The first ten on today’s playlist:

In airports now, especially if I am wearing just a t-shirt, women walking past smile at me and veer slightly towards me rather than away as they did before my hotness upgrade.

Attractiveness matters so much more than it should in human society.

Devon Eriksen on X: “Feminism is not so much an ideology as is a strategy for constructing narratives in order to seek power. Men and women both use language to seek power, but they have different ideas of what power is. To a man, power is direct power: the ability to act and effect change in the….

I don’t agree with all of this and it frames it all in a very conservative way. But ignore the framing; think about the ideas. And, largely, I believe the ideas are correct. This is indeed what feminism has devolved into. When I write about how déclinée modern feminism has conceived the greatest good as bending the knee to HR, I’m essentially discussing the same ideas as the Twitter post, just twisted in a more liberal way.

I noped out of feminism when it became obvious it had mutated to perverted neoliberalism that was also mostly concerned with telling men that we are in fact inherently, genetically terrible while insisting (related to the neolib turn above) that the values of the most malignant, most anti-human HR department ever conceived is what we should all be subject to.

There should be no patience for any of that, and I certainly have none; we have an entire galaxy to conquer. And we need to get started.

A ‘Chronicles of Narnia’ Star Returns to WW2 With This New Film.

LOL @ that uniform that Grammer is wearing. 82nd Airborne unit patch with no fucking airborne wings. No way, brother. No paratrooper alive foregoes wearing their wings (and everyone who is or was in the 82nd is a paratrooper). Also, he’s a two-star general so that’d make him the commander of the 82nd (Airborne Division) if he’s got that unit patch on his left shoulder (on the right, it’s a combat patch).

Here’s what General Gavin’s (famous member and commander of the 82nd) uniform from WWII actually looked like. Notice those airborne wings sittin’ pretty up there. More on what’s wrong with that uniform below, as it’s a whole lot.

Do more research, please. (Call me — I’m expensive, but worth it.)

(As noted, there are many other things just completely wrong with that uniform, too. The CIB placement is incorrect. There are no medals, which a two-star general would have plenty of. It also doesn’t appear to be either a real uniform of any kind used then. It’s some weird pastiche; it’s neither an army officer’s summer service or winter service uniform. The belt also seems to be from a US enlisted uniform of the time. It’s also missing the U.S. infantry pins on the lapels. And there are still many other things wrong! Fucking hell the more I look the more fucked up it is.)

The first ten on today’s playlist:

Automated distribution of high-rate, high-fidelity polarization entangled photons using deployed metropolitan fibers.

Oh, what the fuck. I had no idea this was becoming possible RIGHT NOW.

This is another of those things Reddit dumbasses will swear is “impossible” five years after it’s already being done (which is, you know, now).

China spends about as much as the U.S. on defense.

Ayup. And Russia spends about 3x as much as is most commonly estimated (conventional wisdom is way, way wrong here) and thus roughly about 30% as much as the US in a fair comparison.

If Europe really wanted to halt economic migrants from the sea and to stop their deaths on the ocean, they’d publicly and frequently announce any and all sea rescue operations would halt and that all migrants would be immediately repatriated.

Then they should proceed to do just that. For a little while, drownings would increase. But then they’d fall precipitously as many, many fewer would attempt to cross that way. Ethically, this would be the correct thing to do as it would decrease deaths enormously and help to halt the social decline of Europe.

Of course, neither of those end states is an actual goal of European elites so it’ll never happen.

The Phantom Menace is a bad movie. As a whole, it’s unwatchable. I did see it in the theater at the time despite not being much of a Star Wars fan.

However, the entire scene where Kenobi stands guard while Qui Gon uses his light saber to slowly melt through the blast doors on the starship is really nicely done. It shows how powerful the Jedi are, how relentless, and how fanatical. If the rest of the prequels had continued like this they might have been worth watching.

Just the part of the scene in particular of the light saber in solid metal melting it like butter is so effective in itself. Not just the special effects, but mise en scene, the acting, the costumes — it all works so incredibly well, unlike most of the rest of the film.

Ah, what could have been.