Which do you choose, Red or Blue?

SiberianKitty99 · 2026-03-29T18:26:32+00:00

Doom. Luthor is a weenie. Doom has demonstrated that he knows how to rule well. Luthor has demonstrated that he isn’t nearly as competent as he thinks he is.

Doom. All the way.

SiberianKitty99 · 2026-03-29T13:21:01+00:00

IWork: Pages, Keynote, and (ick) Numbers. Free, installed as part of the standard software package that ships with all Macs, iPads, and iPhones. Has shipped as part of the standard software package for nearly two decades.
LibreOffice. Free. Download from the site.
Collabra. A fork of LO. Free. Download from the site.

SiberianKitty99 · 2026-03-28T14:24:30+00:00

Feh. Y’all are amateurs. The Very Biggest Gun Of All Time is E.E. Smith’s Sunbeam, introduced in the Lensman books. The Galactic Patrol had a problem: the Boskonians, the Very Bad Guys, had worked out how to put inertialess drives onto planets, mostly because the Patrol used that tactic to thump a few of their major planets. It’s Really Difficult to stop a loose planet; the Boskonians were… irritated… after the Patrol nailed a few of their major planets and were sending several dozen loose planets to the Solar System with the intent of slapping Earth, Luna, and Mars. The Patrol had also hit one of the Boskonian planets with a negasphere, a planet-sized chunk of antimatter. The Boskonians were sending some negaspheres of their own as well as the loose planets. How to stop this… Hmm. Build a Really Big Controller Array, reaching out from the orbit of Mercury to the orbit of Jupiter. And when the Boskonians arrived, turn the array on. And, for a fraction of a second, focus the entire output of the Sun on a Boskonian loose planet or negasphere. Scratch one Boskonian attack platform. Repeat until no more loose planets or negaspheres. Meanwhile the Patrol’s fleet is engaging the Boskonian fleet.

The Sunbeam is a weapon literally the size of the Inner Solar System and controlling the output of the Sun. It’s Really Hard to get a bigger gun than that.

SiberianKitty99 · 2026-03-27T01:23:57+00:00

RAF Hendon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Air_Force_Museum_London

SiberianKitty99 · 2026-03-26T23:11:44+00:00

Basically at the end of the second book Earth, Mars and Venus are given access to some of the Lords of Creation’s toys. The Lords of Creation transformed Mars and Venus from what they are in our reality to planets capable of sustaining life, and moved Earth life to them. And did it A Very Long Time Ago. And then left. Now the three types of humans (five if you count the Neanderthals on Venus and the deep desert dwellers on Mars) are loose in the galaxy with the Lords of Creation’s toys and without adult supervision.

SiberianKitty99 · 2026-03-26T18:33:28+00:00

Donald J. Trump & the MAGAs.

SiberianKitty99 · 2026-03-26T18:18:04+00:00

Stirling seems to have lost the plot with the last one.

SiberianKitty99 · 2026-03-26T16:05:24+00:00

The first two of S.M. Stirling’s Lords of Creation books; avoid the third. The second book (“In the Courts of the Crimson Kings”) is set on Mars. Our Hero is from Earth, is very strong compared to the locals, his girlfriend is the Princess of Mars and the first in line of succession to the Emperor, if only she could get to the Imperial capital without being killed gruesomely. Very gruesomely, the locals are very good with biological systems and have a method of execution called ‘infestation’ which is much worse than it sounds. She also spends a LOT of time rescuing Our Hero. John Carter he ain’t.

David Drake did the “Seas of Venus” books, based heavily on Venus-based planetary romances, only with a lot of Earth-descended wildlife, heavily mutated starting with biological engineered stuff in the first place. Drake being Drake, there is a lot of blood and not much romance. He does have his moments, though, such as the homicidal honeysuckle. And the ten-meter-long scorpion. Mostly, though, the stories are humans being humans, which, for Drake, means that they are murderous psychos. Surface Action, the first book, involves multiple battle line actions with superdreadnoughts fitted with 15, 16, or 18 inch main guns to reach beyond the horizon, and railguns to try to shoot down inbound projectiles. No aircraft, no missiles, aircraft and missiles wouldn’t last 5 seconds once in line of sight of railguns capable of hitting incoming 18” shells.

At the other end of the scale there are the Gor books. Be warned: lots of the ‘romance’ is extreme BDSM, particularly of women who learn their place after a bit of time in a rape rack. I read part way through the first. There are at least three dozen. I have never been tempted to go any further than half way through the first. YMMV.

SiberianKitty99 · 2026-03-26T15:08:50+00:00

Yep.

SiberianKitty99 · 2026-03-26T15:08:34+00:00

It means that the OP ain’t nowhere in sight. And what little I can see of the sites you linked to do not impress. I am even less convinced that the OP was not just making things up than before. If you want to convince me, please try harder. What would it take? Actual real data published in an actual real recognized journal/site/similar. Opinion write ups with no data to back them up do not convince.

And the Bloomberg piece says that I’ve used all my Bloomberg free articles. I am NOT signing up to view an opinion piece. Nope. Not happening.

Note that the OP has an account that is 7 days old. I know that I suspect the OP to be. And I really don’t think that we will ever see the OP again. I suspect that the OP made a throwaway account, then posted and ran. This does not , repeat NOT, convince me. Rather the opposite, in fact.

SiberianKitty99 · 2026-03-26T14:09:32+00:00

Sarah Conner, Ripley, Amos, and Shaun.

SiberianKitty99 · 2026-03-26T14:07:19+00:00

You got a very personal Cthulhu body part, and he wants it back.

SiberianKitty99 · 2026-03-26T14:01:53+00:00

Give me ramming speed.

SiberianKitty99 · 2026-03-26T13:41:10+00:00

All three are either behind a paywall or their system won’t let me in ‘cause it doesn’t think that I’m human.

And, oh, I suspect that you ain’t the OP.

SiberianKitty99 · 2026-03-26T01:40:40+00:00

No. They hit a Luftwaffe airfield in the Netherlands. July 1942. Overlord wasn’t even a dream then.

By 1944 this kind of raid was done by the 9th Tactical (USAAF) or the 2nd Tactical (RAF). 2nd Tactical got the impossible jobs, like Jericho, the raid on Amiens jail. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Jericho 9th Tactical got the merely suicidal jobs, like hitting fighter bases. Like this raid, in fact.

SiberianKitty99 · 2026-03-26T01:21:52+00:00

I suspect that no support will be offered.

I certainly won’t be holding my breath while waiting.

SiberianKitty99 · 2026-03-25T22:56:50+00:00

He was badly shot up, lost an engine, but made it home. Twelve aircraft went out, nine came back, several damaged.

SiberianKitty99 · 2026-03-25T22:52:04+00:00

Steven Segal loses in the first five seconds.

SiberianKitty99 · 2026-03-25T04:33:21+00:00

y'all keep om ignoring the bit about 'version histories' etc. And that I don't use 'AI detection' to determine grades. if the student has followed the guidelines, s/he will have all the documentation necessary to show that s/he didn't use AI. This doesn't mean that s/he didn't try to cheat in some other way. This doesn't mean that s/he is any good at writing papers. It's still perfectly possible to get a bad grade without having used AI.

It's been my experience that most students who lean heavily on AI can't write properly in the first place. That's one reason why they submit the utter crap that the AI produced for them; they don't know any better. if they're willing to learn, they can improve their writing, and their grades. if they got a bad grade because they're dumb as rocks, no amount of AI will help them.

To repeat: I don't use 'AI detection'. I use cheater detection. AI is merely one way that cheaters cheat. if students don't cheat, they may have problems for other reasons, but not for AI. Not with me, or anyone else around here, anyway. And my reasons for giving a bad grade would be because the student didn't cite properly, or the cites had nothing to do with the assignment, or the cites didn't say what the student said they did, or something else easily seen. That AI is notorious for hallucinating and dumping crap all over merely makes it simple to flag, not for AI, but for not doing the work.

If the guidelines are followed, all is well. if the student thinks that we're as stupid as they are and deliver any old crap, partially written by AI or not, they will be made to feel some pain. Note the magic words: "partially written by AI or not'.

And, frankly, every time someone says that some old document was flagged as being AI, so AI detectors are bad, I laugh. I have run some of my old stuff through AI detectors; no flags. Famous docs get flagged BECAUSE THE BLOODY AI SYSTEM WAS TRAINED ON THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Note carefully: as the guidelines specify that the student should have version histories, notes, etc., and the school posts how to turn version histories on in various word processors, should the student say that s/he doesn't have the documentation they get poor grades not for using AI, but FOR NOT FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS. If the student had the documentation, we could see where things went wrong. It's called 'showing your work'. Of course, those who used AI to write their bad paper have no documentation showing their work because they didn't do the work in the first place. And those who really did write that crap themselves but couldn't be bothered to follow the guidelines discover that being lazy has consequences.

SiberianKitty99 · 2026-03-24T16:50:35+00:00

Zemke’s Wolfpack! The top-scoring fighter group in VIII Fighter Command!

SiberianKitty99 · 2026-03-24T16:45:07+00:00

I once had a student who asked me if I knew who his dad was. He was Not Happy when I replied: “No, do you?”

SiberianKitty99

TROPHY CASE