Chief of Station - Netflix Movie

Chief of Station | Official Trailer (HD) | Vertical
Vertical

Okay action thriller. Lots of fisticuffs, lots of gunfire. There is a story, but it's pretty thin. The only people we care about here are Aaron Eckhart as Ben Malloy and Olga Kurylenko as Krystyna Kowerski. There are also a bunch of villains to hate.

Attila Boat Tour Budapest

The bad guys commandeered this boat which led to Krystyna killing most of them, all except the head villain. Isn't that the way it always goes?

P. S. Phil Hoad has a review of this movie on The Guardian

Data Centers and Bicycle Seats

RockBros Bicycle Saddle
Fist Most Bike

Uniberp Reports:

I'd been using a function on my chromebook that lets me select a portion of the screen and google search it, just like Google Lens but easier than drag-dropping an image or selecting a file.

I usually use it to help identify antiques and stuff, but lately it just sits and blinks "Thinking a little longer". Google Lens still works fine with the same image.

Aside from the possible local cache issues, I jump to the possibility that Google is just tired of me wasting its time looking at old lamps and fans.

It could be they have seen some of my critical remarks about data centers or Republicans and I am now pegged as part of the resistance to their goal of data center hegemony, but that would be kinda petty and work against any support I had for the least evil of the mega-providers (namely Google).

SO... what I think is actually happening is that all this processing power they are building "to help the consumer" is simply to mine more cryptocurrency.

Anyhow I got a new bicycle seat from RockBros. It was cheap, and I sold off my old brooks racing seats on ebay for a good price. I needed something that was easier on my new hips, and I ride more heavily on my butt now to reduce hip wear.

I liked it so much I bought another for my cottage bike. They sent the wrong thing, so I sent them a note and they sent me a return label. 

They said they were out of the saddles so they sent me a refund.

So I bought another of the same saddle from Canada.

Then the first company sent me the right saddle. Now I have 3.

If any of you would like to try it, I will gift it to you. It's not leather, but it works for my 1 hour rides.

Now we'll see if Google retracts my refund.

Uniberp's message came in via Gmail. Gmail, being my friend and all suggested this reply:

I'll take the spare saddle if no one else claims it. I've been doing more riding lately too.

As for the search function, that sounds like a typical Google move—making things worse under the guise of 'improving' them. I wouldn't put it past them to prioritize everything but the user's actual needs.

Oregon Wildfires

Active wildfires in Oregon as of August 16, 2026 - AirNow

From a story in Willamette Week:

State Rep. Mark Owens (R-Crane) can see the fires from his front porch.

This summer, the Big Grass, Coleman Creek, and Second Flat fires tore across southeast Oregon, all three of them megafires (covering greater than 100,000 acres), in the biggest wildfire summer in recorded state history. On the worst days, the air quality index near Owens’ alfalfa fields in Harney County hits 540. He checks the weather every morning like any farmer. Lately, that means checking smoke.

Owens has represented House District 60 in southeastern Oregon since 2020. His district contains more acres than the state of Indiana: Malheur, Harney, Lake, Baker, and Grant counties, plus part of Deschutes. It is easily the most fire-exposed legislative district in Oregon, if not the nation. It’s also alfalfa and cattle country.

Oregon House District 60

10 Short Videos #6227

10 Short Videos #6227

1. Deep Sea Diver #dog #goldenretriever
2. Heaven's IT Guy - Welcome back from vacation!
3. (Before CGI) Assembling a 1966 Chevy: The Film Artistry of Practical FX
4. 🐕 Every friendship needs a little bit of drama
5. TEMAX180° Rotating Cabinet System
6. Truckers this ever happen to you on the road?
7. 1988 Farming - Maybe more like 1960
8. Levitation - STOL airplane
9. He did NOT see that coming - Big wrench
10. Ein Schiff wird gehoben - A ship is being lifted

Funnies

Spy Game - Netflix Movie

Spy Game (2001) - Official Trailer - Brad Pitt Movie HD
Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers

Directed by Tony Scott famous for any number of films but I'll just mention Top Gun. He is also the younger brother of Ridley Scott famous for Alien.

The story recounts Nathan (Robert Redford) and Tom's (Brad Pitt) history of working together as spooks for the CIA. Now Tom has tried to pull off a stunt to rescue his girlfriend and gotten himself in a terrible jam. The big-shots at the CIA aren't willing to try and save him because reasons, so Nathan uses his retirement fund to engineer an op to rescue him. It's probably going to land Nathan in hot water, but he's a spook, he'll elude his pursuers. And Tom and his girlfriend will owe him.

Found a more complete synopsis here with the catchphrase: 

A thriller than seems more real than fiction

which is pretty accurate.

Can't tell who wrote it. It's a website with one review of this one movie. It uses the acronym MACV-SOG without defining it, so I asked Google:

MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group)

Espionage is a dirty business. Assets in the spy trade are people who can get the information about the enemy that the agents want. However, to spooks, assets aren't people, they are just objects to use to get what you want and as soon as they are no longer useful or you have gotten what you want, they get dropped. If they fall into a burning pile of shit, well too bad. Good agents are not going to waste any tears for them. No wonder the CIA is so popular.

Cast I recognized:

• Robert Redford as Nathan Muir
• Brad Pitt as Tom Bishop
• Catherine McCormack as Elizabeth Hadley
• Michael Paul Chan is familiar to us for his role as Lieutenant Michael Tao in The Closer
• Marianne Jean-Baptiste is familiar to us because we've seen her in like a zillion different shows.

Volga Hydrofoil 70
Wm Schimmel

Somewhere around the 1:10:00 mark, the Sheik catches a ride from Cyprus to Beirut, a distance of  maybe 120 miles, in speedboat equipped with hydrofoils. Never seen the like. Google thinks it might be a Volga, a Soviet boat.

Putin Goes Fishing on Iturup

Vladimir Putin at a fish processing plant on Iturup - Gavriil Grigorov

This piqued my interest because my niece and nephew are in the fishing business. Those are some big halibut, but where's Iturup? It's an island northeast of Sapporo, Japan:

Iturup Map

Google Maps failed me. Pull up Iturup on Google Maps and it shows you the island, but no cities towns or roads. If you ask it for one of the three airports, it will show it to you, but then it won't shut up about it and there doesn't seem to be any way to turn it off. New and improved for your viewing pleasure, and for most people, most of the time it probably works very well. Not for me. I might have to start using one of the other free, online, maps of the world.

Wikimapia has pictures:

Not sure whether these apartment buildings are abandoned or not

Town

Iturup Airport with Su35 jet fighters