Could You Make A Space Suit From Duct Tape?

Mecha Monday : Mega Bots Inc!

We Challenged Japan to a Duel.

In the summer of 2015, MegaBots, inc. completed construction of the USA's first giant piloted mech. The Mk. II MegaBot is a 15-foot tall, 12,000lb robot capable of hurling 3lb projectiles at speeds of over 130 MPH.

Upon completion of the Mk. II, MegaBots challenged the only other known giant piloted robot in the world to a duel. A 9,000lb robot known as KURATAS created by a group in Japan known as Suidobashi Heavy Industries. 

Megabots!

Mecha Monday: Love,Death&Robots

Love, Death & Robots

Hi All, there is a new series on Netflix called "Love,Death&Robots"
episode: Lucky 13 You gonna love it. Rest of the episoodes are great too.

Tanker's Tuesday: CRAZIEST Tanks In The World!

Technomage explains...

"We are dreamers, shapers, singers, and makers. We study the mysteries of laser and circuit, crystal and scanner, holographic demons and invocations of equations. These are the tools we employ, and we know many things."
– Elric

RIP Stan Lee

Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee dies at 95

Were it not for Stan Lee, superheroes would be fewer in number, financially poorer, but better-adjusted people. The torch-bearing writer, editor, and longtime Marvel Comics head honcho has died, Marvel confirmed on Monday. He was 95.

Lee’s innovations pushed comic books from the edge of obscurity to the cultural forefront as a legitimate American art form. And he helped usher in an era when superhero movies, including such global blockbusters as Marvel Studios’ Iron Man and Avengers franchises, rank as Hollywood’s most reliably bankable entertainment properties.
The son of working-class Jewish immigrants from Romania, Lee was born Stanley Martin Lieber in New York in 1922. He adopted his famous pseudonym while employed as a proofreader and text filler at Timely Comics, the pulp publisher that later became Marvel. “I felt someday I’d be writing the Great American Novel and I didn’t want to use my real name on these silly little comics,” said Lee, who later legally adopted his pen name.

In the early ’60s, when superheroes battled villainy as blandly indestructible paragons of virtue, the comics upstart grew disenchanted with such strait-laced characters as Superman, Batman, and the Flash, who were then flourishing at rival DC Comics. As a result, Lee strayed from accepted tropes to create an interlocking network of heroes with a kind of flawed humanity — a breakthrough dubbed the “Marvel revolution” that would ripple across popular culture for decades.
Unlike so many other caped crusaders of the time, Lee’s heroes tended to be misfits and wisecrackers, teenagers or regular Joes given to fits of pique, self-pity, rage, insecurity, and churlishness. Spider-Man’s Peter Parker, for example, was an orphaned nerd who — when not saving New York City from impending disaster — wrestled with unrequited love, schoolyard bullying, and negative cash flow. The X-Men, meanwhile, captured the zeitgeist as bona fide members of the counterculture. They were superpowered mutants intent on doing good but forced to maintain an uneasy peace with human beings who reviled the “uncanny” crime-fighters as a dangerous subspecies.
Another classic Lee antihero, Fantastic Four strongman the Thing, vanquished foes with superhuman strength and an impenetrable, rock-like hide but became beloved for the sum of his quirks: the character’s lingering unease with his monstrous condition and a gravelly New York brio Lee swiped from Jimmy Durante.
At the height of the civil rights movement, Lee helped introduce a wave of characters including Luke Cage (a.k.a. Power Man), Falcon, and Black Panther, thereby smashing an unofficial color barrier for major superheroes held in place since the dawn of comics. “Not to have diversity of different races and nationalities is ridiculous,” Lee told EW in June 2015. “Because the world is diverse. The more we can include everybody, the better it is.”

By the late ’60s, Marvel was selling 50 million comic books a year. In 1972, Lee became the company’s president and publisher. In conjunction with a number of illustrators — most notably freelance artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko — he perfected an assembly-line model of comic book production that came to be known as the Marvel Method. Lee would pump out characters and rough plotlines, then hand his unfinished ideas over to artists who fleshed out the action before handing the work back to Lee for his signature punchy dialogue. Comic book artist Gil Kane noted that Lee “wrote one book a night for 10 years. Not only was it easy for him, but it was the best thing that happened to comics.”
Although the Marvel Method evolved into the industry standard, it resulted in no small amount of bitterness. Kirby, whose pen strokes birthed such iconic heroes as Spider-Man, the Silver Surfer, and the X-Men, became estranged from Lee over money issues and creative credit, a controversy that has outlived both men and continues to rage in fanboy forums to this day. “I came up with the Fantastic Four. I came up with Thor,” Kirby said in a 1991 interview with The Comics Journal. “Whatever it took to sell a [comic] book, I came up with. Stan Lee has never been editorial-minded. It wasn’t possible for a man like Stan Lee to come up with new things.”
In his later career, Lee became known for his P.T. Barnum-like hucksterism and tireless self-promotion, turning up across the media landscape to conjecture (often erroneously) about Marvel movie projects. He even launched a signature cologne in 2013. But despite his inextricable link to Marvel for over half a century, Lee never maintained ownership rights to the characters. So when Marvel Entertainment was sold to Disney for $4.2 billion in 2009, the man once known as “Mr. Marvel” didn’t see a penny of profit. “I was always a Marvel employee, a writer for hire, and, later, part of the management,” he told Playboy in 2014. “Marvel always owned the rights to these characters. If I owned them, I probably wouldn’t be talking to you right now.”

Lee received the National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medal from President George W. Bush in 2008 and was inducted into the comics industry’s Jack Kirby Hall of Fame and Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame.

In recent years, Lee maintained his cultural presence operating Pow! Entertainment, a multimedia company that develops and licenses film, television, animation, and video game properties, and serving as one of the partners of Los Angeles Comic Con. (Lee sold Pow to Hong Kong-based Camsing International in 2017 and ended his relationship with L.A. Comic Con in 2018.) He also made regular cameo appearances in Marvel-produced films.

For seven decades, Lee was married to Joan Boocock Lee, an English native and onetime hat model. “She was the girl I had been drawing all my life,” Lee would say of his wife. The Lees had two children: Joan Celia, also known as “J.C.”, who was born in 1950, and Jan, who died days after her birth in 1953. Joan Boocock Lee preceded her husband in death in 2017.

Stan Lee was not untouched by turmoil or controversy in later life. In January, he was reportedly accused of sexual harassment by employees of a nursing company. A lawyer representing Lee “categorically” denied the allegations, calling them “false and despicable.”

In March, TMZ reported that Lee contacted police after he noticed $1.4 million missing from his bank account. Around the same time, he revealed in a video addressed to fans that he had been battling pneumonia, which caused him to cancel several public appearances.

A month later, a report in The Hollywood Reporter detailed strained relationships and infighting between Lee, daughter J.C., and other members of his inner circle. Lee also sued his former manager for allegedly duping him out of millions of dollars.

In a video to fans in March, Lee appeared sanguine. “I want you all to know I’m thinking of you,” he said. “I want you to know that I still love you all. And I think that Marvel and Spidey and I had the best group of fans that any group in the world ever had, and I sure appreciate it.”

Mecha Monday : BattleTechWiki

A BattleMech (often abbreviated 'Mech, although that could technically also refer to IndustrialMechs) is an armored combat vehicle of roughly humanoid shape, standing 8 to 14 meters tall and typically massing from 20 to 100 tons. 'Mechs are best suited for ground combat, although they are also capable of operations underwater, in hazardous environments and in space.
BattleTechWiki

ZKZM-500 Laser Assault Rifle

As the U.S. prepares for war in space, China’s bringing the space war home. Its ZKZM-500 laser assault rifle is reportedly capable of hitting a target from a kilometer away, igniting flammable objects, and burning through human skin. And it’s ready for production, the researchers behind the project claim.

A weapon that fires a destructive laser beam has been a dream of military researchers for decades. The US military has recently had some luck with huge laser-firing cannons that are intended to be mounted on ships or trucks and can take down a drone by burning through its body. But effective laser rifles for use by individual soldiers have been stuck in the land of fantasy. The South China Morning Post, however, spoke with researchers at the Xian Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics (at the Chinese Academy of Sciences) who say they have developed a powerful laser rifle that will soon be in the hands of Chinese police who focus on anti-terrorism. From the report:

The 15mm calibre weapon weighs three kilos (6.6lb), about the same as an AK-47, and has a range of 800 metres, or half a mile, and could be mounted on cars, boats and planes...
In the event of a hostage situation it could be used to fire through windows at targets and temporarily disable the kidnappers while other units move in to rescue their captives.
It could also be used in covert military operations. The beam is powerful enough to burn through a gas tank and ignite the fuel storage facility in a military airport.

The gun is entirely silent and its beam is invisible, the vivid report alleges. A target wouldn’t know what’s happening, apparently, until a hole burned through their clothes in the blink of an eye and their skin and tissue experienced “instant carbonization” that, in the best case scenario, would leave a permanent scar. One researcher told the Morning Post that “the pain will be beyond endurance.” If the unfortunate target happened to be wearing flammable clothing, they could go up in flames, according to the report.
At $15,000-a-piece, the ZKZM-500 sounds relatively inexpensive, especially if you consider that it doesn’t require traditional ammunition. The weapon’s lithium battery can apparently handle over 1,000 laser bursts that last around two seconds each. But even though that cost would be feasible for some civilians, the technology is expected to be restricted for military and police use only.
Even that level of use could face pushback from other countries. As the Morning Postpoints out, the United Nations Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons came into force in 1998 and has been signed by 108 nations around the world. It bans the use of weapons that are specifically designed to cause permanent blindness, but as part of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, it lacks any real mechanisms for enforcement.
While hostage and anti-terrorist situations are being discussed as the most likely scenarios for these weapons to be used in the short-term, a promotional document uploaded to a Chinese government website and seen by the Morning Post also highlights its potential for use against “illegal protests.” China’s grip on the internet has tightened over recent years, making it more difficult to organize dissent.

Mayhem in the Midwest: The Fight for New Texas

Now a look form the other side of the battle for New Texas

Fight For New Texas

TJOTMS, Ep 18: Arrival - Battle of Apache Canyon

Well They've gone and done it!  Hats off boys great game and the lead up was to die for!

From The Major:

*The big weekend finally arrived. We played 8 games (7 connected) games and it really lived up to everything I thought it would....* *Background* After fighting her way across Sector Six and beyond, the KCS Mary Shelley has finally arrived at her goal, New Texas: the source of teleportium and possibly the key to galactic wide instantaneous galactic wide teleportation. (see all previous posts labeled "Voyages of the Mary Shelly") Unfortunately, not only is the planet engulfed in a brutal Civil War, but the sworn enemy of Colores, the 4th Reich, has also sent a warship to New Texas.

Big weekend!

Tanker's Tuesday : China Reveals New Main Battle Tank (Humor)

China has just revealed its latest Main Battle Tank for the Chinese Military and army. The T-420 "Rising Sun" is a groundbreaking new tank that was designed with firepower, protection and mobility in mind. Too funny : happy May day!

Castle Wolfenstein Part III

A further idea on the setting, going with an alternate WWI, A younger Red Skull is working on reanimating the German dead as well as a few other projects in this secluded castle (and surrounding area) . He must be stopped at all costs! 

I Still have to get the undead German packs from Rebel and Slave to Gaming to do my steampunk zombie conversions!