zx3 @zx3@driveinsaturday.org

Ad Astra Per Aspera #nasa
https://astronomy.com/news/2018/01/remembering-the-columbia-disaster

@001zlnv *vrrt-klik!*

@001zlnv ostensibly the right answer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3Co9GxHJg0

the countdown has begun. your giant #mecha, gleaming and thrumming with power, is ready to be launched into battle. the resident AI has an eclectic musical taste and has offered you a limited selection of power-up anthems. do you choose:

@cstross fortunately, as a proponent of Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism, i can bypass these concerns and continue living in my personal pleasure orb at Lagrange Point 2.

(this is all good conversation, and as much as i disagree with some of the points here, the main thrust is true: oligarchs like Musk and Bezos have repeatedly displayed their arrogance and evil and should not be entrusted with the perpetuation of humanity in space, noble goal or not. exploration of and existence in space should depend on our ability to change our bodies and adapt to non-Earth environments, not terraforming other worlds to accept our levels of habitability or forcing human bodies to endure the vagaries of space travel. keep sending ever-smarter robots to Mars until we can walk around there ourselves without suits and without getting cancer.)

@LexYeen "you come to me, on this, the day of my 14th boob augmentation, and you ask me a favor in front of my big bouncy mommy milkers, knowing i cannot refuse"

well, "Stalker" sure was a movie. i really am a fan of overlong, atmospheric movies full of philosophical conversations but it's hard to concentrate on the last twenty minutes when my Tom Servo subroutines are all screaming "END! ENNND! ENNNNNNND!"

absolutely 100% worth your time, but know what you're getting into. also, the story behind the production is BONKERS.

attn @mawr :

"when a man is born, he is soft and pliable. when he dies, he is strong and hard. when a tree grows, it is soft and pliable. but when it is dry and hard, it dies. hardness and strength are Death's companions. flexibility and softness are the embodiment of life. that which has become hard will not triumph."
--"Stalker" (Tarkovsky, 1979)

(tl;dr, soff = gud)

finally getting around to watching Tarkovsky's "Stalker." i'm glad i read Roadside Picnic first. if i still can't sleep maybe i should round out the night by re-watching "Annihilation."

honestly, i kind of enjoyed Black Adam. parts were undercooked, and i wish they had done more with the points they brought up about imperialism and self-determination which went nowhere. i have a feeling the "zombie attack" in the third act was a draft rewrite so that we didn't get to see an unarmed proletariat uprising against an evil PMC--which, admittedly, probably wouldn't have gone so good, but it's strange that those guys just vanished halfway through. and doesn't Intergang have ties to Darkseid? i dunno. comic books and DC continuity in particular are weird.

this wouldn't have been the worst place to kick off a second (third?) phase of the DCCU and start moving out of the shadow of the Snyderverse but i guess James Gunn et al. have different plans.