An American president has casually suggested deporting/expelling Americans who refuse to not just stand for forcible patriotic displays, but do so “proudly.” Should they wear identical smiles to denote “pride?” Who will police the pride level to ensure compliance?

Trump says NFL players who kneel during national anthem 'maybe shouldn't be in the country'

Okay, now I know some if not most of the folks here know by now the observation that H.L. Mencken made a century ago in one of his newspaper columns, which ends

Quote:As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

Starting a new thread as I don't see the old one. I'm pretty sure there used to be a What-If thread, but my search attempts didn't find it.

Sometime in the last week a new What-If appeared on the xkcd site, Earth-Moon Fire Pole, which asks what would happen if you built a fire pole stretching from the surface of the Moon to the surface of the Earth. As many might expect the answer is, Very Bad Things. But has that ever stopped Randall from exploring a question? "But let's ignore those problems! What if we had a magical pole that dangled from the Moon down to just above the Earth's surface, expanding and contracting so it never quite touched the ground? How long would it take to slide down from the Moon?" Yeah, didn't think that had ever stopped him from answering a question. :}

Other choice quotes:

"...and that's not how sliding works."
'Unfortunately for you, space is big, so "pretty close" is still a long way.'
"At worst, your hands and the surface of the pole will both be converted into exciting new forms of matter, and then you'll be flung away and plummet to your death."

and best of all the image alt text: "DO NOT USE THIS GRAPH FOR PLANNING PURPOSES. It's not that it isn't accurate, it's just that any kind of plan that involves this type of data is probably a bad one."

CBC News: Researchers working on new kind of green beer — with cannabis

Who needs barley? Not these college students. At the moment, they're using hemp as a replacement for barley, but they plan to switch to cannabis once it becomes legal, possibly later this year.

"Kramp hasn't tried cannabis beer herself, but said industry researchers claim it'll have a nutty flavour."

Looks interesting...

Google Quietly Removes "Don't Be Evil" Preface From Code of Conduct

By sheerest coincidence, Chrome on my Android phone kept insisting this was a dangerous, untrusted site.

Old thread is here.

Welcome to another installment of "Okay, what's it from?"

Zippo has 14 digital models available for download on this page. I only recognize half of them. What are the others from, if anything?

* HAL 9000 (2001: A Space Odyessy)
* cartoon submarine (Yellow Submarine)
* incom for DAZ Aiko3 (is this generic?)
* ayashii kikai (?)
* time machine (obviously something based on Wells's book, but which adaptation?)
* ultra eyes (?)
* monolith (2001: A Space Odyessy)
* Shotaro's controller (Tetsujin 28-go, a.k.a. "Gigantor")
* memekurage (Is this just a jellyfish, or is it from something?)
* pitch fork (generic devil)
* ufo (is this generic?)
* ray gun (looks generic to me)
* iron rod (generic oni's club)
* screw type (?) EDIT: Mamorien has IDed this one.

The official Senate page, s.2393: CLASSICS Act, doesn't have very much information at this point.

The Register's story has much more information: US Congress mulls extending copyright yet again – to 144 years.

Folks, please make this an election issue. Let your Congresscritters know what you think of extending copyright yet again to benefit a very few big businesses and nobody else.

...my logjam on the Ep 3 fight clears up.  I might have chapter 2 ready to release by the end of the month at this rate!

Huh.  You guys have been busy in here since I last poked my head in.

But yeah, apparently there was a film made called, naturally enough, Strategic Air Command back in 1955 starring Jimmy Stewart and June Allyson... and they filmed actual B-36 Peacemakers during start-up, take-off, and flight.  And to top it all off, some beautiful person has restored the original footage to HD quality.



Just in case anyone needed a bit of inspiration.