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| Cessna 205, same one as in the video |
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| Continental 470 Engine |
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| Cate Blanchett and Bradley Cooper in “Nightmare Alley.”(Kerry Hayes/20th Century Studios) |
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| Shown here is the office of Lilith Ritter (played by Cate Blanchett), which was inspired by classic 1930s Art Deco design. Photo: Kerry Hayes |
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| Roughly 80% of the film’s interiors were built studio sets, including the office of Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett). Much of the Art Deco furniture came from CooCoou27 and Queen City Antiques in Buffalo, the Finch Hudson showroom in Hudson, New York, as well as the NYC Modern showroom in Mount Penn, Pennsylvania. Photo: Kerry Hayes |
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| This one isn't Kate's office, this is the mark's office. Photo: Kerry Hayes |
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| Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett) & Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) scheming - Searchlight Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection |
The total US LNG output according to the EIA for 2022 is 11.5 bcf per day, which is 115 bcm per year, or roughly the capacities of Nord Stream 1 and 2 combined.
I take bcf to mean billions of cubic feet and bcm to mean billions of cubic meters and I notice that the number give for bcm per year is ten times the amount given for bcf per day, which makes me wonder if this could be right? So I haul out my trusty spreadsheet and check, and lo and behold it does.
Of course a little mental arithmetic could assure you that the numbers are at least in the same ball park. A cubic yard holds 27 cubic feet and cubic meter is a little bigger than a cubic yard. Ten times 27 is 270 which is roughly the same size as 365, so yeah, it could be, but it still seems to be too much of a coincidence so I had to check.
Carny is thought to have become popularized around 1931 in North America, when it was first colloquially used to describe one who works at a carnival. The word carnival, originally meaning a "time of merrymaking before Lent" and referring to a time denoted by lawlessness (often ritualised under a lord of misrule figure and intended to show the consequences of social chaos), came into use around 1549. - Wikipedia
Think we could use a little of that? Of course that presumes that people can learn anything at all. Sometimes only being hit over the head with a two-by-four will dissuade them from their headlong plunge into idiocy, but we're getting sidetracked here.
Back to the movie. He falls under the tutelage of an old man who used to be a successful performer but has since succumbed to demon alcohol. He has a meticulous notebook of verbal codes used with his assistant in his mentalist act. Stan, our not-a-hero, studies the book assiduously and with a doll from the carnival starts up his own mentalist act and soon becomes a sensation in the big city, traveling around the country, living in fancy hotels, living the high life.
Now he starts to encounter some high rollers, and this is where it starts to get weird. A mentalist act can be very entertaining, much like a magic act, but some people take it seriously. Add in obsessive grief or guilt and a conniving mentalist, such as our boy, and we can see an opportunity to make off with a boatload of moola. Remember, too, this in the 1930's, the height of the depression, and people's fascination with all forms of the occult was rampant.
The psychiatrist gets involved, big money changes hands and then disaster strikes and everything collapses.
The movie tells a story, and while the scenes on the screen are glorious, the story and the characters are just rough sketches. That might be due to the dialog, which was full of odd phrases and pronouncements. People would say things and my brain would say 'what?', but the story is moving along. It was kind of like watching John Belushi's Samurai character from SNL making a sketch, big slashing motions accompanied by incomprehensible yelling.
Now the cast, that was interesting. Bunch of people I had seen before but didn't know their names. IMDB provide us with a page of stars:
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| Nightmare Alley Cast |
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| DDoS-GUARD |
Is RT trying to protect themselves from a DDoS attack? A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server, service or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of Internet traffic. Is there such an attack going on right now? Or is someone throwing up roadblocks and using this warning page to disguise their action?
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| 2019 photo of natural gas drill rig in Lancashire - Cuadrilla/PA |
Now, how is it that Russia got to be such a big supplier of natural gas to Russia? Could it be that they funded environmental groups to protest against anything that would make Europe energy independent? Does that sound like one of those crazy theories about Russia meddling in Western affairs that some people have been pushing?
Michael Shellenberger (Twitter) and Matt Ridley (The Critic) seem to think it's real:
The Russians also lobbied behind the scenes against shale gas, worried about losing their grip on the world’s gas supplies. Unlike most conspiracy theories about Russian meddling in Western politics, this one is out there in plain sight. The head of Nato, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said the Russians, as part of a sophisticated disinformation operation, “engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organisations — environmental organisations working against shale gas — to maintain Europe’s dependence on imported Russian gas”.
The Centre for European Studies found that the Russian government has invested $95 million in NGOs campaigning against shale gas. Russia Today television ran endless anti-fracking stories, including one that “frackers are the moral equivalent of paedophiles”. The US Director of National Intelligence stated that “RT runs anti-fracking programming … reflective of the Russian Government’s concern about the impact of fracking and US natural gas production on the global energy market and the potential challenges to Gazprom’s profitability.” Pro-Russian politicians such as Lord Truscott (married to a Russian army colonel’s daughter) made speeches in parliament against fracking.
Makes me wonder if this whole Ukraine debacle was engineered to maximize Russia's profits from natural gas because some guys in the international billionaires club have a big stake in Gazprom*, the Russian natural gas company.
* Gazprom has their own web page, but for some reason it's not loading right now. You don't suppose somebody cut the wire, do you?
Via ZeroHedge
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| One of the crashed helicopters |
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| Kamov Ka-32A11BC C-N 9712 |
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| BOEING 767-300 (P4-MES) |
Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich is a Russian oligarch, billionaire, businessman, and politician. Abramovich enriched himself in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, obtaining Russian state-owned assets at prices far below market value in Russia's controversial loans-for-shares privatization program. Wikipedia
Somehow seems appropriate since Russia's been in the news lately.
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| I Fight Evil Forces - Francis Alexander |
This wouldn't have bothered me much, I mean no more than any other story of people getting screwed by giant, incompetent organizations, except I was just talking to IAman the other day about car rental companies and how I had tried all the others, found them to be garbage and finally settled on Hertz because the business of renting a car from them was so smooth. The last time I tried to save a couple of bucks on a rental car the counter man made me listen to a 15 minute spiel about all kinds of bullshit I wasn't interested in before he would finally give me the keys and let me go.
These days I only rent a car when mine is laid up in the shop for a few days, and then I rent from Enterprise because they have lots of little local offices.
Via Knuckledraggin My Life Away
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| Quordle Solution |
I'm looking at a report from my stock broker about Russia's invasion of Ukraine. I'm reading along and it mentions a report from IFX. IFX? Never heard of them. Turns out it is a subscription news service. Dial up their webpage and they have this announcement:
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| Interfax Announcement |
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| Madbird Bogus Advertising Agency |
It happened in London and it looks a whole lot like Inventing Anna. A guy creates a digital advertising business and hires a bunch of graphics designers to work on a commission basis, but none of the supposed deals he is working on ever come through. Nobody suspects a thing until one person starts nosing around, looking for the office where they are going to be working when the pandemic is over and finds . . . nothing. In a matter of minutes the whole house of cards collapses. Just like Anna he might have been 'this close' to succeeding if any of those advertising deals he was supposedly pursuing ever came through. On the other hand, he might have just been another Chase scamming his way through life with a completely fake company. The only problem is that it seems that there was no money coming in, none at all. Very weird.
BBC has the story. Via Schneier On Security.
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| Map of Russian Invasion of Ukraine |
Looks like all the warnings about Russia invading Ukraine have come true. We kept poking the bear and now the bear has come out swinging. I'm not surprised. I've given up on Western media, you have to suffer through too many advertisements, human interest stories and sensationalism before you get any real information, if there even is any. So I went looking for what Russia had to say about it and I found some excerpts from Putin's statement on Aljazeera.
I especially liked this bit:
“Then came the turn of Iraq, Libya, Syria. The illegitimate use of military force against Libya, the twisting of all decisions taken by the UN Security Council on the Libyan issue led to the complete destruction of the state, to the emergence of a major hotbed of international terrorism, to a humanitarian catastrophe and a civil war that has not ended to this day. The tragedy, to which they doomed hundreds of thousands, millions of people not only in Libya, but throughout this region, gave rise to a massive migration wave from North Africa and the Middle East to Europe.
The revolutions of the Arab Spring were supposed to bring freedom and joy to all those people but mostly they brought death and destruction.
There was also this bit, that I find hard to disagree with:
“By the way, American politicians, political scientists and journalists themselves write and say that in recent years, an actual “empire of lies” has been created inside the United States. It’s hard to disagree with that, as it’s true. But let us not understate: the United States is a great country, a system-forming power. All her satellites not only dutifully agree, sing along to its music, but also copy its behaviour, and enthusiastically accept the rules they are offered. Therefore, with good reason, we can confidently say that the entire so-called Western bloc, formed by the United States in its own image and likeness, all of it is an ’empire of lies.'”
That's pretty bad. Telling the truth is the foundation of any friendship. Anywhere but in politics, liars get kicked to the curb in short order.
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| The Golden Hawk (1952) |
Riders of Skaith has the best review of a movie I've seen in a long time:
I looked for a clearer version of the poster that Riders posted. I didn't find one, but I did find this:
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| 1957 Studebaker Golden Hawk |
Customs and outward forms signal that one’s duty is greater than one’s self, and neglect of them is an exercise in egotism. - George Rutler
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| Ambassador Bridge |
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| Ambassador Bridge |
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| Renault TREZOR |
The Media Accountability Project Trailer from The Media Accountability Project on Vimeo.
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| Kim Hye-su |
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| North American Aviation XB-70A-1-NA Valkyrie 62-0001 Prototype just before landing at Runway 4 Right, Edwards Air Force Base, ending of its first flight, 21 September 1964. |
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| Major Carl Cross |
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| The New Yorker |
I am not going to subscribe to The New Yorker or The Washington Post or The New York Times. I don't want to be locked into one news feed and I don't want to be paying subscription fees to half a dozen different outfits. That shit can add up to real money.
What I want is a subscription service that lets me read from any number of sites. To make things fair, that service would keep track of what stories each subscriber accessed, how long they spent reading it (and if they actually read it, but that might be tricky) and then divy up the fees amongst all the news providers on a proportional basis.
I don't understand why someone hasn't done this, other than the old paper empires are still locked in old ways of thinking.
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| Spam |
Just because.
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| Flat Holm Island Aerial View |
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| Flat Holm Island |
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| 2024 Forecast Coal Production |
Some people make a lot of noise about much CO2 you get from burning coal. Some parts of the world, like India and China, could benefit from just cleaning up the smoke.
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| Sample Layout of Emissions Controls at a Coal Power Plant |
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| Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Moscow. (Alexei Druzhinin / AP Photo) |
Some people are so invested in their own beliefs that nothing can dissuade them from their idiocy. Andrew J. Bacevich's article on The Nation has the best explanation for why the White House is beating the war drum these days. I don't agree with everything in that article, but this bit is pretty good.
But let me suggest that our present-day antipathy toward Russia derives from something deeper than an unwillingness to let go of old grudges. The real issue has less to do with them than with us. More specifically, it centers on a desperate need to refurbish the concept of American exceptionalism. Nowhere is that need felt more powerfully than among members of the foreign policy establishment.
American exceptionalism is the conviction that in some mystical way God or Providence or History has charged America with the task of guiding humankind to its intended destiny. Embedded in the phrase is the essence of our collective identity.
We Americans—not the Russians and certainly not the Chinese—are the Chosen People. We—and only we—are called upon to bring about the triumph of liberty, democracy, and humane values (as we define them), while not so incidentally laying claim to more than our fair share of earthly privileges and prerogatives.
American exceptionalism assumes a Manichean world in which good is pitted against evil, with our side assumed to embody good. Packaged with highfalutin sentiments of the sort to which recent US presidents (except one) routinely—and perhaps even sincerely—pay tribute, American exceptionalism justifies American global primacy.
New word for the day: Manichaean, pertains to Manichaeism, an old religion that taught an elaborate dualistic cosmology describing the struggle between a good, spiritual world of light, and an evil, material world of darkness. Actually, I've run across it before, and looked it up before, but so far it hasn't stuck. That's the problem with smart people. They find new words and then they inflict them on the proles. Annoying is what it is.
Note about the photo. John Kerry was Secretary of State under Obama. Oldest version of this photo I found is from 2016. Who knows why The Nation decided to use it. ZeroHedge used a photo Biden. I like Putin better than Biden, probably because all my information comes from the fringes and not from the center.
Via ZeroHedge
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| Dubai Museum of the Future 289 piece jigsaw puzzle |
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| Dubai Museum of the Future |
‘We may not live for hundreds of years, but the products of our creativity can leave a legacy long after we are gone.’
قد لا نعيش لمئات السنين ، لكن منتجات إبداعنا يمكن أن تترك إرثًا طويلاً بعد
رحيلنا.
‘The future belongs to those who can imagine it, design it, and execute it’ and
المستقبل ملك لمن يستطيع تخيله وتصميمه وتنفيذه
‘The future does not wait. The future can be designed and built today.’
المستقبل لا ينتظر. يمكن تصميم وبناء المستقبل اليوم.
Good luck verifying whether that is what is actually written on the building.
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| Dynetic's HLS (Human Landing System) Concept |
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| Dominated by heavy industry, Hebei province surrounds Beijing and has been blamed for the serious smog problems in the capital. Photo: Simon Song |
Yesterday's video was all about when the Nazis attacked in WW2, the Soviet Union moved a boatload of factories east. The number of factories mentioned was 1,500, which prompted anonymous to comment:
1500 so how many went from U.S.A to china
Well, how many was it Google? I had to scroll down (one whole screen's worth) past all the recent new reports of US companies leaving China but eventually we got to some relevant stuff. The first one was from Politifact, I don't know how good they are, but they agreed with Donald Trump, something I would never expect from them.
Donald Trump stated on March 20, 2017 in remarks at a Kentucky rally:
"Since China joined — that’s another beauty — the WTO in 2001, the U.S. has lost many more than 60,000 factories."
60,000 factories gone to China means, what? 6 million people out of work? No wonder Trump got elected. People talk about the deep state, which sounds kind of ominous, but I think what we have at work is a pack mentality. People connected with the government are enjoying the benefits of that cooperation, they are part of the pack. Everybody else, people not connected with the government except through taxes and voting are not part of the pack. For those in the government camp, all those who are not in their pack don't count. If they get screwed over, it doesn't matter, if they lose their job, their home or even their life, it doesn't matter, they are not part of the government pack. From the viewpoint of the government pack insiders, they don't matter because they are not "one of us".
