Izzy doesn’t bite me. She steps on me a lot but she doesn’t bite.

Basically functioning as a digital proof of purchase.

Somebody’s gonna watch some Ashens tonight.

Possibly through ignorance or misunderstanding, btu I still think the tech behind NFTs may have some function, but it’s certainly not the weird pictures of badly colored in monkeys speculation market that happened there.

Somehow, it’s a surprise to people that I’m a competent trumpet player. As if every high school in the state doesn’t have a band class. Fully half of my graduating class in high school were musicians of some kind between chorus, orchestra and band classes. But somehow nobody expects a random dude in his mid-30’s to pick up a trumpet and play a few bars of Ravel’s Bolero.

Learn how to echolocate!

we represent the vegan space socialists who are always right.

you guys are the worst.

we know.

When a cat loafs, the things that stick up on either side of her back? Those are her knees.

Hairless and thin furred cats really show off how much of their head is just eyeball. He’s got the cheekbones of an SR-71.

what happened to thinkgeek?

Folks who buy into conspiracy theories may buy into more than one, often for similar reasons. A lot of them boil down to “Big They is trying to control you by putting X in the Y, so don’t eat the Y” and if you’re willing to buy that story once you’re probably willing to buy it again. While I don’t think the myths have much to do with each other, I bet you’ll find a lot of “chemtrail” believers also…being afraid of 5G cell networks? Vaccines. Whatever they don’t understand.

Industry executives hiding the harmful effects of their products definitely happens though. It’s quite well documented.

Was it seconds after that screenshot? It’s been awhile since I’ve seen Undiscovered Country but the way I remember it:

Captain’s Log, Stardate Something Something Point Two. The Excelsior is continuing its mission to study the Gamma Quadrant. Our calm routine science mission is going according to plan. I’m taking the opportunity to enjoy a nice cup of tea.

Sir! Sensors indicate state of the art special effects off the port bow!

everyone is thrown around, like actual thrown around because Sulu’s tea table is actually a mounting point for the hydraulics the bridge set is mounted on so they can actually thrash the actors around

“Sensors confirm, Praxis exploded sir. Should I contact Starfleet Command?”

“Are you kidding?”

way at the end of the movie

“The Enterprise is in trouble! We have to get there just in the nick of time!”

“If we go any faster she’ll fly apart!”

“FLY HER APART, THEN!”

Excelsior arrives

“Okay, we’re here. So, now what? I guess we’ll let the Klingons shoot at us too for a minute while Spock and Bones modify the torpedo I guess.”

It feels doubly weird to me because this is the only time in the TOS movies that the Enterprise flies into combat fully ready, and it’s the only time another starship comes to her rescue.

In The Motion Picture, Enterprise’s refit broke more than it fixed, she barely works, the transporters kill a couple people, and she doesn’t actually fly into combat.

In Wrath of Kahn, the ship is in decent shape but they’re loaded with trainees on a training cruise, and Kahn catches Kirk with his pants down, so the ship is limping for the rest of the movie.

In Search for Spock, Enterprise is still wrecked from the last movie, Starfleet isn’t gonna fix her, and Scotty slaps together an automation system so 5 guys can fly her to Genesis…not expecting to go into combat.

Voyage Home barely has an Enterprise in it; the HMS Bounty is just casually used to fly back and forth in time but does not see combat in this film.

Final Frontier, the Enterprise A barely works because apparently the only person in Starfleet who can make a Constitution class ship work is Cdr. Scott.

Undiscovered Country, Enterprise is in good working condition, has a full capable crew and a seasoned command staff aboard, she arrives at Khitomer ready for a fight…And gets the conference room kicked out of her. They sit there awkwardly getting the shit kicked out of them because they can’t detect the bird of prey until they decide to modify a torpedo. At some point during that sequence Excelsior turns up to…help get shot at.

I think I want a different scenario where Excelsior comes to Enterprise’s rescue, maybe if Enterprise is outnumbered or just completely outclassed, rather than facing a slightly better cloaked than usual bird of prey that Enterprise can utterly maul the second she gets her teeth around it. Excelsior should get a big damn hero moment, like arriving just in time to take a torpedo meant for a wounded Enterprise, or to surprise Klingon Ship #3 with a volley of torpedoes, giving the Enterprise enough of a respite to bring Klingon Ship #1 into her sights. Something.

I was somewhat flippantly lumping conspiracy theorists together as a community, expressing an observation that the idiots who believe jet liners are spraying mind control chemicals are likely to also believe in bullshit like flat earth or anti-vax or all manner of other shit we just should not tolerate as a society.

But welcome to the internet where casual discussions must also be MLA formatted research papers because somebody’s going to take your words as ridiculously literal as they can.

Those nuggets of truth are absolutely real. It’s why I bring up TEL in AVGAS, there are airplanes hosing the place down with neurotoxins, it’s a real problem. Fortunately there’s a robust plan to fix it, and I’m surprised it hasn’t been canceled by the Trump regime already.

Now there we’re talking about cloud seeding. That is at least mostly real.

If I understand correctly, the object is to spray chemicals into the air which strongly encourages moisture to condense into clouds, either blocking sunlight or causing rain. The USAF experimented with this during the Vietnam war to some success, it’s not exactly the cartoon idea of “Airplane flies by, airplane farts, there’s a rumble of thunder and an instant summer rain shower”. Though for various reasons to include “the chemicals you have to spray to make this work aren’t very nice” it’s probably a bad idea. I gather that’s what the legislation in question is actually about, and it’s honestly not a bad idea to regulate or ban this practice.

The word “Chemtrail” isn’t associated with that, it’s tinfoil hat ivermectin sucking 5G fearing moron talk for “the airlines are spraying chemicals that make you vote Democrat. Wake up sheeple.” Which is 1. complete and utter donkey shit, 2. makes conversations about cloud seeding worse, and 3. makes conversations about General Aviation still using leaded gasoline worse.

Correct, it’s an ingredient in aviation gasoline, not in kerosene-based jet fuel.

Controlled Flight Into Terrain, or CFIT, is the case of being extremely specific. It’s not a mid-air collision with another aircraft, in-flight breakup or fire, flight control failure, crew incapacitation or anything like that. CFIT means the crew was present and alert, the aircraft was functioning correctly and hadn’t departed controlled flight, they’re flying along and all of a sudden the ground happens.

It’s almost always a case of egregious amounts of pilot error. Failures in judgement such as deciding to fly down a canyon because it looked so cool when Luke Skywalker did it, and then being unable to climb out and slamming into a wall. Failure of navigation in the mountains. Failure to maintain minimum altitude on an instrument approach (Look up that Cross Air flight that killed the German pop band Passion Fruit) Failure to compute takeoff and climb performance and flying an airplane straight into the mountain off the end of the runway because you needed 900 feet per mile and at this density altitude you could only manage 750. Or, one of my favorites, the Korean Air Cargo 747 captain that chased a broken ADI straight into a forest outside London.

Aeons ago I read something about scientists monitoring weather temperature data in September 2001. A lot of aircraft were grounded that month, and they detected an uptick in temperatures because there were fewer contrails, Earth’s albedo decreased very slightly.

The guy who named it was running away from it in a panic at the time. “AH FUCK! GORILLA! GORILLA GORILLA GORILLA!”

I mean Rotax is kicking some ass, they’ve got a 160 horsepower engine now, weirdly enough out of the same displacement as the 912S. Imagine if they made a 6 cylinder variant, damn thing could make 300 horsepower easy.

I cannot think of a reason to use a Corvette engine in an airplane other than “fuck it.”

There’s gonna be a lot of pencil whipping by A&Ps I think. If I understand correctly, the way they’re gonna deal with it is roll out a high octane lead-free fuel that just works, so most of the mechanic’s job is going to be putting new stickers next to gas caps and signing logbooks.