Author: photog

It’s Shiny and New

photog Current Events, Science , ,

So, it hasn’t snowed in a week and I’ve got a good four or five days to relax.  I guess, life is good.  The news kind of bores me at the moment.  The courts are going back and forth on the ICE arrests and the protest riots.  I guess it’ll take a while for that stuff to get sorted out.  I’ll let Trump get on with his work.  He doesn’t need my applause to do his job (I hope!).

So what else is going on?  Well, we’re sending a rocket around the Moon I hear.  They’re sending four astronauts and one of them is a girl.  Well, what can you do?  She can make sandwiches for the return trip, I guess.  I’m glad they’re planning missions to land on the Moon again.  I think the Moon is a better location for space missions than either the space station or Mars.  Mars is currently too far for our current capabilities to be attempted safely and effectively.  The space station doesn’t seem to be very interesting or useful.  A moonbase on the other hand has definite possibilities.  I think they can start by using robot equipment to transport lots of equipment to the lunar surface and then have a few manned missions to set up a permanent base.  Using unmanned flights to accumulate fuel before humans begin inhabiting a base would provide more of a safety factor.

As for what purpose the base would fulfill, I’d say it would be almost completely scientific experimentation.  Personally, I have a theory that somewhere below the surface of the Moon we’ll find bacterial life.  Specifically, it will be terrestrial life that reached the Moon as spores.  There is supposed to be frozen water on the Moon and below the surface there may be more moderate temperatures.  Of course, there is no atmosphere but I’ve got this feeling that somehow all the life on Earth must leak out into space over time.  Of course, Mars is a better place to look for wandering terrestrial micro-organisms.  But I want to put in my claim for Moon bugs early.  Maybe they’ll even name them after me; E. coli photogiensis.  But I think the Moon would also make a great location for astronomical observatories.  And in terms of the astronauts, having one sixth gravity on the Moon would be many times better for them than the micro-gravity of the space stations.

Finally, they could call the base Luna City.  Robert Heinlein based a number of his short stories and one of his best novels on the Moon (“The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”) I think Luna City is an excellent name.  Of course, when it gets big enough for a main street, that should be Neil Armstrong Boulevard.  Of course, it may turn out that living on the Moon isn’t healthy for humans.  If that’s the case we’ll know soon enough.  Then the Moon will be the domain of robots.  And since it’s so close that will someday happen.  It’s a very large rock that’s very close to Earth and eventually we’ll think of lots of things to do with it.  But right now, it’s shiny and new and waiting for us to walk on its surface again.  Maybe even girls.

With Extra Butter

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, Movie Reviews, photog's Corner, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Movie Reviews , , ,

Oldest Grandson is a fan of video games and of video game adjacent internet personalities.  There is a guy named Markiplier (well, technically that’s an alias) who has made a fortune playing video games on his YouTube channel and currently has something like thirty-seven million followers.  I’ve only ever watched a couple of minutes of his content and must confess I don’t see the attraction.  I guess it’s because I’m old.

Anyway, this guy decided to make a horror movie using his own money and then put it on 3,000 movie screens.  It cost him about $3 million to make.  And on its first weekend it’s made more than $18 million.

Now here’s the thing.  In Hollywood the catering budget for a movie that makes $18 million on its first weekend would cost more than $3 million.  Anyone who would be employed to open a movie of that size would make at least $5 million in Hollywood.  So just based on scale any movie made for less than $3 million is in a completely different league from Hollywood.  This movie couldn’t fail with the built in audience it has and almost any Hollywood movie can’t help but fail.  Even Forbes magazine is touting the new entertainment model that “influencers” like Markiplier has pioneered with his movie success.

So, this is the third movie I’ve heard of that made a bunch of money because someone with tens of millions of followers on line self-financed it and got his people to buy tickets.  Does this show us the future or is this just a blip while the streaming giants kill off or buy up Hollywood?  Maybe it’s a little bit of both.  Markiplier would never get his movie made by a Hollywood studio.  And Netflix and Amazon are frantically looking for content that won’t be ignored by the Zoomers.  I think what we’re beginning to see is a realization that creative types and Silicon Valley are going to have to blow up the Hollywood model with its bloated budgets and maniacal dependence on poorly written sequels of old intellectual properties.  They’re going to have to forget about making crap like “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” or “Star Wars 37: Search for Obi Wan’s Lesbian Aunt.”

The kids around today want to watch stuff that speaks to them.  Some of it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to old people like myself.  But it doesn’t have to.  What they don’t want is corporate slop disguised as sequels to movies that their grandparents watched as kids.  And you really can’t blame them.  So next Saturday I’ll be going with Oldest Grandson to see “Iron Lung.”  And I’ll leave my expectations at the door and watch it with an open mind.  Maybe I’ll love it or hate it or just feel kind of confused.  But I’ll get a chance to see what the future looks like.  And at the very least I know there won’t be a girl-boss character.  Apparently, Markiplier Has 90% of the character face time in the movie.  And I’ve decided I’m going to splurge on the large popcorn.  With extra butter.

The Jig Appears to Be Up

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“Fox Varian, 22, sued both a psychologist and plastic surgeon involved in carrying out a double mastectomy on her in Westchester County, NY, in 2019, when she was a transgender-identifying 16-year-old. Varian, who now works as an actress and no longer considers herself to be transgender, is the first known “detransitioner” to win a civil medical malpractice trial, let alone take such a case to trial, multiple outlets reported.”

The jury awarded her two million dollars.  Now, there is all kinds of medical and legal mumbo jumbo that says if the doctors follow the guidelines that the AMA and the psychiatric associations prescribe then they can’t be touched.  Well, I’m guessing any jury that has human beings and includes women who have daughters will see this kid and see what they’ve done to her and think, “What if that had been my kid?”  And then they’re going to punish these doctors to the tune of millions of dollars.

“The jury had concluded Einhorn and Chin’s conduct leading up to Varian’s double mastectomy marked a “departure from the standard of care,” the Epoch Times reported. The verdict only specifically applied to the plaintiff’s case, however, and not in general to minors receiving so-called “gender-affirming” care, National Review reported.”

Currently there are twenty eight other detransition lawsuits queued up for trial.  Some time after the tenth multi-million dollar verdict is handed down, the malpractice insurance companies are going to raise their rates on psychiatrists and surgeons who do “gender-affirming care” and that will be the beginning of the end for these procedures in every jurisdiction except for the most rabid pro-LGBTQ legal environments.  There are always exceptions.  Places like California will write laws protecting these procedures from legal jeopardy but that still leaves federal courts where civil rights can be used to protect minors from medical harm.

And I think this will happen faster than most people imagine.  The British and the Scandinavians put a stop to these pediatric trans-surgeries years ago because they saw that the results for the patients were terrible.  The likelihood of suicide didn’t decrease after the procedures, it increased.

The other result of this lawsuit will be an incentive for young people who bought into the “trans idea” to see that they’re not the only ones who realized that they’d made a terrible mistake and use the courts to take vengeance on the so-called medical experts who proselytized them into ruining their bodies, health and minds by inflicting this permanent, terrible damage on them.

I wonder if in a few years the people who were responsible for the medical associations sanctioning these awful procedures won’t themselves be punished in some way.  From my point of view they deserve prison time.  But at the very least they should lose their licenses and be made an example.  These are not innocent mistakes.  Only severe mental illness or psychopathic disregard for the welfare of innocent children could explain allowing these surgeries to be prescribed for underage patients.

Well, the nightmare appears to be ending.