Open Bar: Curbside Pickup Only

[Doktor Howl]

I didn't care for the doppler figures the systems guys eyeballed off some graph, so I incorporated some orbital mechanics into my model, instead.  I made the Earth a perfect sphere, ripped off the atmosphere, and stopped its rotation to make things easier, but the numbers should still be good to within 10%.

It turns out that low-earth-orbit satellites are spooky.  They're visible for only about 12 minutes at a time, and spend half of that flying straight for your head at over 6 km/s.  Then they miss you by a hairs-breadth, and scoot off in the other direction, laughing softly.

But the real bitch is the degree to which this movement distorts a modulated signal in a fashion that resembles time dilation.  It's not the carrier frequency drift that's the problem, it's the rapidly changing data rate.  Modems don't like that.

The speed of light isn't fast enough.  This is a third-rate universe.

It was the only one on the shelf.

[altered]

I have the worst parts of a sci-fi franchise playing out behind my eyeballs 24/7 these days. We just keep pulling new people out of the black hole in my brain and if you doubt me, one of me has been keeping a map up to date, so I happen to know we are nigh on 90 system members in this brain. Yes, the headaches ARE a constant lately. It's ridiculous. I'm crazy in ways I didn't know existed.

And my love life is full of people at least as catshit crazy as I am, one of whom is being eaten by brain cancer because her live-in girlfriend thinks waiting from April to October for chemo is fine, actually. Another is a full blown alcoholic who works for a capitalistic invention designed expressly to damage human beings for money (health insurance company) and can you blame it for drinking under those circumstances?

The primary relationship fucking ghosted, deleted everything, no one's heard from them in close to a month now. So I found someone new, who is also completely bugfuck and wants me to hypnotize her, cut her open and stuff her full of metal pieces (listen, no humans are actually harmed, only human psyches -- and also I'm basically a cenobite these days which proves you really can be whatever you want to be, so this is basically a feel-good coming-of-age movie plot here), so I'm not as depressed as I could be.

I still can't quit smoking. Hell of a thing. And I still can't find work. Probably something to do with being completely insane, but at this point I wake up every day and smell the coming Nuclear Apocalypse flowing out of the East, so I'm going to make the most of what I got while I have it. Maybe I'll bring some people joy and hope along the way, and terrorize the whitebread morons in ways they don't even know how to be properly afraid of yet as a bonus. All you can hope for, right?

[Doktor Howl]

More bee news.

https://apnews.com/article/massachusetts-springfield-assault-and-battery-bees-635d25fd584a46863ceb3326b6490001?utm_source=Connatix&utm_medium=HomePage

[Doktor Howl]

I have the worst parts of a sci-fi franchise playing out behind my eyeballs 24/7 these days. We just keep pulling new people out of the black hole in my brain and if you doubt me, one of me has been keeping a map up to date, so I happen to know we are nigh on 90 system members in this brain. Yes, the headaches ARE a constant lately. It's ridiculous. I'm crazy in ways I didn't know existed.

And my love life is full of people at least as catshit crazy as I am, one of whom is being eaten by brain cancer because her live-in girlfriend thinks waiting from April to October for chemo is fine, actually. Another is a full blown alcoholic who works for a capitalistic invention designed expressly to damage human beings for money (health insurance company) and can you blame it for drinking under those circumstances?

The primary relationship fucking ghosted, deleted everything, no one's heard from them in close to a month now. So I found someone new, who is also completely bugfuck and wants me to hypnotize her, cut her open and stuff her full of metal pieces (listen, no humans are actually harmed, only human psyches -- and also I'm basically a cenobite these days which proves you really can be whatever you want to be, so this is basically a feel-good coming-of-age movie plot here), so I'm not as depressed as I could be.

I still can't quit smoking. Hell of a thing. And I still can't find work. Probably something to do with being completely insane, but at this point I wake up every day and smell the coming Nuclear Apocalypse flowing out of the East, so I'm going to make the most of what I got while I have it. Maybe I'll bring some people joy and hope along the way, and terrorize the whitebread morons in ways they don't even know how to be properly afraid of yet as a bonus. All you can hope for, right?

I feel ya.  Everything around me - outside of my family - has turned into absolute shitburgers and I'm okay with cenobites and nuclear warfare.

[chaotic neutral observer]

I feel ya.  Everything around me - outside of my family - has turned into absolute shitburgers and I'm okay with cenobites and nuclear warfare.

Just like the weak ass-excuse for a plague we got, the nuclear war is going to be a fizzle.  The Russians will lob a "best used before 1986" tactical warhead, and it will make a bit of a mess, but mostly it will just piss everyone off.

I wouldn't plan any trips to Kherson, though.  "Evacuating civilians"?  Sounds like Putin is planning to wipe it off the map (by nuke, or otherwise).

I wonder how North Korea feels about all this.  Nuclear power was supposed to be their wildcard, but Russia has nukes, and they're losing a war.

[Doktor Howl]

I feel ya.  Everything around me - outside of my family - has turned into absolute shitburgers and I'm okay with cenobites and nuclear warfare.

Just like the weak ass-excuse for a plague we got, the nuclear war is going to be a fizzle.  The Russians will lob a "best used before 1986" tactical warhead, and it will make a bit of a mess, but mostly it will just piss everyone off.

I wouldn't plan any trips to Kherson, though.  "Evacuating civilians"?  Sounds like Putin is planning to wipe it off the map (by nuke, or otherwise).

I wonder how North Korea feels about all this.  Nuclear power was supposed to be their wildcard, but Russia has nukes, and they're losing a war.

Apparently the Russians are going to blow up the dam and flood the city.

[altered]

snip

I feel ya.  Everything around me - outside of my family - has turned into absolute shitburgers and I'm okay with cenobites and nuclear warfare.

I could do without the nuclear warfare, but at the very least it's giving me an impetus. No point in waiting for a better time to be my nightmare-self if the next time period of note is forecast to be global fallout with a side dish of petty fash. No thanks, I'll leave the future to whatever can survive it. In the meantime I'll consensually kidnap and torture all the interested trans people into gender-fucked combat drones, because the worst that can happen is going out the way any freak like myself ought to.

Let them entomb me like smallpox.

ETA: I'm not actually starting a queer apocalypse cult, combat drone is a term of art here.

[Doktor Howl]

So the new member "sosoclever" is the first friend I made when I moved to the USA, 43 years ago.  She's a hoot.

She dropped by to tell me that some bastard regged as Howl/Tarwell on FB.

If you see me there, it's not me.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Report, report, report.
hxxps://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100087084975926

[Suu (parody account)]

So the new member "sosoclever" is the first friend I made when I moved to the USA, 43 years ago.  She's a hoot.

She dropped by to tell me that some bastard regged as Howl/Tarwell on FB.

If you see me there, it's not me.

I wonder who it is, then. Other than some idiot scammer who is attempting to knock off the older Sam Tarwell account. Both of them seem gone to me.

[Doktor Howl]

Report, report, report.
hxxps://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100087084975926

I can't see that, but I am curious as to which particular shithead is doing it.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Check your PMs.

[hooplala]

One of Roger’s many stalkers, no doubt.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

He's catnip to them.
And that's odd. He's not exactly vulnerable prey. 

[hooplala]

They generally are not the sharpest spoons in the drawer.