Mideast

Mideast

The Ayatollah is a dirty commie. He may not proclaim himself a commie, but by his actions you may know him. Doesn't it say something like that in the Bible, the Christian Bible? According to the Ayatollah, it's either his way or prison, which is the modus operandi of ever good, er, dirty commie. It doesn't matter whether his way makes any sense or not, which is why they have a hard time putting together a military force that is powerful enough for anyone to consider it a threat. Anyone who has a brain is going to be insulted by the Ayatollah's bullshit. The only way anything gets done is if you have slimey weasels to run interference, people who can takes the Ayatollah's blabber and translate it, transform it, or possibly even deflect it before it reaches the ears of those who are actually capable of doing the work. That would be a tough job, I don't think I could do it, and I certainly don't want to be in a position where I would be compelled to.

Israel, you may have heard, has killed two top terrorists in the last few days. One was a leader of Hamas and the other was a big shot in Hezbollah. I couldn't be happier, especially when I read the nonsense coming out of Al Jazeera.

I've been wondering why someone doesn't quash some of these tin-pot dictators and set up a new system of government, like we did with Japan and Germany in WW2. Then I realized doing something like this generally means war, and wars are expensive. These days it has become a question of economics. If you invade and take over some country, are you going to be able to extract enough money to make it worth while? I mean the chief-jerks-in-charge would be fine with it as long as it doesn't impact their whores, toot and private jets, but with inflation the cost of whores, toot and private jets ranks right up there with funding a small army. So as long as North Korea and Iran are just spouting off and aren't seriously bothering anybody, it's easier and cheaper to just let them go along their merry way.

Hamas went over the line and Israel is angry, they are going to continue their war against Hamas and Hezbollah until they are eliminated from the face of the earth. At least I hope they are. It certainly doesn't make any sense to stop now. Iran might get involved, but I think they are just going to continue  doing what they are doing, which is spouting nonsense and funding terrorists. They are unlikely to do anything serious, even assuming they are cabable of launching a competent attack, given that the USA might take offense. But that's all idle speculation and I'm not going to worry about it. It would be a shame if someone carpet bombed Tehran, but it's no more than they deserve. It could be an opportunity to create a new society in Iran, one that wasn't hell bent on picking fights with its neighbors.

Turning the Dial

Backyard Faucet

Turning the knob on the faucet in the back yard. I've got a sprinkler going on a tree that's got some kind of problem, and maybe a little extra water will help. Anyway, I've got the faucet dialed in to where the water is going far enough but it isn't going too far. Now I look at the knob so I can remember what position it is in, so tomorrow when I come out here again I'll know how much to turn the knob and I won't have to fiddle-fart around with it. So I look at the knob and I see that there is all kinds of stuff in the center. There's the rusty nut and the shaft it is threaded onto. Behind the knob there is a little round aluminum plate with some writing on it. But nothing stands out, and there is noting fixed to mark it against, so I'll just have to remember to turn it 7/8 of half of a turn, which is like turning the knob so the bump that is currently at the top is half way between where the bump at the bottom is now and the bump just to the left. If you look at the knob as a compass and say north is at the top, then we want to be pointing to southwest by south. If the knob had six bumps we could look at it like a clock face, but it has eight bumps, not six, so we won't.

For sprinkling the tree, 7/16 of a turn is probably good enough, but if it was a more sensitive operation, like tuning in a radio or turning the feed screw on a lathe, you're going to want something better. Radios and machine tools have dials calibrated to whatever accuracy you like*. You could get around dials for high precision equipment by gearing down the dial to the point where it was one complete turn for every hash mark on the direct drive dial. That way you don't have to look at the dial, you just count the number of turns of the dial / crank / knob.

*the phrase 'you like' is kind of loaded. If what you like is commonly available, it's no big deal, but if you want something out of the ordinary, you can have it, you just have to pay for it, and custom stuff is expensive because you not only need someone who can do the work, you also need someone who is willing. Most people are looking for steady work. It's the unusual person who will take on custom jobs. Now you could say that building contractors are always doing custom work, but their options are limited to the materials they are familiar working with.

Past Time to take down the Biden Crime Family

Time to take down the Biden Crime Family…! pic.twitter.com/QGSj0wzy9Y

— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) October 28, 2023

This is a glorious statement, but it's over almost a year old. Then there are those Anonymous and Qanon76 badges. Lastly, I looked on Speaker-of-the-House Johnson's Twitter feed and there is almost nothing there for 2023, and certainly not this video. I'm wondering if Johnson actually gave this speech, then what happened to the evidence? Something doesn't add up, but that's nothing new for that east coast slime pit.

Via Bustednuckles

The Beekeeper

THE BEEKEEPER | Official Restricted Trailer
Amazon MGM Studios

This is the perfect Jason Statham film. It's perfect because the pacing is perfect, there isn't a false step in the whole show. It's perfect because Jason Statham beats up a boatload of bad guys. In other words it's perfectly ridiculous which makes it great fun. Go Jason, go! Beat those bad guys to a pulp. Fold, spindle and mutilate them until the audience (me) is content.

Jason plays a retired fixit man, a Beekeeper. Beekeepers get called in when something has gone wrong with the system that keeps society running smoothly. They get called in when the systems that are normally used to keep things in check fail and things start to go off the rails. But Jason is retired. He keeps bees and lives in a barn he rents from an old lady who lives out in the boonies. The show opens with him disposing of a nest of nasty hornets. His technique is interesting. He covers the nest with a paper bag and breaks it loose from its support, carries it into his barn, sticks a fluorescent light bulb into the opening of the bag, smashes the part of the bulb that is inside the bag and applies electricity to the light bulb. We get treated to some sparkling lights and sounds and that's it for the hornets. Kind of hoping this is foreshadowing of what's going to happen to the bad guys, even though we haven't seen any bad guys yet, we know there are going to be some, obviously, because it's a Jason Statham film.

There is some science-y sounding mumbo-jumbo about hornets attacking beehives and how bees will turn on their queen if the drones she is producing are defective. Don't know about any of that, but they don't spend more than a couple of lines on the subject, just enough to get the idea. Wait, are the bees protecting the hive, or is it the beekeeper? Oh, right, the beekeeper steps in when the bees can't handle the problem themselves.

Okay, we're going to have some spoilers here, but can you really spoil a Jason Statham film? We know what's going to happen and the whole point is to watch Jason get medieval on everyone who gets in his way.

Things get going when the old lady gets scammed by some sleazy hackers who have subverted some anti-virus software. The old lady is a trustee for a charity and she holds the keys for a $2 million dollar bank account. The scumbags talk her into giving up the keys and immediately siphon all the money from all her bank accounts. Distraught over this apparently unrecoverable loss, she shoots herself. Now, you might wonder how such a feeble minded person got to be in charge of a $2 million bank account, but that's just because you are a cynical twerp.

Okay, there is one false step. After work Jason goes over to the old lady's house for dinner, because she invited him. When he gets there the door is open. He goes in, it's dark, and hearing nothing, he picks up a kitchen knife. Just as he discovers the dead old lady, a woman bursts in with a gun and busts him. How did he not hear her? She must have just driven up, unless she has been lying in wait? Turns out she is the old lady's daughter and an FBI agent to boot. Of course she is.

Now Jason is looking for the scumbag hackers who stole the money. Turns out the cops have been looking for them but haven't been able to track them down. Jason still has connections to the Beekeepers organization which gets him a clue and that's all he needs, now Jason's fury is unleashed on the sleazebags and massive mayhem ensues. 

Turns out the scam originated in a boiler room that has a couple of dozen slimy mudder fudders bilking people left, right and center, and there are a bunch of these boiler rooms operating across the country, all reporting to the master sleazeball who is the head of a giant internet company like Facebook or Instagram or something. He is also the son of a blond woman who is the President of the United States. All his ill-gotten gains went to her Presidential campaign, in particular, the money helped swing the vote in a handful of key counties. Counties, mind you, not states. That's how close elections are sometimes.

His chief of security warns him that he cannot protect him from the Beekeeper, so his best chance of survival is to go to mom's house. Presumably the Secret Service will be able to deal with the Beekeeper. Ha. Is to laugh. Mom and son go to the 'beach house', some palatial mansion defended by phalanx of coppers of various flavors. (Why am I not impressed?) Just in case you have any doubt about what kind  of sleazeball the son is, we have him snorting coke off of his dead father's desk.

Now we need an excuse to execute this guy, I mean we have witnesses after all, but shithead kindly provides one by holding a gun to his mother's head. No problemo, the BeeKeeper doesn't hesitate because everyone knows the Beekeeper never misses.

Sidewalk Dream

I'm walking up the street on the sidewalk. The street slopes slightly downhill towards the river. I am on the left side because there is no sidewalk on the right side. I want to cross to the right side of the street as I am facing uphill. I get to a traffic light but it's a complicated intersection and the lights don't give you enough time to cross the street. People in cars going downhill sometimes unintentionally get in the left lane but they want to go straight so they switch lanes in the middle of the intersection which is unnerving if you're in the middle of the crosswalk.

While this dream was going on, I was sure I knew where this street was. I was so sure of this that when I woke up I pulled up Google Maps to see if I could locate any such place in Portland, because I was likewise sure it was in Portland. But the more I looked and the more I thought about it I couldn't think of any such place.

Kind of strange that I had three vivid dreams within 24 hours. I was feeling kind of puny the last couple of days so that may have something to do with it. But I wasn't running a fever, least ways not enough to notice. I don't know what it was, but it seems to happen periodically.

Future Rubbish

The Discarded - Faulty
WitnessAi

Junkyard of the future.

Component Dream

I'm at work and I'm talking to a younger guy there and I'm telling him about a tiny camera I found in a story. It is the size of a grain of rice, and I'm wondering where you can find something like that and he  hands me a catalog. It's an old parts catalog book. It 's about 3 inches wide and about 7 inches tall and about an inch thick and it's got a thousand pages in it. I open up the book and start looking through it and it's not obvious where anything is. There's several sections but the section that looks like an index is in the middle and it only goes up to the letter I. There's other sections for different subjects but I'm not seeing anything that would lead me directly to miniature cameras. So I go to the front of the book and I start leafing through it page by page and I notice that the first half dozen pages are all about brakes: brake rotors, brake pads, parts for automobiles. And I'm thinking, well, people who deal with electronic components are probably do-it-yourself kind of people and brakes are something you can do yourself that can save you a lot of money so maybe they're just tapping into that market here. 

Anyway I keep looking through this book and I'm still not finding anything and then a couple other guys come and sit down at the table where we are. I don't recognize them. They are both wearing clean, button down shirts, but they're a little scruffy looking. Their haircuts look like they were done by a third rate barber and their shaves are a little sloppy, but they're smiling and happy. They ask our last names and I tell them mine and I ask them their names and he says he's afraid to because my name is so unusual. So I guess Smith and Jones and they laugh because I'm not far off, or I'm not wrong but they don't tell me their names. So I asked them what we can we do for them and they won't tell me that either so I start guessing that are they here to pick up or deliver something or they here to give us a sales pitch, but none of those are correct. So now I'm guessing that they're fixit guys that have been called in to correct a problem with the company which means we're probably all going to get laid off and they don't say I'm wrong but all they'll say is that they're mowing the grass tonight or reaping the grass tonight or something like that.

Cruise Missile Fly-by

Fishman Captures 2 Cruise Missles while in Caspian Sea
JustSayYourLines

Good day to be out on the water.

Caspian Sea

The Caspian Sea is about 700 miles north to south and roughly 200 miles across. This image is in the normal orientation, that is north is at the top and south is at the bottom. Going clockwise from the bottom it is bordered by Iran, Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhastan and Turkmenistan. I don't know who's shooting at who, but I'll bet Azerbaijan is involved. That's where Baku, the oil town, is.

$7 Bill Dream

I'm back in Beaverton, we still have the Windstar, but the kids are older and we're playing car shuffle, you know the old drill where you have one more driver than you have cars and someone has taken one of the cars to run an errand and now all the other drivers have to adjust to driving a different car than usual. I need some small bills to pay someone but all I have is a couple $100 bills, and now I have to walk a couple of blocks to pick up a car. There is a two story business building with outside stairs and an outside walkway around the second floor. Going through this building is shorter than going around the block, but I only ever visit the businesses on the second floor. I get halfway up the stairs before I realize I am only going past this building, I don't need to go upstairs at all, so I turn around.

Now I'm sitting in the driver's seat in the parking lot of a convenience store. I know the guy who works there and he has just exchanged a small stack of bills for one of my hundreds. I'm counting the money and it starts with four singles. What's this? Why do I have four singles? Whatever, I count the rest of the money and it comes to a hundred bucks, so I hand him back the four ones. Now I count the money again and I notice that a couple of what I thought were tens are now $7 bills. What? Since when did they start printing $7 bills? Who knows? The government is far away. This is just one more thing to mess with people. Okay, so that's what the extra $4 was for. (Yes, I know it doesn't add up, but it did in the dream.)  Now I go through the stack of bills again and this time I find a couple of four dollar bills. Oh boy, this is getting messy. And that is all.

Spacey

Space Lady

We were in downtown Hillsboro the other day and they had a couple of blocks closed off because of about two dozen big chalk drawings on the street. They were like eight feet square, maybe larger.

Space Dude

Douglas C-54 Skymaster

Douglas C-54 Skymaster (N500EJ)

Berlin Airlift Historical Society. The Berlin Airlift has shown up here a couple of times.

 

Temu

Digital Camera Model

Ordered this very cool model of a movie camera from Temu, $20 for 600 pieces. The parts are just like Legos, but smaller, like 2/3 the size. The whole model is only about six inches long. It has all these dials and knobs that look like they ought to do something, but such is not the case, it's just a static model. Legos are nice, but they have gotten kind of expensive, and they seemed to be aimed at more main stream markets.

Age of Majority

He didn’t stutter once.
Case

Still trying to figure out who this guy is. I posted about this earlier:

Seems that Ukraine has lowered the age for drafting men into the military has been lowered from 27 to 25. When we were fighting in Vietnam the draft age was 18. I haven't heard anyone explain this discrepancy, and I have no explanation myself. I just find it very odd.

 

Anyway, got me to wondering about why we use the age of 21 to mark when a person becomes an adult. Didn't find much, but I did find a couple of things.

Why 21?: A brief look into the history of the Minimum Legal Drinking Age (MLDA) - talking about the 19th and 20th century in the USA and Protestant religion.

THE ORIGINS OF THE 21ST BIRTHDAY
The origin of the 21st birthday actually came from a boy being groomed for knighthood. In medieval times, there were 3 stages to becoming a knight, all of which were 7 years apart;

• 7 years old – The boy’s training begins as he becomes a page. Essentially a Knight’s servant, the boy would learn what was required to become a Knight while acting as a messenger and performing other basic servant duties.
• 14 years old – The boy would become a Squire. The Squire’s primary duties would be as an armour and shield carrier, caretaker of the weapons and armour, and tasks like saddling the Knight’s horse. This was also the first time that the boy would be taken into battle with the Knight. Often acting as a flagbearer, the Squire would be given a chance to prove himself in battle. A Squire’s role would also involve ensuring the Knight had an honourable burial should he be felled in one of these battles.
• 21 years old – Providing the boy succeeding in his two previous posts, he was officially dubbed a Knight at the age of 21. The Knight was a form of lower nobility and a trusted agent of a Monarch and a skilled fighter bound by a code of chivalric conduct. 

Lessons From The Drinking Age Experiment

For 600 years of English common law and throughout most of U.S. legal history, the age of 21 was regarded as the age of full adult status. Until 1971 the legal minimum voting age was 21 and many states maintained age 21 as their legal drinking age. It was not until the Vietnam War with the unpopular, forcible draft of disenfranchised 18-year-olds, that the age to vote in the U.S. was shifted downward to 18 by the 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Update - dude in the video is Jesse 'The Body' Ventura, former professional wrestler and governor of Minnesota. Thanks to ColdSoldier.

 

Clown World

Trump and the bullet

First we have:

'. . . FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress on Wednesday that “there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel.”' - The Daily Wire

Why would you say something like that? I mean, does it make any difference? There was a man firing a gun at people at a public gathering. Why would you care whether it was shrapnel or a bullet? Oh, right, it's because they are clowns. Now it makes perfect sense. Muder truckers.

RAF RC-135W Rivet Joint

Then there is this from RT:

British spy planes ramped up their activity in the Black Sea in June 2021, just days before a Royal Navy frigate attempted to sail past Crimea in Russian territorial wars. According to the government in London, the HMS Defender was on a “freedom of navigation patrol” from Odessa to Batumi in Georgia.

The Russian navy had fired warning shots at the British frigate and dropped bombs from an airplane in its path. London initially denied that this happened, until Moscow released videos proving its case.

Four days after the incident, classified documents discovered at a bus stop in Kent showed that the Royal Navy deliberately sent the Defender into Russian waters to provoke a reaction. 

'Classified documents discovered at a bus stop'. Seems like I've heard that one before. It could have been that a harried civil servant inadvertently dropped a folder while waiting for a bus, but my suspicious mind says someone was tired of the bullshit and decided to leave that folder where they knew it would be discovered by a reporter.

Yes, London and Washington D. C. are two different cities in two different countries, but the USA barks and western Europe leaps to obey, so their governments are all part of the same circus.

Soviet Era Technology

MYSTERIOUS 50 Year Old Soviet Power Tool: Teardown and Review!
The Doubtful Technician

Just a couple of items I encountered today. Above we have an old Soviet power tool, below we have a Soviet micro computer, circa 1990.

UKNC

Talking to Osmany this morning and he's telling me that back around 1990 in Cuba, when he was ten years old, he was studying computer programming using these big, fat keyboards with a memory module that plugged into the upper right corner. This photo of the UKNC fits the bill. It was a PDP-11 clone. When I was in school ten years earlier, in Texas, we had a PDP-11 computer for certain classes. It was a mini-computer, which meant it was rack mounted.  The CPU was the size of a microwave oven.

There is a UKNC emulator available on GitHub.

Diamond Mines of Mercury

Mercury

The Silicon Graybeard has a post up about the possibility of a ten mile thick layer of diamond beneath the planet Mercury's crust. Suppose there was such a thing, and also suppose we could send a rocket there that could also return to Earth. The way SpaceX is going I expect we could build such a rocket within twenty years or so, assuming we really wanted to. What form would this layer of diamond take? Would it be a ten mile thick layer of gravel made of diamond gemstones? Or would it be like one solid layer like the shell around an egg? What could you do with a mile long piece of diamond? Might be time to go back and Neil Stephenson's The Diamond Age.

Company - Musical Comedy - Keller Auditorium

Company | North American Tour Preview
BroadwaySF

A musical comedy? What we have is funny skits alternating with songs. We saw this a week ago. The skits were funny, sometimes hilarious. The words weren't always intelligible, but much of the comedy was physical: actions, poses, tone of voice, sudden stoppage of words, so you didn't actually have to hear what they were saying. The songs were, well, songs. They did nothing for me, but I'm funny that way. Some people are really into singing. Me, I prefer popular music, not this highfalutin' stuff.

The story is about a 35 year old single woman and the prospect of marriage, or not. The rest of the cast is five married couples, so we take a look at those marriages and none of them are perfect, they all have their own quirks. Kind of like real life.

Simpletons and Scoundrels

The whole Trump assassination attempt, has been, pardon the expression, beaten to death. But then I came across this piece by JMSmith. He brings history to bear on the subject, and I think his take is insightful. Voila:

Simpletons and Scoundrels

“A flighty and half-witted man is the very instrument generally preferred by cunning politicians when very hazardous work is to be done.” 

Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England  (1848)*

Macaulay makes this trenchant remark while discussing a deluded wretch named Granville, the doomed patsy in a failed plot to assassinate the English King William of Orange in 1692.  Macaulay tells us that Granville, a Frenchman, was “undoubtedly brave, and full of zeal for his country and his religion,” but that his main qualification as an assassin was that he was “flighty and half-witted.”  By “flighty” Macaulay means both impetuous (overhasty) and given to romantic illusions (i.e. “flights of fancy”).  I trust what he means by half-witted is plain enough.

A flighty and half-witted man is the preferred tool of cunning politicians when their scheme is very hazardous because “no shrewd calculator” will do the deed “for any bribe.”  What cunning politicians require is therefore a romantic simpleton who dreams of glory and cannot calculate the odds.

As Macaulay explains,

“It was plain to every man of common sense that, whether the design succeeded or failed, the reward of the assassins would probably be to be disowned by the Courts of Versailles and Saint Germains [the exiled court of  James II], and to be torn with redhot pincers, smeared with melted lead, and dismembered by four horses.  To vulgar natures the prospect of such martyrdom was not alluring.”

When Granville was betrayed by his accomplices, his punishment was simply to be hung, drawn and quartered, but the prediction that the French and Jacobite principals of the plot would disown their assassin was fulfilled in full.  The official position of Versailles and Saint Germains was that assassination was abhorrent and Granville had acted alone, perhaps under the influence of madness or some personal vendetta.

After his trial, and without hope of reprieve, Granville named one Barbesieux, an agent in the French War Office, as the architect and director of the plot.  Although Louis XIV officially abominated political assassination, he quietly protected Barbesieux.  Macaulay asks:

“If he really abhorred assassination as honest men abhor it, would not Barbesieux have been driven with ignominy from the royal presence, and flung into the Bastille?”

Macaulay’s question is, of course, rhetorical.

A failed assassination.  A flighty and half-witted patsy who met a grisly end.  Official shock and detestation.  The designer concealed and protected.

Some people are going to say this smells like Killary's handiwork and I'm not going to say they are wrong.

If the name Granville sounds familiar, it's because there have been a number of Granvilles in English history, but none that I found from this time period. JMSmith concurs, the only reference we have is in Macaulay's book.

Evanescence - Bring Me To Life

Evanescence - Bring Me To Life (Official HD Music Video)
Evanescence

Listening to the radio on the way home from brunch this morning and this tune comes on the radio, and my wife turns it way up. Surprised me, didn't think she would go for this. I think I remember hearing this tune a long time ago, possibly by another group, but I couldn't find any evidence of that, so here we are.

Inflation

Inflation

Saw this meme about inflation this morning. I know prices have been going up, but they've been going up since I got out of high school and Nixon took us off the gold standard (1971). It seems like they have been going up faster lately, which I blame on the government's profligate spending. I don't know how accurate this meme is but those items which have gone up 50% (for all intents and purposes 49.3% is indistinguishable from 50%) make it look really bad. But how bad is it, really?

So I took the nine numbers listed above and computed the average. It comes out to 31%. So what rate of inflation do you need to reach 31% in four years? 7%. That's only 2% more than the 5% that I use as my default value for inflation.

My general rule is that a business needs to be making 3 times as much as the rate of inflation. One third of that 21% profit goes to taxes, one third goes to compensate for inflation, and the remaining one third is what the investors (the owner or shareholders) can take home. At an inflation rate of 7%, a business needs to be returning 21%. So while profits that large companies are reporting may seem excessive, it is probably no more than they need to survive, and we all depend on those businesses to support our civilization.

Future Yachts

1902s Yacht Fair Lady

I'm reading The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars and round about Chapter 9 we are cruising the Black Sea in Griselda's personal yacht, North Star. This is back in the roaring 20's so there is a whole crew to operate the ship and cater to Griselda's whims.

Yacht from the Future

Reading about this excursion from the Black Sea to Scotland prompted this little thought experiment. Imagine a world where all our problems have been solved and we have robots to build anything we want. In a world like that everyone could have their own fully automated nuclear powered yacht, capable of crossing the Pacific Ocean or even sailing around the entire world.

You wouldn't be able to get to the middle of continents cuz there's no navigable Rivers, so you would need an aircraft, a helicopter with a 2500 Mi range. And it would have to be a big helicopter so you can have a comfortable cabin and not be riding in a noisy plexiglass box.

If everyone's got one of these yachts that's would be 8 billion yachts and the question is: if they were evenly distributed over the world's oceans how far apart would they be?

Oceans cover 139 million square miles, so if each of the 8 billion people on Earth had their own yacht, then, on average, each yacht would have 11 acres of water to itself. Evenly spaced they would be 700 feet apart. Trying to go anywhere would be like navigating a parking lot or a harbor, not exactly smooth sailing.

Thanks to Anonymous for pointing out the error in my math. Well, not the math, but my interpretation of the math. This was my original description:

 

. . . there would be like 12 yachts per acre or 3 yachts per quarter acre. I picked a quarter acre because that is the size of a good sized suburban lot. In other words, it would be right crowded and you probably wouldn't be able to go anywhere on account of being hemmed in so tightly.

Kaspersky

Seven years ago the Federal government banned the use Kaspersky anti-virus software in government computers.

Last month the government banned the sale of Kaspersky anti-virus software in the USA starting July 20.

This morning (July 19), CrowdStrike anti-virus software caused Windows computer systems world-wide to crash. ZeroHedge has the same story.

Color me very amused. I quit using Windows years ago.

P. S. RT has a story about CrowdStrike, former FBI Executive Assistant Director Shawn Henry and Russiagate. Huh, imagine that, you put corrupt slimeballs in charge and you get screwups like this.

Biden Camp Throwing Their Weight Around, Again

I've been getting some pushback from people I know about RT, well screw that. I like RT, I think they publish some very good stuff. They also publish a lot of stuff about the Ukraine war, but I don't read any of that because I expect that, like 99% of the stuff published about active conflicts, it's all bullshit.

You may have heard that Elon Musk wants to prosecute somebody, I dunno, major media outlets? The Federal government? over censorship of anything to the right of center. And since whoever is in charge in Washington D. C. has been calling the shots in Europe, we get this fun little bit:

WATCH full Zakharova interview before ‘far right’ magazine ban

The German outlet Compact was quashed in its home country days after publishing a conversation with the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman

RT has published the full 80-minute video of an interview that Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova gave to the German magazine Compact.

This week, the German government banned the publication and began a police investigation into its associates, after accusing it of fueling “far-right extremism.” Zakharova claims that the crackdown could have been a response to the interview.

Compact correspondent Hansjorg Mueller asked the spokeswoman which “red lines” Berlin might cross in Ukraine to trigger direct retaliation by Russia. He also wondered if Moscow could withdraw from the Two Plus Four Agreement – the multilateral treaty that allowed the reunification of Germany in 1990.

The German government did not mention either Russia or the Zakharova interview in its announcement of the crackdown on Compact. Instead, it accused the outlet of undermining the constitutional order in the country with its content.

Some German media linked the move with the surging popularity of the anti-migration, nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. Mueller served in the German parliament in 2017-2021 as a member of the AfD faction.

You can watch the interview by following the link. The two people (Maria and the reporter) are speaking some foreign gibberish, but there are subtitles. If the subtitles are crawling by too fast (or too slow) you can adjust the playback speed. I didn't watch it, I don't have the patience. I like my news in short, succinct paragraphs.

While we are on the subject of 'whoever is in charge in Washington D. C.', Sarah A. Hoyt has a fine idea for a novel.

P. S. 'Dirty Commies' is the best label I could think of for this post. Just to be clear I am not referring to the Russians, but the Biden administration.

Preference Cascade

Borepatch put up a post titled:

The preference cascade has begun

I hope he's right. He explains the term, but I'm wondering because I think I've heard this term before, so I go looking and I found this excellent post on Blog & Mablog:

The Coming Preference Cascade

It was so great I had to leave a compliment and as a bonus I got this wonderful response: 

Thank you for submitting a letter to Blog & Mablog. Years from now, after you have been nominated to become the next Secretary of State, the fact that you used to read this blog, and even were so far gone in your depravity that you wrote this letter to us, will no doubt be brought up at the congressional hearings. Such being the case, we commend you for your courage. At the same time, while admiring your bravery, we have to warn you that because of the volume of letters we receive, we are not able to promise to publish every one. Thank you for understanding.

The Blog & Mablog post has four parts. The third part is titled Saul & David and is about some passages in the Bible. I am not sure what the relevance is, other than the aura of authority is linked to the spirit of the Lord. Shoot, that might be true.

I don't know how far the cascade has progressed. My local area (Washington County) is like a little bubble of joy and happiness, things couldn't be any better. I have to avoid talking with people about politics, most of the people I know are true blue Biden supporters. Intel and Nvidia both have a big presence here and they have made fortunes for a bunch of people. You can tell from the proliferation of wineries and Christmas tree farms. You can't just have a big estate in Oregon, you have to be using it for 'agricultural purposes' and Christmas tree farms and wineries fit the bill. The far east side of Portland is another matter.

Walking the Dog

Dog Water?

I have upped my walking to 30 minutes. It's been a year since I got my new artificial hip joint installed and while I could walk comfortably since shortly after the operation, walking for a few minutes would cause the joint to start aching. After a while I was able to walk around the block (ten minutes), but this summer I have started tackling longer distances, like three or four miles. Great achievement, but it left me so wiped out I would need a couple of days to recover. Sad, very sad, as the great and benevolent Donald likes to say. But now I've been doing 30 minute walks every morning and all is well.

I go early in the morning, before breakfast and before I've taken a shower because if I wait till those two chores are done, life takes over and a walk takes the back burner which means it doesn't happen. While I am out, I will usually see about a dozen people, some are working (roofers and landscapers mostly), some are just out walking and about half of these are walking their dogs.

Today I noticed this little puddle adjacent to a paved walking path. Been by here every day for a week and today was the first time I noticed it. It looks like someone deliberately made this hole for drinking water for dogs, but it has a definite brown tinge from the adjacent asphalt paving. Doesn't seem like a good idea, but if it was really bad I suspect dog's wouldn't drink out of it.

Talking to Jack about his dog Ruthy yesterday. It seems like Ruthy likes to eat cherry pits she finds on the ground. Jack's neighbor has a cherry tree that hangs over the fence, and there's a cherry tree at a nearby school where they go for walks. So what's the big deal? Dogs eat all kinds of garbage, that's how they get that wonderful dog breath. Well, seems cherry pits are full of cyanide. If you just swallow them whole it's not a big deal, but if you crunch them up it doesn't take more than a dozen to send you to your maker. The crunch is the key, but dogs like crunchy things, so, yeah, you wanna take precautions.

Wasn't there a tune called Walking the Dog? Yes, yes there was:

Rufus Thomas - Walking The Dog (1964)
Reelblack One

Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump

Mickey Mouse Club Intro (Color)
Dalton Barron
I was inundated this morning with people yammering about the shooting. It was all Trump, all the time, which led to the title, which led to the above tune. I'm surprised someone hasn't redone the tune with 

D-O-N, A-L-D  T-R-U-M-P replacing Mickey Mouse. I mean, they have the same number of letters. Disney would probably have a conniption fit.

So there was a lot of yammering but not much in the way of actual information. We do have this video. I got the link from daily timewaster.

The sniper was already watching the shooter. Why didn’t he shoot first! 🤔 pic.twitter.com/Ts72wqdG4t

— GentlemanJack (@xGentleManJack) July 14, 2024

We can hear 5 shots being fired in this video. After the first shot, the rooftop snipers don't seem to be aiming their weapons. Erik Prince posted this in a post on X:

Watching the newsreel one can hear how proximate the shooter is by the very short time lapse between the crack of arriving bullet (supersonic) to the boom of muzzle blast (sonic).  

I dunno about that, sounds like the action cycling on a semi-automatic rifle to me, and as those five shots came within four seconds, I think it very likely it was a semi-auto. 

Full Metal Jacket - Mickey Mouse song
BakotaNiN

This showed up while I was looking for the video at top. This one might be more appropriate.

Jargon

Heard a couple new-to-me expressions this weekend. We were talking about why a radiologist might be needed at 2AM, and we were thinking, well, trauma in the Emergency Room. But then dutiful daughter mentions:

Decompensation - In medicine, decompensation is the functional deterioration of a structure or system that had been previously working with the help of compensation.

I suspect in everyday conversation you would call it 'taking a turn for the worse'. And yeah, if someone decompensated in the middle of the night, you might very well need a radiologist.

The other one I heard from a friend at happy hour:

Index of Refraction and Coefficient of Extinction are the real and complex portions of light.

Okay, there's a lot crammed into that sentence. I've heard of Index of Refraction, it just tells you how much light is bent, but Coefficient of Extinction is new to me. Wikipedia gives us this:

Extinction coefficient refers to several different measures of the absorption of light in a medium:

• Attenuation coefficient, sometimes called "extinction coefficient" in meteorology or climatology
• Mass extinction coefficient, how strongly a substance absorbs light at a given wavelength, per mass density
• Molar extinction coefficient, how strongly a substance absorbs light at a given wavelength, per molar concentration
• Optical extinction coefficient, the imaginary part of the complex index of refraction

I think the last one, Optical, is what we want, though what you would use it for is beyond me.

45

M1911A1 .45 Automatic

This caught my eye, I mean it sounds like a really good deal. But this is an old ad, surely from the days before Nixon canceled the gold standard. In those days an ounce of gold was $35, so this gun cost almost two ounces of gold. Now-a-days, a 45 will set you back $1,000, which sounds like a chunk of change until you realize that gold is now $2400, which means this gun would cost less than half an ounce of gold. So in terms of our rapidly devaluing paper money, a 45 costs like 20 times as much as it did in the bad old days. However, in terms of real money, a 45 costs a quarter of what they used to cost.

 

Twang

Twang
Chuck Pergiel

Trying to pull the shed corner to the final position at the max pull of the cheap marine winch i bought years ago that didn't work for squat at least resulted in this cool sound. - Uniberp

Happy Hour

Lively discussion at happy hour last night. I made notes because I am looking for some science fiction to read and we're looking for concerts to attend this summer.

Science Fiction Books

• The Coincidence Makers - Yoav Blum 
• Jennifer Government - Max Berry

Science Fiction Authors

• Randolf Monroe - XKCD, NASA
• Daniel Suarez
• Blake Crouch
• Justin Cronin

Tunes

• Dermot Kennedy - Giants
• Bodine
• Rodrigo y Gabriella
• Ryan Sheridan
• Violent Femmes
• Which version of 'I Shot the Sheriff' is better? Bob Marley's version or Eric Clapton's?
• Icicle Works
• Yes
• Jethro Tull - Ian Anderson
• John Anderson 
• America - Warm Springs Oregon July 27th

SpaceX

SpaceX upper stage anomaly

How is it that we even have pictures like this? We are walking way out on the edge and there ain't no net.

Alec Baldwin

Judge throws out Alec Baldwin manslaughter case

Why am I hearing about this from RT? Oh, if might be because I won't pay for subscriptions to known liars like the Washington Post and The New York Times.

I thought this was a bullshit case from day one which was what, two years ago? It's taken this long for the courts to figure out it was bullshit? It did draw a lot of attention and now I wonder if that wasn't the plan all along. Everyone knew the case was bullshit, but if you are playing with firearms you need to be careful. By dragging this out across the headlines for however many months they did, they may have impressed all the Hollywood prop guys that you can't be messing around. So maybe all this bullshit did some good.

Ukrainian Language

RT has the story: Ukrainian children still speaking Russian – regulator

Here's an excerpt:

Since gaining its independence in 1991, Ukraine has largely been a bilingual nation, with most citizens able to speak or understand both Russian and Ukrainian, particularly in the eastern half of the country. After the 2014 US-backed coup in Kiev, however, Ukraine’s new authorities abolished Russian as an official regional language and have adopted policies aimed at suppressing and outlawing it, arguing that it represents a threat to national unity and security. 

In 2019, the Ukrainian parliament passed a law requiring Ukrainian to be used exclusively in nearly all aspects of public life, including education, entertainment, politics, business and the service industry, obliging all Ukrainian citizens to know the language. It also requires that 90% of TV and film content produced in the country be made in Ukrainian. From July 17, the use of the Russian language in Ukrainian media will be virtually outlawed, Kremen has said.

This forced Ukrainization was one of the reasons why Russian-speaking residents living in the east of the country rejected the post-coup authorities in Kiev in 2014. Many of these regions, namely the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, have since joined Russia after overwhelmingly voting to do so in public referendums in 2022.

There is something wrong with Ukraine, well, there are many things wrong with Ukraine, many of which are caused by the dunderheads in Washington D. C., but this kind of thing makes me think there is some fundamental problem that made all the chaos possible.

There was a bunch of noise in the USA a few years back with people complaining about immigrants not speaking English. That seems to have died out. Was there a court ruling? I don't remember, but Spanish crops up now and again, it helps when you are dealing with working people as opposed to my fellow retirees (useless twerps, the lot of them). My Spanish is limited. When people ask if I speak Spanish I like to trot out my favorite phrase: 'Una mas cerveza fria por favor'. Yes, beer is feminine. I had to check.

Police

Tam points out this story:

Cops: The Young versus The Old

over on Active Response Training. Good story.

Aerojet

Abandoned Planet: Aerojet Everglades
Abandoned Planet

I remember reading something about this place a while back. This video doesn't have much, but it does give us a bit of the story. The part about the Apollo Program ($257 billion) costing more than the Manhattan Project ($2 billion) was a surprise. The price of gold during the Manhattan Project and at the beginning of the Apollo Program was $35 an ounce. By the end of the Apollo Program the price of gold had tripled, so the $257 billion amount is slightly inflated, but we can pretty safely say the Apollo Program cost roughly one hundred times as much as the Manhattan Project. All the stories about life on the home front during WW2 are all about rationing and shortages of everything. By contrast America was living the high life during the Apollo Program. Funny how a little injection of government spending  during WW2 jump started the economy to the point that we could shoot the moon and not even notice.

Abandoned Aerojet Dade Rocket Facility

We're way down at the tip of Florida.

Explaining the Obvious

From Europe’s Far-Right Revival: Unpacking the Surge by Zubair Mumtaz

July 9, 2024

The far-right is gaining increasing power across Europe, with several countries now having right-politico parties in government or as major political forces including France and the Netherland are the latest. This trend is driven by a few key factors such as worsening economic conditions and decreasing living standards of the working and middle classes, worsened by neoliberal policies and the Eurozone crisis, which have led to frustration with mainstream parties. Far-right populists have effectively capitalized on this discontent, positioning themselves as advocates for the “common people” against the political establishment.

Concerns regarding immigration, particularly from Muslim-majority nations, have provided a fertile environment for far-right parties to advance nativist, xenophobic, and Islamophobic agendas. They blame immigrants and minorities as a threat to national identity and security, proposing simplistic solutions and fueling anxieties.

However, the failure of centre-left and left-wing parties to adequately address the economic and social worries of their traditional working-class support base has created a void that far-right populists have filled. The left’s perceived alignment with pro-EU, pro-immigration policies has alienated numerous voters, prompting them to search for alternatives.

Moreover, as mainstream centre-right parties increasingly embrace far-right language and policies, particularly on topics like immigration, it has contributed to the normalization of extremist perspectives. This blending of the lines between the far-right and centre-right makes populist parties seem more acceptable to a wider electorate.

Furthermore, growing dissatisfaction with the perceived absence of accountability and responsiveness of EU institutions to the needs of all member states has fueled Euroscepticism. Far-right parties exploit this sentiment, positioning themselves as protectors of national sovereignty against an overbearing, undemocratic EU bureaucracy.

The author goes on for a bit. Who is he?

Zubair Mumtaz is a Conflict / Security Analyst and an M.Phil. Scholar in Peace & Conflict Studies at National Defence University. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.

The are at least three National Defence Universities:

• Washington D. C., U. S. A.
• Islamabad, Pakistan
• Taoyuan City, Taiwan

I'm pretty sure Zubair is from the one in Washington D. C.

The Draft

Seems that Ukraine has lowered the age for drafting men into the military has been lowered from 27 to 25. When we were fighting in Vietnam the draft age was 18. I haven't heard anyone explain this discrepancy, and I have no explanation myself. I just find it very odd.

Blast from a Parallel Dimension Past

Synthsaga SciFi: Middle 20th century American Typhoon motorcycles ,parallel dimension
Synthsaga

Cute.

Mosques

Hosseiniyeh Ershad in Tehran, Iran

Technically, this building is not a mosque, but it is an old Islamic building. RT has a story about the recent election in Iran. It opens with this:

Hosseiniyeh Ershad in Tehran is not just a religious site for Shiite Muslims, but also one of Iran’s most renowned political venues. Before the 1979 revolution, prominent Iranian intellectual and revolutionary Ali Shariati delivered his fiery speeches against Shah Pahlavi here. On Friday, starting at 8am, this beautiful building with its turquoise dome hosted the largest and oldest polling station in the country.

Remember the Shah? 

During World War II, the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran forced the abdication of Pahlavi's father, Reza Shah, whom he succeeded. During Pahlavi's reign, the British-owned oil industry was nationalized by the prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, who had support from Iran's national parliament to do so. However, Mosaddegh was overthrown in the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, which was carried out by the Iranian military under the aegis of the United Kingdom and the United States. Subsequently, the Iranian government centralized power under Pahlavi and brought foreign oil companies back into the country's industry through the Consortium Agreement of 1954. 

The election isn't going to make much difference, the Ayatollah and his cronies are still in charge. Wikipedia has a page about the building.

Streetview Ad

I got the picture at the top from Google Streetview. Pan 90 degrees to the left and you get this message in Persian plastered over the view. Translated* it reads:

1402

Website design and launch shop

Praise for curbing inflation and production growth

Advertisement of your brand and products on the Google map. Registration of your business on the Google map

09126063498

Vahid is stable

Digital publication ID: 13742

Shamad code: 1-1-870037-65-100

Maneh Culture Development Center in Naft Ber Game

www.241.ir

I wonder if they have hacked Google Maps or are they doing this with the connivence of Google? Surprisingly, the website URL works.

al-Nuri Mosque, Mosul, Iraq

Over in Mosul, Iraq, Aljazeera has a different story:

Iraq: 5 big ISIL bombs found hidden in Mosul’s al-Nuri Mosque

Five large bombs were discovered hidden in the walls of the historic al-Nuri Mosque in the city of Mosul in northern Iraq, a remnant of the armed group ISIL’s (ISIS’s) rule over the region.

The mosque – famous for its 12th-century leaning minaret – was destroyed by ISIL in 2017 and has been a focal point of the UN cultural agency UNESCO’s restoration efforts since 2020.

The UN agency said five large-scale explosive devices, designed for significant destruction, were found inside the southern wall of the Prayer Hall on Tuesday.

“These explosive devices were concealed within a specially rebuilt section of the wall,” a UNESCO statement said on Saturday.

Streetview takes you inside the mosque

* Translate means taking a screen shot, feeding it to Google Lens, picking up the text and feeding it to Google Translate, stuff that was science fiction 20 years ago.

Dar es Salaam

Dar es Salaam

Just a cool picture. 

Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar, Mombasa

Dar es Salaam is on the coast of Tanzania, about 200 miles south of Mombasa, Kenya. Zanzibar is about 30 miles away.