--
dbrandon

Google was a filthy liar.

But I also got to spend about a day and a half getting very footsore in the National Museum of the United States Air Force, which would have been worth the trip on its own.

They haven't really changed their layout or most of their exhibits in the I-forget-how-many-years since the last time I was there, but the little chill down the nape of the neck as you turn a corner and process "Oh, that's Bockscar. OH," does not lessen on repetition.

-----
Iä! Iä! Moe fthagn!

https://www.birdwatching-bliss.com/american-kestrel-nest-box.html

As for the eclipse, given that I live in Pittsburgh, the best prospects weatherwise for me was going to be somewhere on the south shore of Lake Erie. I got a campsite at Pymatuning State Park (the PA one) and staged out of there.

As it turned out, the best weather prospects on the day were west of Cleveland, so I got up early and drove to Old Woman Creek State Nature Preserve up by Huron, OH. It was a nice spot, not too crowded, and there were plenty of birds including herons, egrets and eagles to watch in the meantime. The weather turned out good, just some high cirrus clouds that didn’t really impair viewing.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

Oh, that’s the ”360-Degree Sunset”! When the moon’s shadow is passing over the earth, and blocking the light from directly above you, the sun is still shining down on all the areas outside of the shadow, and hitting the atmosphere and refracting about in the distance, eventually reaching you. That’s part of why it doesn’t turn pitch black (as the light is still falling outside the cone of the shadow), but is still dusk/dawn levels of light, as normally you’d get that level of light when the sun is just below the horizon shining up into our section of atmosphere.

—- Philip

	Philip J. Moyer Contributing Writer, Editor and Artist (and Moderator) -- Eyrie Productions, Unlimited CEO of MTS, High Poobah Of Artwork, and High Priest Of the Church Of Aerianne -- Magnetic Terrapin Studios "Insert Pithy Comment Here" Fandoms -- Fanart -- Fan Meta Discussions

I remember when I was a kid, there were many scifi properties that were set in the unimaginably distant future year of

2020.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Instead we got fascists and pandemics.

Can we vote this timeline off the island yet?

In lieu of flying cars (because I would not trust lay people to drive those things), I would also take those fully immersive VRMMOs that are supposed to launch around now.

...I would also accept genetic therapy clinics and cybernetics.

Heh, I can't remember if I posted about this on the Games forum here, or somewhere else, but I remember having a discussion about Cyberpunk 2077 and how the incredibly effective medical technology in that setting sort of de-fangs its dystopian pretentions a bit. I mean, at the start of the game your character is just a broke-ass {street kid|disgraced corpo|renegade nomad}, and you get your eyeballs replaced in one of the earliest cutscenes. The operation takes like five minutes and the recovery time afterward is... oh yeah, zero. And yeah, the doctor floats you a loan for it, but even at that, it's not a very big one. Same with having limbs and major organs replaced later on in the game. It's easy, it's quick, and it's not "I own my own volcano lair" expensive.

With medical tech like that available to even the lowest rungs of the admittedly-fucked-up society, I'm not completely convinced living in that society wouldn't be worth it, which is clearly what you're supposed to think...

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Are you sure? Because most of the time those seem to be the most dangerous things the worlds they're set in have ever seen...

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I mean, I wouldn't want to be in the very first wave, because that's a great way to be Death Game'd, but anything after that should be pretty great!

We got the Library of All Human Knowledge, pocket supercomputers, and Star Trek
communicators/tricorders.

Admittedly, the wheel-shaped space station and Moon colonies are waaaaay behind schedule.

-VR
Can you imagine the flying car traffic accidents?
"They copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind,
And I left 'em sweating and stealing a year and a half behind."

Peter Eng
--
Obamacare RFID chips! Proven true by an NBC news story aired in 2006!

That has always been an issue. The difference now is it much easier to find the contradictions. Before, you pretty much had to be involved in a story to see where the lies were. Still leaves the problem of "What is truth?", no wiki or website is going to resolve that.

-VR
"Logic is a wreath of pretty flowers that smells bad."
"They copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind,
And I left 'em sweating and stealing a year and a half behind."

I started to reference an episode of Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law where they spend the runtime poking fun at how wildly out of date The Jetsons is now...only the episode itself aired in 2004. The episode that was one long laugh at how outdated 60s-era "futuristic" cartoons are is now itself a time capsule of mid-00s trends and tech.

--------------------------
CdrMike, Overwatch Reject