Posts Tagged ‘Lego’

LinkSwarm for December 30, 2022

Friday, December 30th, 2022

Greetings, and welcome to the last LinkSwarm of 2022! Short this time because of a whirlwind of pre-New Year’s Eve cleaning.

  • A whole lot of stuff in Russia seems to be catching on fire.

  • Serbia puts its army on high alert over Kosovo (again) because having just one war in Europe obviously isn’t enough. But that was three days ago, so maybe it’s just more sabre-rattling.
  • Minnesota instructor fired for including painting of Muhammad in course on Islamic art.
  • Higher education can’t be reformed from within.
  • EU bans imports of products linked to deforestation, freezing Europeans cut down forests to survive.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • As usual, it’s good to be in tech. “Laid Off Tech Workers Are Having No Trouble Finding New Jobs.” This is why all that “get back to the office or get fired” rhetoric is an empty threat.
  • “LEGO just released a set based on a gay television show and I kid you not they labeled one of the gay men a groomer.”
  • How Southwest Airlines screwed the pooch this week, with thousands upon thousands of cancelled flights.

    Sure, there was a very bad storm. But any frequent flyer knows that airlines love to trot out the liability-shielding word “weather” when a more honest reason for a delay is a chronic staff shortage, as was clearly the case in Denver for Southwest; no backup plans; or, in this instance, problems with an archaic, off-the-shelf phone and crew-scheduling system that buckled under pressure even as every other airline quickly got back to normal.

    Evidence mounted that Southwest, apparently still stuck in the 1990s, had ignored numerous calls to upgrade its technological support system even after it knew the danger of a meltdown. Rather, it focused on restoring its stock dividend and, reportedly, installing a pickleball court at its headquarters.

    As with many businesses in crises, Southwest and its top executives were slow to heed the scale of the problem coming over the net this week: Airline delays on this scale aren’t just about missing family gatherings, although that is bad enough, or sitting on the floor for hours. They can be matters of life and death.

    I also read somewhere that the top people at Southwest have finance backgrounds, not airline operations backgrounds.

  • Thousands Of Spirit Airlines Passengers Disappointed Their Flights Weren’t Canceled.”
  • Studios are shocked, shocked that properties they’ve ignored the advice of fans to infect with social justice are hugely unpopular.

    Henry Cavill is like many leading men. He’s handsome and talented, and anything he appears in automatically attracts viewers. However, unlike most leading men, his fanbase consists of both typical and atypical elements for someone like him. While he does have the love of moviegoers, women, and the respect of many a man, he also has a massive following in the nerd and geek communities.

    This is because Cavill is, himself, a rabid geek and an unabashed one at that.

    It’s this geeky quality that led Cavill to pursue various roles that should have made studios a lot of money. All they had to do was listen to Cavill. However, that’s not what they did. They ignored him, and now things are crumbling around them.

    Netflix’s “The Witcher,” in particular, is one lesson that studios could learn a hard lesson from because it represents studios ignoring the geeks on a singular level. Cavill is a man who pushed for Netflix to take on “The Witcher” and he even succeeded in landing the role as the series protagonist “Geralt of Rivia.”

    The Witcher is a well-known property. It started as a successful book series that was adapted to successful games. Cavill was a no-brainer for the role of Geralt, not just because he looked and acted the part flawlessly, but because he was a massive fan of both the games and the source material.

    Cavill was more excited than anyone that this series was being made and said he’d stick it out with the show for seasons on end and would only depart if they didn’t respect the source material and change the show for their own purposes.

    And true to form, Netflix hired showrunners that did exactly what Cavill warned again. Believable rumors began circulating that Cavill was unhappy with the show. It later came out that Cavill was oftentimes fighting to maintain various elements of the story. It was also revealed that the showrunners would laugh at, or show disdain for, the source material that Cavill loved so much. Soon enough, he announced he was exiting the role as Geralt and handing it to Liam Hemsworth. I can only imagine the heartbreak Cavill suffered over this, but it was the right move…according to both his fans and fans of “The Witcher.”

    Cavill is one of the few actors who he and his fans can say truly understand each other. He’s one of them and it shows.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • NFL legend J. J. Watt announces his retirement.
  • “Customer states: My car sounds like a Husky/a dolphin/Ric Flair.”
  • Tom Lehrer has released all his songs for free on the Internet.
  • “New Canadian Operation Game Just Has You Murder The Patient.”
  • .50 BMG vs. Body Armor

    Thursday, July 12th, 2018

    Ace of Spades had this video up of Jerry Miculek testing a Barrett .50 BMG rifle against a body armor plate made of dense polyethylene:

    Result: The round did not penetrate the back of the plate. That’s not the result I would have expected.

    That got me wondering what a .50 BMG round would do against other types of armor plate out there.

    Here’s a video of a .50 BMG first against two Level IV composite/ceramic plate body armor plates.

    Spoiler: it obliterates the first plate, seriously deforms (but does not penetrate) the second, hard enough to obliterate the water jog behind it.

    Level III Kevlar helmet?

    Not only does the .50 BMG obliterate it, it doesn’t even stop an AK-47 round.

    More on the same theme.

    The .50 BMG doesn’t go through the helmet, it goes though three helmets, and through both sides of two.

    How about 1 inch of AR550 steel?

    Just over an inch of Titanium:

    And just for fun: .50 BMG vs. Legos: