LUDIK - Netflix Series

LUDIK Trailer (2022) Arnold Vosloo, Vikash Mathura
Movie Coverage

South African furniture dealer gets roped into a gun smuggling operation and he's not happy about it. We watched the first episode tonight and boy oh boy, do we have some characters. I fully expect Ludik to visit revenge on the rich fool who thought he could pressure Ludik. It's going to be great.

Mormons in Europe?

Joseph Horne Wagon Train 1862

Liz Hinds talks about Mormons emigrating from Europe to the U. S. A. I thought the Mormon religion was exclusively American. She has a bunch of links.

Funnies

Peter the Great

Peter the Great Statue, Moscow, Russia

I'm reading a story about UFOs in Russia and there is a map, but all the labels are in Russian. 

St. Petersburg Russia Ring Road

So I go to Google Maps and look at St. Petersburg and I see there are a couple of very long bridges across the bay (Gulf of Finland). So I go looking for the story about how they came to be. Not finding much, I go to B1M, where I don't find much except a video about BIM (Building Information Modeling) in Russia and a view of this statue appears. I think that's the weirdest statue I've ever seen. Also very cool. Naturally there are a bunch of ignorant fools who don't like it, but that's always the way it is whenever anybody does anything cool.

Miller Lite, Coors Light & Blue Moon Big Game Commercial | The High Stak...

Miller Lite, Coors Light & Blue Moon Big Game Commercial | The High Stakes Beer Ad (Extended)
Miller Lite

Saw this ad while I was watching the Portland Trail Blazers beat the snot out of the Houston Rockets last night. Thought it was pretty entertaining. Damian Lillard scored 71 points, which is more than half of what his team scored. It is a new personal record for him.

The Most Important Motorcycle You Never Heard Of

The Most Important Motorcycle You Never Heard Of
FortNine

More motorcycle history in this video clip than in a whole box of ducks. There is a short advertisement in the middle, but it is clever enough to be entertaining.

Torpedos

Mark 48 heavyweight torpedo

Defence Blog tells us that Lockheed-Martin, the Pentagon's number one weapons supplier,

. . . was awarded $16,8 million cost-plus-incentive-fee contract in support of the Mark 48 heavyweight torpedo efforts.

I like the "cost-plus-incentive-fee" bit. How fast can we pour money down the drain?

But it does get me thinking about torpedos. The Wikipedia article about the Mark 48 tells us:

The swashplate piston engine is fueled by Otto fuel II, a monopropellant which combusts to drive the engine.

Swashplate engines are kind of cool, they are compact, roughly the shape of a Wankel rotary engine like you can find in the Mazda sports car, but Otto fuel II, that's something else. Being a monopropellant means you don't need an oxidizer. Near as I can tell it's based on nitrogylcerine but they have done things to it to make it stable. It gets sprayed into the combustion chamber and ignited with a spark where the resulting explosion drives the piston. It's nasty stuff, you don't want to get any on you and the exhaust fumes are deadly poison. In a torpedo the exhaust gets pumped into the ocean where it is seriously diluted, so it probably doesn't kill too many fish. Probably.

Now I am reminded of the Russian nuclear powered torpedo. Putin announced it a couple of years ago but I haven't heard much about it since then.

Can Russia's Doomsday Weapon Be Stopped? Status-6/Poseidon
Covert Cabal[The video has an advertisement that runs for one minute starting from the one minute mark.]

Poseidon is big - over five feet in diameter and 80 feet long - which makes it like 35 times the volume of the Mark 48 and likely 35 times the mass.

Now I am reminded of the search for the missing flight 370 airliner in the Indian Ocean.

INDIAN OCEAN (April 14, 2014) Operators aboard the Australian navy vessel ADF Ocean Shield move U.S. Navy's Bluefin-21 into position for deployment. Using side scan sonar, Bluefin will descend to a depth of between 4,000 and 4,500 meters, approximately 35 meters above the ocean floor to spend up to 16 hours at this depth collecting data. Joint Task Force 658 is supporting Operation Southern Indian Ocean, searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Peter D. Blair/Released)

They were using a torpedo to look for the wreck. They didn't find it, but then the torpedo they were using wasn't nuclear powered, so it had limited range and endurance. But if we had a nuclear powered torpedo, we could set it to searching and it could search the entire ocean. It might take a while, but then we would know what is down there.

There have been nuclear powered submarines cruising the oceans for decades and they probably have been accumulating a great deal of data about the ocean floor, but maybe not. Submarines only go down to about a thousand feet and most of the world's oceans are much deeper than that, so deep that the submarines can't 'see' the bottom.

Funnies

Funnies

Proof the UK Hates the Poor

The Lotus Carlton / Omega Sedan Was a World-Beating PR Nightmare - Jason Cammisa Revelations Ep. 28
Hagerty

I like Jason's car stories. He digs into, not just the cars, but the forces that conspired to get them built. Towards the end of the video when the car is being thrashed along some winding two lane blacktop, every time he lets off the throttle there is a sound like someone gasping and I cannot for the life of me figure out what it is. Comments on the video suggest the sound might be from the boost dump valve. A Florida dealer has one for sale for $65K.

XIAN Y-20 Kunpeng

XIAN Y-20 Kunpeng

Just because I don't see many photos of Chinese aircraft. The prototypes were equipped with Soviet engines. The Chinese are evidently building their own engines now.

Triptych - Netflix Series

Triptych (Triada) | Official Trailer | Netflix (Maite Perroni)
Maite Perroni Nation

Mexico. Synopsis of first two episodes:

We have a set of triplets that were separated at birth and raised independently. The first one, Aleida, grew up in a well-to-do family and became the wife of corporate big shot. She loses her mind and is committed to the loonie bin. When her husband gets her out for her birthday, she gets a hold of a gun and goes to visit her psychiatrist. She shoots several people on her way in and takes the doctor hostage. The cops show up and everybody gets shot.

The second one, Rebecca, grew up in a middle class family and joined the police force where she is now working in forensics so she gets called to the scene where she discovers that the dead woman looks just like her. Not only that, but she isn't quite dead. She rallies enough to call Rebecca by her name.

She asks her mother about this strange occurrence, but her mother denies everything, so Rebecca collects a piece of blood soaked cloth from the crime scene and a cheek swab from herself and sends it off for DNA analysis. When the test comes back with a match, she confronts her mother again and this time the truth comes out - she was adopted illegally and her mother is still afraid of being sent to jail.

Aleida is admitted to the hospital but with three gunshot wounds to the torso, she is not expected to live, and she doesn't. But when Rebecca goes to check on here she finds that the hospital has no record of her. Seems the big shots are trying to cover up the shooting. Back at the cop shop, her boss tells her the investigation has been closed on orders from on high, which irritates Rebecca. It irritates her enough that she breaks into her boss's desk and sees a copy of Aleida's husband's drivers licence.

Rebecca sneaks into Aleida's husband's house and discovers a file with some photographs of herself along with some photos of places in the city. She goes to visit one and is assaulted by a big fat pimp who apparently is somehow feeling wronged. The next place she visits is a strip club where she encounters the third twin up on stage dancing with the pole.

Just to add a little drama, Rebecca is a recovering alcoholic who has been having an affair with her married boss. The last time he broke it off, she torched his car. That was enough to get her into Alcoholics Anonymous where she has been minding her P's & Q's for the last few months. But she and her boss, a dedicated family man, are still enthralled and she cannot repel his advances.

P.S. Next four episodes. This show has gone off the rails. The husband recruits Tamara to pose as his wife and has her publicly sign over her company to him. You'd think her death would automatically cause the company to be transferred to him, and if it didn't, that's what lawyers are for. Trying to stage this transfer with an imposter is something that would only happen in a telenovela. Oh wait, that's where we are.

In any case, suspicions are aroused. Rebecca is going crazy trying to figure out what happened. Her compulsion doesn't make much sense, but compulsions are sometimes like that. In any case she falls off the wagon and when she gets drunk, through some kind of psychic connection, Tamara also gets drunk. Fortuitously this happens when a couple of suspicious investors pay a visit to try and determine if Aleida is really who she says she is. 

Rebecca enlists Aleida's psychiatrist help in investigating her past. The shrink digs up the social worker who handled the adoption. She reveals that there was some kind of genetic experiment going on and the doctor who delivered the babies planned to kill the attending nurses and the mother before shipping the infants off to parts unknown. A nurse and the social worker escape with two of the kids, but the thugs catch and kill the mother, so the doctor only gets one infant.

But now the shrink sends her assistant to kill the social worker. WTF?

Meanwhile, Rebecca's boss's wife has kicked him out of the house and he has moved in with Rebecca. She isn't happy about this, but apparently her sexual desire is overpowering her common sense.

P. P. S. The last two episodes attempt to wrap us this mish-mash of nonsense, but it never does make much sense. Supposedly there was some kind of long term genetic experiment going on, but it was never clear as to just what they were after. Throw in a bunch of half-assed violence and you have to wonder if this is a documentary about a bunch of incompetent fools. I mean, nobody would write such a non-sensical story, would they?

Higher

A U.S. Air Force pilot looked down at the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon as it hovered over the Central Continental United States February 3, 2023. Recovery efforts began shortly after the balloon was downed. (Photo courtesy of the Department of Defense)

Pretty cool. Airliners fly at 40,000 feet. The U2 can get up to 70,000 feet. This balloon was at 60,000 feet. Balloons can get higher. Remember Felix, the balloon jumper? That was from 127,000 feet.

I'm reading Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer about the 1996 Mt. Everest climbing disaster. Mt. Everest is 29,000 feet tall. Base camp, starting point for most every climging expedition, is at 15,000 feet. The FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) requires pilots to have supplemental oxygen if they are flying over 12,000 feet. I've been up to around 10,000 feet while hiking and I got to tell you there's no air up there.

Via My Daily Kona

P.S. Neil deGrasse Tyson tells us that the tallest mountain, measured from the Earthś center is not Mt. Everest, but Mt. Chimborazo in South America:

Neil deGrasse Tyson - the tallest mountain relative to Earth's center
It's not rocket science

Tallest Mountains in South America

Turns out that eight of the ten tallest mountains, as measured from the center of the Earth, are all in South America within a few degrees of the equator.

Hate Me Some Haters

Goodthink Inc.

JMSmith has a few words about hate this morning:

I trust that everyone understands that a “hate group” is a group that all goodthinkers hate.  It is an official bogyman, bugaboo, or Emanuel Goldstein, and all goodthinkers hate it because hating it make them good.  Expressing their hatred serves goodthinkers as a shibboleth; experiencing this hatred serves goodthinkers as a mind-melding source of unity; acting out this hatred drains the hostility goodthinkers would otherwise feel for other goodthinkers.  A “hate group” is simply a lot of rubbish invented by the Party, and that is why, like a comic-book super villain, a hate group never wins or disappears.

When It Rains, It Pours

First the Dyson vacuum bit the dust. Yesterday my computer flaked out, problem with the memory cards I installed last week/month/year whenever. Last night the trash pump started making ugly noises. Got on the phone this morning looking for a replacement pump. Talked to people working for small companies in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Texas and every call was as clear as a bell, not like when I try to talk to someone in some giant soulless corporation like a credit card or drug company.

I just replaced those memory cards, so they should be around here somewhere. After precious minutes  of rummaging around last night, I was stumped. But this morning I had a flash that they were in a stack of boxes stacked on top of my miniature tool chest in my office, and sure enough, there they were.

You know what ChapGPT is going to be used for? Answering customer service calls for giant soulless corporations. Most people like to talk to other people. Only a small percentage of people prefer reading. Answering calls from customers takes time, and time is money, and most of those phone calls are just nonsense, requiring only a tiny bit of information, information that is totally inaccessible from the outside, information that is stored away in some data base, but only trained operatives are able to enter the sacred chamber to retrieve the required data. Yeah, that's what AI is going to be used for and it will mostly work, but when it fucks up, which it inevitably will, it will be impossible to fix.

P. S. Remember this? 

“Doctors are taught 'when you hear hoofbeats, think horses not zebras,' meaning a doctor should first think about what is a more common—and potentially more likely—diagnosis.

The trash pump wasn't making the noise, it was the adjacent sump pump. It's a tall pump and it had fallen over and the float had gotten stuck against the side of the bucket. Question now is, why did it fall over? Must have been Russian disinformation. The sump is totally dry, like there hasn't been any water in there for years, which indicates that all the work we did to mitigate water seeping into the crawl space actually worked. Amazing. Good thing in any case, a new trash pump was going to cost me $500.

The Law According to Lidia Poët - Netflix Series

The Law According to Lidia Poët | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix

Lidia was a real person:

Lidia Poët (1855 – 1949) was the first modern female Italian lawyer. Her disbarring led to a movement to allow women to practice law and hold public office in Italy. - Wikipedia

In the show she is a cute, bright pixie, member of a wealthy family. I mean we don't really care about the peasants do we? She's basically a 19th century Nancy Drew, using her wits to solve a murder in each episode, and or course exonerating the falsely charged fool who has gotten arrested.

19th century technology is in evidence: she has a typewriter, she trades a priceless Ming vase for a bicycle, the concept of using fingerprints to identify a person is known, though not commonly accepted. And the prosecutor's office has a volumetric glove, which is basically a mechanical lie detector.

The first scientific lie detector test was invented by Cesare Lombrosso in 1895. This was known as the Volumetric Glove. The subject's hand was placed in a container of water. The amount of water displaced as the subject was asked questions indicated peripheral vasoconstriction, and thus the amount of stress present. - Polygraph Solutions

Cesare Lombroso, a famed criminologist, described a primitive lie detector called a volumetric glove in his 1876 book Criminal Man: "The glove is filled with air, and the greater or smaller the pressure exercised on the air by the pulsation of the blood in the veins of the hand acts on an aerial column. . . . [T]his chamber supports a lever carrying an indicator which rises and falls with the greater or slighter flow of blood in the hand." - Chegg

Mosso was encouraged in his studies of the emotions by Lombroso, his tutor and contemporary. His work is of unusual interest to the student of deception, particularly his studies of fear and of its influence on the heart and respiration. As early as 1875 Mosso demonstrated, by means of a "plethysmograph" (an instrument for measuring blood pressure and pulse changes) periodic undulations in man's blood pressure caused by the respiration cycle; " and his ingenuous studies of the circulation of the blood in the brain opened up new avenues for the study of the influences of fear. In 1895 he described a new device for measuring blood pressure, giving credit to Vierordt for first measuring man's blood pressure, from the outside, in 1855. - Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

The device in the show is a mechanical device that holds the subject's wrist and records the changes in pressure on a black tape that also runs through the device.

Sukuzi Motorcycle

Suzuki Motorcycle
Jigsaw puzzle

This might be a GSX 1100 Katana from around 1980.

Dark Voyage by Alan Furst

Dark Voyage by Alan Furst

Great story about the adventures of a tramp steamer and her captain sailing around Europe in 1941.

Captain DeHaan and his ship, the Dutch tramp steamer Noordendam, are co-opted by British intelligence to carry a load of commandos to a headland on the north coast of Tunisia in the Mediterranean. The object of the commando raid is to take out a German post that is watching ship traffic using Bolometers, a new, high tech, whiz bang  infra-red detector gizmo. They drop anchor just offshore in the middle of the night, the commandos take small boats into shore and do what commandos do. Naturally, there are complications, but they mostly get away, raise anchor and steam away without anyone being the wiser. Just another tramp steamer sailing east in the Mediterranean.

Thermal Imaging Sensor

I didn't find any good pictures of WW2 German Infrared Detectors, but I did find this very cool image in a story about current infrared research. 

Breguet 730 Flying Boat
Page 55. Never flew during the war.

As they are sailing away from the commando raid, they see a couple of enemy patrol aircraft but nothing comes of it.

Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 Sparviero
Page 55.

Browning GP35  Automatic
The captain's gun

They dock in Alexandria, Egypt, where all is chaos as the Germans have launched an invasion of Crete. Our ship gets loaded with munitions along with a couple of tanks and a couple of airplanes. They convoy to Crete. No sooner are they docked than the harbor is attacked by a squadron of Stuka dive bombers. The anti-aircraft guns on the British warships dispose of most of them, but they do some damage. Our ship and crew escape with only minor damage.

Nothing like a little success to get you assigned more of the same. Now it's back to the west end of the Mediterranean where they pick up a cargo of black-ops radio gear which includes some largish antennae masts and trucks to haul them. They have to sail north around England and Ireland, across the North Sea and into the Baltic, passing between German occupied Denmark and neutral Sweden.  Somehow they manage to arrive at their rendezvous at the southern tip of Sweden, in the middle of the night again, and manage to unload their cargo onto a fishing trawler that makes several trips carrying the gear the mile to shore. It is well after dawn when they finish, but they are underway by the time the regular Nazi patrol aircraft comes by. 

Now they are home free, all they have to do is navigate the minefield between Denmark and Sweden, the same one they had to navigate on the way in, but a German patrol boat spots them and decides to inquire. Well the jigs up now, sailing under false colors, looks like they are heading for a German prison or worse. Well, except the mess boy and the cook deliver coffee to the bridge, and boy do they deliver. The guard gets a coffee pot to the head and the Nazi lieutenant gets a knife in the back. Their ship is faster than the German boat by maybe two knots, but with a thick cloud of black smoke, night falling and confusing radio messages indicating chaos onboard the ship, they manage to evade the patrol boat.

With the Germans alerted to their presence, the way west seems closed, so they head East to the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania). They arrive just as Germany has forgotten their pact with Russia and has mounted an attack. The port is under attack, so they pick up a load of refugees and head north toward Finland. Their ship is part of a rag tag convoy that gets attacked by German airplanes. Their ship is damaged, damaged, damaged, but it keeps limping along well enough to carry them aground on a Finnish island.

On page 38, Captain DeHaan reviews the 40 book library he keeps in his cabin.

• Multatuli  Max Havelaar
• Louis Couperus
• William Shakespeare Henry V
• Joseph Conrad  The Mirror of the Sea
• Joseph Conrad  Nostromo
• Joseph Conrad  Heart of Darkness
• Joseph Conrad The Secret Sharer
• Joseph Conrad  Lord Jim
• T. E. Lawrence The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
• Malraux Man's Fate
• Malraux  Man's Hope
• Stendhal The Red and the Black
• Stendhal  The Charterhouse of Parma
• Tolstoy  War and Peace
• Bowditch The American Practical Navigator
• Nicholl's Deviation Questions and Law of Storms
• Baedeker for France
• Colette My Mother's House
• Colette  The Vagabond
• Colette Claudine in Paris
• Colette  Claudine at School

On page 184 Furst mentions Captain Claude Farrere of the French minesweeper Lieutenant Borri
Serebin. Kind of weird just throwing in a couple of specific names like that since they don't seem to have any bearing on the story, so I do some checking. Found nothing about the French minesweeper, but Captain Claude, well that's another story. 

J. P. Sauer & Sohn, Suhl CAL 7,65
Page 222 - The Nazi lieutenant's gun

Map of Noordendam's Travels

Sunday

Concrete Blonde - Dance Along The Edge
Johanne Blanco

I need some better loud speakers. Mostly I listen to music at a low volume, not loud enough to get excited, but every once in a while a tune comes on (like this one) and I feel compelled to turn up the volume, and the little Bluetooth speaker I've got just doesn't cut it. I have some better speakers but they quit working and I am still nursing the idea that I can figure out what's wrong with them and fix it. More likely I will poke around a bit and decide it's beyond my capabilities / not worth the effort, but I still feel compelled to at least look into the problem. I did cut the speaker boxes open after all.

I also need better speakers for my bike rides. I've been riding my daughter's Peloton exercise bike. What a racket. Near as I can tell some people like listening to recordings of people talking to them while they are riding. WTF? I don't, but then I'm an alien. There are a selection of videos of riding through various scenic locations that are accompanied by music and they aren't too bad, but I've been through all of them and have no desire to watch them again. And the music they play is just garbage. Maybe if you are young and stupid you might like it, but then again I'm the alien, so I think it's crap.

So today I hooked up my laptop and pulled up a YouTube video that was decent enough, but the music was crap, so I muted the volume, open a second tab and loaded one my YouTube playlists and that kept me entertained.

I've been trying to figure out what is wrong with our Dyson vacuum cleaner. The roller brush wasn't spinning. It was totally clogged and when I cleaned it out I discovered the bearing on one end was shot, so I ordered a new brush. Put that in, but it's not spinning. Check the power, nothing. So I take the switch apart. That was a mistake. What a freaking nightmare. Dyson vacuums are pretty clever, lightweight, make good use of high strength plastic and fancy injection molding, but this switch is just insane. It;s like is was designed by a demented demon. All it needs to do is turn on the power to the two motors, but there are a umpteen parts and it has to be assembled blind. It's just frigging nuts. Hopefully I'll be able to give a full report on just how fucked up this contraption is, but right now I'm just trying to get the roller brush to spin, and it's not.

It looks like there might be a break in the cable that runs from the switch to the brush, but why would it break? It's just a cable, well protected. More exploratory surgery tomorrow.

I was supposed to be working on the vacuum today, but there's only so much bullshit I can tolerate, so I spent the day reading Dark Voyage by Alan Furst. Quite the adventure. Got a largish post going on that, it should show up here soon.

Iran F-4 Phantoms

Iran’s Army chief, Major General Abdolrahim Mousavi and Iranian Armed Forces Chief of Staff, Major General Mohammad Bagheri visit the first underground air force base, called “Eagle 44” at an undisclosed location in Iran, in this handout image obtained on February 7, 2023. Photo: Iranian Army/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS

Looking over the pictures I had saved recently I came across this one and I wondered who is still flying F-4 Phantoms? I mean these things are ancient. The first one flew back in 1958, they were a big deal during the Vietnam war. We sold a bunch (200+) to the Shah before he was overthrown.

We also sold some F-14 Tomcats to Iran.

Awaken - Netflix Series

Awaken (2020)ㅣK-Drama Trailerㅣ2
Kmoovy

A semi-goofball Korean show about a special team of cops investigating a series of apparent suicides. Problem is the deaths are predicted by cryptic letters delivered to a sensationalist TV news reporter. The team of young adults (they look like high school kids) are led by a seasoned veteran detective. The old cop has got some sort of mysterious back story which is somehow entwined with the FBI consultant that joins their team. Cute girls, plenty of mystery and plenty of the staples of your generic Korean cop shows, like they always sending four cops in a new car to investigate a crime scene, plenty of scenes of driving down modern super highways, lots of people slurping their noodles.

The deaths are kind of odd, but I suspect they are going to be blamed on some kind of high-tech brain washing program being run by some corrupt, high level dude.

P. S. The show is a little uneven. Some things they do very well, and sometimes they just drop the ball. Some of the characters don't make much sense. It's kind of like the writers were just making stuff up as they went along, and then a couple of episodes later they got new writers who completely changed the story.

P. P. S. This show deals with some very nasty villains, so there is some food for thought in there. The production values are uneven, plenty of foolish 'dramatic' scenes. I guess we don't really want to think too deeply about any of this, let's focus on the emotions of the moment.

The Crud

Tuesday, February 7

My wife and I have both come down with some kind of bug. She was running a fever of 100 degrees yesterday and feeling pretty miserable, so I suggested she might want to take a couple of aspirin or something. She declined, saying running a fever was beneficial. Now I was confused because I remember hearing both what she was telling me and recommendations to take drugs to reduce the fever, so I asked the Google and got this back:

Evidence shows that fever is beneficial to the healing process, triggering the immune response and preventing viruses and bacteria from replicating. One study showed that flu sufferers who suppressed their fevers with medications were sick for more than three days longer than those who took no medication.

So now I remember that it is high fevers that are dangerous, like 104 degrees. A piddly little 100 degree fever is nothing to worry about.

Wednesday, February 8

Suja Organic Immunity Defense Shot With Turmeric And Probiotics - 2 Fl. Oz.

Last night I was feeling pretty miserable. Osmany gave a little bottle of magic juice. Tasted yucky. Next morning I was feeling pretty good, but that only lasted for a few hours and then I got worse than ever. Next couple of days were pretty miserable. Took some Nyquil and got some sleep, not much mind you, just enough so that I thought I might survive.

Saturday, February 11

Feeling much better today. Still kind of weak, but well enough to shower and cook a batch of sausage patties.

We went to see a play at Portland Center Stage on Sunday. They want everyone to wear masks. On the way home my wife started feeling bad. Stupid. No one else except medical offices require masks. Did our wearing masks prevent anyone else in the theater from getting sick? I doubt it.

The worst part about wearing a mask, besides being stupid, is that no matter how I futz with it, they don't seal around my nose so I get a constant stream of warm air being directed at my eyes.

Was it COVID? I don't know and I don't care. What would knowing whether it was COVID or garden variety cold/flu have done for me? Nada. Same treatment regardless, rest and sugar water in several flavors. Intolerance for solid food makes my suspect it was the flu and not just a cold.

The Knack

Dilbert - The Knack full - YouTube.flv
sgispider

Yup, I'm the alien.

Via The Feral Irishman

Whole Lot of Slamming Going On

I open feedly like I often do and these were top three headlines:

• Report slams police as ‘unprofessional’ in Tyre Nichols beating
• Ukraine slams Roger Waters over UN Security Council speech
• Tucker Carlson Slams MSM Silence On Seymour Hersh Reporting: "We Were Attacked For Asking Questions"

Validated

Homesman Tommy Lee Jones final dance scene
Nicolas Närgrath
Zerohedge reports:

Nord Stream Sabotage Was CIA, US Navy Covert Op: Seymour Hersh Bombshell Prompts White House Response - Tyler Durden

If case you haven't heard FORMER New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh 

"has concluded the United States blew up the Russia-to-Germany natural gas pipeline as part of a covert operation under the guise of the BALTOPS 22 NATO exercise."

If he wasn't a former reporter before now, he definitely is one now.

I claimed the same thing five months ago. Nice to have someone confirm my feelings, even if Seymour has been cast out from Biden's mafia.

P. S. Hersh's story on Substack. 

Don't know who Hersh is? I didn't. He's been a gadfly since I was knee high to the proverbial grasshopper.

Termination Shock - Notes Part 2

Notes on the book Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson. The book is set in the not-too-distant future.

Part 2 - Louisiana

Part 1

There is some discussion about people in the mining business and the Paguna Mine in Bougainville comes up: "The place was famous for its hugeness and infamous for political reasons."

Paguna Mine, Bougainville
The central pit is over one mile across.

Excerpted from Wikipedia:

Panguna is one of the largest copper reserves  in the world, having an estimated reserve of one billion tonnes of ore copper and twelve million ounces of gold. The site was at one time the world's largest open-pit copper/gold mine. The mine caused devastating environmental issues on the island, and the company was responsible for poisoning the entire length of the Jaba River, causing birth defects, as well as the extinction of the flying fox on the island. Dissatisfaction with the company led to an uprising in 1988, led by Francis Ona, a Panguna landowner and commander of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army. The outcome of the uprising was the Bougainville conflict, between the BRA, who sought secession from PNG, and the Papua New Guinea Defence Force. The ten-year conflict resulted in over 20,000 deaths, as well as the eventual closure of the mine on 15 May 1989, and the complete withdrawal of BCL personnel by 24 March 1990. It has remained closed to this day.

There is also an extensive backstory about Willem, one the queen's aides. His family was in Indonesia when WW2 broke out and were imprisoned by the Japanese. Their troubles didn't end when the war did, now we have Sukarno mounting a campaign for independence which meant more chaos and more trouble for, especially for white Europeans.

Earthquake

GMV for mww 7.8 TURKEY

Acronyms:

• GMV stands for Ground Motion Visualization
• mww is a subtype of the moment magnitude scale (mw) derived from a centroid moment tensor inversion of the W-phase.

I don't understand exactly the description for mww, just that they are doing some number crunching on the data.

Via The Feral Irishman

Termination Shock - Notes Part 1

Notes on the book Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson. The book is set in the not-too-distant future.

Part 1 - Texas

Part 2

Princess of Orange
Possible future queen of Holland

The Queen of Holland flies into Waco, piloting an aging private jet.

Dassault Falcon 900EX

They have flown from Amsterdam, a distance of 5,000 miles. There are numerous business jets that could make the trip, the Dassault Falcon is just one. It's been in production since 1984, so an old one is entirely possible. The current Dutch Airforce One is a 737.

Noordeinde Palace

Noordeinde Palace is where the future queen will have her office.

Waco Texas airport, dam, and confluence of the North Bosque and Brazos Rivers

Texas has a real problem with feral hogs. Rufus has made is his mission in life to kill as many of them as possible. He hunts them at night using a rifle with a night vision scope. Rufus is a character in the book, but his technique is real.


107 Hogs Down | Hog Hunting with Thermal Night Vision in Texas | Zeus Pro 640
Ultimate Night Vision
Feral hogs get onto the runway at Waco. The plane runs into them just as it is touching down and crashes. Everyone survives, the plane doesn't catch on fire, but the hogs are a problem, and then Rufus shows up and saves the day.