Buenos Aires, Argentina

The supposed skull of Mary Magdalene, in it’s case in France

meirl

Rachel Nichols

No blink only yawn

Jeep thing

Mary Tyler Moore (1966)

Natalie Wood (1970s)

Blursed Brown Sugar

Internet Archive’s e-book lending is not fair use, appeals court rules

Publishers prevail despite lack of proof of market harm.

Tactical

Brie Larson

Selena Gomez

Homelander

Wizard by me

Mud slinging

Ryan North Interview With StarTrekBookClub.com

This week’s conversation is with Ryan North, author of the current Fantastic Four series, Adventure Time comics, Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Lower Decks (2022), Shaxs’ Best Day, and the upcoming Lower Decks: Warp Your Own Way and Lower Decks (2024). A slight disclaimer, I’ve actually been emailing Ryan for years and years, he ran an advertising system named “Project Wonderful” that was indeed wonderful and I loved it very much.  It’s not around now though and that makes me sad.

Our conversation roams from his fantastic work on the first Lower Decks mini series, then moves to how to build a choose your own adventure type of story.  Turns out that the upcoming Trek story isn’t his first attempt at this!

Back in 2018 he wrote “How To Invent Everything” and we talk about how frustrating it would be to time travel without knowing how anything actually works.  He was so frustrated with this idea he went out and wrote a book that would let any stray traveler of time jump start the wheels of invention and get you back to the style of civilization that you were previously accustomed to.  Some of that lead to what I personally call “hated knowledge” which is when you learn so much about something that’s broken that you hate knowing all that.  For me it’s a carpet cleaner that I’ve taken apart 50 times and could fix in the dark.  That kind of experience leads to learning how to take things apart and trouble shoot and is actually a good thing, but I still hate it. .

I ask him if he’d be able to write a lower decks literature book and his answer will shock you! (he said yes and it would be a blast to do)

We finish up our conversation by talking about Eaglemoss’s spaceship subscription program that we both got pulled into and I give one final plug for my fishtank that’s on twitch (and has a crashed 1701A in it).

Ryan North can be found at his  website, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, and Twitter.

Natalie Alyn Lind

For once Jesse Watters gets it right.

Molly Gordon

The Federation has a weird track record with artificial intelligence

“Space: Above and Beyond” Review

Space: Above and Beyond: Created by Glen Morgan, James Wong. With Morgan Weisser, Kristen Cloke, Rodney Rowland, Joel de la Fuente. The Earth is embroiled in a desperate war against alien invaders, and this series focuses on one squadron of Marine pilots involved in it.

I had a strong memory of really liking this show, but I knew that it was military science fiction from a time when scifi on TV was pretty hokey at times, so I was happy to see that the first episode opened so strongly with the drill sergeant from “Full Metal Jacket” making an appearance.  It throws a few seemingly unrelated concepts at the wall with tank born super soldiers with no home after a war with synthetic humanoids combining with an assault by alien forces on a human colony on a far off planet. It all eventually kinda sorta all ties together and the stories go from pretty ok to downright bad at times.  The synthetic stories and concept haven’t aged very well, showing particular 90’s elements that are no longer in vogue, specifically androids with cool looking eye caps and circuit boards just randomly hanging off their necks to indicate they’re androids and not humans.  I loved the final project and I think it’s one of the reasons I grew into loving military scifi so much as an adult.

My one big complaint about the show is that the main characters seem to be “general purpose” space marines, depending on the requirements of whatever episode they were in, from leading ground forces to piloting their own “hammerhead” fighter ships to running the guns on smaller cargo landers.  I get that the necessities of the show’s structure is the reason this happened this way, but that structure could be better laid out if the show was made in modern times.

The reason I went back to watch this was that I found a couple paperback books that have stories from this universe and wanted to have the show fresh in my mind when I read them, so now they’re up next on my TBR pile.  They’ve been there for about a year now!

Classic cityscape – SanFran – (OC)

wizards be like “I like NBs– New Books”!

God bless the USA

Ted Kaczynski at University

Monica Bellucci at a film premiere in Paris, 1995

Krysten Ritter

Humvees of 95th Air Assault Brigade drive trough Kursk region [1016×571]

First Miss Universe contest 1952

Yogma La, India [3220×2422][OC]

ECG

Jayne Mansfield (1956)

CSX9000 – Daytona Coupe

Kristen Bell

meirl

Alison Brie

Airline Mechanic Smuggled Cocaine In Airplane Cockpit

More On This – Airline Mechanic Smuggled Cocaine In Airplane Cockpit (watchaeor.com)

Paul Belloisi, a former American Airlines mechanic at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK Airport), was sentenced by United States District Judge Dora L. Irizarry to 108 months in prison for his role in a conspiracy to import and possess cocaine.  Belloisi was convicted in May 2023 following a one-week jury trial of all three counts of an indictment charging him with conspiring to possess and import cocaine and importing cocaine. Breon Peace, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Darren B. McCormack, Acting Special Agent-in-Charge, Homeland Security Investigations, New York (HSI), and Francis J. Russo, Director of Field Operations, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, New York Field Office (CBP), announced the sentence.

Avatar Fire And Ash (2025) Textless Poster p

Abby Elliott

Naches Peak Loop at Mt. Ranier National Park, WA [OC] [3024×4032]

Oh Hmmm….

Pikmin Garden [1920×1080]

meirl

Aly Raisman

meirl

Took me a minute

BIKINI

Joyce DeWitt 1970’s

Cobie Smulders