I want to take it one step further.

And no, I don’t care if there’s good reason to believe that Tyrannosaurs weren’t fluffy like owls, I still want a decent artist’s depiction of a T. rex with owl-level fluff.

The recruiting station was inside a railing in the rotunda. A fleet sergeant sat at a desk there, in dress uniform, gaudy as a circus. His chest was loaded with ribbons I couldn’t read. But his right arm was off so short that his tunic had been tailored without any sleeve at all… and, when you came up to the rail, you could see that he had no legs.

[…]

“So they put me out here to discourage you boys. Look at this.” He shoved his chair around to make sure that we could see that he was legless. "Let’s assume that you don’t wind up digging tunnels on Luna or playing human guinea pig for new diseases through sheer lack of talent; suppose we do make a fighting man out of you. Take a look at me — this is what you may buy… if you don’t buy the whole farm and cause your folks to receive a ‘deeply regret’ telegram. Which is more likely, because these days, in training or in combat, there aren’t many wounded. If you buy it at all, they likely throw in a coffin — I’m the rare exception; I was lucky… though maybe you wouldn’t call it luck.”

He paused, then added, "So why don’t you boys go home, go to college, and then go be chemists or insurance brokers or whatever? A term of service isn’t a kiddie camp; it’s either real military service, rough and dangerous even in peacetime . . . or a most unreasonable facsimile thereof. Not a vacation. Not a romantic adventure. Well?”

The guy with no legs is definitely in the book, and he strenuously tries to convince Rico not to join.

Actually that’s Paul Verhoeven and Edward Neumeier writing the movie Starship Troopers, which I maintain is a dumb movie with aspirations of being a smart movie, pretending to be a dumb movie.

Just as an example, in the scene where the guy asks why they’re learning to throw knives when they have ICBMs, here’s Heinlein’s take:

Once, during one of the two-minute rest periods that were scattered sparsely through each day’s work, one of the boys — a kid named Ted Hendrick — asked, “Sergeant? I guess this knife throwing is fun… but why do we have to learn it? What possible use is it?”

“Well,” answered Zim, “suppose all you have is a knife? Or maybe not even a knife? What do you do? Just say your prayers and die? Or wade in and make him buy it anyhow? Son, this is real — it’s not a checker game you can concede if you find yourself too far behind.”

“But that’s just what I mean, sir. Suppose you aren’t armed at all? Or just one of these toadstickers, say? And the man you’re up against has all sorts of dangerous weapons? There’s nothing you can do about it; he’s got you licked on showdown.”

Zim said almost gently, "You’ve got it all wrong, son. There’s no such thing as a ‘dangerous weapon.’ "

“Huh? Sir?”

“There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men. We’re trying to teach you to be dangerous — to the enemy. Dangerous even without a knife. Deadly as long as you still have one hand or one foot and are still alive. If you don’t know what I mean, go read ‘Horatius at the Bridge’ or ‘The Death of the Bon Homme Richard’; they’re both in the Camp library. But take the case you first mentioned; I’m you and all you have is a knife. That target behind me — the one you’ve been missing, number three — is a sentry, armed with everything but an H-bomb. You’ve got to get him… quietly, at once, and without letting him call for help.” Zim turned slightly —thunk! — a knife he hadn’t even had in his hand was quivering in the center of target number three. “You see? Best to carry two knives — but get him you must, even barehanded.”

"Uh — "

“Something still troubling you? Speak up. That’s what I’m here for, to answer your questions.”

“Uh, yes, sir. You said the sentry didn’t have any H-bomb. But he does have an H-bomb; that’s just the point. Well, at least we have, if we’re the sentry . . . and any sentry we’re up against is likely to have them, too. I don’t mean the sentry, I mean the side he’s on.”

“I understood you.”

“Well… you see, sir? If we can use an H-bomb — and, as you said, it’s no checker game; it’s real, it’s war and nobody is fooling around — isn’t it sort of ridiculous to go crawling around in the weeds, throwing knives and maybe getting yourself killed… and even losing the war… when you’ve got a real weapon you can use to win? What’s the point in a whole lot of men risking their lives with obsolete weapons when one professor type can do so much more just by pushing a button?”

Zim didn’t answer at once, which wasn’t like him at all. Then he said softly, “Are you happy in the Infantry, Hendrick? You can resign, you know.” Hendrick muttered something; Zim said, “Speak up!”

“I’m not itching to resign, sir. I’m going to sweat out my term.”

“I see. Well, the question you asked is one that a sergeant isn’t really qualified to answer… and one that you shouldn’t ask me. You’re supposed to know the answer before you join up. Or you should. Did your school have a course in History and Moral Philosophy?”

“What? Sure — yes, sir.”

“Then you’ve heard the answer. But I’ll give you my own — unofficial — views on it. If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cut its head off?”

“Why… no, sir!”

“Of course not. You’d paddle it. There can be circumstances when it’s just as foolish to hit an enemy city with an H-bomb as it would be to spank a baby with an ax. War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government’s decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him… but to make him do what you want him to do. Not killing… but controlled and purposeful violence. But it’s not your business or mine to decide the purpose or the control. It’s never a soldier’s business to decide when or where or how — or why — he fights; that belongs to the statesmen and the generals. The statesmen decide why and how much; the generals take it from there and tell us where and when and how. We supply the violence; other people — ‘older and wiser heads,’ as they say — supply the control. Which is as it should be. That’s the best answer I can give you. If it doesn’t satisfy you, I’ll get you a chit to go talk to the regimental commander. If he can’t convince you — then go home and be a civilian! Because in that case you will certainly never make a soldier.”

…and in the movie the guy just gets a knife through the hand and Zim says “Try to push a button now!” They’re not exactly equivalent. This (admittedly quite long) series discusses the issues with Verhoeven’s interpretation of Heinlein, but the short of it is that Verhoeven and Heinlein were such fundamentally different people that the very idea of Verhoeven adaptating Heinlein is absurd.

That whole book is a wild read. It’s about how and why to be involved in politics. Some of it is kind of a 1940s manual on how to operate a campaign, but a lot of it is talking about why it’s important to be engaged and pay attention, and also stuff like this:

If you believe that laws forbidding gambling, sale of liquor, sale of contraceptives, requiring definite closing hours, enforcing the Sabbath, or any such, are necessary to the welfare of your community, that is your right and I do not ask you to surrender your beliefs or give up your efforts to put over such laws. But remember that such laws are, at most, a preliminary step in doing away with the evils they indict. Moral evils can never be solved by anything as easy as passing laws alone. If you aid in passing such laws without bothering to follow through by digging in to the involved questions of sociology, economics, and psychology which underlie the causes of the evils you are gunning for, you will not only fail to correct the evils you sought to prohibit but will create a dozen new evils as well.

Heinlein has plenty of issues, but I feel like a lot of people overlook his positives.

Of what use, then, are the American Communists?

They serve one function extremely useful to you and to the country, so useful that, if there were no Communists, we would almost be forced to create some. They are a reliable litmus paper for detecting real sources of danger to the Republic.

Communism is so repugnant to almost all Americans, when they are getting along even tolerably well, that one may predict with certainty that any social field or group in which the Communists make real strides in gaining members or acceptance of their doctrines, any such spot is in such bad shape from real and not imaginary social ills that the rest of us should take emergency, drastic action to investigate and correct the trouble.

Unfortunately we are more prone to ignore the sick spot thus disclosed and content ourselves with calling out more cops.

—Robert A. Heinlein, Take Back Your Government

Turns out you can fit pretty much the entirety of Christian morality inside of a fortune cookie and the rest is just window dressing.

Proverbs 14:31 Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.

Deuteronomy 15:7 If anyone is poor among your fellow Israelites in any of the towns of the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward them.

Luke 14:13-14 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.

Luke 12:15: Then he said, “Beware! Guard against every kind of greed. Life is not measured by how much you own.”

1 John 4:20 If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.

1 John 3:17 But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?

John 13:34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

Also the vagus nerve.

Detroit would be a bit of a journey:

Empty - Small Shack - Huge Skyscraper - Dilapidated Ruin - Empty.

Same thing for me from a promoted link on Facebook from some magazine reviewing the show. Big episode happens, I don’t watch it that night because I’m busy but I’m planning to watch it the next night. Promoted headline: “Ten Ways [Character who was killed in that episode] Could Come Back From The Dead Next Season.” Aw, fuck me!

So it’s exactly like my year 2000, too!

Less than a day later…

https://www.thedailybeast.com/maga-pol-justin-eichorn-who-introduced-bill-on-trump-derangement-syndrome-arrested/

I’m out of the loop. Is this ball balancing image a political metaphor with which I’m not familiar, or is this just demonstrating the weird arbitrary limitations put on AI image generators?

The idea did occur that I’d better be damn sure that I like whatever honey I’ll be eating for the rest of my life.

I don’t know if you have these, but I’m a big fan of “Tightly-Laced Corset Ahead”

My theory, at least for purposes of The Terminator, is that after Judgment Day, there were some human holdouts in Austria who sent troops to help fight Skynet, so that’s why an Austrian accent would be assigned to an infiltration unit.

I have nothing to say about Terminator 3. That was like three or four timeline modifications later. There’s bound to be some reality degradation.

Dangle a tin can on a string out the window and listen to the rate of the jingle jangle on the pavement?

I’ve got a copy of the book of rejected princesses!