Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Bark louder, little dog.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

This fight is for everything.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Everybody saw this coming.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Come on, man.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

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49Comments

  6. 6.

    Uncle Cosmo

    Well, I had the language narrowed down to Swedish & Dutch before I got to the website, but I was leaning toward the former–just seems the sort of half-genius, half-whackjob thing a Svensker would undertake… Now if he’d only delivered one of those throat-destroying Dutch sccccccch sounds…

  7. 7.

    Comrade Mary

    Lots of people are crying fake, but I don’t have the expertise to figure it out. Something similar was done in Toronto, too, a few years ago.

  9. 9.

    Warren Terra

    If Nintendo or Google has a lick of sense, they’ll bung him a few dollars, maybe fly him and his gear to their neck of the world for a visit – apparently he is controlling his rig using Wii controllers and an Android phone.

  10. 10.

    CaseyL

    Woo hoo! – but I bet you need wicked strong arms for the flapping, no?

    Honestly, stuff like this makes me teary-eyed. Just when it seems like the greater mass of humanity would be better used as ballast or fertilizer, something like this comes along and I feel less hopeless about my species.

    Thanks, John!

  11. 11.

    Warren Terra

    @CaseyL:

    Woo hoo! – but I bet you need wicked strong arms for the flapping, no?

    It’s not human-powered flight: he’s using motors. But then, he’s some 30ish to 40ish guy with a dream, a tiny budget, and engineering skills; I’d not be surprised if using modern, expensive materials a similar performance could be achieved by a sufficiently athletic person, using pulleys rather than motors.

  12. 12.

    Comrade Mary

    Some numbers, graphs and more arguments at Wired.

    @CaseyL: No kidding! My shoulders were aching just looking at it. They need some teeny 95 pound rock climber as their test pilot, as she would be light enough to allow for more lift than some 150-pound man, but still have enough upper body strength and endurance for the flapping flapping flapping.

  14. 14.

    catclub

    there is a relevant xkcd:
    all the worlds where intelligent things learn to fly never develop calculus. (approximately)

  16. 16.

    jl

    Amazing. Thanks very much for the clip of the …

    Flying Dutchman, har har.

    But this flying dutchman is not as spooky.

    Also too, I think this is an excellent fitness club project for JG Cole (his sis could probably do it easy as snap as soon as she figured out how the contraption works, so she does not count). I eagerly await the report.

  19. 19.

    feebog

    He may use motors to augment, but he was obviously flapping his arms as well. Man with a dream, this Buds for you.

  21. 21.

    Warren Terra

    @jl:
    @feebog:
    He was flapping his arms to move the Wii controllers. I’m not sure if any work was transferred from his arms. There’s no overview on his site, so far as I can see.

  22. 22.

    Jess

    So late 19th century!

    I love that he kept describing it as “lekker” (literally delicious, but applied to anything wonderful that defies description).

  23. 23.

    Daaling

    @CaseyL: If any of you took the time to follow the links you would find it’s powered by an electric motor. His hands flapping basically just control the speed using the motion sensors in an android phone and wii controller. His hands don’t actually do any work.

  24. 24.

    penpen

    Guys the collective lack of skepticism being shown towards this video is giving me a sad… where is Tom Levenson when you need him

  31. 31.

    Bago

    Eesh. Reading the LGF fox news nutpicking article was disturbing. Because skittles are totally gangster.

  36. 36.

    GG

    Couldn’t get the subtitle thing to work, but it wasn’t really needed. Fantastic, happy-making video, however impractical it might be for most of us to ever experience.

    But Oh those ebil Nederlanders, killing old people who don’t have “Don’t Kill Me” bracelets… Sorry, my snark ran out v. fast. That lying piece of shit lie just pisses me off. I so love the Netherlands, except for the lack of sun enough of the year.

  37. 37.

    Anahymen

    Pretty obviously a fake. Even more clear in the video posted at wired.com. The interesting thing to me was noticing the Slingshot logo on the prop wings. Slingshot is a local (to me) company that makes kiteboarding gear. It looks like they sacrificed a kite to serve as the skin of the wings.

  38. 38.

    FridayNext

    @feebog:

    Man with a dream, this Buds for yo

    Did you mean Bud Cort? Because that’s exactly who I as thinking of when I saw this.

    I guess it only took about 40 years to make Bud Cort’s dream a reality I wonder if these Dutch guys have a bird friend who will crap on his enemies and mark them for death?

    Strangest.Ending.Credits.Ever.

  40. 40.

    Lee

    I say we take up a collection for John to try this.

    The comedy alone would make it worth it.

  41. 41.

    John D.

    @Anahymen: That’s exactly what they are made of. Read the title of the 13th video in the series.

    What do you mean by “fake”, as well? Are you claiming that he did not leave the ground using the wings? Nobody on his team is claiming that he has achieved human-powered flight. They are claiming to have flown a short distance using the wings. I’d like to see your evidence that he didn’t.

  43. 43.

    Awesome

    It’s so passé to claim something is fake if you didn’t bother to try to understand how it works.

    It’s magic. That’s what it is. Don’t give me this nonsense about motors and 2000 watts of force, 5% supplied by arm muscles. It’s magic, conjured by a powerful sorcerer.

    And he’s going to turn you into a bumpy toad for doubting him.

  45. 45.

    Amir Khalid

    Some years ago — in the 1980s, if I recall correctly — a man flew across the English Channel under his own power. He was a skinny little guy, an experienced long-distance cyclist, riding what was essentially a special lightweight bicycle with wings and pedal-powered propellers.

    Even if the Dutch birdman has to move his arms only to actuate the motors that do the physical work of flapping the wings, I see his brief flight left him having to catch his breath. There’s quite a lot of continuing repetitive motion involved before you have enough airspeed to glide for a bit. So like the guy who flew across the Channel, I reckon you’d need to be quite lean and very fit to actually use these wings to fly. But this thing does seem to have potential as an extreme sport.

    @Lee:
    “As God is my witness, I thought John Cole could fly.”

  46. 46.

    henrythefifth

    It’s fake. 1st, when the guy launches, there is magically a camera to his right, but there is no person there in the initial filming. Second, if he really were flying, his legs would still be perpendicular to the ground. There is no way he has such amazing abs to raise his legs parallel to the ground in flight. Third, there’s no lift under the wings while in “flight”–they still are as floppy as they were on the ground. The wings would be puffed up and full-looking from the underside were he truly flying, see Bernoulli’s Principle, or your shower curtain every day.

  47. 47.

    Will

    It’s fake because it looks fake.

    (1) The helmet cam shots don’t show the wings, the other people, or the flyer’s shadow (which should be in the upper right of the frame). That’s because the helmet cam shots are taken from a RC-helicopter.

    (2) The helmet cam footage was shot in the morning. The “flying” shots were in the afternoon. Check out the position of the sun in both shots.

    (3) Notice that the flyer’s shadow disappears at around the 30 second mark? First it’s there, while the fellow is running along the ground, then leather-jacket wanders into the frame, then he wanders out, and *poof* the flyer’s shadow has disappeared.

    (4) Right at take-off the camera man has a mild epileptic seizure and also forgets how to focus his camera. Huh… that’s an unfortunate mistake. He makes the same mistake during the landing. Bad luck, I guess.

    (5) What is holding the flyer’s legs up? Seriously. Hang-gliders use a hammock type thing to keep themselves in a superman position. What’s this guy doing?
    At first his body is in an “L” shape as his legs are hanging down while he “flaps.” Then… suddenly, his legs magically lift up into a superman position. What’s holding them up? If you think “muscle,” then go try it. Put your upper body on a desk/table, say, everything north of your stomach, and then lift your legs to horizontal. Then hold it for 5 minutes, while flapping your arms.
    Also, he can’t be clipping into a previously unseen harness while flying because both his hands are rather occupied, you know, with the flapping.

  48. 48.

    slippy

    There is no way he has such amazing abs to raise his legs parallel to the ground in flight

    Maybe he’s a gymnast. Or a martial artist. Tae Kwon Do practitioners must build up a hip muscle that’s about the size of your thumb in order to hold up those high kicks.

    Or maybe he’s Wile E. Coyote.

  49. 49.

    Jason

    I agree, fake. The takeoff looks fake, like a CGI effect. And the physics is all wrong — those wings have to generate \massive\ lift, not just wobble back an forth a little. Ever seen a pelican take off? If it was possible at all, it would require that sort of motion. And his “power assist” drive train is pure animated handwaving — I can’t see how it could possibly work.

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