Labels

Plants with Labels

Went for a three mile walk yesterday, first time to cover that much distance in several years (two? five?). Guess my body has recovered from the two surgeries I had this year. Anyway, out walking and I notice all these little signs with the names of the plants. I have never been very good with plant names, most of them just sound like gobble-de-gook. Somebody went to a lot of trouble to label these plants. Unfortunately the sun has bleached out much of the writing. Still, a good effort.

DARPA Heavy Lift Challenge

Katana Drone

Defence Blog reports:

Katana carried a 112 pound payload aboard a 29 pound airframe, producing an official payload-to-aircraft-weight ratio of 3.84 to 1, Avidrone said. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency had set a 4-to-1 ratio as the goal when it opened the competition in November 2025, a mark no existing heavy-lift drone had reached and one no team in the competition managed to hit. Avidrone’s result was the closest.

This might explain why helicopters with tail rotors are the most common helicopter configuration. 

Russia in Syria

Tupolev Tu-22M3 Khmeimim Air Base in Syria

Just a cool photo. The Tu-22M is a big airplane. Selected specs from Wikipedia:

• 140 feet long
• variable sweep wings go from 112 feet to 76 feet
• weighs 60 tons empty
• 1200 MPH top speed
• Russia might have 500 of these aircraft

Khmeimim Air Base in Syria

10 Short Videos #6224

10 Short Videos #6224

1. Then We Found a Massive Crack in the Block
2. The chicken invasion has finally begun. - Farming While Beige
3. Impact wrenches and the mechanic
4. Firefighters Watched This Airtanker Fly Straight Into the Smoke 😳🔥
5. Kung-Fu Mr. Whiskers Cat 🐈‍⬛
6. High-Speed Machine Counts Thousands of Tiny Particles Instantly
7. Why a gentle touch feels like love - Hannah Fry
8. YOUR ROUTER SEES YOU
9. O bichão é grande! - That beast is huge!
10. THE 1984 TOUCHSCREEN

Relativity

Why Does Time Stop at the SPEED OF LIGHT? Feynman's Mind-Blowing Truth
Imagine the Physics

This video ties together time dialation, distance compression and time compression together. I've heard of all of these before but I don't think I've heard them all combined. Photons are weird.

Funnies

1936 DeSoto Airflow

1936 DeSoto Airflow

The Desoto Airflow was the economy version of the slightly larger Chrysler Airflow. Risky move introducing something so advanced in the middle of the Great Depression. The model only lasted 3 years before Desoto went back to a more conventional design.

323.5 cubic inch straight-eight engine in a 1937 Desoto Airflow

The Chrysler flathead inline engine was manufactured from 1924 through the early 1960s.