Pat @Pat@qoto.org

This list is literally hundreds of items long. What the fuck are we waiting for?

#science #fiction #ScienceFiction #SciFi #FTW #sfftw #film #movie #spaceflight #future #rocket #ZeroG #Fritz #countdown #moon

Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

Woman in the Moon (1929)

This was Fritz Lang’s last silent film, which was released just three years before the Nazis took power in Germany. Lang, whose mother was Jewish, opposed the Nazis, and the main villain in this film has a remarkable visual resemblance to Hitler.

One of the striking features of this film is the attention to technical detail. Hermann Oberth (one of the founding fathers of rocketry along with Goddard and others) was the technical consultant for the film. There are long segments in the film that go into fine detail about the acceleration, speed and trajectory of the rocket complete with diagrams of orbital mechanics. The passengers in the spaceship are shown experiencing high G-forces during acceleration, followed by zero-G conditions. Many scifi films, even to this day, don’t bother to show zero-G conditions in spacecraft and just show the astronauts walking around; this film was way ahead of it’s time on scientific accuracy.

In science, there was a lot going on when this film was made with the Solvay Conference in 1927 just two years before the making of the film, and the first manned rocket-powered plane demonstrated a couple of months before the film’s release.
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video description:
clips from the film, video only, no sound, all the writing within the images of the film are in German, however the intertitles have been translated to English for this version of the film – video shows the rocket being rolled out to the launch pad and partially submerged in water, because “it is too light to stand freely”. Meanwhile, in the spaceship the astronauts are walking around dressed in ordinary street clothes. One of them explains to the others that “until the necessary speed of 11,200 meters per second is reached… there will be eight critical minutes in the battle with increase in velocity, the pressure of which is fatal for humans when it surpasses forty meters per second.” Closeups of analog dial gauges are shown for speed and acceleration. (the dial for acceleration correctly shows the units as “m./sec.^2”) Intertitle says, “After these eight minutes during which we feel as if tons of weight pull us back to Earth, we will be victorious in the battle with pressure, or...”. Another man (who plays the coward) covers his ears and appears upset. There is a dramatic countdown… “6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, NOW!” Then the rocket takes off at a very quick speed. The leader tells the coward to dump the first rocket stage when it is empty. Other astronauts appear distressed by the high G-forces, their acting style is exaggerated. The cots that they are lying in are suspended by springs, and the springs begin to stretch to show the G-force. It shows the second stage separating from the rocket and the upper stage engine firing. Later it shows the astronauts looking out a window at the Earth with the Sun appearing from behind it. Intertitle says, “On our Earth, the sun is just rising.” Later it shows a woman and a man – the woman is trying to pour out wine from a bottle but it won’t pour out because they are in zero-G. The man shakes out some of the wine and it floats in spherical bubbles, the woman laughs and the man scoops up the droplets into a wine glass and quickly covers the glass to prevent the wine from escaping, then carefully sips some out from the side of the glass while his hand partially covers the glass. Later someone writes in a logbook, “Have entered the gravitational field of the moon. Are within 9000 km of the moon.”

Wouldn't it be ironic if China won the war against the US and started putting all those MAGA folks into re-education camps and all those anti-immigrant MAGA racists found themselves fleeing the US to other countries, seeking asylum as refugees?

@Deglassco

Didn't read the NYT piece, but it's true. I'm reminded of the film "2 Days in New York", which was funded by Paris firm and shot in Europe, about an interracial couple who have some family from Paris visit them in New York. The focus is on the cultural differences between Americans and Parisians. If the film was made in Hollywood, it would have been a much different and racially biased film.

Then there's "Midnight in Paris", a film about Paris produced by a New Yorker. That film has extreme racial bias. Josephine Baker is shown in the film, but she has no lines all!

Also, back in the 20's Josephine Baker moved to Paris to get away from the racism in the US, which turned out to be a great career move. I'm sure if she would have stayed in the US her career would have been crushed -- she would have never been as popular as she was. The Parisians loved her and she gained worldwide fame.

@peterdrake

They also knew about lead in gas and smog. They knew that touching or breathing gasoline fumes causes cancer. They also start wars in order take supplies off the market to drive up prices.

Also, the tobacco companies knew about cancer; McDonald's knew about clogged arteries; the CDC knew that cloth masks and the vax are useless; the FDA knew about toxic ingredients in vitamin supplements; the USDA knew about acrylamide in french fries and toast...

We need a major reset.

In case you didn't notice, all of the couples in this film are mixed-race marriages, white and black. In 1935 when this film was released, most US states had so-called anti-miscegenation laws, which prohibited interracial marriage. It wasn't until 32 years after this film was released that the Supreme Court ruled that those laws were unconstitutional.

This film was way ahead of its time by showing interracial marriage in 1935.

Also in the film, one of the black characters does the moonwalk dance while he's on the moon. 😆 (The moonwalk was popularized by Michael Jackson nearly 50 years later.) The moonwalk is attributed to Cab Calloway, who first demonstrated it a couple years earlier in 1932.

This film is only the second time that the moonwalk was featured in a cartoon, the first being "The Old Man of the Mountain" in 1933, also produced by Max Fleischer and scored/voiced by Cab Calloway and his Orchestra. (That cartoon actually used Calloway's dance moves and a rotoscope to produce that cartoon.)

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#revolution #USPOL #justice

Which event is most likely to cause you to join the revolution?

@trinsec

I'm surprised that mods can't see who is blocking who. It seems that that would be a useful tool to have.

The feature I proposed would help sort out that Romanian example situation.

For that feature, it might even be better to have a list of common reasons that the user could just click when they block, like: foreign language, offensive, gore, obnoxious, trolling, etc.

@trinsec

When a mod sees that someone is getting a lot of blocks, it might be useful to see immediately why folks are blocking them, rather than having to read through their timeline.

@trinsec

That feature might also be useful for admins to have more info while moderating.

@trinsec

Yes, I've tried that too.

It would be a great feature to add to the software -- when you get to the confirmation page while muting/blocking, if it could include a text field where you enter why you are blocking and then have those notes display when you list out your list of muted/blocked users.

@trinsec

I try to do that now when I think of it, for transparency and so I can remember why I muted/blocked someone.

@baldengineer @trinsec

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx

(man dd for details)

@trinsec

OK, you caught me. I always complain about people using abbreviations without disambiguation, but now I did it!

DOS = Denial or Service

(some guy rapidly posted 20+ toots in a row, so I muted him.)

#fedi #qoto #transparency

@Paulos_the_fog

That's been going on a long time.

#OliverTwist #Dickens

Just muted a guy for DOS-level posting to the public timeline.