3D Figurines

3D Custom Figurine

TEMU, source of endless amusement, has done it again. You send them a picture of someone and they will 3D print a figurine based on that photo for like $15. The figure is about six inches tall.

National debt hits $40 trillion

The US Department of the Treasury building in Washington, DC [Daniel Heuer/Reuters]

Aljazeera has the story, but it raises as many questions as it answers. For example:

Total debt, which includes debt owed to others and what the government owes itself, has doubled since January 2017, when Trump began his first term as president. US debt at the time was $19.95 trillion.

The government owes money to itself? What does that even mean?

Here's the elephant in the room:

The US spends about $7 trillion annually, with about 60 percent of that going to Social Security Administration (SSA) payments, health insurance including Medicare and Medicaid, and veterans’ care.

I have no idea how to fix that.

Public debt borrowed from domestic and foreign investors makes up 80 percent – roughly $32 trillion – of the gross debt, according to Treasury data.

. . . 

Separately, another 20 percent of the gross national debt – about $8 trillion – is owed intra-governmentally and therefore does not affect overall finances.

There we go with 'the government owes money to itself' again. 

I'm still going with ten years until we get hyperinflation and things get really bad.

From a previous post:

But all this fussing about jobs and housing and war is just avoiding the elephant in the room - the umpteen zillion old folks on social security and Medicare. All I can see is that inflation is going to continue to increase. I suspect it might be ten years before the rate starts going up monthly. About then the rate will start going up exponentially and within months we'll be using trillion dollar bank notes to buy groceries. That's when people will start using the Chinese Yen or Crypto-bit strings.

Fried Chicken

Krispy Krunchy Chicken (Sophia Mick)

I like fried chicken, though I don't get it very often because - reasons? I'm not sure. Anyway, here's a story for you:

Krispy Krunchy Chicken Has 35 Metro-Area Outposts. Ever Heard of It? - Matt Kalinowski

You’d likely guess that KFC is the country’s biggest fried chicken chain, with 4,100 locations. But No. 2 is less obvious. It’s not Chick-fil-A (3,100 locations), Popeyes (2,000) or Church’s (975) but Krispy Krunchy Chicken.

Who?

KKC flies under the radar by cleverly leveraging gas stations and convenience stores that have full kitchens and fryers. A lot of them. Founded in 1989 in Lafayette, La., the privately held company numbers 3,600 locations in 49 states. It even has the quaint origin story of being started by a single convenience store owner, Neal Onebane, a real-life Cajun with a very good fried chicken recipe.

Read the whole thing here, it's an entertaining story.

Funnies

10 Short Videos #6230

10 Short Videos #6230

1. THE HOLE IS A LUNG - Arctic Seal
2. Can I Crack This Lock?
3. is my lens bigger than you? 😝❤️🍄 - Teresa Mycelia
4. Compared to Maxwell, his younger brother—the tabby cat—is much faster.
5. defying gravity (spiderman challenge)
6. Lamborghini’s V12 Racing Boat
7. Something serious is happening in the animal council 👀
8. If you want gorgeous hand-made scribes or punches, Niroc is the dude!
9. Dozer Man Basket Demonstration
10. 1975 Farming - USSR

Lancia D50

Lancia D50 driven by Formula One World Champion Alberto Ascari during the 1955 Monaco Grand Prix

The Lancia D50 featured a revolutionary 2.5-litre V8 engine utilized as a stressed structural chassis member and distinctive pannier fuel tanks mounted between the wheels. Ascari famously wore a bright blue helmet and unfortunately crashed this car into the Monaco harbor during the race.  Four days later he died when he crashed while testing another race car at Monza.

Lancia D50

Notes from "A Gentleman in Moscow"

Minus six - The minus six was a form of exile imposed in the Soviet Union during the 1920s, which banned the subject from living in or visiting any of the union's six largest cities as well as border territories. Cities banned:

• Moscow (now in Russia)
• Petrograd (known as Leningrad from 1924, now Saint Petersburg in Russia)
• Kiev (now Kyiv in Ukraine)
• Kharkov (now Kharkiv in Ukraine)
• Yekaterinburg (known as Sverdlovsk from 1924, now Yekaterinburg in Russia)
• Tiflis (now Tbilisi in Georgia)

Drosselmeyer is a one-eyed hotel cat named for the mysterious magician-like figure in Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker.

Admiral Stepan Makarov

Stepan Osipovich Makarov (1849 – 1904) was a Russian vice-admiral, commander in the Imperial Russian Navy, oceanographer, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and author of several books. He was a pioneer of insubmersibility theory (the concept of counter-flooding to stabilise a damaged ship), and developer of a Cyrillic-based semaphore alphabet. A proponent of icebreaker use, he supervised the first polar icebreaker construction. Makarov also designed several ships.

Makarov saw service in the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) as a captain, and ordered the first successful attack with a self propelled torpedo. He served again in the Russo-Japanese War as vice-admiral and was assigned to the defense of Port Arthur, where he was hailed as a competent and aggressive commander. On 13 April 1904 Makarov led his flotilla to the aid of a destroyer that had been ambushed by the Japanese. Makarov was killed in the subsequent battle when his flagship Petropavlovsk struck a naval mine and the ship's magazine detonated. Japanese divers found Makarov's body after the war and gave him a burial at sea, and as a mark of good will Japanese officers led Makarov's funeral in Port Arthur. 

In 1946, after the Soviet invasion of South Sakhalin, the village of Shiritoru on that island was forcibly depopulated of its Japanese inhabitants and renamed Makarov in his honor.

Neman River

Page 147 - "Ah, Napoleon, perhaps you would never have prevailed in your quest for mother Russia; but 10° warmer and at least you might have reached home with half your forces intact, instead of losing another 300,000 men between the gates of Moscow and the banks of the Neman river."

His Serene Highness Prince Mikhail Kutuzov Smolensky - Roman Volkov

Another hotel cat is named after 

Field Marshal Kutuzov (1745 – 1813). He served as a military officer and a diplomat under the reign of three Romanov monarchs: Empress Catherine II, and Emperors Paul I and Alexander I. Kutuzov was shot in the head twice while fighting the Turks (1774 and 1788) and survived the serious injuries seemingly against all odds. He defeated Napoleon as commander-in-chief using attrition warfare in the Patriotic War of 1812.

Kazan Cathedral, Saint Petersburg

Previous post about this book.