Tau Cetaceans

this reminds me - need to find an unflattering picture of Whiskey Pete for my sci-fi timeline wiki thingy...

Mood

not the highest priority, but my most selfish nerd desires for what to come out of the coming AI Bubble / Oil Price Spike / Crypto Crash / anti-MAGA backlash:

- Star Trek IP no longer owned by Ellison et al.
- D&D IP no longer owned by WotC/Hasboro

You Can Pick Your Friends, You Can Pick Your Nose, But Don't Pick Your Friend's Nose YouTube video by Spitball Music

re: Homeland Secretary-nominee Markwayne Mullin reportedly picking other people's noses... (if you consider GOP Senators and their spouses to be people)

I refer back to my earlier statements about this being the weirdest effing timeline

really seems like we're in the dumbest effing timeline...

(though to be sure, also coming to terms with how much sane-washing there has been on how dumb the timeline always was)

big words coming from a guy whose country is also a Chinese gas station...

The Ritz-Carlton Baku Hotel - Wikipedia

checked on Trump Tower Baku after the IRGC hit the Baku International Airport (during Trump v1.0 had idle bad thoughts it might become a target for terrorism / become a way to goad the idiot)... and apparently it's no longer Trump-branded? (easily the best real estate decision of the last 10 years)

The Ritz-Carlton Baku Hotel - Wikipedia

googled Trump Tower Baku after the Iranians hit the Baku International Airport (during Trump v1.0 had idle bad thoughts it might become a target for terrorism)... apparently it's no longer Trump-branded? easily the best real estate decision of the last 10 years...

it's a Ramadan miracle!

cover of "The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman - astronaut walking through a jungle carrying a laser rifle - very "vietnam war in space" coded

(end-of-month cleanup on sci-fi timeline b4 resuming disassociation from current events)

pro: Andrew formerly known as Prince arrested, and does not go into exile in Dubai (as I'd previously predicted)

con: Dubai is one of the places Iranian missiles are raining down on in the Bibi & Donny Show...

the future we were promised: space warships shooting lasers at each other

the future we were given: border patrol shooting party balloon with laser on loan from military, military shooting border patrol done with laser

the future we need: give Ukraine all the lasers so they can shoot Ruskie drones

Phil Ochs - "William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed"

cover of the Dark Empire graphic novel

Dark Empire was far from my favorite part of the Expanded Universe when it came out in the 1990s... thought the Emperor coming back was more than a little hokey... but holy *^&! did it at least set up the premise and follow a logical plot from there... not "we're making something new up in part 3"

also - (( extended rant about how carbon dating doesn't work that way redacted ))

and on a personal level, the fact the geologist was such a sniveling idiot offended me, but in fairness, the entire crew were all sniveling idiots... /2

you've learned humanity was made by aliens who then tried to destroy us, do you:
a) go back to Earth and tell everyone this monumental info
b) radio Earth and tell everyone this monumental info
c) go to the alien home world to demand answers because they hurt your personal spiritual feelings /1

(reasons being - Hari Seldon is obvious self-insert, Asimov was serial sex pest, and on top of that was re-reading Prelude to Foundation for first time since middle school and getting squicked out by how Asimov did the "Hari gets the robot girl who isn't actually into sex" supposedly happy ending)

illustration in a medieval manuscript depicting a giant green fish head sticking out of the water while men in a boat sail nearby

new avatar - Porphyrios, 6th century whale who attacked Byzantine shipping lanes

still associate with the "want to figure out WTF is going to happen in the future" ethos, but Hari Seldon avatar was getting weird for... reasons...

also sometimes you are just in the mood to wreck imperial shipping

painting of Galileo explaining the phases of the moon in the context of heliocentricism and the moons of Jupiter he'd discovered (also evidence of heliocentricism) to two Catholic Cardinals

Happy Galileo Day to those who celebrate

eppur si muove

(am reading City on Mars right now, research for hard sci-fi project that tries to be way more realistic on timelines than the likes of Musk... mostly just as a way to try and redeem 10 years of almost PhD in planetary geology... if get to take the piss on Musk on the way, bonus) /5

but now 2020s Zubrin has to deal with the reality of 2020s Musk, messy personal life, maybe ketamine-addicted, in bed with Trump (who 1990s Zubrin couldn't have imagined), who is doing a heel turn and saying let's colonize Moon/Greenland instead of the Holy New World... it's got to rankle a bit /4

cover of The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke

side note: but always considered Arthur C. Clarke's Vannevar Morgan in Fountains of Paradise as the ur-example of this yearned-for character archetype - he's just a flat uncomplicated guy that exists purely to fund the fun thing like space elevators or Mars colonization /3

Zubrin also really truly believes the schema he put out in Case for Mars - Moon is Greenland, asteroid belt is Caribbean, Mars is America (and what's worth doing/colonizing)... 2000s/2010s Musk would have been 1990s Zubrin's dream - the rich guy who is going to make my sci-fi dream come true /2

fair enough... shifting conjecture: 1990s Zubrin would have loved the idea of a multi-billionaire swooping in and making all his Mars dreams come true after so many big government "we're going to Mars" initiatives have floundered... before and after Case for Mars first published /1

also, easy conjecture / psychoanalysis for underlying motivation - from Case for Mars and Mars Society onward, he was king of the space colonization nerds, with a normal-ish amount of wealth, and now you've got Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk butting in and stealing his thunder... /3

remembered something he wrote in Case for Mars that was skeptical of the peace w/ Russia lasting and googled his current take on Ukraine and he seems like throwback normie 20th century GOP type on FP, which jives with his other anti-Trump stances.. and being a MIC aerospace engineer in Cold War /2

(pov: snot-nosed kid who read Case for Mars and attended 1st Mars Society in 1990s, including talking in small group with Zubrin, before falling away from all that)

off the cuff, can say he was a lot more libertarian ideologue about what he wants to see happen on Mars than when in full public... /1

or... dark matter is a thing... it is PBHs and some neutrinos are the byproduct of when they explode... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

keep trying to get sold on Traveller...

some Traveller evangelist: "it's more realistic than other sci-fi TTRPGs, but it still has FTL, aliens and psionics"

me: "uh... one of those is a fair bit more plausible / comfortably hard / realistic sf than the other two..."