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That's something I need to see more of.

It was brought up in some UFO discussion somewhere, a suggestion for the propulsion of saucer-type UFOs. (They do actually seem like they're possible if done properly with this tech.)

I was curious, googled it, and they had a really crappy website on an .edu domain showing how they got regular extension cables to produce enough ionic wind to visibly glow. It was crazy, but just incomplete enough to annoy me, so I kept googling it every few months to check the progress out.

Around the time they got the DARPA contract, they showed a working tethered prototype and a concept image of a scifi looking stealth bomber using the old, "giant blue glowing coil of doom" method they were working on at the time, but otherwise kinda like the Nighthawk.

I'm not one hundred percent sure if they are the same people as this group, but the main guy on that project was the leader of the field (because no one else was in it, mind) so I'm inclined to assume it's connected.

[Engineers fly first-ever plane with no moving parts]

Engineers fly first-ever plane with no moving parts

As per the article:

"Now MIT engineers have built and flown the first-ever plane with no moving parts. Instead of propellers or turbines, the light aircraft is powered by an "ionic wind"—a silent but mighty flow of ions that is produced aboard the plane, and that generates enough thrust to propel the plane over a sustained, steady flight.

Unlike turbine-powered planes, the aircraft does not depend on fossil fuels to fly. And unlike propeller-driven drones, the new design is completely silent.

"This is the first-ever sustained flight of a plane with no moving parts in the propulsion system," says Steven Barrett, associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. "This has potentially opened new and unexplored possibilities for aircraft which are quieter, mechanically simpler, and do not emit combustion emissions."

He expects that in the near-term, such ion wind propulsion systems could be used to fly less noisy drones. Further out, he envisions ion propulsion paired with more conventional combustion systems to create more fuel-efficient, hybrid passenger planes and other large aircraft."

Here's a link: https://techxplore.com/news/2018-11-first-ever-plane.html

This is definitely "thinking outside the box."

I've been following this since before it became a DARPA thing back in 06. There's been four or five people working on it since the mid 90s, they got DARPA backing after they showed a tethered flight prototype (about a foot long wingspan and literally just electric cables wrapped around a shaped piece of plywood) but that went nowhere and got canned around 2010 ish iirc.

Good to see they kept going and got something more useful. Also super interesting that they have reason to think the efficiency scales well now, that was a huge deal with the DARPA project, they couldn't make it scale up at all.

The Proud Boys are too much of a known entity to just fall apart. McInnes and his creatures are famous (for some value of fame) in their circles, and I know how that kind of ego gets off on being important.

My bet is they do as Cain suggested, running to Daddy, but the real meatheads of the group start a second "unaffiliated wink-wink" group that sticks to what the PB are currently.

This kind of rabbit hole can go down infinitely with minimal losses outside the very top, and I suspect the general membership is more about stepping on people than boot licking, the authoritarianism is just an excuse. And I suspect the remainder are more inclined to see jailed leaders as martyrs to the cause than anything else.

I think it's a bad idea to do anything there unless you are the sort of person who thinks you can "win" a mosh pit.

Excellent job.

I picked a fight with the head of security at Boston City Hall today.

I need to know how that went.

Yes. Howl nailed it.

Let's try to put an end to the rugged individual meme.

Here's the main thing:  The rugged individualist meme - alongside American libertarianism in general - is a perfect extension of logic from an incorrect assumption.  Humans are by nature a cooperative species.  The mistake made by the RI/Libertarian crowd is that they assume that To cooperate with the group is to surrender your identity.

And that last bit is the part we have to attack.

I can't help but feel that the only problem with this approach is that the people who don't already feel that a community is a good thing are so bogged down with their own false baggage that nothing can change their minds.

Best example of this is "gamer culture", where anyone who tries to bring facts about being not-a-piece-of-shit to the table is just considered brainwashed or a brainwasher. Libertarians and their fellow travelers are (in my experience) no different in this respect. They've internalized "us vs. them" to the point that they automatically consider any deviance from accepted doctrine to be evidence of enemy action.

I want to figure out how to break /that/ first. Thus far, though, I have nothing.

If you have any ideas of your own, I'm genuinely curious about them. Someone whose belief system precludes anything but their own dogma is well defended, and I haven't taken many opportunities to probe that mindset for weaknesses myself.

Nothing surprising, but plenty frightening:

https://apple.news/A-S6nscQvRIeae_QYv_d2QA

I've gotta say, it's getting interesting. Last week this shit was entirely predictable, and now I have no fucking clue what's coming. It's like a delicious daily surprise of rancid dog shit on a bed of roach eggs.

I like that he calls the enemy of Anti-fascists the US Government monopoly on violence.

I know he's incapable of recognizing what that means, but that just makes it all the more rich and interesting, I think.

He is basically a machine for metabolizing cocaine.  There will be no Nobels this year.

Lots of political dumpster fires to take the place of Yule logs for un-American Americans though.

I like that he calls the enemy of Anti-fascists the US Government monopoly on violence.

I know he's incapable of recognizing what that means, but that just makes it all the more rich and interesting, I think.

Lots of intelligent people have said great things while using coke. Freud is not one of them. He was a musty misogynistic trash fire, and has never been anything but. If you think his work has any value outside of mockery, you are beyond hope.

Fox is getting increasingly weird as fuck.

https://apple.news/AePHEV5XHQwC3hrRprOU5pw

They were the FIRST legal supporters of this, apparently. And they managed to do it without too much blatant frantic ass covering for their followers, check the quote for yourself:



That's less latter-day Fox News and more 2006 CNN.

I have no idea what the fuck is going on anymore.

All you need to know is that Zizek is a "Freudo-Marxist."

To really simplify it enough that anyone can easily recognize the issue here, he thinks Freud's coke addled brain diarrhea should be used to inform governance of a communist state.

Everything such a person says is worth no more than dogshit on a hot sidewalk. Sadly, you stepped in it.