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Pat

@lucifargundam

People who do that tend to f*ck their own mothers in outhouses, too.

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Pat

Yeah, that's "portion", not "potion".

(fair use image)

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Pat


Animated sequence of the galaxy cluster "Stephan’s Quintet" from the Webb Telescope...

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Pat

Here's a picture of a recent lunar eclipse...

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Pat

Retro SciFi of the Week…

Battlefield Earth (2000)

Battlefield Earth is infamously regarded as one of the worst science fiction films ever made. Based on L. Ron Hubbard’s navel of the same name, the film took nearly 20 years to finally get financed and produced. The film uses a stilted, campy acting style and copious tilted camera angles similar to the style made famous by the 1960s TV series Batman. The stilted acting style was interpreted by most critics as simply bad acting.

(fair use image)

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Pat


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Linux tip…

If you want to keep your cat from typing potentially dangerous stuff into your unattended keyboard, type the following at the CLI:

cat

(it actually works!)

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Pat

The Webb Telescope has discovered water on a planet 1120 lightyears away!

WASP-96b is a gas giant exoplanet that revolves around a star that is about 1120 lightyears away in the Phoenix constellation. The planet was discovered in 2013 using transit photometry, but the precise measurements of the spectra used to verify water and clouds on the planet could only be done by Webb.

Because it’s a gas giant and it is orbiting its star very quickly (3.4 days per revolution) it probably can’t support life as we know it, but this demonstrates what Webb can do to help find habitable planets.

WASP=Wide Angle Search for Planets

(Public domain image)

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Pat

Retro SciFi of the Week…

Virtuosity (1995)

Films about the mind comprise a huge chunk of the science fiction genre. They trace their roots all the way back to the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in the 19th century. Themes include mind alteration, mind control, telepathy, direct neural links, the hive mind, virtual worlds and much more.

Virtuosity marked a turning point and a refresh of this subgenre. Although this isn’t the best example of mind films, it’s significant because it began to pull together the elements of the next major phase of the subgenre. This led directly to “The Matrix (1999)”, and later to “Inception (2010), “Time Sleeper (2020)” and many other groundbreaking films about the mind and virtual worlds.

Predecessors influencing this film include “Altered States (1980)”, “Brainstorm (1983)”, “Max Headroom (1987)”, and “Lawnmower Man (1992)”. Most of the earlier influential works were tied more to the “hardware” of the brain, such as “Spock’s Brain” (from ST:OS) and “The Brain that Wouldn’t Die (1962)”.

When Virtuosity first came out, it looked like the subgenre had finally jumped the shark, but the somewhat goofy features in this film came to define the next phase of this subgenre. (I’ll highlight some of those elements under a spoiler content warning in this thread.)

(Image: low-res movie poster, fair use)

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Pat


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It’s surprising that Benjamin Franklin didn’t even make it into the top ten of historians’ list of the rankings of the best presidents of United States.

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= A statement that is logically or literally true (or partly true), but seems to imply something that isn’t true or is just plain weird. (for rhetoric, logic or propaganda studies… or just for fun)

(Image of portion of table from Wikipedia, CC-BY-SA-3.0)

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Pat

Retro SciFi of the Week…

AI: Artificial Intelligence (2001)

Like last week’s movie, this is an epic that spans a period of time. It also has a theme of liberty and justice, among many other topics. The production quality and special effects are among the very best.

Nearly all of the actors do a tremendous job in this film. Haley Osmont gives an amazing performance for a child actor. It also stars William Hurt, who has appeared in many great science fiction films and who just recently passed away.

Ironically, for a film that deals with the topic of justice, this one has significant racial bias, which is all too common in Hollywood movies. Otherwise it’s a great, classic scifi with lots of futuristic technology and special effects.

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Pat

Found this documentary - it was made about a decade before the pandemic, but...

No further comment.

(Video: 35 second, fair-use clip, no audio)

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Pat

A properly worn respirator is the most effective way to prevent infection and spread of COVID-19 disease.

The most effective respirator at a reasonable price is an elastomeric respirator with detachable filters. The best filter is N100 or P100. These filters are at least 99.97% efficient at filtering out the tiny particles that carry the virus.

Respirators are effective against all variants of the virus. They are also effective against other respiratory viruses and pollen.

The respirator should be NIOSH-approved.

Make sure you do a seal check each time you wear the respirator so that no air leaks around the mask.

Make sure the filter material doesn’t get wet because it won't work as well when it is wet.

(Image: Mediawiki Commons, Danielle Blue, CC-BY-SA-1.0)

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Pat

A properly worn respirator is the most effective way to prevent infection and spread of COVID-19 disease.

An N95 filtering facepiece respirator is at least 95% efficient at filtering out the tiny particles that carry the virus.

The respirator should be NIOSH-approved and have straps that go all the way around your head. (Or the similar European standard FFP2)

Never ever wear a mask with earloops – they are not reliable.

The respirator should fit tightly to the face and not allow any air to flow around the mask.

You should probably also get vaccinated. The vaccine is about 44-50% effective at preventing infection at its peak effectiveness and it helps to prevent hospitalization and death, however, vaccinated people who become infected can still spread the virus.

An elastomeric respirator is even more effective.

(Image: Mediawiki Commons, Martin von Creytz, cc-by-sa-2.0, modified with PD image)

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Pat

The holding in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health says that the states have plenary power over abortions.

So the Vermont legislature just introduced a bill to allow abortions without restriction up to the 48th week of pregnancy.

In a separate bill, they define the moment of birth as when the umbilical cord is cut. (Nothing in US Constitution about umbilical cords, either.)

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= A statement that is logically or literally true (or partly true), but seems to imply something that isn’t true or is just plain weird. (for rhetoric, logic or propaganda studies… or just for fun)

(public domain image per mediawiki commons)

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Pat

Retro SciFi of the Week…

Cloud Atlas (2012)

Not so retro, but it’s one of the best science fiction films ever made and aside from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, perhaps the very best. It includes an ensemble cast of some of the most accomplished actors in the world.

The breadth and depth of this film is enormous and the quality is completely uncompromising. It uses a nonlinear narrative (lots of flashbacks and flashforwards) with an intricate plot and the actors play multiple roles, so it may be confusing on first viewing. This film demands a lot work from the viewer – it will probably take you at least three viewings to begin to understand it. If that’s not your thing, then I’d recommend you go watch ‘Sharknado (2013)’ instead.

The primary philosophical conclusion reached by the film is absolute bunk, but that doesn’t detract from its story and entertainment value. (And the presentation of its thesis up to that point is sound.)

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Pat

(Bathroom doors image, flickr.com/photos/10058483@N00, CC-SA-BY-2.0, modified with fair use images from STNG)

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Pat

Happy solstice!

(As of about 6 hours ago...)

(Image from wikipedia commons, public domain)

Image not to scale. 🙂

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Pat

Economics chart of the day…

(Yeah, I know I don’t do one of these every day. I only make one when I want to.)

(Chart from wikimedia commons, data from stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?Data)

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Pat

Retro SciFi of the Week…

Supercar (1965)

Here’s a short, two minute clip from a 1960s TV series about a flying car. Of note here are the use of virtual actors and references to string theory – way ahead of its time.

(I doubt if you’ll be able to find this series anywhere, it's not well known and you probably wouldn’t be able to sit through an entire episode anyway… I’m pretty sure this is the worst SciFi of the Week I’ve done so far, but I couldn’t pass up the metaphor presented here regarding the promotion of putt-putt cars.)

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Pat

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Dyslexic’s summary of the January 6th hearings…

“I thought he was a patriot, but it turns out he was just a parrot.”

(Image Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA-4.0, by TapTheForwardAssist)

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