Why not blimps indeed?

I don't know if I've mentioned this before (I have), so it may come as a bit of a surprise (it won't), but I don't like flying. Like, I can get on a plane if I absolutely have to, but it's an anxiety-filled ordeal and why not blimps? Can we just take blimps?

You have one dramatic, spectacular disaster that is forever seared
into the public consciousness and they never let you forget it... 

Here, watch these crashing waves instead of
thinking about how you're hurtling unsupported
through the sky at hundred of miles per hour.

I ask because according to Rosen Aviation, the future of air travel is windowless tubes of OLED screens running pictures of windows. Yeah. Their innovation--and I use the word sarcastically as indicated by the italics--is to replace windows on planes with screens that will display scenery as well as information about about the flight and even details about landmarks you might be flying over. So instead of enjoying the view, you can have the plane tell you about it. Cool, I'll just close my eyes and wait for the flight to be over.

The ludicrously named Maverick Project "was born from trying to bring tomorrow's technology into tomorrow's plane" gushes Lee Clark, the company's senior VP for strategy and, one presumes, awkward phrasing.

"Then what's the goddamn point?"

-Me

He went on to tell CNN that:

"One of the elements that is most critical for Rosen is the integration of technology seamlessly, that it's almost invisible technology."

-Lee Clark, on how invisible 

the cabin-spanning OLED 

wall panel displays will be

Yeah, ok, but why? Well, the CNN article points to structural advantages and I guess that makes sense. The tiny windows on planes essentially being weak points in the fuselage, but I'm just making that up. I'm not an engineer. What I am, however, is cynical and suspicious of any company whose website talks more about innovation and "stakeholders" than it does telling us what they actually do. 

"Our mission may be simple, but it's powerful. In advocating for each
of our stakeholders, we're ever mindful of their sometimes-competing
desires and define our results through their collective success."

-Rosen Aviation's mission statement...

which is about planes? I think?

Wouldn't translucent displays hovering
mid-air be, like, super-hard to read?

It feels like this is more about coming up with something that feels futuristic than practical or even desirable. The company boasts that they were recently up for an award for its holographic plane controls which let cabin crews operate the craft without having to touch the filthy, filthy control panels, which, sure. I suppose that's ok, but "holographic?" It sounds like motion sensors to me, but someone saw Iron Man so here we are, talking about holographic controls. The stakeholders love it.

Interesting word choice given how well
trickle down anything has worked out.

Oh well, you and I aren't likely to endure a six hour flight surrounded by a screen saver anytime soon. Clark is pretty clear that this is a rich people thing:

"It completely fits into business, first class--and I think some of those technologies can even trickle down to the coach environment.

-Lee Clark, sounding like quite the dick

But whatever. As stakeholder-enticing as things like holograms and OLED walls are, I'd personally be thrilled if someone would come up with something truly innovative: like tranquilizer darts so the cabin crew could knock out anti-maskers who loose their shit. Or legroom. That would be great.

Seriously, this is a problem. Can't someone shift some paradigms
or re-brand some mindshares and innovate us up some legroom?

This is Megatron all over again...

Today saw the release of a new Nintendo Direct, which are sort of like Apple's events except the press doesn't pretend it's real news, and everyone is stunned, stunned I say, by the news that Chris Pratt will be voicing Super Mario in the Super Mario Bros. movie.

Captain Lou Albano, who originated the role, could not be reached for comment.

Pictured: What happens when
you hand over creative control.

The film, still more than a year off, is the result of a collaboration between Nintendo and Illumination. Yeah, the studio who did Minions, but don't worry. After the ludicrous Robitussen trip that was 1993's Super Mario Bros. staring Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo, the video game company learned its lesson and is keeping a close eye on this adaptation to make sure it stays close to the source material and doesn't end up as another Blade Runner knock-off with dinosaur strippers.

Take it down a notch Shigeru,
he's already signed.

Super Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto announced both the release date and introduced the voice cast:

"First, of course, is Mario, who will be played by Chris Pratt. He's so cool! Mario will be talking a lot in the movie. Please look forward to Mario as performed by the very talented Chris San."

-Shigeru Miyamoto, gushing, like, 

just nerding out over Chris Pratt

Pictured: that one time Link spoke.
And no, Excuse me Princess doesn't count.

Which, I mean, I like Chris Pratt. He was fun on Parks and Recreation, and who would have thought that he'd be counted among the many leading Chris's? But "Mario will be talking a lot...?" I guess that makes sense, it'll be full length movie and yeah, I suppose the protagonist has to talk, but this is Mario. He's usually fairly mum. I mean, he's no Link, but his speech is limited to onscreen text (in the RPG's) or the occasional "Who-hooo!" or "Oh-no!" And I'm just not sure I can take a chatty Mario for two hours. And is Pratt going to be putting on a stereotypical Italian accent? The whole time? And perhaps more alarmingly, will Pratt be Mario from here on out? 

Since 1995 a guy called Charles Martinet has been the voice of Mario (and Luigi, and Wario). And he's also in the film, but according to Miyamoto, he'll be playing "surprise cameos," but not Mario. Again, I've got nothing against Chris Pratt, but "It's-a-me, Mario!" "He's we-a go!" "So-long gay Bowser!" Those are all Martinet.

Or "so long King Bowser" or possibly "so long-eh Bowser" or
whatever it is Mario says. The point is it's Martinet's voice we all hear.

Ironically, it was a bullet Hugo Weaving failed to
dodge. And uh, he was in The Matrix and-no? Ok.

But this is a business and they needed a name, and it is what it is. It's like when George Lucas CGI'd Sebastian Shaw out of Return of the Jedi and inserted Hayden Christensen in his place. Or when Frank Welker, who'd been the voice of Megatron for like twenty years, was passed over for Hugo Weaving in the live-action Transformers. Of course, in that movie Megatron was unrecognizable and the dialogue was both inaudible and dumb, so I don't know, maybe he dodged a bullet?

Anyway, this is a movie for kids, and I'm sure Chris Pratt will be fine, albeit a very different Mario. But still, I can't help but feel for Martinet who, after twenty-seven years, is basically doing "additional voices" in a movie he probably should have stared in.

Martinet may not look like a lead actor but I'd point out two things. First, this is a voice roll.
Second, did anyone really expect Andy from Parks and Rec to have the career he's had?

Yeah, but is it WATA rated?

Hey, someone just paid one million, one hundred and seventy thousand dollar for--get this: not a video game. A book. They paid $1.17 million for a book. A three-volume, first edition of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Yeah, that's the whole title. The weird punctuation, the "or," the second title. It's was a 1800's thing I guess.

"Well, they pay by the word, so..."

-Mary Shelley, on padding it out

Spontaneous combustion, incidentally, was
another dumb thing people believed back then.

To further contrast this from the recent spate of the ludicrous sale prices of decades old, but not really all that hard to find video games, Shelly's first edition of Frankenstein is legitimately rare. Shelly published five hundred copies in 1818, and did so anonymously because in the past everyone was a bunch of ignorant goons and the idea that a woman had not only written a book, but had written a book dealing with murder, alienation, and the implications of creating life, would have literally caused readers to spontaneously combust. 

Obviously the misogynistic, ignorant, classist, 
racist, 18th century is more screwed up, but
I mean, three Human Centipede movies? 

This version is also referred to as the "uncensored" edition because Shelly later published a revised, more commercial version that added lightning to the monster-making formula, criticized Victor Frankenstein's decision to play God, and made Elizabeth, his fiancée an orphan rather than his cousin. It all sounds pretty tame to twenty-first century ears, and you might question her artistic integrity, but then we live in a world of not one, but three movies about someone sewing people mouth-to-anus to see how long it takes them to die, so we have to ask, whose is the more screwed up culture?

"Suck it Austen!"

-Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly

Ok, but one point one seven million dollars? That's a preposterous sum of money to blow on a book, no matter how rare, right? Sure, but this is basically the first sci-fi novel in English, and calling attention to that fact and to the fact that the genre was invented by an 18 year old woman is pretty cool. And speaking of, this sale does beats a copy of Jane Austen's Emma out for the highest price paid for a book written by a woman record. 

But still, I'm conflicted. I think it's great that something like this makes the news and gets people interested, but it kind of sucks that rare books, or video games, or art so often end up being investments for rich people and not like, in a museum somewhere, or in the hands of researchers or preservationists. Instead it will just be on some rando's rare book shelf so they can show off to their friends, and that's a bummer. 

On the other hand, it's a book, an old one, but still, you know, a book.
I suppose we've reached the limits of what we can learn from the actual,
 physical object, so what the hell, I guess I'd take the money too.

The thunderous "wah-wah" of a sad trombone:

"Waaah...the racist lunatic we support
lost the election...waaaaah..."

-these people

So the bad news is that a few hundred people turned up in D.C. for that dumb rally in support of the people charged in the Capitol riot, but the good news is that only few hundred turned up to support-wait, like, do we have to call January 6th a riot? A riot is something that breaks out at Target on Black Friday over flatscreens. The January 6th thing was thousands of right-wing nutters who planned to seize the government, kidnap or murder officials and instal the former host of The Apprentice as dictator for life. I just feel like riot doesn't cover it.

Oh, the gold Trump statue guy.
I'm sure he's got lots of great ideas
and fair-minded opinions to share.

Anyway, the event's organizer, Matt Braynard, told reporters that:

"This is about the many people who were there that day who have not been charged with violence, not have been accused of assaulting a police officer or destroying property, and the disparate treatment they've received. This is about equal treatment under the law."

-Matt Braynard, hoping anyone reading

his comments is unfamiliar with the internet

Regular, of course, being a relative 
concept when it comes to these people.

So, couple of things. First of all, he said that it's not about the people who were charged with violence, which is weird, because Braynard told Mother Jones like, two days ago that the rally was 100% about the people who were arrested and charged and in fact he called them political prisoners which is horseshit. Breaking into the U.S. Capitol building, assaulting police officers and shitting on the floor and then going to jail for it doesn't make you a political prisoner. That just makes you a regular prisoner. 

"Hold your fire, they're white!"

-these cops, evidently

And what disparate treatment is he even talking about? I think most everyone watching on January 6th had the same thought, which "how quickly would these assholes have been gunned down if they weren't white?" Every time a pack of white dudes is feeling under-appreciated, they grab their assault rifles, pile into their pick ups and break into a government building. Look, I'm not pro-hail of gunfire, but any one of those "protests" would have been met with a hail of gunfire if they weren't white. 

So like I said, the good news is that today's parade of fragile white people whining about how they've been mistreated was only a few hundred, and there weren't any major problems, but it's still pretty disheartening that there were any. 

I think they've got that upside-huh? Oh, they're protesting because the people who
tried to overthrow the democratically elected president faced consequences for their crimes?
I see. I'm sorry, how is the right more patriotic than the rest of us? I'm genuinely asking.

Sure, mammoths, why not?

"Well well well...looks who needs our help..."

-some mammoth who's never 

going to let us hear the end of it

A genetics professor is this close--sorry, you can't see my fingers, but trust me when I say I'm holding them a scant distance apart. Anyway, he says he's very close to being able to use genetic sequencing and gene splicing to re-create woolly mammoths. And get this, he teaches at Harvard, so he's probably not a nutter. Oh, and also get, he wants to do it because he believes that herds of genetically resurrected woolly mammoths will actually help fight climate change. Amazing? Sure. Unbelievable? Maybe. In need of some context and qualifications? Absolutely. It's science, so let's walk it back a bit.

"Actually it started pretty mad-scientist-y,
the fact that African elephants were better
surrogates was just a happy coincidence."

-Greg Church, PHD

What George Church, head of the Wyss Institute at Harvard, wants to do through his company, Colossal, isn't cloning. Instead, they call it de-extinction (which, I think they made up) and the idea is to splice preserved mammoth genes into the species' extant relative, the Asian elephant and create a kind of elephant/mammoth hybrid. Which, to be extra complicated, will be carried to term by African elephants. And that's not like some arbitrary mad scientist, just for the hell of it kind of thing, it happens that African elephants are larger and can more easily carry the Asian elephant/mammoth hybrids to term. 

Yeah, it...it was us. We're basically the
worst thing to ever happen to this planet.

Ok, but what, you might reasonably ask, the hell is the point? According to Colossal's website, the result will be "a cold-resistant elephant with all of the core biological trains of the Woolly Mammoth." Yeah, you persist, but why? Settle down, we're getting there. These mammoths, when they died out uh...somehow, left a void in the ecosystem of the Steppe. The grasslands were replaced by marshes and wetlands which aren't as good at absorbing carbon and now the permafrost is melting and we're pretty screwed. Ecologically speaking. Colossal's sorta mammoths would, in theory, fill that niche. 

Confirmed: old people still exist.
Better luck next time Peter...

Cool, where's the catch? There almost certainly isn't one as far as the science goes. I mean, sure, the tundra now isn't anything like the tundra thousands of years ago, but I'm sure re-introducing mammoths into a climate that's like way warmer won't have disastrous consequences. But what's giving me pause is who's backing this endeavor: venture capitalists. Ugh. The Winklevoss twins are involved along with Peter Diamandis who, a few years ago tried to cure aging by throwing money at it. I...I don't think that panned out. Oh, and Tim Draper. Remember Tim Draper? He was the guy who tried to break California up into a bunch of smaller states.

How come? Who can say why any of these rich d-bags do any of the things they do. My first thought was that he didn't want his taxes going to the poorer regions of the state, but then it occurred to me that he probably doesn't pay taxes to begin with. I guess he just wanted to carve out some kind of gross, libertarian, venture capitalist utopia where he and the other riches could invest in start ups and write their dumb books about how to get super rich without working a real job. 

Step one: have a shitload of money.
Step two: invest in a bunch of bullshit until something pays off.
No, I didn't read his book, but I stand by my summary.

The solution to a lot of problems
is tax the shit out of billionaires.

Anyway, I don't know, as suspicious as I am of anything so tainted with venture capitalist interest, maybe Church is on to something. Maybe mammoths will trample down the moss or whatever he thinks they'll do and save the planet. But there's a part of me that can't shake the feeling that maybe instead of chasing after these crazy sci-fi, Jurassic Park solutions to climate change, we shouldn't just tax the shit out of some billionaires and use the money to plant trees and put up solar panels. 

She uh...she gets the irony, right?

And just like that, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett hands us the perfect description of two thirds of the Court: a bunch of partisan hacks.

Of course she insists that they're not a bunch of partisan hacks,
but isn't that exactly what a partisan hack would say?

No, really, the bill allows any rando to
sue someone who has an abortion. So
in many ways, Texas can go fuck itself.

In a speech at an event celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the University of Louisville's McConnell Center--as in Mitch, gross-- Justice Coney Barrett explained that it was her goal to convince us that the Court "is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks." And look, I don't want to tell her how to persuade people, I mean, she is a lawyer, but maybe maybe it would help if she didn't try to make the case at a building named after Mitch McConnell, two weeks after siding with Texas's bullshit anti-abortion/bounty-hunter law. I mean, that's pretty goddamn hack.

Madison never saw automatic weapons
and armor-piercing rounds coming. They
 would have been like phasers to him. 

Barrett insists that she's an originalist which means that she supports the original intent and wording of the Constitution, but mostly that's just what conservatives say when they leap to the defense of the gun lobby or when they rob women of basic body autonomy. The Constitution is a two and a half century old document and is constantly interpreted to meet the needs of the time. It's why so many people have assault rifles. The Court decided that when James Madison wrote about a well organized militia in the age of breach loaders, he also meant that your racist uncle could stockpile an arsenal of assault rifles in his basement. It's nonsense, but here we are.

Marriage equality is another thing the
Right pretended was about originalsim,
but really they just don't like gay stuff.

But interpretation is also why you can marry whomever you want. Because things change. And they know that and they're not there to offer an originalist interpretation anyway. They're there to impose their worldview on the rest of us, exactly like Amy Coney Barrett says they're not. Despite her protestations--or at least refusal to to express any opinions during her hearings, she's been vocally anti-choice her entire career and that's why she's there. That and because Mitch McConnell stole the appointment from Obama.

It's like, a third hack. A third.

Either Scalia died too close to the 2016 election or Bader Ginsburg died to close to the 2020. Not both. But that was the brain-meltingly hypocritical case made by Mitch McConnell when he sat on Merrick Garland's nomination and then when he rushed through Coney Barrett's. And since Brett "I Like Beer" Kavanaugh is only there because the electoral college handed Donald Trump the presidency over the will of the voters, I'd argue that the right-wing tilt of the court is entirely due to partisan hacksmanship. 

So while it's maybe not fair to say that the Court is "a bunch of partisan hacks," after all, some of them are duly appointed and reasonable people. I think it's completely correct to say that it's stacked with partisan hacks. 

I mean, is there anything more partisan hack-y than a sitting
Supreme Court Justice giving a speech at an organization named for
the partisan hack you basically stole a seat on the bench for her?

Nuhura!

You heard me, as in new Uhura. Actor and singer Celia Rose Gooding is playing a younger version of Uhura on Strange New Worlds, which, if you're a big huge nerd like myself is exciting news. If you're not, you'll have to take my word for it. 

Nuhura!

In a sci-fi arms race between Trek
and Wars, I suppose we all win.

Also a powder, because this whole thing is going to be Star Trek this and phasers that and if that's not your cuppa, you'll want to bail out now. Anyway, Strange New Worlds is like the ninth or tenth Star Trek show, and the fifth one in the last couple of years and I'm simultaneously stoked--do people still say stoked?--and also trepidatious. Trepidatious because holy shit, at some point enough is going to be enough and even big huge nerds like myself are going to say there're are too many Star Trek shows, but until that day comes, stoked. 

She also often got the short skirt, because 
Gene Roddenberry was kind of a creep.

So SNW (acronym!), if you're not in the know, is a prequel to the original show and a spin-off of Discovery which introduced Anson Mount playing Captain Pike and Ethan Peck as Spock. It's set on the Enterprise pre-Captain Kirk, so they could have gotten away with a bunch of new characters, but instead they are throwing in some younger versions of the original crew including Nurse Chapel, Doctor M'Benga (the Enterprise had two doctors, Bones was just the most famous one), and Cadet Uhura which I think is especially awesome because the character often got such short shrift on the old show.

Given the ship's endless supply of
no-name crew, couldn't they have
mind-wiped one of them instead?

Such a big deal was made about how progressive it was to have a Black woman on the original Star Trek--and it was legitimately a big deal--but at the same time she was basically a secretary and Kirk routinely shouted at her. Because the 1960's. Like, there are episodes in which she just doesn't appear in, with no explanation as to where a senior member of the crew is, and one time a sentient robot probe erased her memory. She had to be re-educated, loosing her entire personality and was essentially a new person from that point forward, but then she was just back at her desk the next week like nothing happened.

She didn't fare much better in the movies. In Star Trek III, they leave her back on Earth while the menfolk go and search for Spock, and in part VI, she's seen fumbling with a bunch of Klingon-English dictionaries as though part of her job wouldn't include being fluent in the language of the Federation's greatest foe. See? Short Shrift, made all the more frustrating given the character's (and actor Nichelle Nichols's) likability. 

Nerds at sci-fi conventions know more Klingon
then the ship's communications officer whose
actual job it is to speak Klingon. I mean, c'mon.

Get it? Sounds like oral sensitivity? 
Thanks for keeping it classy screenwriters
Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman.

Some of this was kind of made up for with Zoe Saldana's take on the character in the J. J. Abrams movies where she gets more to do, but at the same time she often got relegated to the role of Spock's girlfriend and target of Kirk's groping (no, really). And the less said about her aural sensitivity line, the better. No, you know what? Let's talk about that. In the reboot movie she complains to Spock that she should have gotten a better assignment since she's demonstrated her "aural sensitivity." 

Yup, they gave her a blow job joke. Lucky for us 2021 isn't 2009, and with the new Star Trek shows making way more of an effort to not be so gross and misogynistic, I'm hopeful that Celia Rose Gooding's Cadet Uhura will get better treatment than her predecessors. Of course, Alex "Blow Job Joke" Kurtman is also the show runner, so who can say?

Hey, here's a fun fact that speaks to how much the writers cared about the character:
Nyota Uhura didn't get her official, canonical first name until two thousand nine.
It took them forty three years to even bother to name the character. 

Marc Lore: Urban Planning Wizard

Cities have been a thing for what, ten thousand years? And Serial Entrepreneur and Investor has been a job description since never, so I guess what I'm saying is that I don't have a ton of faith that former Diapers.com founder and Walmart e-commerce CEO Marc Lore is going to be reinventing cities anytime soon.

Look out Uruk, here comes the Diapers.com guy with a better idea!

He didn't specifically mention hover
cars, but there's probably hover cars, right?

Does that make me a nay-sayer? Maybe, nevertheless, nay I say. According to Lore, telos was a term coined by Aristotle meaning end goal or purpose. I'm not sure how Lore would know that since Aristotle died twenty-three hundred years before the invention of the Ted Talk but here we are. Anyway, Lore is embarking on a project to build a planned city named Telosa--so like, telos with an "a." Lore says that Telosa will be as diverse as New York, as clean and as efficient as Tokyo, and as wisely and as equitably run as Stockholm. 

It will be ecologically sustainable and house five million people. The whole thing will cost about four hundred billion dollars and will be built over four decades, somewhere in the desert, the exact location is still TBD. Holy shit, a brave new world is dawning! 

I mean, most of the planet will be a desert soon, so really, they could built this anywhere.

Pictured: everything wrong
with capitalism. 

Great, sign me up. Except don't sign me up because good intentions aside, serial entrepreneur and investor isn't a job and this whole thing smacks of the kind of billionaire bullshit that gave us rich people riding a dick rocket into low orbit. I'm not trying to be a jerk to Marc Lore. In his promotional video he touts the project's goals of equity and sustainability, and these are laudable. But his idea is basically why not build a city that doesn't suck? which is what everyone has wanted since the hunter gathers settled down and built roads and sewers and Starbucks. 

Maybe he can put together the investors to pull it off, but when it comes down to it, he's a capitalist rounding up other capitalists to invest in his city. And isn't capitalism the thing that's created the unequal and unsustainable situation we find our planet in in the first place? The answer I'm looking for is yes. I'm not saying I have a better idea, but leaning in to the one that set the Pacific Northwest on fire might not necessarily be the way to go.

"What are you talking about? Unfettered capitalism has worked out great for us."

-Rich people

"Sure, it seems unfair now, but wealth is going
to start trickling down any minute. Trust us."

-What the rich have been

 telling us for forty years

Like, investors don't invest their money in things without some assurance of a return, so right from the start, this thing is already fundamentally about making money and not, as Lore says in his commercial, "people centered." Am I just being cynical? Sure I am, but it's hard not to be. I mean, look at literally anything happening in the world right now. But I'm also hugely suspicious of utopian billionaires. Marc Lore is no Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk in terms of net worth but he's still a rich I think we've all learned not to pin out hopes on the rich because they're not looking out for anyone but themselves.

Above: and artists rendering of
basically every billionaire in America.

I mean if they--that is the people who control most of the world's wealth--wanted to, they could, as a class, wipe out hunger or homelessness or cut global carbon emissions. But they don't because then they wouldn't have the one thing that gives them power over the rest of us. So it's all oversized checks and grand charitable gestures, but at the end of the day they're still sitting atop their hoards like tax-dodging Smaugs, so what's in it for them?

"Sure, that would make more sense,
but I've already made up a name so..."

-Marc Lore

But let's say Lore comes up with the billions of dollars to build his city. Wouldn't that money be better spent fixing cities that already exist? Having potable drinking water in 21st century America is not a given, so why not do something about that? In California, PG&E shuts off our power because they spent all the money we gave them to fix the grid on bonuses for their CEO's, so maybe give us a hand? Or he could slap four hundred billion dollars worth of solar panels on everyone's roofs. My point is there's probably better, more efficient people centered things he could do with the money, but they're not as sexy and don't make for great pitch videos for investors.

Or, and I don't know, go with me on this, but instead of waiting for a bunch of billionaires to play Sim City with real money, what if there was some kind of system where people had to contribute a portion of their income to say, some kind of governmental agency, and then they use that money to provide municipal services or improve infrastructure? 

Yes! Like taxes, except what if rich people had to pay them too?