The funny thing is that he kinda-sorta already has in “Apollo 13”. The Apollo CSM was built by North American Aviation, later named North American Rockwell after a merger. They changed their name to Rockwell International in 1973, then sold their space division to Boeing in 1996.

Rockwell also built the space shuttle. So Rockwell also has the dubious distinction of having built every American crew vehicle that killed its crew.

what the fuck am I supposed to do with myself

Movies with internet friends!

I’m certain that I have no idea.

That show aged really well. Explicitly calling out real-world American government shit like Gladio, Operation Paperclip, Iran-Contra, etc. Mixing up the setting every few years to refresh the well of jokes. A refreshing lack of homophobia and transphobia, which was all too common in other animated adult stuff from the late 2000s. I’m still a fan.

A good starter printer is the Ender-3 V3 SE. It’s reasonably fast and reliable for the price. It comes pre-assembled unlike some earlier Ender-3 models which are more DIY. I’ve had one for about 6 months and I’m very happy with it.

In addition to a printer, you’ll want good slicer software. It’s hard to go wrong with Cura. It’s free software under the LGPL v3, source code available here. It supports a ridiculous number of printers, and it incredibly customizable. It’s also very fast. I regularly run it on a budget years-old laptop with onboard Intel graphics and 8GB RAM and it still works perfectly. A lot of the slicer software that comes direct from printer manufacturers is either some weird homegrown thing with poor performance and poor customization, or it’s just Cura with proprietary bits on top. Ignore it all and go straight to original Cura.

To get started in 3D modelling, get a free account at Tinkercad. It’s a proprietary web thing from the bloodsuckers at Autodesk, but it’s actually legitimately good. It’s easy to export the right kind of file that Cura needs.

dark side of Moon

Serious answer: a Roger Corman biopic. Made on a Roger Corman budget, by Roger Corman’s longest-term friends and colleagues. A love letter to his work in the spirt of his work.

Joke answer: a G-rated Peter North biopic.

The Empire will never, ever forgive him for how he and his colleagues helped destroy the Iraq and Afghanistan war narratives.

A cousin introduced me to it a month back. I was sold on it by the end of the very first scene. It’s my kind of crazy. He’s always had great taste in entertainment.

I actually only learned about Hazbin Hotel after watching Helluva Boss. Frankly I’m not as big a fan of Hazbin Hotel so far. I like the style and the story and the characters, but I really don’t enjoy musicals.

This has apparently been around for awhile but I just recently heard about it. Universal Paperclips, a game based on the paperclip maximizer artificial-intelligence thought experiment. It starts out like a clicker game but rapidly veers into deep social commentary.

Other lifeforms in the universe being basically humans with a bright shade of paint thrown on them.

This is one of the reasons I love Farscape. Sure, there were lots of funny-paint funny-nose-ridges humanoids. And lots of Leatherclad Fascist Space Australians. But the production team genuinely tried to make alien-looking aliens right from the start despite their budget and technology limitations. And as their budget improved they seemed to put all the extra money right into the puppets and prosthetics.

Of course Farscape did do the “a white human man is most important entity in the universe” thing. But I also forgive Farscape for that because John Crichton sure as hell didn’t want any of that attention, he wasn’t aiming to be a hero, he just wanted to fly under the radar and go home.

About ten years ago I spent a small christmas bonus on a really great winter coat, because I was spending a lot of time waiting at train platforms in winter conditions that were like -20° and windy. I haven’t needed to wear it in nearly five years.

There’s actually an open question on that. China’s Shenzhou spacecraft was heavily based on Soyuz. But there’s never been clear communication from the CNSA that the Shenzhou uses a standard Soyuz-style APAS docking system or if they modified it. It may not even be possible to dock Shenzhou to the ISS at all.

This lack of public information is pretty common unfortunately for those of us interested in spaceflight. It’s not sinophobic to state that the CNSA is incredibly tight-lipped on specifications. They’re very public with scientific research results relating to spaceflight, but almost never give the technical details on how they accomplish that research.

My bet is on NASA making a change to the Crew-9 flight in august, either to add physical seats or only send two astronauts up instead of the planned four. Adding new seats is theoretically possible as the Crew Dragon structure was originally designed to accommodate 7. But it may require modifications that might not be possible to complete before the flight. I think it more likely that NASA only sends up two astronauts. NASA doesn’t like emergency design changes.

I will eat my hat before Bill Nelson would request a Soyuz from Russia. That is going to be his absolute last resort. Nelson is going to be under extreme pressure from the White House to make NASA’s response a “made in the USA” solution.

My attitude towards American presidential politics, being both a non-American who can’t vote and as someone who sees both parties as capital’s servants, is that the only value of an American presidential election is entertainment. I want to see an election play out like a good episode of Archer - just all kinds of crazy shit that makes people lose their minds and do even crazier shit. I want an election like a John Waters movie. I want an election like a Joseph Heller novel. I want an election that wallows in the depths of sleaze that would make Charles Bukowski say “hey, let’s tone it down!” I want an election so lurid that it makes a Traci Lords biopic look like A Charlie Brown Christmas. I want an election so depraved that Kevin Spacey pops his head up to say in sincere horror “jesus christ, what the fuck?”

And having the fucking Teamsters president doing a speech to Trump’s base is definitely in that category. I totally approve.

It’s even worse than vertical integration. It’s just one family, owning theoretically-competing businesses with extreme combined marketshare. That one family rakes in all the profit while the workers are subject to the usual predations of capital. The Irvings are worse than a mob family. The Irvings can do what mob families aspire to do, but the Irvings can do it openly and legally.

Good fucking riddance. Now let’s see the rest of them go.

Oh my goodness yes! I can’t believe I forgot that one.

The limited text space may make it tricky. I can’t just keep listing all the fandoms that basically guarantee that I and the other person wouldn’t hit it off, the list would be huge. I need to figure out some pithy line to sum it all up.

You can have my dating apps when you pry them from my warm, sticky fingers.

The bank accounts that never have savings because young British adults are paid poverty wages as the norm, and the drivers licenses for cars they can’t afford to buy and maintain?

2012 Was Once Considered Hottest Year On Record, Man In 2024 Remembers Wistfully.