Negative Reinforcement

A Robot Shoots Me When I Get Shot in Fortnite
There's some foul language in here, but it's pretty funny. It's also pretty impressive the way he has strung so many disparate elements together.

Lost In Space - New Series

Lost in Space | Date Announcement [HD] | Netflix

I watched a couple of episodes. I suppose it might be a good show for kids. It was a little juvenile? elementary? Not that great. The special effects were pretty good and there is a bit of real space physics, so that was interesting. Okay, it was more of a passing acknowledgement that, yeah, physics might have some bearing.

The story is a bit apocalyptic, which, now that I think about it, is a pretty common feature in Science-Fiction. I mean they blew up an entire planet full of people in Star Wars. But we like survivor stories. Kind of like fairy tales that way.

I think the thing about the Earth becoming unsafe for human life is kind of a poor motivator. Yes, you can motivate people with fear, but they don't always make the best decisions when they are scared, do they? Me, I'm more in favor of a lets go see what we can do attitude. There are a lot of naysayers out there who will question whether it's a worthwhile endeavor. "Why would you ever want to do that?" they'll say. "Why don't you come and sit with me and Mrs. MacGyver. We'll have some tea and cake." Christ on a crutch, just what I want to do. Get away from me you old biddy. I wouldn't actually say that, of course. I'd go and have tea and biscuits, but all the time I'm gonna be thinking about how are we going to go places.

The thing is, well, let's Wikipedia give us the premise:

In the aftermath of an impact event that threatens the survival of humanity, the Robinson family is selected for the 24th mission of the Resolute (24th Colonist Group), an interstellar spacecraft carrying selected families to colonize the Alpha Centauri star system.

Before they reach their destination, an alien robot breaches the Resolute's hull. Forced to evacuate the mothership in short-range Jupiter spacecraft, scores of colonists, among them the Robinsons, crash on a nearby habitable planet. There they must contend with a strange environment and battle their own personal demons as they search for a way back to the Resolute.

Resolute
There are 14 stacks of Jupiter Spacecraft arranged around the inside of the big ring. How many ships are in each stack is debatable. It might be as few as four, or and as many as a couple of dozen.

The way I remember it, the Resolute wasn't carrying more than about a hundred of the Jupiter spacecraft. How many people on board a single Jupiter? Kind of hard to tell. We've only seen a half dozen people or so, and they seem to have plenty of room.  Given the available space, in an emergency, you could probably cram a couple of hundred people into one ship, though you wouldn't want to do for more than a day, and then only if you can provide enough air for everyone to breath. For long term habitation, a Jupiter might only be able to support a small family.

Jupiter Spacecraft

Doesn't matter really. From what we know, some of the Jupiters made it down to this planet. Don't know many, don't know how many were destroyed on the way down. Durn these cheap communicators. This means, of course, that any time they need a new character, they simply need to find another ship that managed to make it down to the ground intact.

Hand Dancing

Anton Ishutin feat Note U Be My Lover Sharapov Remix
АЛИНА ВИШНЕВСКАЯ
The tune is tolerable and there are plenty of dancing girls, which is always a plus, but it's the hand dancing (I don't know what else you would call it) that captured me. She shows up at the beginning and intermittently throughout the video.

I thought it was cool enough that went looking for more and found this guy.


"DUBSTEP FINGERS" | Finger Tutting Hand Dance | PNUT | Skrillex Kill everybody
My fingers are a little on the stubby side, so I would hard pressed to duplicate this performance. Okay, I would be hard pressed to do something that might be recognizable as a poor imitation.

Hand dancing has been mentioned here before.

Update July 2022 replaced missing video.

Crime & Punishment

Gnarls Barkley - Crazy [video] Album Version

It occurs to me that one reason why the Catholic Church has such a problem with pedophilia is that dispensing justice is not in the Church's purview. The church is in the business of forgiveness. You can bet that those who committed a sin while in the grip of some hormone induced compulsion, when they get to confession they will be truly repentant and will whole-hearted promise to sin no more. And the church, being the church can only accept them at their word. But people are animals. No matter how much we might like to think we are in control of ourselves, it's the hormones that are actually in control.

Ping Pong

ping pong carnival　（卓球芸人ぴんぽんまとめ English Ver.）
Could this be the reincarnation of Bruce Lee?

Amalgam

Aluminum and Mercury
Very strange.

Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Dayz of Summer

Aerosols World Wide

Key:

• blue - sea salt (storms)
• red - carbon (fires)
• purple - dust

A couple of days ago about 10 in the morning I went outside and looked at the sun. It was so dim and red I could look directly at it. Shows you how much smoke is in the air.  Started looking around, trying to figure what was going on in the forest fire department, and what I found is politics. There are several big outfits all pushing their own agenda, and since big money is involved they are pushing pretty hard. I did find a couple of things. One is that the federal government has given the Forest Service some money to pay for fighting fires, so the Forest Service no longer has to steal money from their operating funds to pay for fire suppression. This is good because because the fire fighting business had gotten go big that it was pretty much consuming their entire operating budget.

Another was that something 75 out of a hundred and some forest projects have been hamstrung by environmentalist lawsuits. Seems the environmentalists want to let nature take its course which means letting these fires burn.

The last was that fire season has grown from lasting a couple of months 30 years ago to where it now lasts upwards of six months, mostly due to warmer weather.

Our natural response (actually not natural, conditioned is more accurate) is that fires are bad and should be put out. But that leads to an accumulation of fuel which leads to bigger conflagrations which is why the air is full of smoke.

Eventually all this surplus wood should burn and then things should go back to normal, whatever that is.

All this talk about haze and summer prompted my recollection of this song, though I don't think I've ever heard the whole thing before.


Nat King Cole - Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer