Pat @Pat@qoto.org

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Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

Mars Attacks (1998)

This one’s really weird. It makes fun of all those 1950s science fiction films, showing many of the common tropes and stock characters, but turning them into gags. There's a lot of graphic violence portrayed in a comedic style in this movie which was kind of a new phenomenon at the time it came out, at least for a major Hollywood scifi.

*****SPOILERS: The attached unauthorized trailer contains spoilers and graphic violence.*****

The gags in this film will make you laugh, but they’ll also erode your empathy and moral compass, so watch at your own risk.

#science #fiction #ScienceFiction #SciFi #FTW #sfftw #film #movie #space #spaceship #UFO #UAP #1950s #Helicopters #military #hair #1990s #hand #dog

accessible description:

Video opens with a new-age woman holding a crystal sitting on top of a car wearing new-age attire, and overlooking a huge crowd of people off in the distance who are gathered around a landing pad out in the middle of the desert. A sign says Welcome To Earth, there are a couple of news reporters giving on-the-spot news reports. The woman reporter is carrying a little chihuahua, a flying saucer comes down, it's landing gear extends and it sets down, then a big long ramp unrolls, there's a red carpet waiting for the aliens to come out, then cut to the president looking at his TV Set as an alien comes out of the spaceship, the alien talks in an alien language and a geeky guy translates it with some goofy machine, everybody smiles when the translation says “We Come in Peace”, then a hippie releases a dove and the dove flies overhead and the alien shoots down the dove with a laser, frying it to a crisp. Then the aliens start shooting all of the people and the soldiers who are in 1950s style jeeps and tanks. Quick cut to a guy in a Las Vegas casino who says “whoa”, one of the soldiers runs towards the alien carrying a gun and yelling, one of the reporters runs across and falls on the ground, crawls over to the other reporter, and they reach out to grab each other's hands, the camera shows the woman reaching and grabbing the guy's hand, then an alien fires a laser and cut back to the woman with the guy’s hand but the rest of the reporter is missing, it's just his hand cut off at the wrist. the woman drops the hand in shock then the little chihuahua quickly walks up and grabs the hand by a finger and drags it away, and only a skeleton of the reporter remains because he got shot by the alien. The aliens gather up some things and fly away and the new-age woman sits on top of her car in shock overlooking a scorched empty desert with no people left.

***** THIS VIDEO CLIP CONTAINS SPOILERS AND GRAPHIC VIOLENCE *****

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I think it's about time for a hard reset...

#USPol #incumbent #termlimits #congress #space

This was awhile ago and younger folks might not know about this.

Here's a video of when Obama was confronted by a guy (later dubbed "Joe the Plumber") who was critical of Obama's tax plan during the 2008 campaign.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQO-nS56j8M

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"Joe the Plumber" dead at 49...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx25N3ydF-c

SHOCKING!!!!

You won't believe this clickbait!!!!

Doctors can't explain it!!!!

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Which is the most common clickbait?

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COVID-19 cases are on the rise.

Remember, a cloth mask is inadequate to stop virus particles. Please make sure you wear an N95 or P100 respirator.

#respirator #N95 #COVID19 #vax #pandemic

(Video clip from josh_rimmey, tiktok, https://www.tiktok.com/@josh_rimmey/video/7223087366972558638, fair use)

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Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

Dark Star (1974)

This started out as a college film, which was actually pretty good quality for a college film, but then some movie exec found out about it and got the rights to it and added a bunch of material to bring it up to a feature length film. Then a distributor got hold of it and put it in theaters. So, it was it was a nice college film but a really lousy commercial release.

Here are some sample clips from the film which illustrate the pacing problems that the film has. Apparently the college version was even slower paced than this theatrical release. It got released on VHS about a decade later and actually had quite a few sales/rentals and now people are calling it a cult classic.

It's funny to watch with a lot of geek humor, if you’ve got the time.

#science #fiction #ScienceFiction #SciFi #FTW #sfftw #independent #film #movie #space #spaceship #collegefilm #NoHelicopters #military #hair #1970s #BeachBall

accessible description:

Open with a computer screen that says “To scout ship Dark Star, Galactic sector”; Cut to an image guy in a uniform who is shown on a black and white video screen talking to the camera, there are real-to-real computer storage units in the background; then cut to a space scene with the Dark Star ship slowly moving past the camera and then moving towards a planet; then cut to a guy laying on some patio furniture in a small room, he is wearing huge sunglasses as if he's getting a suntan and another guy comes into the room dragging a big heavy metal door which he places up against an opening; then cut to a guy standing in a dark room with some blurry special effects in the background and a giant beach ball drops from the ceiling down onto the floor and starts making some alien noises and the guy talks to the beach ball; then cut to the beach ball again and a guy hanging in an air duct of some sort then cut to a sign that says emergency airlock interior door; then cut to a sign that says caution laser, then the beach ball forces open a door where the laser is; then cut to some guys with long 1970s hair sitting around playing cards and talking about intelligent life; then cut to an image of a planet slowly getting larger and a ship is approaching the planet and a guy says “There she is.”

I intentionally avoided the Republican primary debate Wednesday night. I’m not listening to anything that any politician says anymore because there’s a 90% chance that they’re lying when they open their months.

But just out of curiosity, did any of those bozos mention any of the following? (not rhetorical, please let me if you watched the debate)

- UBI (Universal Basic Income)
- Banning the burning of fossil fuels
- Making oil companies pay for all of the pollution they put into the air
- Holding the CDC and other public officials accountable for killing more than a million Americans during the pandemic
- The fact that more than 100 people are dying each day right now from COVID-19
(Did any of them even wear a mask during the debate?)
- AI is about to wipe out 50-80% of the jobs on Earth
- Equitable tax system that eliminates all deductions/exemptions, and applies tax to the top line of the income statement
- Supreme Court is for sale to the highest bidder
- Limiting Congressional salaries and benefits to the median income
- Elimination of nuclear weapons
- Humans are about to become the number two species on the planet, behind sentient AI
- More than half of all people don’t have equal rights because of who they are

(My guess is that they spent most of the time talking about which soccer team boys and girls should be playing on in school sports; or how to keep brown people out of the country.)

#debate #debates #maga #republican #USPol #election #primary #revolution

Congratulations to India's space engineers for a successful soft landing of their Chandrayaan-3 lander on the Moon's surface.

Also, congratulations to Russia's engineers for a hard landing of their Luna-25 Lander into the Moon's surface. #sarcasm

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/russias-luna-25-lander-has-crashed-into-the-moon/

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/23/world/chandrayaan-3-lunar-landing-attempt-scn/index.html

#space #moon #lunarlander #chandrayaan #luna25 #india #russia

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Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

Forever Young (1992)

This is a romance drama / sci-fi written and produced by Jeffrey Abrams (JJ Abrams). It's basically a Rip Van Winkle story about a guy in 1939 who ends up volunteering for some advanced cryogenic experiment, gets frozen, and wakes up in 1992.

The story manages to avoid most of those hackneyed anachronistic encounters of a guy who's misplaced in time; it really sticks to the romance, emotions, and characters, and this guy's quest to find his old friends from 1939. The film has the feel of a Spielberg film, particularly ET, which was produced a decade earlier. It’s sentimental, almost sappy. It's commercial -- very much so -- and tries to appeal to multiple demographics. Jerrald Goldsmith, who scored Logan’s Run (which was last week’s Film of the Week), created the exceptional score for this movie, and overall it’s a well produced film. Some of the plot points seemed forced and unrealistic, placed in the story simply to create tension, not uncommon for a Hollywood film.

With Mel Gibson and Jamie Lee Curtis in the lead roles, the acting is world class, although neither of those actors completely disappear into their roles. Elijah Wood also has a major role and gives a great performance as the ten-year-old son of Curtis’ character. Isabel Glasser plays Gibson’s character’s love interest, but oddly doesn’t get as much screen time as the other leads.

There's only one black character in the film (Joe Morton), a researcher who was portrayed as antagonistic and in this story was unable to figure out the design of the cryogenic apparatus that was created by a white character (George Wendt) fifty years earlier. This type of depiction of black characters was typical of films produced prior to the Rodney King beating and LA riots which broke out just as initial filming for this film was wrapping up. Other than that, I saw no other significant bias or racial stereotypes.

As far as technology, there wasn’t much, basically just the cryro-chamber, which had a steam-punk design that was out of place for the pre-war time period.

Overall the film is worth watching, just don’t expect much in terms of science fiction gadgetry, aliens, spaceships, etc.

#science #fiction #ScienceFiction #SciFi #FTW #sfftw #film #movie #physics #B25 #helicopter #military #warehouse #1990s #Buford

accessible image description:

movie poster with Mel Gibson’s face covering most of the poster and a small image of Gibson and Isabel Glasser embracing and kissing.

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*** CSPAN Caller of the Day ***

This citizen scientist has made her own meteorological observations of sound waves to support the conclusion that climate change is real.

#climate #climatechange #cspan #science #wackadoodle #sound

Believe it or not, our society used to be even more violent than it is today. Even the cartoon TV commercials were violent...

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Here’s a National Geographic episode about mountain animals, including this cute kitty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcRifDitRnU

#caturday #wildlife

(fair use clip – Content Warning: includes graphic scenes of a snow leopard hunting)