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Check out “Violet Evergarden: Eternity and the Auto Memory Doll” on Netflix
https://www.netflix.com/title/81208936?s=i&trkid=14170286

Rather thrilled to find the #VioletEvergarden movie released, and made its way to Netflix.

While the series is principally Violet’s story, the film is a more heartwarming tale focused on the side story of the two sisters that she meets. Which I think is a rather lovely thing. The side story takes place at a time after Violet has developed as a character, and shows a world that has like her, begun to recover from the war. So it makes more sense for a movie like this than one focused on Violet’s story; the main series rewards us with a character that can create such an aside, and not have to devote extra to her development. Well, providing you actually watched the beautiful series 😉

Violet Evergarden is one of a handful of anime characters that will likely stick with me a long time. A character introduced to us as constantly on fire, and not yet able to realize that her arms were perhaps the smallest thing she lost to the war.

Because of how the main series tells Violet’s story, I can appreciate the depth of the backdrop even more. You’ll notice how rapidly the city has evolved, and how common place postal service has become. It’s quite nicely executed behind the story, IMHO.

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US’s digital divide ‘is going to kill people’ as Covid-19 exposes inequalities.

A touch sensationalist for a headline, but an issue worth considering. A key point worth remembering in this context is also our population, and our geography. The United States has a population in the 300 ~ 330 million range, last I looked. We’ve also got a pretty vast quantity of land. Figures of 20-40 million probably ain’t bad in that context.

Actually, it’s always been kind of amazing how wide spread electricity, phone, and running water has been across the country. In my lifetime: you’ve usually been able to take those three things for granted, or you may end up carving red rum on your walls.

Connectivity has exploded in my life time. I can still remember having to be cautious when selecting dial up phone numbers, back when the phrase long distance has a billing context. Today, well: I’m pretty swell on the networking front. Many places not so much.

One thing that is for sure: we won’t be using less Internet as society marches on into tomorrow. Well, unless the mushrooms start a sprouting….

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In an effort to catch up on some of my reading backlog, I recently found myself revisiting The Fruit of Grisaia, both the visual novel and the anime. Because sometimes time for reading is limited, and the story is pretty damned long.

In doing so, I’m kind of reminded of several things. The anime adaption while extremely well executed is also extremely condensed. Many key scenes are filtered through but as a whole: you only get something on par with 20% of the visual novel’s content. That is to say: the anime is great, but it’s like looking through a pinhole compared to the original media. Episode one’s one line summary of each character’s story is also spot on.

About 90% of the crude humor that makes Yuuji’s school life so enjoyable is cut, and each characters story is condensed heavily for time. For me that’s kind of sad because the joking and clowning around is part of why the novel left me laughing my ass of more often than not.

Considering that each characters story is practically a novel in of itself, the anime fairs pretty well for cutting out so much. You still get key moments like burying his classmate alive, but much of the detail around it is lost, such as the airhead’s true nature. I think Amane’s story is the only one that really escaped massive trim: probably because there’s no way to actually trim her story and keep the jist. By contrast, Sachi’s which is the longest character story in the novel: only got one episode that struggles to tell the jist of her condition. And the series totally misses out on her sadomasochist sense of humor to a fine degree, and Michiru’s constant bombardment of idiocy and subtle kindness. All sorts of things in the name of fitting into a standard season length.

Likewise things are quite twisted to create a point of co-existence out of the novel’s ladder like structure. So we don’t get to see how much Yuuji / Makina truly mirrors his relationship with Asako, as that would be destructive to a shared finish. And a host of other things. I don’t think we even get the hilarious Lamborghini and frozen turkey scene from Yumiko’s route which was just freaking awesome sauce. Instead a new ending is sort of created, and much of the characters’ suffering and healing is drifted off to the cutting room floor. But if you had to cram it down to about a dozen episodes, I’d say the anime is about as good as could be done with the story.

But then I remember what really made me interested in the story wasn’t Gurizaia no Kajitsu itself: but the anime adaptions of the follow on media. Which pretty much starts out by telling Yuuji’s story, and the road from his truly fucked up youth to his master, Asako, saving him for the pits of hell. It wasn’t until after the anime adaptions of the The Labyrinth, and The Eden of Grisaia that the original visual novel really went on my radar.

Which kind of leaves me wondering: and just how heavily condensed was the rest of the trilogy when they adapted them to anime!?

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Going with a dinner double feature of Olympus Has Fallen, and Angel Has Fallen was an interesting pair.

I remember watching the first film in the series on cable shortly after it came out, and finding it a nice action movie if a tad brutal. Give or take that a bunch of office workers who have barely played Halo or CoD, would probably make better cannon fodder for guarding the front door. But that was kind of the point I suppose.

Angel Has Fallen is a rather more varied film. Starting off with a return to its more Call of Duty generation like approach before descending into The Fugitive, and than back into straight up action. Somehow though, I find the best parts are about Mike and his dad.

‘Cuz if his dad had to be a crazy old man, at least he’s a rather handy, crazy old man. And the ending after the credits may have made me laugh quite a bit.

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Some levels of comfort may be limited to the dogs amongst us, lol

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Artist Makes Fun Illustrations Of Problems Faced By Girls And Other Crazy Situations (64 New Pics)
https://flip.it/MZDl0N

These are great. Number 7, and 21, especially made me snortle 😄.

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Wired’s Article on iPad Use in Hospitals to Combat COVID-19 is Eye-Opening.

While I would say that modern iPads are a touch overkill, and expensive for such a mission, I kind of like the idea. The old video phone concept will probably never catch on quite like sci-fi suggests, but given the situation: I’d say use the technology you’ve got.

These days pretty much everything tends to have the capabilities for a video call, and I imagine none of us are that fond of the protective gear. Both the amazing medical staffs, and their patients.

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You know, there hasn’t been many developments of genius that terrify me in the context of world history.

The US Air Force saw no pressing need for a solid fuel ICBM. Development of the SM-65 Atlas and SM-68 Titan ICBMs was progressing, and “storable” liquids were being developed that would allow missiles to be left in a ready-to-shoot form for extended periods. Hall saw solid fuels not only as a way to improve launch times or safety, but part of a radical plan to greatly reduce the cost of ICBMs so that thousands could be built. He was aware that new computerized assembly lines would allow continual production, and that similar equipment would allow a small team to oversee operations for dozens or hundreds of missiles. A solid fuel design would be simpler to build, and easier to maintain.[11](p153)
Hall’s ultimate plan was to build a number of integrated missiles “farms” that included factories, missile silos, transport and recycling. Each farm would support between 1,000 and 1,500 missiles being produced in a continuous low rate cycle. Systems in a missile would detect failures, at which point it would be removed and recycled, while a newly built missile would take its place.[11](p153) The missile design was based purely on lowest possible cost, reducing its size and complexity because “the basis of the weapon’s merit was its low cost per completed mission; all other factors – accuracy, vulnerability, and reliability – were secondary.”[11](p154)
Hall’s plan did not go unopposed, especially by the more established names in the ICBM field. Ramo-Wooldridge pressed for a system with higher accuracy, but Hall countered that the missile’s role was to attack Soviet cities, and that “a force which provides numerical superiority over the enemy will provide a much stronger deterrent than a numerically inferior force of greater accuracy.”[11](p154) Hall was known for his “friction with others” and in 1958 Schriever removed him from the Minuteman project and sent him to the UK to oversee deployment of the Thor IRBM.[11](p152) On his return to the US in 1959, Hall retired from the Air Force, but received his second Legion of Merit in 1960 for his work on solid fuels.[12]
Although he was removed from the Minuteman project, Hall’s work on cost reduction had already produced a new design of 71 inches (1.8 m) diameter, much smaller than the Atlas and Titan at 120 inches (3.0 m), which meant smaller and cheaper silos. Hall’s goal of dramatic cost reduction was a success, although many of the other concepts of his missile farm were abandoned.[11](p154) 

Now that is fucking terrifying as far as concepts go.

The older Titan IIs themselves were pretty frakkin’ terrifying when you consider the ~9 megaton payloads. We had dozens of Titan IIs kept on constant alert during the cold war, and they were pretty dangerous beasts just being kept ready.

Now a farm concept? Holy fuck is that terrifying. Perhaps with conventionally armed missile, such a complex might be a nifty defense structure. But in the context of our strategic missile programs? That kind of arsenal would almost be Sky Net scary. In retrospect, I think it seems even more terrifying a concept today than it must have been in the ’50s and ’60s. Fancy electronics, and shit have come a long way in the past sixty’ish years–making such automata even easier to imagine.

If I have trouble sleeping, I”m blaming Wikipedia’s article on the LGM-30 Minuteman, and the late Edward Hall.