Eminence Front - The Who

The Who - Eminence Front (Original)
Eduardo Montenegro M1

This song came up in rotation and I decided it needed to be here.

The single entered Billboard Hot 100 on 25 December 1982, reaching number 68. - Wikipedia

I was still in Austin, Texas in 1982.

Electric Bike Conversions

Want the Absolute Best Electric Bike? It's probably already in your garage.
JohnnyNerdOut

IAman's electric bicycle was stolen from in front of Winco a couple of weeks (months?) ago, and now he's looking to build another one. His previous source for electric bike parts was Bafang USA Direct, but they quit importing Bafang motors on account of them operating in Communist China, so he's looking for another source for parts and finds Johnny Nerd-Out just across the river in Vancouver, Washington.

Panavision

The Fifth Element - 1950's Super Panavision 70
Panavision Paradise

There are a bunch of these videos up on YouTube. They are AI generated trailers for old, famous movies.  Very entertaining, though I am a little disturbed by how attractive the AI generated women are. Panavision Paradise isn't the only one making them. Panavision seems to be the key search term.

Chinese Commercial Real Estate

Not sure why I am posting this. I mean, who cares if the Chinese Commercial Real Estate (CRE) market is in free fall? The CRE market here at home is not in such great shape itself. Guess I'm just trying to keep tabs on fast the world is sliding towards the abyss. There are always ups and downs, but these days the news just seems to be consistently bad, which I translate to meaning that the slide has gotten steeper and faster. Will something happen to pull us out of this ever worsening recession / depression? Or are we really going to go into free fall? 

Anyway, I thought the opening to this story was pretty good. It goes on for a while and if you are really into what's going on in the Chinese economy you might want to read it.

Chinese Offices Emptier Now Than During Peak Of Covid Lockdowns As Economy Crumbles
 BY TYLER DURDEN FRIDAY, AUG 30, 2024 - 08:30 PM 

One week ago, we reported that China had found itself "On The Verge" of collapse as its "Welfare State Crumbles, Explosion In Social Unrest As Youth Unemployment Soars, Strikes Surge." All of this was the result of Beijing's very deliberate - and extremely risky - decision to not engage in a massive stimulus this time, unlike every previous occasion of sharp economist slowdown, and risk social unrest at best, or a full-blown revolution as an unthinkable worst case. 

Here is the silver lining: all those revolutionaries will have brand new empty offices at their disposal when they finally take over. That's because as the FT reports, offices in China’s biggest cities are emptier than they were during stringent Covid-19 lockdowns in what is the latest clear sign of how the country’s economic slowdown has crushed business confidence. 

At least a fifth of high-end office space was vacant in the tech hub of Shenzhen in June, according to data from three real estate agencies, while office vacancy rates in Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai were also higher than in June 2022. Naturally, with demand collapsing, rents are at least 10% lower than they were two years ago and in many cases much lower. 

While a rise of flexible working has made it hard for developers to fill office space in cities such as London and San Francisco, and led to an unprecedented commercial real estate crisis, in Chinese cities - where far fewer people work from home - analysts said there is a much simpler cause for explosion in office vacancies: the collapsing economy.... which is amusing considering the centrally-planned central government has set a full-year economic growth target of about 5%. The reality is that China's economy is shrinking at that rate, if not much faster.

 

Choose Joy

Kamala at the White House

More AI generated memes at the link. Via ZeroHedge

And the Leonid Brezhnev Memorial Award goes to ...

Stolen entire from Borepatch on account of it's so great:

Leonid Brezhnev

And the Leonid Brezhnev Memorial Award goes to ...

So UK Prime Minister Keir "Two Tier" Starmer has decreed that people saying hateful things will be jailed because their speech is actually violence, and he's making room for them in His Majesty's prisons by releasing violent criminals because their violence is actually speech, you guys.

Some big shot police constable has even said he was going to go all 1775-Bunker Hill on Americans for their speech, which is totally violence.  Ooooh kaaay,

All this totalitarianism reminds me of a joke from the Soviet Union, back in the day.  It was said about Leonid Brezhnev (and likely others).  I've somewhat rewritten it for modern times.  See if you can tell the difference.

So this guy goes to Red Square Hyde Park Speaker's Corner and yells "Leonid Brezhnev Keir Starmer is a senile fascist old fool!"  Of course, the police swarm him and drag him off to Ye Olde Gaol.  He is sentenced to ten years and ten days in durance vile - ten days for slander and ten years for revealing State Secrets.

Maybe I gave away my edits right there ...

And so the Leonid Brezhnev Memorial Award for Totalitarianism goes to Brit PM Keir Starmer, for fascism above and beyond the call of duty.  Well done you dirty commie bastard.

MS Bard

MS Bard

Heck of a photo. Nice little ferry boat on a very big, very cold sea. They run excursion tours in the Arctic ocean around Svalbard, Norway.

MS Bard

This boat uses the same power transmission gear as a diesel locomotive. They have diesel engines generating electrical power that is fed to two 350 kilowatt electric motors that turn the propellers. Similar to a hybrid car, but no giant battery pack. This has a couple of advantages over a conventional drivetrain. There is no mechanical gearbox, so the engine does not need to be aligned with the propeller shaft.

Svalbard

Odd feature of Google Maps - notice the light blue circle. It is not the Arctic circle, it is very much smaller. The Arctic circle is at 66° 34' N, this circle is about 20 degrees farther north. Clear the search box and the circle disappears.

Abandoned Coal Loading Dock

The Russians have been digging for coal on Svalbard since the 1920s. I thought I put up a post about it before, but maybe not. Svalbard has appeared here before.

More Links

Who’s afraid of Sahra Wagenknecht? Germany's 'left-conservative' has redefined populism by Thomas Fazi. This story is about an old time, east German politician who has founded a new political party in Germany. I like her.

Data Centers In 'Spy Country' Northern Virginia Face Seven-Year Hookup Wait by Tyler Durden. I'm impressed with all the data centers being built in my neighborhood, but I imagine they are small potatoes compared to what's being built in Northern Virginia.

Taxes

Why Arabs hate taxes
Rudy Ayoub

This guy has made a bunch of videos, mostly about the son trying to deal with his father. They are very, very frustrating / annoying. But pop's attitude is spot on here.

Adventures in Satellite Communications

Downloading Images From US Military Satellites
saveitforparts

Satellite stuff seems to use an inordinate number of acronyms but once you have become familiar with them they are just like the jargon mechanics or electricians or any technical occupation uses. Some of the equipment is very fancy, but some of it is unbelievably simple and crude. Funny business all around.

Via a comment by Tactius on an earlier post.

Today's Links

Two stories about the propaganda and one about real world impacts on our paradise.

• Nord Stream sabotage: How Western media outlets do their governments’ dirty work by Tarik Cyril Amar from Istanbul
• You’re All Wrong About Inflation from Handwaving Freakoutery
• Richard Cantillon
• Looks like the Cape of Storms continues to live up to its original name by Bayou Renaissance Man

Soviet Era Communications Satellites

The Massive Molniya Satellites - How The Soviet Union Solved Satellite Communications Their Own Way.
Scott Manley

It's always interesting to see what the Russians are, or were, doing. Previous post about Russian spy satellites.

Smoke Forecast

Current Wildfire Situation

Linked website has animated map where you can see the situation as it has unfolded.

Via Detroit Steve

Drunk Driving

Curious story:

Drunk Driving

How the war on drunk driving was won by Nick Cowen

Deterrence alone might not stop crime. But, as the campaign against drunk driving shows, it could help create the norms that do.

Via Detroit Steve

 

Chance of Earthquake

Chance of Earthquake

Harsh winter weather, hurricanes or earthquakes. Take your pick.

Via Detroit Steve

Bird's Eye View

Hairy Eyeball

I didn't know that birds had eyelashes and whiskers. Weird, man. Not quite sure where I got this pic, maybe daily timewaster, maybe The Feral Irishman.

Mechanical Meditation

California Bob found this quite fun:
Car Dismantler Powerhand VRS (Vehicle Recycling System)
Powerhand

Powerhand is based in Scotland.

Uniberp replies with a link to a TikTok video:

This guy gets metal the old fashioned way, he chops up electronics with an ax.

Sometimes he does a live stream, which I have found mesmerizing for a few minutes until I start to feel vicarious exhaustion and hopelessness.

I enjoyed watching these guys digging a road in Turkey:

Caterpillar D7g Bulldozer And Excavator Removes Giant Block Rock~Dev Kaya Çıkartma Operasyonu
GREYDER MEHMET
These guys are pulling a bulldozer out of the mud.
Amazing Expertly Technique Skills SHANTUI BULLDOZER Falling Into The Water Help Heavy Crean Success
Construction Cambodia
I am amazed by how thin those cables are. They don't look to be more than 3/4 of an inch thick and they are lifting that multi-ton bulldozer. It is Cambodia, so maybe they are working a little closer to the edge. Shoot, we probably have guys here doing the same kind of sketchy looking things. A 30 ton load will break a 3/4" steel cable. This bulldozer, a Shantui DH17, weighs about 9 tons, so they should be okay. A 3 to 1 ration is not the normal safety factor of 10 to 1, but at least they are not on the hairy edge.

Broken Glass

Broken Glass

Picked this glass up out the cupboard and I heard this funny 'tink' sound. Looked at it and noticed two cracks that start and the rim and run down the sides about two inches.There is one front and center in this picture. I hope you can see the little jag to the right about a quarter of an inch below the top of the beer in this photo. The jag is only about an eigth of an inch long and marks the end of the crack. So far.

Broken Glass Closeup

I went ahead and poured my beer into the glass because I wanted to see if it was going to leak. I fully expected it to do so, but it didn't. I'm probably going to tempt fate and use it again for my second beer but after that it's going in the trash. It's fine to play with broken glass when you know you're doing (What? You're drunk, throw that glass away now.) but I suspect it won't survive another visit to the dishwasher and there's no sense risking it, not for a $2 glass anyway.

Dark Winds - Netflix Series

DARK WINDS Season 1 | Official Trailer
RLJE Films

Dark Winds Season 1, 6 episodes, 45 minutes each.

In 1971 an armored car gets robbed in Gallup, New Mexico, and the guards are killed. The bad guys escape in a Bell Jet Ranger helicopter. Meanwhile, a couple of people are killed in a motel on the Navajo Indian Reservation. Are these two crimes connected? There is no obvious connection other than their proximity in time, this level of violence is unusual, and the fact that the helicopter was seen heading toward the reservation.

If you look at the details, it's a little rough, but the story itself is good. We've got obvious good guys and obvious bad guys, and then we also have good guys pretending to be bad guys and vice versa, so we've got a good cross section of humanity. But most importantly the heroes are good guys and they win their little war against evil, so everything turns out all right, well, except for all those people who got kilt. Didn't turn out so good for them.

The worst part of the show was the robbers. Their plan was pretty good to start with but they made so many bad mistakes along the way that you wonder how they manage to come up with this plan in the first place. Ostensibly, the bad guys are members of the Buffalo Society a militant group.

• First mistake was killing the guards. Robbery is one thing, but murder is another. 
• They destroy the helicopter. I'm thinking the take from an armored car robbery in Gallup, New Mexico, is not going to cover the loss of the helicopter. Of course, if you steal the 'copter it doesn't cost you anything. I guess I'm just not ruthless enough. Of course, if you are killing people you are already extremely ruthless, so relatively speaking, destroying a fancy helicopter is small potatoes.
• They take the stolen cash and stash it in the backs of silly tourist trap paintings. Anybody picks up one of those paintings is going to notice that they are much heavier than a painting should be. If they had given the frames solid wood backs it might have made them more convincing.
• They kidnap a Mormon family because they bought one of their tourist trap paintings from a local tourist trap. They could have just followed them and negotiated with them for the painting, or just stolen it from them. Kidnapping is just ridiculous. Murder seems more like these guys style, they've already killed three or four people, what's another bunch? On the plus side we get a whole lotta complicated cave action.
• They decide to co-opt a local used car dealer to launder the money for them. He's married and they photograph him screwing his girlfriend. Holding these photos over his head he acquiesces to their demands. There are easier ways to conceal money. Like put it in a lockbox in the closet. Or a safe deposit box in bank.
• They can't shoot. The two bad guys get in a shootout with two cops and in spite of having superior weapons and a boatload of ammo, they can't manage to injure the cops much less kill them like they intended, and one of the bad guys gets shot, though not fatally.

Early on the cops discover traces of hyrdraulic fluid in a small lake (big pond?). I would think that would be enough to mount a full scale search, but they don't. It isn't until our girl cop (of course there's a pretty girl cop) finds an aluminum rowboat floating in the middle of the pond. Now we've got a dead helicopter pilot and a dead teenager who the lead cop had set to work searching the pond. Don't know what you could see, the water appears to be opaque. But he manages to find something, just in time for the bad guys to show up and shoot him. I can't quite recall what triggered the girl cop to visit the pond. Was she looking for the kid or just nosing around? Anyway, the boat drifting in the middle of the pond wasn't right. and that leads to a full-on search of the pond.

They show some Dine (Navajo) traditions, but it's a little forced.

A couple of the houses were pretty iffy. I wouldn't mention it, but I've seen it in at least one other show and it's starting to become annoying. Bad guy's grandfather lived in a shack. The siding is haphazard with gaps between the boards. Even a shack, if anyone is staying there, is going to get sealed up against the wind. You might get away with walls like that for a few days of pleasant weather, but eventually the wind will come up and you are going to stuffing those cracks with something. It does allow for everyone to have a limited view of where people are on the other side of the wall. If you can't pull off an ambush under those conditions, you ain't much of a bushwacker.

Jim Chee, the handsome young police officer was raised on the reservation. He goes back to visit his old home. It is a small round structure, maybe 15 feet diameter, possibly adobe, and the conical roof has fallen in. That's all okay, it could have been built like that, but I don't think I've ever seen a conical roof anywhere in the southwest. But the walls looked to be made of big stone blocks, like two foot tall and four feet long, and I don't think I've ever seen anything old in the southwest that was built like that. I dunno, maybe the old man was a student of Roman architecture or something.

Is it a true story? Not exactly, but a Google search turned up several robbery / murders around this time:

• February 1971 - Interstate Manhunt Ends: Four Killed, Two Injured
• May 1977 - Arizona armored car robbery
• June 1971 - Taos, New Mexico - Leyendas: A bojangled bank robbery accusation

Map with locations from the show and from the three stories listed above:

Murder & Mayhem

The full map has more placemarks. When I was in high school I spent a summer at my uncle's cabin outside of Taos, New Mexico, so all the places in the show were pretty familiar. What I especially remember was the long drives across long stretches of empty. It took a good two hours to get from Los Alamos to the cabin. Basically going anywhere took at least an hour whereas back in Ohio where I lived everything was a half hour away, so twice as long as what I was used to. Also, I was driving in Ohio, but I wasn't in New Mexico, so that made all those trips very long. I wouldn't be surprised if a New Mexico police car racks up 50,000 miles a year.

P. S. The character B. J. Vines looked awfully familiar, but I couldn't place him. Thanks to the internet, I now know that he was played by the same actor who played Detective Larry Zito in Miami Vice: John Diehl.

Power

Grumman G-36 Wildcat (N5HP)

Near as I can tell the G-36 version was used by Britain and France. Almost 8,000 of Wildcats were built. Those built for the Europeans used metric instruments. The throttle in the French version worked opposite of the American version. The Americans pushed the throttle forward for more power, the French pulled the throttle back.

Ukraine Today

10 Reflections On Ukraine After Its Latest Independence Day Celebrations by Andrew Korybko

Introduction:

Post-independence Ukraine failed to fulfill its initially promising socio-economic potential due to incorrigible corruption, and when people finally began to protest this systemic problem, their movements were co-opted by the West as part of a geopolitical power play against Russia.

 

Monsieur Spade - Netflix Series

MONSIEUR SPADE Trailer (2024) Clive Owen
ONE Media

The series opens with sequence of screens that display this text message, a couple of lines at a time:

SOME SAY THAT SAM SPADE WAS 

THE GREATEST PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR WHO EVER LIVED.

IN SAN FRANCISCO.

IT ALL DEPENDED ON WHICH BAR YOU WERE SITTING AT

WHEN YOU ASKED THE QUESTION.

BUT THAT WAS A LONG TIME AGO. 

BEFORE HE DISAPPEARED.

NOW THERE ARE THOSE WHO SAY

HE LIVES SOMEWHERE IN THE SOUTH OF FRANCE.

WHILE OTHERS SAY,

>>FRANCE?<<

>>SPADE?<<

>> NOT A CHANCE!<<

So somebody was letting their imagination run loose, and thought they would make a new movie starring all-American Sam Spade, but let's put a twist on it and set it France. What would that looks like? Well, it's not bad. France has a long history of making gritty detective / murder mysteries. Pépé le Moko comes to mind.

The show is a little confusing, partly because while everyone is talking about the villain, he doesn't appear until we are halfway through the show.

Clive Owen stars as iconic private detective Sam Spade, now retired and living in southern France. Except he ain't really retired now, is he? His last job has a dying woman hiring him to pick up her daughter, Teresa, from Istanbul and deliver her to her father in France. He picks up the girl okay and delivers her to France, but her father proves elusive, so he enrolls her in a boarding school at a local convent. Meanwhile Sam marries a Gabrielle, a rich widow. Eight years go by, Gabrielle dies and Sam inherits her fortune and her estate. Teresa is now approaching her 18th birthday and her 'father' and grandmother, who previously wanted nothing to do with her, are suddenly filled with affection for the girl. Seems the father pilfered a large sum of money and the mother managed to stash the loot in a trust fund in the girls name. Once she turns 18 she will have access to that money, so everyone suspects the papa and grand mama's sudden change of heart is based on this expectation.

The show jumps back and forth between the mid-1950s and the early 1960s. In the fifties, the people are still dealing with the after effects of WW2, especially those who collaborated with the Nazis. In the 1960s we've got the rebellion in Algeria going on which has divided the French into those who want to hang onto Algeria and those who are willing to let it go, and they are killing each other over this.

From Algerian War article in Wikipedia:

"The planned French withdrawal led to a state crisis. This included various assassination attempts on de Gaulle as well as some attempts at military coups. Most of the former were carried out by the Organisation armée secrète (OAS), an underground organization formed mainly from French military personnel supporting a French Algeria, which committed a large number of bombings and murders both in Algeria and in the homeland to stop the planned independence."

Bozouls, France

Much of the story is set in the town of Bozouls. The town is perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Dourdou de Conques river.

Peugeot 203

Sam drives several different cars which is one way you can tell which timeline you are in. The show opens with the Peugeot 203, a handsome car. In later years he's driving a weird looking Citroen.

Panhard CD

We have a bunch of outsiders in town, all looking for one mystery kid. British Intelligence are driving a Panhard CD.

The way the show turns out was quite surprising. All through the show Sam shows no affection for his ward, Teresa, but he continues to watch over her. Put that together with the fact that her erstwhile father shows no interest in her, and it should be obvious who her father is, but it still surprised me.

Other French murder mystery posts.

I also posted a review of Monsieur Spade that I stole from Variety.

UBS: Taylor Swift Could Derail the Global Battle Against Inflation

Taylor Swift

An amusing story from Schiff Gold:

Just when you thought the headlines couldn’t seem more absurd, Swiss banking giant UBS has issued a warning that in the global battle against inflation, the worst enemy of central banks could be none other than pop star Taylor Swift.

The report could be seen as one part genuine economic analysis, one part marketing schtick for the UBS Arena. This is the chosen venue for many huge events including Taylor Swift concerts and the MTV Music Video Awards. However, the underlying point is that sudden spikes in demand make it harder for central bankers to use monetary policy tools to cool inflation.

UBS economist Paul Donovan describes in his report how huge events that draw attendees from all over the world — such as Taylor Swift shows, which draw masses of screaming Swifties who flood cities around the world to see their favorite star — create demand shocks. These are especially noticeable in industries like travel and hospitality when a sudden influx drives up prices at hotels, restaurants, airlines, taxis, and similar services. Donovan says:

“Hotel prices will often rise for accommodation near a mega event venue. Transport costs (in particular air fares) may also increase. The measurement method for these prices is more likely to capture the unusual and transitory pattern of demand, and it is here that the increase in consumer price inflation takes place.”

It isn’t so much that UBS is wrong. Sudden increases in demand drive up prices. But the large point is how the notion itself lays bare the total absurdity of the global economy, and the nonsensical notion that a handful of central planners is able to micromanage global inflationary pressures. Are Taylor Swift concerts really enough to move the needle on global inflation and derail monetary policy efforts?

Eurozone inflation and PMI got a boost this month, but it was entirely artificial — caused by the fact that France hosted this year’s Olympic Games. The surge in economic activity created a massive but entirely transitory increase in demand, dragging up Eurozone economic data points. Meanwhile, fundamentals remain weaker, and major Eurozone economies outside of France continue to contract, fueling motivation for the ECB to return to cutting interest rates again next month.

The story goes on. You can read the rest of it here.

Notes:

PMI - Purchasing Managers' Index is a measure of the prevailing direction of economic trends in manufacturing.

 

Roman Shumov

Roman is a historian who sometimes writes for RT. I read a couple of his stories today. I think they are well done. Now I'm wondering if there is American news site that is produced in Russian, and if there is, what does it sound like? Does it sound reasonable like RT does to me, or is it like the Washington Post and The New York Times, full of bullshit and lies? I suppose it matters which stories you choose to read. I don't read anything about Ukraine or Gaza because everyone writing about those two war zones has an ax to grind. Yes, wars are horrible, but that's the way of the world these days, there is always a war going on somewhere. I think it's because people just like to fight and there are 'leaders' who are willing to take advantage of this natural inclination and are able to organize those people into a coherent force.

Anyway, here's a couple of stories by Roman:

• Russian officer, Finnish hero, Hitler’s ally: The fascinating story of Carl Mannerheim - 80 years ago Marshal Carl Gustaf Mannerheim became President of Finland. An extraordinary person, he was a military commander and statesman in both Russia and Finland, and left behind a controversial legacy in each country.
• Beyond their 790-mile shared border and 108 years of being part of the same state, Moscow and Helsinki have other things in common: their complicated attitudes toward Carl Gustav Mannerheim. Once hailed as a hero in both countries, Mannerheim was a Russian army officer who became Finland’s president during the Second World War. His legacy is fraught with ambiguity and marked by countless lost lives, both Russian and Finnish. This article explores who Mannerheim was and why monuments dedicated to him are frequently splashed with red paint on both sides of the Finland-Russia border.
• The mother of Rus towns: How a legendary Russian city ended up in Ukraine - Once the heart of the ancient kingdom of Rus, it was made capital of Soviet Ukraine in 1934.
• This paragraph rang a bell: "In the 9th century, a country emerged which would come to be known as Kievan Rus, the homeland of the ancestors of modern-day Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians. The backbone of this state was a network of river trade routes. These routes began in Scandinavia, traversed the Baltic Sea to the Gulf of Finland (near present-day St. Petersburg), and split in two. One route headed east to the Volga River and then to the Caspian Sea, skirting Iran and Azerbaijan before reaching the Arab lands. The other route went south through Novgorod and down the Dnieper to the Black Sea, leading to Constantinople, the Byzantine Empire’s capital. Iron, wax, furs, linen, weapons, and slaves were sent south; north came intricate metalwork, books, and, most crucially, silver." - Reminds of Vikings: Valhalla
• Ruins of Yugoslavia: How Russia learned that NATO poses a threat - The US-led military bloc’s illegal strikes on Belgrade in the spring of 1999 forever changed relations between the West and Moscow

New-to-me words:

hecatomb

• (in ancient Greece or Rome) a great public sacrifice, originally of a hundred oxen." After Pythagoras discovered his fundamental theorem he sacrificed a hecatomb of oxen"
• an extensive loss of life.

P. S. Map of places mentioned in the story about Carl Mannerheim:

Finland

Deserts

Dune | Official Main Trailer
Warner Bros. Pictures

I watched the movie Dune this week. This is the first of the pair of recent movies. I've read the book and I've seen an earlier movie version, but I'm watching this movie and it's nothing like I remember. Oh, I remember some of the characters, but I remember this story being a science fiction thriller, and this movie wasn't that at all. This time the thing that struck me is that the Atreides family packs up their entire company, including their army and their families and all their associated baggage and moves to the most hostile planet in the universe. Okay, on an absolute scale it's not all that hostile, it's got gravity similar to Earth and breathable air, but when you look at it using a human scale, the place is inimical to human life. It's covered with sand. The sun will fry you, the sandstorms will strip the flesh from your bones, and if that's not enough there are giant worms that will swallow you whole. Hell might be a better name for this planet than Arrakis. You would have to be a very loyal follower of the Emperor to accept an appointment to Dune.

But you think about it for a minute and Dune really sounds a whole lot Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Very hot, unpleasant places covered with sand, governed by tyrants, but we still have people willing to pack up everything and move there, and the reason is the same: money. On Dune, it's the spice. In the Mideast, it's oil.

Baiken Uranium Mine in Kazakhstan

Today I came across a story about how Kazakstan is a world leader in the uranium mining business. Above we have a picture of one of their uranium mines. Looks like a nice place with lots of green. On the edge of a desert, but still pretty nice. Then I look on the map:

Baiken Uranium Mine in Kazakhstan

and I see it's surrounded by a desert. Just how big is that desert? Big:

Baiken Uranium Mine in Kazakhstan

The area shown is about 900 miles across, so the mine is at the edge of the desert. The Caspian Sea is at the left hand side of the map and what used to be the Aral Sea is the greenish-white blob near the top center. The Baikonur Cosmodrome is about half way between the mine and the Aral Sea.

What I didn't find is whether the Kazatomprom (the Kazakhstan uranimum mining operation) is enriching uranium, which is what you need to do if you want to use the uranium for anything besides being dense. This led me to Wikipedia's page about Enriched uranium, which was a real eye-opener. Seems the whiz kids have busy cooking up any number of techniques for enriching uranium. There is gaseous diffusion that was used at Oak Ridge during WW2. Then we have second generation gaseous diffusion that uses high speed centrifuges that is many times more efficient. This is the one Iran was using when somebody (Israel?) hacked their centrifuges and caused them to speed up to the point where they destroyed themselves. And that's just the start. People are working on plethora of techniques involving chemistry, lasers and microstructures.

I've written several other posts about Dune over the years.

Perryverse

Größenvergleich einiger Raumschiffe
Thomas Röhrs

Title translated reads 'Size comparison of some spaceships'. Watched this short clip and I'm wondering where this is coming from. Reading the comments on this video gave me a clue which led me to this page on Wikipedia, where I found:

Perry Rhodan is a German space opera franchise, named after its hero. It commenced in 1961 and has been ongoing for decades, written by an ever-changing team of authors. Having sold approximately two billion copies (in novella format) worldwide (including over one billion in Germany alone), it is the most successful science fiction book series ever written. The first billion of worldwide sales was celebrated in 1986. The series has spun off into comic books, audio dramas, video games and the like. A reboot, Perry Rhodan NEO, was launched in 2011 and began publication in English in April 2021.

Amazon has some of these books. There is a bunch of stuff on the net.

Election

Couple of stories. I like this one from RT because it gives us a view of our upcoming Presidential election from outside. It's discouraging, but it sounds fairly neutral, which just makes it sound worse.

Kamala Harris may well win the White House by Graham Hryce

Graham Hryce is an Australian journalist and former media lawyer, whose work has been published in The Australian, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age, the Sunday Mail, the Spectator and Quadrant. 

This one from Daily Wire is another page in the book of charges against the big media for corruption and bias, the same charges Elon is suing them over.

Study Suggests Tone Of Legacy Media Coverage Amounts To Election Interference

Funny Words

Are Trad Catholics a Protestant Sect?

JMSmith has a post up today about Martin Luther versus Traditional Catholics. I am nominally a Lutheran, and I have certain problems with the Catholic Church, but I often enjoy what JMSmith writes. Some of his stuff is wonderful and some of it is inpenetrable. Today's post is borderline, bunch of words I didn't know.

Scala Santa to open for limited time with the original marble stairs Jesus walked
ROME REPORTS in English
Pilate’s Staircase (also known as the Scala Sancta). Video is five years old.

Funny words:

• Greater Catechism - catechism is a summary of the principles of Christian religion in the form of questions and answers, used for the instruction of Christians. Evidently there is a bigger one (the Greater Catechism) and a smaller one.
• Novus Ordo -  short for Novus Ordo Missae, which means the "new order of the Mass".
• propitiatory - an action intended to please someone and make them feel calm, or to reconcile or appease.
• sedeprivationist - Sedeprivationism is a doctrinal position within Traditionalist Catholicism which holds that the current occupant of the Holy See is a duly-elected pope, but lacks the authority and ability to teach or to govern unless he recants the changes brought by the Second Vatican Council.
• sedevacantist - Sedevacantism is a traditionalist Catholic movement which holds that since the death of Pius XII the occupiers of the Holy See are not valid popes due to their espousal of one or more heresies and that, for lack of a valid pope, the See of Rome is vacant.
• simony - the act of buying or selling spiritual things, church offices, or roles that are closely connected to the spiritual. The term comes from Simon Magus, who, according to the Acts of the Apostles, tried to buy the power to give the Holy Spirit to others from Jesus's disciples.
• sola fides - a Latin phrase that means "faith alone".

More funny words that I think I know the meaning of, but mostly I'm too lazy to look them up.

• apocalyptic
• consecrate
• epiphany
• epiphenomenal
• facetiously 
• liturgy
• paraphrase
• perfunctory
• piously
• prelates
• schism
• secession

Update next day - replaced video. Original wouldn't play here.

What do you know?

Yesterday there was a story in The Oregonian about QAnon. (Original from Washington Post, book review of  The Quiet Damage by Jesselyn Cook) It was a little silly. Lady reads goofball stuff on the internet and takes it to heart. So what? There have always been people who believe weird, even unbelievable stuff. I'm thinking that maybe this is where all these campaigns against disinformation got started - if you could stop the sources of these fairy tales, people would stop believing them, everyone would start believe the correct things and the world would be full of flowers and unicorns. But that's not going to happen. You cut off the supply of nonsense, a new wellspring of fairy tales will erupt somewhere else. I don't understand why it happens, but talking to people convinces me that it does. Some people are gullible, some people are not smart enough to tell truth from fiction, and some people are just crazy. And wherever there are listeners, there are going to be people willing to fill their ears with gibberish.

Portland Oregon City Council

City of Portland District Map Plan

The City of Portland is changing the way city commissioners are elected. Used to be a city wide election, but now they are going to have three commissioners from each district. We shall see if it makes any difference.

Miss Sherlock - Max series

MISS SHERLOCK Official Trailer (HD) Japanese HBO Series
JoBlo Streaming & TV

An entertaining version of Holmes & Watson done with Japanese women in the title roles. Sherlock is a nickname she picked up somewhere along the way, and Watson is Wata-San. Complicated plots that they rush through in 45 minutes. It's impressive how much they can cram into one of these shows. Numerous characters, and most of the characters are characters, if you know what I mean. Not quite sure how to define 'character' as in 'Joe is quite a character'. That can mean almost anything. Now that I think about it, I think it means there is something unusual about this person, or maybe the person is worth noting, either because the unusual thing is either very unusual or impressive.

Anyway, lots of characterly characters, complicated plots and obscure scientific details. Sherlock also suspects there is someone behind all these crimes she is investigating although we haven't seen any evidence of such a master mind, but we've only seen two episodes so far. But you know what I'm thinking? Moriarty, that's what I'm thinking. He's going to show up pretty soon and he will be a pain in Sherlock's side forever more. Given we've got girls in the title roles, I suspect Moriarty will be a girl also.

Colors of Evil: Red - Netflix Movie

Colors of Evil: Red - Official Teaser Trailer | Netflix
MVSRS

Wikipedia: Colors of Evil: Red is a 2024 Polish mystery crime thriller film directed by Adrian Panek and based on the 2019 novel of the same name by Malgorzata Oliwia Sobczak. The film stars Jakub Gierszał, Maja Ostaszewska and Zofia Jastrzebska. It follows the murder of a young woman in Tricity, Poland and the rookie prosecutor Leopold Bilski who teams up with the victim's mother, Judge Helena Bogucka.

We watched it, like we do all movies, in the original language with the subtitles turned on. I've never seen a dubbed movie that was convincing. Doesn't mean there aren't any, but I like the funny noises furriners make. 

The rookie prosecutor notes some troubling similarities between this current murder and another one that happened 15 years ago. He becomes convinced that they got the wrong guy then and they got the wrong guy now, so wants to overturn the old case, the case that made his boss's bones. Naturally the boss isn't too happy about it. Not happy at all until the dead girl's father, who has been the kingpin's lawyer for many years, turns over a thumbdrive containing all of the kingpin's illicit business dealings. The kingpin has been responsible for many murders over the years, but he won't own up to this one. While he is a very evil man, would he really want to kill his lawyer's daughter? Something doesn't quite add up here.

Tricity (Gdynia, Sopot & Gdansk) in Poland on the left and Kaliningrad Russia on the right.

In the movie, fatso gets in trouble with the king pin for selling drugs on the side, drugs he got from Russsians in Kaliningrad.

Seems I remember hearing something about the Poles wanting to cut through the barrier island the crosses the border so they wouldn't have to go into Russian waters to get to the Baltic. 

I've posted about five other Polish crime shows.

Car Care

Accident on Highway 26

I have spent in an inordinate amount of time dealing with my car this week. Sunday I let my wife use it because her's was out of gas. I like to buy gas at Costco 'cause it's cheaper, but I don't want to go to Costco on Sunday because it's going to be mobbed. Let's wait and go on Monday, but she has someplace to go on Sunday so I let her use my car.

She runs her errand but when she comes back she informs me that the tags have expired and I need to get it fixed. I bought the car back from my son a couple of months ago and never bothered to get the title transferred, so I guess maybe it's time. So off to the DMV to get the title transferred. That takes an hour and a hundred bucks, but I can't get the tags without a DEQ (smog) test. So off to the DEQ I go. That only takes half an hour and $25.

Thursday I head to downtown Portland for a lunch meeting. This usually takes about 30 minutes. Yesterday it took 2 hours. Highway 26 eastbound over Sylvan can get creepy-crawly, but yesterday was much worse. I considered bailing out early but I figured any alternate route is going to be jammed with people avoiding this SNAFU, so I creeped and crawled at less than walking speed for over an hour till we got within shouting distance of the top of the hill and then the congestion suddenly vanished and we all resume charging headlong into the future. At the last minute I realized that the cars at the top of the hill (just over a half mile away) all had their brake lights on. Traffic on the other side of the hill might just be getting into regular creepy-crawly mode (20 MPH), or it might be another cluster-muck, but in any case I had had enough so I bailed out. Took me another half hour to get downtown, but at least I wasn't stuck in a giant traffic jam. There never was any sign of what caused the problem, but the internet knows (picture at top).

Today it's time to tackle the tags again, so back to the DMV I go. Wait 10 minutes or so to find out I need proof of insurance. I have a couple of insurance cards in my wallet, but they're both expired, so back to the house to root around in my files and finally find a couple of current insurance cards. Back to the DMV. This time it takes two hours and $200 but I finally get it done.

Along the way I stopped at UBAD to get a loose rocker panel fixed. The car was a rebuilt wreck when I bought it and this spring the paint on the hood was starting to peal, so I spent a $1,000 and got it painted and the entire car detailed. I think the loose rocker panel is another casualty of the original wreck. Anyway it's trying to fall off, so I stop at UBAD and Martin puts a couple of screws in it. It's not pretty, but it works so it's good enough for me.

I also bought a tank of gas at Costco for $50 and a car wash for $10.

Hillsboro Industrial Park

Driving from DMV to DEQ I took some back roads, just to see what there is to see. Northwest of town farmers are plowing their fields with giant tractors. I thought you needed a giant farm to justify a giant tractors. Well, from the city limits to the coast range, it's all farmland, so yeah, maybe they do need giant tractors. My route eventually took me back inside The Urban Growth Boundary and what a change has happened to this area. There are a dozen, maybe two, big buildings that weren't there last week. The place is going crazy. You can see where The Urban Growth Boundary is in the above satellite map. I don't know how old that satellite image is, but I suspect it's at least a couple of weeks old, meaning it's missing half a dozen new buildings or so.

More car news. I sold my truck. Bought it roughly 30 months ago for $25,000 and spent $1,000 getting the damaged tailgate fixed. Decided I didn't really need a monster truck. Yes, it's a Colorado which is supposedly a compact, but it's a crew cab with a 6 foot bed, so it's very long which makes it kind of a pain to park just about anywhere. Now the Hyundai has returned to my warm embrace, so I don't really need it anymore. I stopped at CarMax in Beaverton. It took 30 minutes from them to come up with an offer of $13,000.

That was disappointing so I thought I'd try selling it myself and placed an ad on Craigslist. There is a little check box if you want to receive text messages and I thought, sure, why not? All the cool kids are doing in now, right? Wrong. I started getting texts right away, but every single one was from a scammer.  I had one guy ask for my best price. I was getting annoyed with all this noise, so I bumped the prince up another $1,000. He writes back immediately, saying okay and promising a certified check. That certified check business is sure sign of BSMF. After a month I finally got a phone call about the truck. This is the first person to call about it and he bought it for $15,000. So, waiting patiently paid me $2,000. I'll take that. He paid with a cashier's check, which is more like a money order. And it was good.

So the truck cost me $9,000 to own for 30 months. I probably only drove about 10,000 miles, so roughly a dollar a mile. Kind of high being as a car, over it's lifetime, probably costs more like 50 cents a mile.

Qatar & CIA Kissing in a Tree

Abdullah bin Mohammed al-Khulaifi was awarded the CIA's George Tenet medal this week [File: X/@AJArabic]

Aljazeera has the story. Qatar, the biggest producer of LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) in the Persian Gulf. Qatar, host to Hamas leadership. Qatar the magnificent, Qatar the despicable. And now they're in bed with the CIA. I pitty al-Khulaifi. I suspect there are a number of people who want his head, literally, but maybe growing up in a snakepit he has learned to dodge and weave.

A GOOD GIRL'S GUIDE TO MURDER - Netflix Series

A GOOD GIRL'S GUIDE TO MURDER Trailer (2024) Emma Myers
ONE Media

Not our usual fair of blood, guts and mayhem. This is more like an Agatha Christie story, but with teenagers, so we get a fair sampling of teenage angst. Watching this behavior from my advanced age it is slightly annoying, but understandable. I mean, teenagers will be teenagers. Not too long ago I would not have been able to watch this. One dumb teenage action and I would have been through it. Once I adjusted to the fact that teenagers are going to behave like teenagers I was able to wait through those scenes until we got back to the main story which was pretty good. And I have to admit, the actors were convincing in their roles.

Anyway, teenage girl in an idyllic English village becomes obsessed with the deaths five years earlier of two older kids. Well, one of them died, an apparent suicide, the other just disappeared. She starts poking around, asking questions. Operating on rumor and innuendo she starts to figure out what happened. Fortunately for her, all of her suspects are guilt ridden, are heartily relieved to have been found out and happily confess their guilt. Well, mostly. Of course many of the creepiest characters turn out to be harmless, and the most angelic ones turn out to be guilty as sin. It's a pretty good story. Our heroine, Pip, follows a torturous path to get to the truth. She'll find a bit of evidence and someone confesses to something, but it's never the whole thing, but it adds a piece to the puzzle.

6 episodes on Netflix, 45 minutes each. We finished it in two nights.

P. S. En route to solving this mystery, our girl discovers a coded reference to a location - 'brown bear bananas', or some such. Wherever does that mean? Papa pops up with What 3 Words, a geolocation scheme I encountered once before. Thought I put up a post, but I cannot find it Cap'n. Anyway, there is a website that will translate your coordinates to a map or vice versa. "Brown bear bananas" seems to be a bogus code, which is not unexpected in fairytale land.

Dragonflies hunt by predicting the future

Dragonflies hunt by predicting the future
AlphaPhoenix

This video is great, best thing I've seen in a while.

Long John Baldry

Long John Baldry ... Don't Try To Lay No Boogie-Woogie On The King Of Rock and Roll
gilothian

This song came up in rotation and I got to wondering just who is this guy. I mean, this is the only song I've ever heard by him, but he doesn't seem like a one-hit wonder, so I look him up on yea olde Wikipedia and found this bit:

John William "Long John" Baldry (1941 – 2005) was an English musician and actor. In the 1960s, he was one of the first British vocalists to sing the blues in clubs and shared the stage with many British musicians including the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. Before achieving stardom, Rod Stewart and Elton John were members of bands led by Baldry. He enjoyed pop success in 1967 when "Let the Heartaches Begin" reached No. 1 in the UK, and in Australia where his duet with Kathi McDonald "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" reached No. 2 in 1980.

He was 6' 7" tall which explains why he was called 'Long John'.