Tag Archives: Invincible

September 8, 2026

TV Tuesday 9/8/26

The recent Sci-Fi Saturday post listed the SF books I’ve been reading (so far) this year, and the even more recent Mystery Monday post listed the murder mystery books likewise. Haven’t read any science books lately (I’ve been getting science news from New Scientist magazine), but I have been watching TV. Maybe too much, but at least it’s evenings only.

Baseball has occupied a lot of my viewing time this summer (the MN Twins are a whole other post). I can only stand to watch three to five hours of TV in an evening, so a three-hour baseball game doesn’t leave much room for my stories.

Nevertheless, there is more than enough for a TV Tuesday post.

11 Comments | tags: Futurama, Invincible, Jack Reacher, King of the Hill, Night Court, Rick and Morty, Scrubs, The Tick (TV series) | posted in TV Tuesday

July 21, 2024

Orbital Mechanics

By Wyrd Smythe

Back on Tau Day (which is also my retirement anniversary), I posted about a scene in the superhero comic Invincible that involves a baseball orbiting the Earth at a very close distance (roughly airplane height). Regardless of superhero strengths, I found the scene impossible on multiple counts.

At the time, I could only calculate the velocity of the ball given the circumference of the Earth and some guesses about the length of the presumed orbit. Suffice to say the answers sufficiently demonstrated the impossibility.

Here, I’ll use orbital mechanics for some hard data on putative baseball orbits.

3 Comments | tags: Invincible, orbital mechanics, planets, Python | posted in Science

June 28, 2024

Double Pi(e) Day

By Wyrd Smythe

Be a Tauist!

I’ve found it extremely difficult to focus this past week. Most of the blame is on Substack Notes, a part of Substack that’s very similar to Twitter or a Facebook feed. I never had Twitter, dumped Facebook ages ago, and barely know what Instagram, Snapchat, et cetera are.

I have no immunity to a doomscrolling feed of interesting micro-posts. Reading them is bad enough. The urge to jump in join the fun is all but irresistible. But days are passing with little to show for them: no books read, no posts worked on, no software projects advanced.

Now it’s Tau Day, and I can’t let that pass postless.

16 Comments | tags: 360 degrees, 60 minutes, circle, Invincible, orbital mechanics, pi, tau, tau day | posted in Baseball, Science, TV

April 19, 2024

Friday Notes (Apr 19, 2024)

By Wyrd Smythe

Often, the hardest part of Friday Notes (and, in fact, most) posts is writing the lede. Very soon after I began back in 2011, I settled on a three-part opening structure consisting of (as my template puts it): Intro… More… Punchline… followed by the page break that divides the lede from the body of the post.

That page break comes into play when WordPress lists a bunch of posts as well as in the notification emails (except in the double-damned WordPress Reader, which corrupts everything in the name of sameness). And while I’m on the topic of WordPress, I’m getting really fed up with it.

But that’s a post for another day. For now, I’ve got Notes…

18 Comments | tags: Bentley, food, galaxy, Invincible, Spider Robinson, stupid people, stupidity | posted in Friday Notes

June 15, 2021

Tons of TV

By Wyrd Smythe

For me, one of the challenges of writing a blog post is coming up with a title. A scan of my Index shows I like short and punchy (with a dash of clever if I can manage it), and I’m not above using puns (in fact, quite love them). I wanted to call this Channel Surfing, but I’ve already used that title. (In retrospect, I should have called that one TV Triple. If only I’d known.)

Earlier this year I read a lot (see: this, this, this, or this). Lately I’m watching more TV, trying to whittle away at various watch lists. (For a retired guy, I have a lot of TODO lists. Lists on multiple ebook platforms, lists on multiple video streaming sites, household lists, personal lists,… I even have a list of local breweries to try.)

Here’s a list of what I’ve been watching lately. And a cutaway about cutaways.

20 Comments | tags: anime, Death & Robots, Fairy Tail, Invincible, Japanese anime, Marvel comics, MODOK, superheroes | posted in TV, TV Tuesday