let's face it: if they had any sense of humor, they would have more jokes than, "Hey, you know so-and-so? Isn't he stupid?"
Heh.
* * *
So, Palestine just banned LGBTWQSZBBQWTF people from carrying out any "activities" in the West Bank.
Explaining the decision to ban the LGBTQ group from operating in PA-controlled areas, Luay Zreikat, spokesperson for the PA Police, said that such activities are "harmful to the higher values and ideals of Palestinian society."The mainstream media is, of course, utterly silent on that point, carefully not mentioning it lest the narrative be damaged.
Just got to love it: the leftists in this country are supporting people who hate gays--not "tolerate" but actively hate and oppress them--and the self-styled "watchdogs" are pretending really hard that they aren't. Because "fellow travelers" and all that.
* * *
He's right. This is bad.
The worst is discovering that there's a kind of person who actually kinda enjoys being sick. They seem to take a sadistic pleasure in making you hop, but when you actually try to help them--get them out of bed, for example, rather than just fetching their tissues or picking up the remote they "dropped"--they give you an utterly convincing "poor me!" act. You feel like the world's champion asshole for not doing whatever they want, even though five minutes ago your own lying eyes convinced you they were a lot healthier than they let on....I have experienced that--first when I worked at the nursing home, and then later on in my personal life.
If you've ever experienced that, you've more or less experienced the Basic College Girl. She wants what she wants, and she deserves to get it, right NOW, and you're the world's champion asshole if you don't give it to her. She'll issue her list of demands--that's the narcissism--but if you tell her no, she'll switch immediately to cringing subservience, and if that doesn't work, she'll do anything-- increasingly literally--to get it.
People find a way to get you to do what they want you to do, to go very far out of your way, bending over backwards, even--only when you get to your limit and say, "No more!" they're shocked and hurt that you're no longer helping them. "Can't you just...?" "Don't you think I'd do it if I could?" "I can do it sometimes!"
Now my wife is experiencing much the same thing, and she's not finding it any easier to cope with than I did.
* * *
Using self-driving vehicles as drug mules. I don't think anyone else thought of this one. Perhaps they had. I don't know; what I do know is that it's going to be an interesting problem to solve, both for the companies that own the self-driving cars, and the police trying to enforce the drug laws.
* * *
The images in this post are priceless. Like the picture of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-little Somalia) with the weird receding-hairline-hairdo of that one incarcerated thug. "Stop sending me this shit" AHHH HA HA HA HA HA
* * *
Well, we're just a bit more than a week away from WoW Classic going live. I am so looking forward to that.
* * *
Gentlemen, I am pleased to announce that a solution for all our arboreal problems can be had for a mere $3,000. *whimper*
...actually that's what one tree guy will charge to trim all the trees in our front yard, remove the offending tree that set off all this nonsense, and also cut back the majority of the foliage in the back yard.
The price for what we need done--which is to remove the mostly-dead choke cherry tree that menaces both our and our neighbor's house--is about $1,300, which we can manage. The $3k figure is right out, though we could stretch and do $2k, I think. I'm not even sure it's necessary.
Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, on my various errands this morning I happened to see that the used car lot that I bought the Jeep from has a black Miata for about that price: $2,900. I couldn't really see the price in the window all that well but $3k sounds about right.
Probably just as well--I wouldn't want a black one. Black is very hard to keep clean.
But it was nice to entertain the thought, however briefly; to think about how to fit it in the garage, to imagine running errands in it on nice days, and so forth.
Realistically, of course, I can get myself a "fun" car sometime after I take care of getting the Mustang into condition for my wife to drive it. Which is to say, when she can start it and drive it without having to know anything about how to start a carburated car other than "pump the gas twice before turning the key, and then let it warm up for at least a minute before going anywhere."
Right now it requires a bit more than that. Argh etc. And I still need to fix the driver's seat so it can go back a bit further, and I need to get power brakes in it. And the accessory drive situation has to be fixed, too. None of which will be cheap or easy.
...but of course getting rid of that tree is more important than any of that.
