#science #fiction #ScienceFiction #SciFi #FTW #sfftw #film #movie #spaceflight #future #aliens #mind #eyes
Retro SciFi Film of the Week…
Abre Los Ojos (1997)
When this film was released the plot was still fresh -- there weren’t many other movies like this one. In fact, the specific story told by this film is quite original.
It was very well received by critics and moviegoers. This was Alejandro Amenábar’s second film, the first, Thesis, which was produced the previous year, was also successful proving Amenábar’s talent. In fact, this film was so good that Tom Cruise bought adaptation rights and did a remake a couple of years later. But that Hollywood version was not nearly as good as Abre Los Ojos, even though they stuck closely to the script. They even cast Penélope Cruz (who was in the original) in her same role. But a major problem with that Hollywood remake was a distractingly poor performance by Kurt Russell, whose acting skills were just not up to the task in my opinion. You’re much better off watching Abre Los Ojos.
It helps if you speak Spanish, but if you don’t mind subtitles you should be able to follow this somewhat complex story because there’s plenty of well-written exposition.
Highly recommended.
(fair use movie poster)
#TopSecret #classified #biden #harris #Whitehouse #senate
President Harris may nominate Barack Obama for VP.
Here's some sunshine...
(see https://qoto.org/web/statuses/109678071655955393
for the full thread)
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... I'm sure you've read my previous posts on this, how the CDC hoarded respirators in the Strategic National Stockpile while they lied, telling people there was a shortage; how they told everyone to wear cloth masks (which don't stop the virus).
They knew right from the beginning that respirators are the most effective way to stop the infection and spread of the virus. They even said so. They said (paraphrasing) "N95 masks work better, but there's a shortage so everybody needs to wear cloth masks. (see attached pic of N95 inventories, which show that supplies INCREASED during the pandemic -- that's right, they pulled N95s off of the market during the pandemic and put them on the shelf so people could couldn't wear them.)
Here's a quote from a Harvard Med. study (Aug. 2021),
"Using data from the third wave, we showed that the epidemic could be eliminated in the USA if at least 40% of the population consistently wore respirators in public."
Biden finally called out the Army to distribute the N95 respirators in Dec. 2021 (because the CDC refused to release them). Look up the death rates to see what happened when they were distributed.
Did you hear about any of this in the mainstream media? Did hear any PSAs telling people to wear respirators?
Here in the US, our country is right on top of things...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PublicHealthEmergency.gov
(Try to visit PublicHealthEmergency.gov and see what happens)
>"I think the people at the CDC have been doing their best, but the GQP crowd prevented them from doing any more than they did."
I don't know what "GQP" means.
The CDC did not do their best to stop the pandemic, they did the opposite. I've been following this very closely. I've watched nearly every presser from the WH response team and CDC, and the Senate Health Committee. I read many papers on what is effective and what is not. I've called and spoken to the authors of those papers to make sure I understood. I understand this better than most people.
The CDC, Congress, the White House, and the mainstream media worked together to make the pandemic worse. They wanted more people sick so they could spend more money and so the industry could make more money. That money goes to conspiring mainstream media as advertising; it goes to Congress as campaign donations and high-paying jobs after they leave Congress; it goes to corrupt administrators in research; it goes to CEOs and investors in the industry.
They literally killed more than a million people just so they could make a little more money. That's what happened.
>"Evil is, as you say, in the minority. If it seems particularly vicious right now, it's because it knows it's outnumbered."
This is very true. A lot of this is in response to a huge shift in information and awareness to the people, and democratization of media. They don't want people aware and informed and empowered. They are willing to kill millions and destroy democracy in order to hold on to power.
>"Despair is a tool of those who would have us give up. We're in the world we're in, most of us are pulling in the right direction, and we make the changes we can. The road is very long, but we're making progress every day."
I haven't given up, I've shifted strategy. They are so entrenched that it will take a major reset to take them down. If that's a revolution (non-violent of course), then that's what it takes.
>"'We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin"
Capitalism is the worst economic system there is, except for all those others that have been tried from time to time.
No economic system will work if those in control are corrupt and it is unjust, and it doesn't allow people to be free.
I don't believe we have anything resembling free-market capitalism in the US. We have a fascist oligarchy. A plutocracy.
#evil #covid19 #vax #vaccine #revolution
Developing a vaccine is as much an art as it is science. The strategy is to fine tune the effectiveness of the vaccine so that it is effective enough so that, from an individual’s perspective, it reduces illness enough to make it a reasonable choice to take the jab, but to make the vaccine weak enough so that vaccinated people continue to spread the disease and make more customers.
#sardonic (In case it wasn't obvious)
#COVID19 #pandemic #corruption #revolution
How to stop a pandemic…
Every time someone dies from COVID-19, reduce the budgets of the CDC, NIH, HHS, and any other agency connected to public health by 5%. Every time someone gets sick enough to go to the hospital, reduce their budgets by 1%. Also tax every drug company and every other health-related company 1% wealth tax for everyone who dies or gets sick from COVID-19.
Then tell them they can get 90% of their money back when the virus is gone.
The virus would be eradicated in a couple of weeks.
#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.”
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.)
I also deleted all of my responses in the thread too so they would not be misconstrued given his/her deleted toot.
Just muted @auser for deleting one of her-his a toots that I responded to. (Probably a bot)
I actually don't care who the House Speaker is.
It's irrelevant.
Enjoy the kabuki theater...
I'm just a geek.
Pronouns: She/Him/Her/His
(Use "she" for the subjective case, "him" for the objective case, "her" for the active possessive case, and "his" for the passive possessive case. Note: This is to avoid non-PC objectification and passivity.)
US, Eastern timezone
Privacy is important.
All of my opinions are someone else's.
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If I favorite your toot, it doesn't mean that I feel your toot is my favorite toot. It means that I'm letting you know that I saw your toot, probably read it, and maybe even liked it (but not necessarily).
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I have another account at:
https://mastodon.social/@PatPat/with_replies
And an additional backup account at:
https://mastodon.online/@Pat/with_replies
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I block anyone who:
- uses racial, ageist, religious, ethnic, LGBT epithets
- uses the word "gay" derisively
- posts child porn
- posts any other racism, ageism or homophobia
- posts ambiguous cases of the above
- boosts or posts quotations of any of the above
(People who use the word "woke" in a derogatory manner are assumed to be pro-racist.)
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My profile header and avatar images are from wikipedia commons (commons.wikipedia.org) and listed as public domain. Images in my toots are fair use, public domain or from wikipedia commons unless otherwise noted. License: https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/licensing-considerations/compatible-licenses