Apparently it is.

Worse, the shuttlecraft set stoops as far as having an Ensign Ro Laren minifig but still no O’Brien.

https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/tbdst-bfcm-40768

Imagine my surprise and amusement to discover that https://www.realultimatepower.net/ is still online.

Well, two things about that.

One, the L1 Lagrange point between the Earth and Sun is further out than the orbit of the moon. Even without doing any math, just a cursory observation of how shadows work will illustrate that, given that the moon itself can just barely cover the disc of the sun from where it is, any such object placed there would need to have a diameter larger than that of the moon in order to completely block the sun’s light. Or some appreciable and nontrivial fraction of the diameter of the moon if you only want to block part of the sun’s light. Lofting something that massive up there and more importantly keeping it there given that it’d also be well within the gravitational influence of the moon would be quite the challenge. (“Quite the challenge,” by the way, is rocket scientist talk for, “This is complete science fiction, and whoever suggested it is insane.”)

Point two is that the Deep Space Climate Observatory is currently already parked there.

Just for anyone wondering, because I was sure wondering, existing continuous fiber filaments from other brands run upwards of $450 per spool at the moment. Jesus.

Not even. The rainbow was god’s covenant with man (or Noah, specifically) that he would not flood the world again in future hissy tantrums. Some wingnuts have not RTFM.

Well, okay. A lot of them.

Most, even.

Emphasis on “tiny” adjustments, per the article. I don’t think Elmo comprehends just how much surface area is going to be required to make any measurable let alone meaningful impact, nor the cost of hefting all of that mass up there and keeping it there.

This whole crackhead idea is completely infeasible. But he probably hopes it’ll help him scam the government out of a bunch of money trying (and failing), while wasting vast amounts of rocket fuel.

Well, I do I have tucked into a random bookshelf one of those “World Atlas” book safes that everyone already knows is a storage box and not a book, because they’ve been sold virtually unchanged as far as I can tell since at least the early 1990s. As a little treat to anyone observant who notices this and thinks they’re so damn clever, inside I have nothing but a scaled down 3D printed replica of a cinder block.

It is astoundingly unlikely anyone will find where my valuables are actually hidden in my house, nor am I going to admit it on the internet.

Likewise, back when I built my first big pants real PC out of actual new components and not just hand-me-down bullshit cannibalized from decommissioned office stuff, I put the plethora of stickers that came with everything on the little rear triangle windows on my car. As if they were riceboy components instead, which in a way I suppose they were. Many of them were those textured stamped aluminum ones and they survived for quite a long time.

Surely at least one confused tuner saw this and puzzled over what the hell G.Skill and MSI “car parts” were supposed to do.

Here’s another sign of the times: Out of all the parts for my current rig, only two of them came with stickers. What a rip-off. My processor came with an AMD sticker (just a cheap vinyl one this time) and my motherboard came with an Aorus sticker which is at least textured metal. I stuck both of them to the inside of the front door on my case.

Not to be a stereotypically insufferable Stallman style neckbeard about it, but the only two objectively correct answers to this question are FreeCAD for mechanical parametric things, and Blender for organic shapes or decorative models. (You can also bully Blender into doing parametric CAD work with plugins. And I guess OpenSCAD also counts, if you would rather program your models rather than model your models.)

All of the other available commercial options are some combination of:

• Proprietary vendor lock-in bullshit
• Subscription model “software as a service” perpetual money sinks
• Always online cloud services that either steal your models/make them available to anyone/probably also report you to the Feds
• Loaded with quasi-legal licensing restrictions that prevent you from distributing or selling your own creations made with it

Or for extra bonus points, all of the above!

FreeCAD isn’t exactly slick and it has a rather precipitous learning curve, but it’s also basically the only viable truly free option that won’t spy on you, steal your stuff, or turn you upside down and shake you for money on a monthly basis.

Deer aren’t very smart. I had one walk straight into the side of my car when I was stopped at a stop sign once. This didn’t do any apparent damage to either the deer or the car. Just, thump. When I mention this to other people around the area they inevitably have a similar story of a deer doing basically the same thing.

I don’t think evolution is working quite fast enough to be doing these dummies any favors just yet.

I don’t know who that dude is, but I’m sure the internet does. As these things went, he did a whole series of clips of Obama impersonations in various ridiculous scenarios.

Late in my high school career I got accosted by some dillweed in an empty hallway. I have no idea what his beef was, but what with my lifelong predilection for being an insufferable snarky asshole it’s not tough to imagine pretty much anybody could potentially have a bee in their bonnet over something I said to them at some point, once they had a couple of days to ruminate over it and maybe look up some of the longer words. And for all anyone knew I was just some scrawny nerd who did calligraphy and played stupid card games. Easy pickings.

Anyway, this punk comes stampeding up to me while popping off at the mouth over how he’s going to whoop my ass and I’m a bitch and this and that and the other thing. I figure I know what he’s going to do. He’s either going to do that braindead bully maneuver where he tries to crowd your personal space with his face 2" in front of yours while yelling and flapping his arms around behind and to the sides like a hysterial chicken, in which case I’m going to kick him smartly in the balls. That, or he’s going to try to tackle me.

He tries to tackle me.

Since I saw this coming from a mile away I cut him off by grabbing him by the throat with one hand, roughly the belt with the other, used his own momentum to hoist him up onto one shoulder, and I swear upon my oath that I did a Shinkuu Nage on this motherfucker right over my head and threw him flat on his back onto the tile floor.

Pose at the end and everything. I couldn’t resist. No one witnessed this except him and me. I wish I had it on video. And that was the end of that. Curiously, after this it seems he had suddenly run out of things to say. He elected not to get up. I left him there and walked away.

I did a lot of unwisely flamboyant kung-fu shit on people in my younger years, often to only middling success. But this was perfect, and I will probably never pull it off again so long as I live.

It’s always astounding to realize that a couple of billion molecules have all decided to get together and be you for a while. On a universal scale, that seems pretty unlikely.

My closest brush with celebrity was being peripherally involved in the skating scene back in the day and in the same town as Bam Margera, when he was just starting to get famous. Bam is, was, and probably always will be 5’4" worth of complete flaming douchenozzle. It’s no surprise that everyone had a story about how that one time they almost kicked Bam Margera’s ass. Or actually did fight him. I imagine this would have gotten significantly more difficult over time as his entourage of groupies and sycophants grew ever larger. Eventually he stopped making local appearances altogether. I’m sure as he tells it that’s because he was now so famous that everyone else was clearly beneath him and he was now untouchable, but I imagine the real reason was much more pragmatic: it was probably only a matter of time before somebody finally put a hole in him, and he knew it.

So yeah. This one time at a skate park in the Philly suburbs, I came this close to beating Bam Margera’s ass. I would have won, too, if it stayed mano-a-mano. But it wouldn’t have, because he’s a little punk.

Bear Grylls also licensed his name to a series of exceedingly shitty knives manufactured by Gerber. He’s off my Christmas card list forever.

Atre was far from your typical sweetheart tech magnate.

Uh. Is there actually any such thing? Every tech bigwig or, indeed, any high level business person in general I’ve ever had exposure to has been a monumental dickhead. Bar none, and without exception.

I am also using this space as an opportunity to suggest, “Crunch Berries, nigga, damn.” And probably get crucified for it.

I like how the sleepless neighbor is somehow Ned Flanders coded.

Sure, but I’m fascinated by these being assembled in Prague and… Delaware? Really, of all places.

Delaware’s only other possible claim to fame is evidently having the same surface area as Reason’s radiator in Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash.