Gaikokumaniakku: On a tangent related to CIA mischief: https://covertactionmaga zine.com/2025/06/12/cia- secretly-financed-politi cal-career-of-monster-of -showa-who-was-responsib le-for-deaths-of-over-1- 5-million-chinese-slave- workers-in-world-war-ii/
Gaikokumaniakku: If Manson and Kaczynski are KNOWN products of CIA brainwashing, how many *unknown* products of CIA brainwashing sowed mischief undetected?
Siamang: *The compartmented technology developers are still humming along* This is the classic cope of every dying regime. The sorcerers will fix it!
Gaikokumaniakku: “I remember trying to like the TV show, because Science Fiction, but thirtyish actors just don’t impress small boys as beefcake and cheesecake.” Do I understand you correctly, sir? Do you mean to suggest that Erin Gray was not a worthy choice to portray Wilma Deering? https://www.buckwiki.com /data/Wilma_Deering Scandal! Outrage! I shall write a sternly-worded letter to the Times!
Gaikokumaniakku: I read the print book, and I had a big hardcover collection of the comic strips. I should probably do a retrospective on the comics, but for the moment I encourage interested pulp fans to check out the existing blogosphere, such as: https://artcontrarian.bl ogspot.com/2011/02/wilma -deering-looks-like.html
Gaikokumaniakku: The missile knows where it is. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=NEyCfBb9peY
Jim: On one hand, I’ll believe it when I see it; on the other hand, real breakthroughs in aviation are long overdue.
Bruce: Isegoria: Thanks, just read it. I’m not sure if I ever read the sequel to the first book before. Pulp based on men who’d been through the Western Front and liked it sure gets bloodthirsty. Less racist than I remembered. There’s even a good word for Asians not corrupted by evil space alien blood. Still, not politically correct. The stuff about the crushed subjects of the evil empire spending their days on drugs, never leaving cramped apartments, watching viewscreen agitprop all...
Southerner: Optimism is severely over-rated. Every sports team when they run on the field think they’re going to win and half the time they’re wrong.
Michael van der Riet: Prisoners of Geography: Africa. I wish that Tim Marshall hadn’t written this exceedingly superficial piece. It calls his credibility into question. South Africa is not a commanding presence at the southern tip of Africa as it no longer has a navy or air force. Regarding the outside world doing business with Bloemfontein, I spent a week there one night. There is no sign of Marxism-Leninism ceasing to be the political direction taken by the entire Subsahara.
T. Beholder: Pessimism, the sense that it is hopeless, is a self-fulfilling prophecy Not entirely wrong… but is optimism better? Are you a techno-optimist? This is a serious condition—as common as prediabetes. Don’t laugh. You can treat your prediabetes—and your techno-optimism, too. - A techno-pessimist manifesto https://graymirror.subst ack.com/p/a-techno-pessi mist-manifesto I have learned that ages become golden because they imitate and innovate. Let’s imitate a golden age, then. But wait, are we...
Isegoria: Since you mention “1919 Buck Rogers,” I’m obliged to note that the post-Star Wars Buck Rogers TV show bears little resemblance to the original novella, Armageddon 2419 AD — in which the hero is named Anthony Rogers.
Bruce: When I read science fiction I compare it to the best science fiction writer, Larry Niven, writing in the golden age of science fiction, 1979, when I was fourteen. Niven is the best at ‘rich tourist in fairyland’. The Coming Race is the story of a rich tourist in fairyland. Legend has it James Baen gave Niven and Pournelle a case of beer to fix up an outline of 1919 Buck Rogers to 1979 SF standards. There’s enough good stuff in ‘The Coming Race’ to do this. Vril is a...
Jim: To the surprise of absolutely no one, the author is a Swede. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=uGkLjfPWqeI
Jim: But get Giotto and the flying shuttle, it takes something more: a broader culture of optimism. What is this grammatical construction? Is this valid English? This progress sometimes became self-sustaining because, at a certain point, it started transforming the self-identity of these cultures. That is why we often see clusters of creativity, like philosophy in Athens, art during the Renaissance, classical music in Vienna and technology in Silicon Valley. This seems subtly wrong, somehow. Could it be...
Muh'lennial: In a healthy society elders would be worth listening to. If we do our part perhaps in 30 years they will be. But the boomers were not beneficial, or even neutrally worthless. They were negative value down to the personal level. The people who listened to them and sincerely followed their advice did poorly in life compare to everyone else.
Jim: Literally everything about the United State circa 2025 is set up to favor the Eternal Boomer and its (yes, its) lesser offspring, the always-spiritual and often-literal butch-lez Elder Gen-X-ette. It’s about damned time to dissolve the monasteries gerontocratic power centers—all of them, every single one.
Freddo: Bob Sykes, don’t worry, the Ivy League will ensure that the US will maintain a lead in critical gender studies.
Bob Sykes: University faculty are very smart, and receive very little supervision. However, they have to generate the resources they need for their research by themselves, and they are rated almost entirely by their success in doing so. The massive cuts in research funding in the “Big, Beautiful, Bill” will crush STEM education and research.