Random News Stories

[Frank Cox]

https://canoe.com/news/national/farm...3-97ed5f1e26d1

SWIFT CURRENT, Sask. — A Saskatchewan judge says an emoji can amount to a contractual agreement and ordered a farmer pay more than $82,000 for not delivering product to a grain buyer after responding to a text message with a thumbs-up image.

The Court of King’s Bench decision, released in June, found a thumbs-up emoji indicated Chris Achter agreed to a contract to deliver flax to South West Terminal in November 2021.

The company’s grain buyer had sent an image of a contract to Achter through a text message earlier in the year and the Swift Current farmer responded with an emoji.

The farmer argued that the emoji indicated only that he’d received the contract, not that he accepted its terms.

His lawyers argued that allowing an emoji to act as a signature for contracts would open the floodgates for cases interpreting the meaning of the images.

Justice Timothy Keene says in his decision that emojis are the new reality in Canadian society and courts must meet the new challenges that the images will bring.

[John Craig]

tickets for wait for me at HOME cinema in manchester this weekend are now out guys i've just bought mine https://homemcr.org/film/wait-for-me/

[Leo Enticknap]

From Newsmax:

Lawsuit: Feds Hiding 'Grassy Knoll' Film

By Sandy Fitzgerald | Saturday, 27 May 2023 12:51 PM EDT

The heirs of a man who recorded the assassination of late President John F. Kennedy are suing to get the original film — which could reveal discrepencies in widely held views, such as if there were multiple shooters in the attack and not a lone gunman — back from the federal government, who they say has been hiding it for decades.

The footage, shot by Orville Nix, a Dallas maintenance man who died in 1972, was filmed from the center of Dealey Plaza while Kennedy's limousine drove into where the ambush was to take place on Dallas' Elm Street, and shows what is believed to be the only unobstructed view of the "grassy knoll" when the fatal shot was taken, reports The New York Post.

The Nixes not only are seeking the release of the film but $29.7 million in compensatory damages.

Some researchers claim that additional snipers were concealed on the knoll, and they believe the film will show that.

"It would be very significant if the original Nix film surfaced today," Jefferson Morley, author of "The Ghost" and other books about the CIA, told the Post, explaining that with modern digital image processing the film would become a new piece of evidence.

"There's a significant loss in quality between the first and second generation," when it comes to an analog film like Nix's, he added.

The original film was last examined in 1978 by photo experts whom the House Select Committee on Assassinations had hired, leading the panel to conclude that "two gunmen" likely fired at Kennedy and he was "probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy."

However, the experts were in doubt about whether the movie showed the other gunmen, and the complete film disappeared. There are some imperfect copies, including one used in Oliver Stone's movie "JFK."

But now, 45 years later, more advanced computer analysis of the original film could solve the mystery, so the Nixes are returning to court after a lawsuit they filed in 2015 was dismissed.

In their lawsuit, filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C., the Nix family includes dozens of documents to trace the original film's path.

Back in 1963, just after the assassination, the press agency UPI paid Nix $5,000, or about $50,000 in current dollars, for a 25-year license on the film. The agency promised to return it to him in 1988, but Nix died in 1972 and the rights passed to his wife and son.

However, his family was not notified when the House committee subpoenaed the film in 1978, and their lawsuit claims the National Archives and Records Administration has lied to them, claiming never to have had the "out-of-camera original" film.

The committee's analysts, though, delivered the film directly to the Archives office in 1978, evidence in the filing shows.

Time may be running out for the film to be useful, however, as it is "at or near the end of its lifespan," and modern image processing should be completed, Kenneth Castleman, a former NASA senior scientist and prominent expert who studied the film in the early 1970s told the Post.

"Working directly from the original, assuming it's still in good shape, might reveal data that is not visible on the copies," he said."There are new techniques to bring up detail in an image that might possibly bring out new information that was not visible previously."

Castleman, who in 1973 analyzed an element seen in Nix's film that some believed showed a marksman with a raised rifle near the Dealey Plaza pergola, said the image "was definitely not a person" but three bright spots in some frames.

He doesn't think further analysis of the film will change his analysis.

Despite having devoured several books and documentaries about the JFK assassination, I have to confess to not having known of any home movie apart from Zapruder's having captured it, but at the same time being a little surprised: home movie cameras were becoming popular among the upper middle classes as the 1960s progressed, and I would have thought it unlikely that only one amateur cinematographer was among the crowds who went to see JFK's motorcade that day. I have for a long time wondered if others did shoot footage that might have contained significant evidence, but, having seen the media circus that developed around Zapruder (especially his interactions with the federal government and Time over the rights) and the interpretation of his film by conspiracy theorists, simply never revealed the existence of their movies beyond immediate family and confidantes.

Assuming that NARA has stored this reel in a temperature and humidity-controlled vault since they acquired it in 1978 (and the role of atmospheric control in conserving acetate and nitrate film was well understood by then), it should still be in physically good shape. Unless it's stored in tropical, rainforest-like conditions, vinegar syndrome is not going to do serious damage to acetate film in only 15 years.

If Nix's movie was shot on Regular 8 Kodachrome and through typical 1960s home movie camera optics, as Zapruder's was, I agree with Kenneth Castleman that it's unlikely to give us any revelations, even after scanning in 8K on a Spirit or an Oxberry and then digitally post-processing/enhancing it up the wazoo. But if it's 16, there might be significantly more detail there, as well as the different angle. I'll be intrigued to see it (and the experts' verdict on it), if it does enter the public domain.

[John Craig]

some new news coming from me is that there is a new film called wait for me, that has been confirmed to be shown in the cinemas in the next few months, they even have some q&a screenings which i think i might go to as i like some of the actors featuring in this film the trailer really drew me to it ! https://www.waitforme-film.com/where-to-see-it/

[Frank Cox]

https://canoe.com/news/local-news/sn...7-fa81902d134e

SNAKE ATTACK: Snake-swinging man busted for beatdown in Toronto


The 45-year-old accused is charged with assault and causing suffering to an animal Snake that!

A man used a snake as a weapon during a street fight in the area of in the area of Dundas St. and Manning Ave. — west of Bathurst St. — just before midnight on Wednesday.

In a video posted to social media, one man can be seen swinging a python snake at another man who tries to defend himself.

A Toronto Police vehicle then pulls up and officers break up the fight and make the men lie down on the ground.

Toronto Video Of Year Contender ( man beats man with SNAKE)
Yes, you read that right, buddy is attacking another man in Toronto @ Dundas and Manning, it is believed with a snake….peak Toronto.#Toronto pic.twitter.com/Mo9UFjf5OR
— Kyle.Taylor (@livingbyyyz) May 12, 2023

“That was a weird one,” Const. Cindy Chung said.

In a statement released Saturday, police said they received a call about a man threatening people with a python snake and officers were dispatched to the area.

“It is alleged that a man was walking down the street holding a living python snake,” Const. Laura Brabant said. “The man approached the victim with the python.”

“There was a physical altercation and the man used the python to attack the victim,” she added.

Brabant said officers arrived on scene quickly and arrested a suspect.

Laurenio Avila, 45, of Toronto, faces charges of assault with a weapon and causing unnecessary pain and suffering to an animal.

The accused appeared in Old City Hall court via video link on Thursday and was remanded into custody.

It unclear what happened to the snake.

[Leo Enticknap]

On the criminal stupidity stakes, this is quite impressive.

Dutch police arrest fake ‘Boris Johnson’ for drink driving

Officers say they do not believe the real former British prime minister was in the country at the time of the alleged drink driving crash

Dutch police have revealed that a man arrested on suspicion of drink driving was found to have a driver's licence identifying him as Boris Johnson.

The fake Ukrainian document, complete with the former British prime minister's picture and correct birth date, was “issued” in 2019 and valid until the end of the year 3000.

Police spokesman Thijs Damstra said the discovery came after officers investigated a crash shortly after midnight on Sunday in which a car hit a pole near the Emma Bridge in the northern city of Groningen.

The car was abandoned but officers were later told that the driver was standing nearby on the bridge.

“The person could not identify himself and refused to undertake a breathalyser test,” Mr Damstra told news agency AFP.

The 35-year-old man, from the small town of Zuidhorn west of Groningen, was arrested and police searched his car.

“Inside, police found a fake driver's licence belonging to Boris Johnson,” Mr Damstra said.

“Unfortunately for this person, we did not fall for his forgery,” Groningen police added on its Instagram account.

Police could not say where the forged document was made but public broadcaster NOS journalist and former Russia correspondent Kysia Hekster wrote on Twitter that fake driver's licences could easily be bought in tourist shops in Ukraine.

Mr Damstra added: “As far as I'm aware, the real Mr Boris Johnson was not in the Netherlands at the time.”

bojo_pic.jpg

If I'm reading between the lines of the article correctly, it is easy (once you've figured out how to get in to Ukraine and then back out again without being shot or blown up) to purchase phony driver licenses in Ukraine that look pretty convincing, with whatever name, DoB, and photo on them you wish. So this idiot chose to buy, and then attempt to use, one in the name of a very high profile individual, and furthermore one that 99.9% of Europe's population know is (a) not Ukrainian, and (b) around three decades older than the fake license's owner.

[Leo Enticknap]

In that case, the SpaceX spokeshole must have had it rehearsed in advance.

Running it a close second would be a time in the 1990s when spokesholes for the British National Health Service were under strict orders to use the phrase "resulted in a negative patient outcome" instead of "the patient died," whenever they made a statement to the media. My aunt and uncle were NHS doctors at the time and were endlessly making jokes about it.

[Randy Stankey]

That's an old term. I've heard it said and have used it, myself, at least, since I was a teenager.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/RUD#English

Noun

rapid unplanned disassembly (plural rapid unplanned disassemblies)

(engineering, euphemistic) An explosion or breakup of a vehicle, usually an airplane or a rocket.

Usage notes
(explosion): This is also formulated in slightly altered forms, as Rapid Unscheduled/Unexpected/Unplanned/Uncontrolled (self-)Dissassembly, with the "U" varying between forms, and "self" occurring in some variants.

[Martin McCaffery]

"Unplanned, Rapid Disassembly"

Whomever came up with this euphemism earned his/her pay. The real question is did they have it in their pocket before the launch, or was it spontaneous?

[Randy Stankey]

I just watched a video by Scott Manley about the explosion of Space-X's Starship rocket:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8q24QLXixo

From what I understand by watching the video, the rocket was, pretty much, doomed from the moment they touched it off.

The launchpad wasn't properly designed to withstand the forces from the rocket's exhaust and there wasn't any means, built in, to deflect the exhaust in a safe direction. The destruction of the pad and the ground beneath kicked up debris which damaged the rocket even before it left the launchpad.

All throughout the flight, the rocket's computer systems were trying to stabilize the failing rocket until it finally reached the breaking point. The rocket began to tumble and, eventually, it bent in the middle. It was losing altitude for almost half a minute before its "Mission Termination" system activated. Either the rocket blew itself up or it automatically self-destructed. I wasn't able to tell which.

Scott Manley commented that, even though the rocket suffered an "Unplanned, Rapid Disassembly" (Blew up) the Space-X team gathered a whole lot of telemetry data that they will use in future launches.

While I agree with the statement, "We haven't failed. We have simply discovered another way that doesn't work," I don't agree with the philosophy of throwing money at a problem until you figure it out. There are plenty of ways to design, build and test rockets without simply lighting the fuse, sticking your fingers in your ears and hoping you don't hear an earth shattering KABOOM!

I have seen other videos by Manley, regarding Space-X, which said that some of their earlier designs were doomed to fail before they started because of some design flaws or because they failed to take into account some factor which they should have. In this video, Manley said that the ground on which the launchpad was built was soft, saturated with ground water and was fundamentally unstable.

I think that Elon Musk, building rockets, operates the same way I did when I played with model rockets as a teenager. (Launch and pray.) The only difference is that he's got a bazillion dollars to play with while I had to save my pennies from my allowance.

Basically, musk gambles with billions of dollars and hopes things pay off. If he blows up enough rockets, one of them is bound to fly, eventually. That's no way to run a business.

I just hope nobody gets killed in the process.

[John Craig]

news alert: new film coming out soon to cinemas called Wait For Me

[Leo Enticknap]

And to be fair, SpaceX's R & D philosophy is to destroy prototypes in testing as a strategy to gather data very quickly with which to make a big leap to the next, far more reliable iteration, rather than the slow and cautious approach. But "rapid unscheduled disassembly" an a euphemism for blowing up was just too good to ignore without a giggle.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

There is a video online of the debris and rocks it kicked up. I'm thinking the 5 first stage engines that failed may have been due to that. It sure sat on the ground a while before it left the pad... as for stage 2, we'll have to wait and see what they find. The only rocket I can think of that never failed in any of it's flights is Saturn V. The first test flight and I believe Saturn 8 almost self destructed from POGO oscillations. But they solved that by adding baffles in the fuel tanks. During design they also had massive oscillations in the engine that was traced to the multi hole nozzel combustion head. But that was on the test stand in Huntsville, and solved before a rocket ever flew.

[Leo Enticknap]

The world's most expensive firework, and a euphemism to rival Gwyneth Paltrow's, courtesy of the Daily Wail:

Elon Musk's Starship goes up in smoke on 4/20: World's most powerful rocket fails to separate and EXPLODES in $3BN fireball before crashing back down to earth

Elon Musk's SpaceX's Starship exploded into a ball of fire on 4/20 during its second failed orbital launch in a week.

The world's largest and most powerful rocket – which was unmanned - lifted off in South Texas and successfully cleared the launchpad, its first milestone.

But the craft was sent into a tailspin when the rocket failed to separate over the Gulf of Mexico. The mission ended at around four minutes when the failure sent the craft crashing toward Earth, imploding mid-descent.

Despite the craft going up in flames, the team at SpaceX reportedly cracked out champagne bottles and chanted 'go Starship' after the explosion.

The company's leadership – including Musk – has repeatedly stressed the experimental nature of the launch and said any result that involved Starship getting off the launchpad would be a success.

The mission was always due to end with the destruction of the Starship rocket, which was supposed to orbit the earth for about an hour before crashing into the Pacific.

But any setbacks will still be hugely expensive. Musk has said the entire program will cost anywhere from $3 billion to $10 billion.

But Musk himself was braced for a failed launch, claiming last month that there was a 50 percent chance his spacecraft could explode during the test flight.

The billionaire congratulated the SpaceX team on Twitter about 20 minutes after the craft went up in flames.

Musk tweeted: 'Congrats @SpaceX team on an exciting test launch of Starship! Learned a lot for next test launch in a few months.'

SpaceX then shared on Twitter that its team will review data and work toward another flight for the rocket.

'As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation,' SpaceX tweeted.

'With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today's test will help us improve Starship's reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multi-planetary.'

Starship was the tallest rocket ever built, around the size of a 40-story building.

The mission was supposed to see the craft blast 150 miles high into the atmosphere before cruising for an hour and crashing into the Pacific Ocean.

The mission took off with promise when Starship ignited its 33 Raptor engines and lifted off the launch pad at the Boca Chica, Texas, facility at 1,242 miles per hour.

Cheers erupted in the control room as staff and hundreds of thousands of viewers worldwide watched the massive vehicle leave the ground.

And it reached a height of around 25 miles above the earth.

But the separation failed, sending the rocket into a spin and within seconds, the rocket detonated over the ocean.

Despite failing to complete the full flight test, SpaceX declared it a success.

'We cleared the tower, which was our only hope,' said Kate Tice, a SpaceX quality systems engineer, during the live-streamed event.

'With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today's test will help us improve Starship´s reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multi-planetary,' SpaceX tweeted.

Starship consists of a 164-foot (50-meter) tall spacecraft designed to carry crew and cargo that sits atop a 230-foot tall first-stage Super Heavy booster rocket.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson also congratulated SpaceX.

'Congrats to SpaceX on Starship's first integrated flight test! Every great achievement throughout history has demanded some level of calculated risk, because with great risk comes great reward. Looking forward to all that SpaceX learns, to the next flight test—and beyond,' Nelson shared in a tweet.

Unlike NASA, SpaceX is a private company and launching a massive rocket is seen as a success.

Musk's company also works faster in developing rockets than the American space agency, so to the billionaire, one lost in the name of science is more information gained.

SpaceX engineers and technicians spent about eight months building the first Starship prototype, whereas it took six to seven years to complete the Saturn V rocket.

Musk has said that SpaceX is building several more Starship rockets and that overall he believes there is an 80 percent chance one of them will reach orbit before the end of the year.

The mission – which would have sent Starship around Earth once before it splashes down in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii – would have been an early milestone in Musk's ambition for the craft to carry people and cargo to the moon and Mars.

Starship is both bigger and more powerful than SLS and capable of lifting a payload of more than 100 metric tonnes into orbit.

It generates 17 million pounds of thrust, more than twice that of the Saturn V rockets used to send Apollo astronauts to the Moon.

No spaceship is currently capable of sending humans to the Red Planet – but all that could change with the development of Starship.

Its creation is part of Musk's grander vision of making us a 'multi-planetary species', first by starting a human colony on Mars and eventually building cities.

That may seem ambitious, but the tech supremo's long-term objective for Starship is to carry people to destinations in the 'greater Solar System', including gas giants such as Jupiter or one of its possibly-habitable moons.

The thinking is that if there were ever a global apocalypse on Earth, the human race would have a better chance of survival if people lived on different worlds in our solar system.

NASA also awards contracts to companies to build its rockets, which also takes time and funding from the government.

This was the second attempt at the first orbital launch. Monday was the initial date, but the mission was postponed due to a glitch moments before takeoff.

'If we get far enough away from the launchpad before something goes wrong, then I think I would consider that to be a success,' Musk said before the flight. 'Just don't blow up the launchpad.'

The rocket was supposed to separate so the booster would then fall back to earth and into the Gulf of Mexico.

Musk has said that SpaceX is building several more Starship rockets and that overall he believes there is an 80 percent chance one of them will reach orbit before the end of the year.

The mission – which would have sent Starship around Earth once before it splashes down in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii – would have been an early milestone in Musk's ambition for the craft to carry people and cargo to the moon and Mars.

Starship is both bigger and more powerful than SLS and capable of lifting a payload of more than 100 metric tonnes into orbit.

It generates 17 million pounds of thrust, more than twice that of the Saturn V rockets used to send Apollo astronauts to the Moon.

No spaceship is currently capable of sending humans to the Red Planet – but all that could change with the development of Starship.

Its creation is part of Musk's grander vision of making us a 'multi-planetary species', first by starting a human colony on Mars and eventually building cities.

That may seem ambitious, but the tech supremo's long-term objective for Starship is to carry people to destinations in the 'greater Solar System', including gas giants such as Jupiter or one of its possibly-habitable moons.

The thinking is that if there were ever a global apocalypse on Earth, the human race would have a better chance of survival if people lived on different worlds in our solar system.

Starship will be capable of carrying up to 100 people to the Red Planet on a journey that is 250 times further than the moon and would take around nine months each way.

Musk and SpaceX have remained tight-lipped about a lot of the details regarding Starship, including images of what the inside will look like.

Still, the 51-year-old has previously said he wants to install around 40 cabins in the payload area near the front of the upper stage.

'You could conceivably have five or six people per cabin, if you really wanted to crowd people in,' the Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter boss added.

In April 2021, NASA announced that it had selected SpaceX's next-generation vehicle as the first crewed lunar lander for its Artemis III mission — due to put the first woman and first person of color on the moon in 2025.

The Starship HLS – or Starship Human Landing System – will include SpaceX's Raptor engines while also pulling inspiration from the Falcon and Dragon vehicles' designs.

It will feature a spacious cabin and two airlocks for astronaut moonwalks.

However, 2025 will not be the Starship HLS' first moon landing. That's because NASA wants the vehicle to perform an uncrewed test touchdown before it returns human boots to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972.

The other uses for Starship are to deposit satellites into low-Earth orbit and possibly carry out space tourism trips.

Musk has promised a trip around the moon to the Japanese online retail billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, who announced that a crew of eight artists would be joining him for the dearMoon mission at the end of last year.

'But I think mostly we would expect to see two or three people per cabin, and so nominally about 100 people per flight to Mars.'

The Martian surface is not the only destination for Starship, however.

t is currently scheduled for sometime this year, but with Starship not yet having completed a successful orbital launch, that date seems poised to slip.

Musk has previously estimated the total development cost of the Starship project to be between $2 billion and $10 billion.

He later said it would probably be 'closer to two or three [billion] than it is to 10.'

The idea for the Super Heavy dates back to November 2005, when Musk first discussed his desire to create a rocket he then termed BFR or Big F***ing rocket.

Since then, other SpaceX launch vehicles have followed, all building up to the development of the Super Heavy.

"Rapid unscheduled disassembly" ???!!! I guess that's what Gwyneth would call an unconscious separation.

As for Musk's take on the whole thing, I suspect he'll have a little trouble hiring any astronauts who agree with him, taking the attitude of "just as long as we don't get blown to smithereens on the launchpad, whatever happens after the launch is OK."

[Leo Enticknap]

So they dug a trench and then disappeared for three weeks.

I don't blame him at all for patching it himself.

Amen, Brother!

Although it's likely that the City of LA is responsible in this case (Brentwood is in the jurisdictional no man's land between Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, most of which is officially part of LA), "so they dug a trench and then disappeared for three weeks" would be a very appropriate motto for CalTrans, only substituting years for weeks. A combintion of shock absorber-destroying potholes and road construction projects that involve coning off lanes and then buggering off for weeks or months has cost me, and everyone else whose work requires them to drive to, from, and within the LA metro, countless wasted hours.

Not that there is anything new about this: Hollywood itself had something to say about the issue three decades ago: