DC Tom

It was okay at my house - which is in a flood zone. But through most of the region, it's been psychotic. Two inches of rain in half an hour. The entire city of Frederick was closed this morning. The weather forecast for Ellicott City is "Oh hell, not again." They're likely to see their third thousand-year flood in five years. The DC Metro is simultaneously flooded and on fire, which is something of a record even for the DC Metro.

Then what the hell's the point? Worst terrorists ever.

I want to know when "interesting" became a synonym for "stupid."

Jesus. Being a grown-up means working with people you wouldn't piss on if they were on fire. What's wrong with that?

But he thinks I'm racist. Go figure.

No. You're overdoing it. Just scream "The Constitution and voting rights are racist!!!" and tell all your friends they have to choose between their MAGA hats or you.

14th Amendment says otherwise. Representation is based on "the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.," Of course, it also strongly implies that determining such eligibility is the right of the states', and allows for an abridgement of representation in proportion to the abridgement of voting rights. The 14th is a pretty weird amendment.

Yeah, a Canadian Godzilla. Destroys Tokyo, apologizes, and brags about doing it better than the United States ever could.

By that standard, the Magna Carta, Martin Luther's 97 Theses, Dante's Inferno, the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and Plato's Republic should also be condemned.

No, Bering Strait, 20000 years ago.

He's not just another Trump/Russia conspiracy theorist. He's a conspiracy theorist who thinks states' rights is Russian plot to hack the 2020 election.

Moving stone via sound by running an oscillating current through a static magnetic field to produce gravity waves? Shut the ***** up.

Didn't for Best, did it?

That's...uh...not really a *****in' thing, is it?

But does he understand turbulence? Really, that is a ridiculous load of nonsense. I'm not entirely sure Pais is even a real person.

I prefer 35°43'19.4"N 117°29'18.9"W. That's just weird looking.

You didn't notice? Good for you. Take my advice: don't look.

What happened to her face?

"Can I get a wizard over here to cast a fire spell???"

Truth. I don't know why anyone would block you. You're not exactly controversial. You're basically the board equivalent of rice cakes.

Why would you need to oil your CBD?

Uh, yeah. That was the doctrine: one group per carrier, high group takes the near target. That's how targets were allocated. McCluskey blew the target allocation, because he didn't know naval dive bombing doctrine, because he was a fighter pilot leading the scout bomber squadron. And there was a very specific reason for that doctrine: because the doctrine of carrier warfare at the time was to disable the other fleet's carriers, to gain air superiority over the enemy fleet. Doctrine specified an even target allocation of carriers between groups, because to achieve air superiority they had to hit all the flight decks, not just have everyone diving on the first one they saw. And McCluskey, not understanding that, almost blew the battle. If Best hadn't been cognizant enough of McCluskey's mistake and pulled his flight out, no one would have dived on Akagi, meaning the Japanese would have possessed two operational carriers (him, and Hiryu) after the initial attack, with a significantly greater number of operational strike aircraft (at least two full deck spots). That's a significantly different situation for Fletcher and Spruance to handle than Hiryu alone with a weakened composite air group. Yes, I know, I only have book knowledge. But I know the doctrine of the period...and more importantly, so did Best, so I'm going to agree with the experienced squadron commander who retrieved the battle from McCluskey's error. Except they didn't. They held their dives. It was how they were trained, and fought. Usually pilots didn't see debris, because they rarely had huge chunks of debris such as entire planes magically decelerated by flak coming at them, and things usually moved too quickly to see and react. But dive bomber pilots, of all air forces in the era, held their dives in the attack.

That one antifa idiot at the end...I can just hear him saying "Dungeon master, is he allowed to do that?"

It's extraordinarily difficult. It's tempered by having a greater-than-average knowledge of filmmaking, so I understand the need to trade-off historical accuracy for technical or narrative reasons (e.g. Dunkirk, which made trade-offs in accuracy for a typically Nolanesque warped timeline, that served to capture the "spirit" of Dunkirk without a pretense to being a documentary narrative). Basically can't watch most war movies (I still haven't seen U-571.) And Roland Emmerich, in particular...his tradeoffs between accuracy and filmmaking suck. Badly. Take, for example, just before the snippet of the trailer I referenced above. Starting at 1:37. Dive bomber pilot in a vertical dive sees plane hit by AAA 100 yards in front of him. Flaming plane starts to slow down, he's heading directly for it. Cut to pilot's face, cut to pilot's hand moving the stick. Pilot swerves around flaming plane, continues dive. What's wrong with that? 1) Planes do not dive in dense groups like that. They dive singly, or by flight. 2) Dive bombers do not dive at 90 degrees. 3) When a diving plane is hit, it does not slow-down mid-dive. They swerve, their dive steepens. They don't lose velocity. (That's a really stupid error. There's plenty of archival footage of planes being shot down that shows this.) 4) If it did, a pilot wouldn't have time to swerve out of the way. 5) If he did, he'd swerve far more than he does in the clip. 6) Dive bombers held their dives. They didn't move to avoid "mid-air debris" - partially because there usually wasn't such a thing, but mostly because they're diving to hit a target. Once they nose over, they're trying to hold their sight on the target and maneuver with it to put a bomb on it. Diving from 18k feet, they have 2-3 minutes to sight the target, put the reticule on it, figure course, speed, and rate of change of both (in their heads, no computers), and decide how to release the bomb. If they maneuver in a dive, they miss. Now, why is all that nitpicky ***** "wrong?" Because they're unnecessary trade-offs. An accurate scene would be 30-60 seconds of a pilot in a dive. (30-60 seconds as a trade-off for 2-3 minutes). Cut between pilot's face and his view out the windscreen repeatedly, with increasing rapidness. No other planes near him, flak coming up. As the scene progresses, tighten each cut. Ship gets closer, you get closer to the pilot's face showing more and more stress. Ship's getting larger in the sight and on the screen. Flak's getting closer. Scene gets tenser. Pilot finally drops his bomb, pulls up, and goes roaring away at 3000 feet. That captures the solutide and tension of that sort of combat flying, until the sudden release of that tension. It also captures the focus and the tunnel vision that the pilot would develop in completing his mission (with the increasing tightening of the shots). That's dramatic, tense, and historically accurate within the constraints of good filmmaking. The choices Emmerich makes, above, are just plain stupid in comparison. He clutters the screen with multiple extraneous objects and exaggerates details to give the illusion of excitement. He creates unrealistic situations (the magically slowing plane, and unrealistic movement) to generate the illusion of tension. And he does so because he confuses spectacle for drama. Because he's a ***** sociopath of a director. And yes, I'm saying I could write a better Midway movie than Roland Emmerich. But that's an extremely low bar.