The Proxy War in Ukraine

I could be completely wrong, but I don't think Russia is bent on world domination, they just want a secure place in the world. The war mongers in the White House seem to think that Russia must be destroyed and if we destroy Western Europe along the way, well, that's just too bad.

Deception, manipulation, sabotage: What the UK does to keep the Ukraine war going by Tarik Cyril Amar

Leaked papers expose a secret military operation that includes planning attacks, suppressing media and brainwashing the British public

A couple of excerpts:

[Lieutenant General Charlie Stickland] – boasting of his pirate ancestors and in charge of “UK-led joint and multinational overseas military operations” – and his motley crew have just been the object of an investigative exposé by Grayzone reporter Kit Klarenberg. In, for now, two articles, the Grayzone has detailed how, in 2022, Stickland set up a below-the-radar network of “an assortment of leading academics, authors, strategists, planners, pollsters, comms, data scientists and tech.” Under the name Project Alchemy and overlapping and liaising with another group of wannabe keyboard Ninjas calling themselves – I kid you not – “the Elders,” this conspiratorial group has worked on, in essence, keeping the Ukraine war going at any price and by means foul and fouler.

. . .  

Doing what exactly? All kinds of things, really, and all based on one stupid yet once immensely popular assumption: that the proxy war in Ukraine could be leveraged to defeat Russia, reduce it to geopolitical insignificance, impose regime change on it, and even break it up. Some, including the new de facto foreign minister of the EU, Estonia’s Kaja Kallas – imagine Annalena Baerbock, but without the brilliant intellect – still seem to be on that political equivalent of an LSD trip gone terribly wrong. What a hangover it will be one day, probably soon.

People mentioned here: 

• Lieutenant General Charlie Stickland - British Army
• Kit Klarenberg - Investigative reporter
• Kaja Kallas - Prime Minister of Estonia
• Annalena Baerbock - Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs of Germany
• Tarik Youssef Cyril Amar - Historian

Now it may be that the gangsters in the White House are right to be afraid of Russia. If Russia gets their act together and can get other 'enemies of the West' to cooperate with them, in five or ten years they might be able to bring serious pressure to bear on the USA. 

I don't think we should be wasting our resources on screwing over the rest of the world, we should be working to make the USA as strong and powerful as possible. Of course, when you are a gangster, you don't really know how to bring out the best in people, all you can do is frighten them into submission.

P. S. It seems like I am seeing more stories critical of Biden and his minions lately. Has Trump's victory caused the more people to stand in the light, or has it just improved my outlook?

Mick Jagger introduces The Beatles to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

Mick Jagger introduces The Beatles to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
Alejandro Suarez Basso

1988. Cool. Jagger would have been 45.

The Hand That Keeps the World Informed

The Hand That Keeps the World Informed

This image shows up in the Linotype video and I thought it was pretty cool. I want to hang a copy on my wall. It comes from the book The Manual of Linotype Typography, which is available online. There are a couple of copies for sale out there.

Nord Stream

Another take on the whole Nord Stream debacle:

Merkel blows a hole in Washington’s Nord Stream narrative by Rachel Marsden

I like this bit:

“The United States argued that its security interests were affected by the building of the pipeline because its ally Germany would make itself too dependent on Russia. In truth, I felt that the United States was mobilizing its formidable economic and financial resources to prevent the business ventures of other countries, even their allies,” Merkel writes.

“The United States was chiefly interested in its own economic interests, as it wanted to export to Europe LNG obtained through fracking.”

This pretty much establishes that it was by premeditated design that Washington leveraged the Russian military operation in Ukraine as a convenient pretext to turn economic competitor Germany – and the EU more generally – into a vassal. But Merkel’s successor, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and the rest of the German and European establishment, acted like Joe Biden was just coming to their rescue out of benevolence when he offered to sell them LNG to replace Russian gas – which turned out to cost several times the price, to the ongoing detriment of German and European industry and citizenry.

While Trump and Biden are both promoting America, Biden is acting like a gangster and exploiting anyone he can get his claws in, while Trump promotes good business. 

Thanksgiving

Entertaining story about the origin of Thanksgiving. Socialists might not enjoy it.

The Great Thanksgiving Hoax by Richard J. Maybury

The early American colonies were just disasters - half the people died. I dunno, maybe that was par for the course. But reading this story makes me wonder just who were these people who signed up for this adventure to a brave, new world. I suspect malcontents from the lunatic fringe, malcontents with money, ships are expensive. It sounds like a movie trope - band of misfits thrown into a dangerous situation with people getting killed off right, left and center.

Linotype

Linotype
YouTube Movies & TV

Kind of long, but totally worthwhile. One of the projects I worked on at my first programming job was a data entry / data base system for a check printing company. They were using Linotype machines to set the personal information that was printed on each check (name, address, what-not). Someone had converted the linotype machines to get their keystrokes over a wire instead of from the mechanical keyboard. They had a room with several of these machines, but no operators. Instead they had a separate room full of girls sitting at computer keyboards typing away. You had to be careful out on the floor where the Linotype machines were because even though they were converted to work with electrical inputs, they still cast hot lead into lines of type, and every now and again there would be a hiccup, and a spurt of hot metal would squirt out of the machine. Those 'hiccups' were referred to as squirt codes on the premise that a bit of code sent down the wire from the computer would cause the machine to hiccup. Actually, it was just the nature of the Linotype machine. Hiccups happened before computers were even a concept. Molten lead is not that hot compared to some things, like molten steel, but it will still burn the hell out of you if you come into contact with it.

I look at the computer systems we use for text these days and while it looks clean and simple from the outside, they are several orders of magnitude more complicated. Construction of the Linotype was dependent on the whole industrial infrastructure that existed back in 1900. Construction of a modern computer needs all of that with a whole additional level of much more complicated machinery and organization.

Given a supply of metal and a machine shop, it ought to be possible to build a new Linotype machine. People have made simple integrated circuits in their garage, but what would it take it make a flat panel display? I have no idea.

European Power Grid

European Power Grid

The link goes to an interactive map.

Via Detroit Steve

F-4 Phantom

Turkish Air Force Phantom

No camouflage here, he wants you to know he's coming for you.

Exercise Bright Star - Egypt 1983

U.S. and Egyptian aircraft over the Pyramids during Exercise Bright Star '83
Click to embiggenate

I came across this photo while skimming the news this morning. It was at the top of a story on Geopolitics about Egypt. I glanced at it and thought 'cool, a bunch of jet fighters flying over the pyramids', but then I looked closer and realized that all of the airplanes were different. Left to right we have:

• McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom
• General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon
• Dassault Mirage 5
• Grumman F-14 Tomcat
• Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21
• Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-19
• Vought F-8 Crusader
• Grumman EA-6B Growler

This photograph is phenomenal. Whoever managed to get all these aircraft to fly together and then managed to capture this photo as they flew over the pyramids deserves a medal.

The Bright Star exercises started in 1981 and are still going on every couple of years.

Club Des Belugas/Thomas Siffling - Get Shafted

Club Des Belugas/Thomas Siffling - Get Shafted
Lopez Repetto
Movie clips from Salton Sea, 2002. Val Kilmer on trumpet.

Risking Nuclear War

Excellent article about the current situation in Ukraine. I looked for a couple of key paragraphs to excerpt, but I couldn't find any that stood out. The whole thing is excellent. Or maybe I just haven't had enough coffee yet. Go read.

Risking Nuclear War by Christopher Roach

Escalating brinkmanship might be justified if victory were in sight or if any of this contributed to American security.  But none of these things are true.

Who's to blame for this stupidity? Christopher suggests it might be these people:

• Anthony Blinken - United States Secretary of State
• Jake Sullivan - U.S. National Security Advisor
• Victoria Nuland - American diplomat

KurtP suggests that Valerie Jarrett, CEO of the Obama Foundation, might be the prime troublemaker.

I suppose it is possible that White House has entirely valid reasons for promoting this war with Russia, but I haven't heard any, other than 'Russia Bad' which sounds a whole lot like 'Orange Man Bad'. It might be that I've set my filters too high and any valid reasons they have are getting screened out along with all the bullshit they spew.

P. S. If you spell Valery with a 'y' instead of 'ie', Wikipedia can't find her. 

Bugatti

1929 Bugatti Type 43 Grand Sport

Bugattis have made several appearances here.

Moritzburg Castle

Moritzburg Castle

This place started as a hunting lodge back in 16th century and has been remodeled and expanded. Wikipedia

MODCONS - Microwave Oven Timer

Emerson Microwave Oven

MODCONS - Modern Conveniences. Real Estate jargon. I've got a microwave oven I use for basically all my 'cooking'. The only thing I really cook in it is scrambled eggs - 2 eggs, a splash on milk, whip with a fork for a minute and then 2 minutes in the microwave. If I put in a bit too much milk the bottom of the eggs is still wet, which is better than when I put in too little and the egg gets cooked all the way through but sticks to the bowl, and cooked egg is the devil to get off. Scotch Brite scrubber and elbow grease does the trick. I keep thinking I should get some anti-stick spray or something but it hasn't happened yet.

Anyway, the timer that runs the microwave oven. If you want to heat something for 2 minutes, simply shut the door and press 2. If you want less than a minute, or anytime that is not exact number of minutes, you need to press TIME, and then the digits of the number of seconds (and minutes) you want, like 3, 0 and then you press START. If you really want the oven to be a modern convenience it should have something like a 5X or 10x button. Press the 10x button and 3 and you get 30 seconds. To do minutes and seconds maybe a + (Plus) button. Press +, the number of minutes, then press 10x and a number and off you go. Of course it adds two more buttons to the control panel, but there are already a bunch of buttons on there I don't use so they could go away. Until I need them.

Random Thoughts - High Rise Life

I didn't go outside Monday. Spent the whole in the house. Probably happens two or three times a week. I go to downtown Portland sometimes, and I'm driving around amongst all these high rises and there are hardly any people out walking around. Now it could be that everyone is at work and only unemployed slackers like myself are out wandering around, but it just feels like there ought to be more people out and about. But then it occured to me: maybe they just stay inside all the time. You can get everything you need delivered, you've got all the entertainment you could want coming to you over a wire, and if you get bored with that you have a great view out your window. Maybe they are there, inside, perfectly content.

So there you have two plausible, innocent explanations, but it doesn't take much to imagine more sinister solutions. Maybe the buildings are friggin' empty. All of the condos were sold to people, but they don't live there, they live somewhere else, or maybe they don't live anywhere, they just travel constantly and just drop in to visit occasionally. Or maybe there are people in those apartments, but the door is locked and they can't leave. I mean all these high rises could be prisons and who would ever know? Pretty sure you can't get in without permission from a resident, and inmates can't give permission.

Life in a high rise has no appeal for me. Long waits for the elevator. Just going outside is an expedition. There is the view and that can be entertaining for a while. We bought a house up in the West Hills with the intention of moving there. Didn't pan out. Anyway, it had a great view, but after I had seen it a dozen times it kind of lost its attraction. I like my backyard more better.

Africa, Religion, War

Alliance of Sahel States (AES) (Red) and ECOWAS (Gray)*

I keep hearing about largish numbers of people being killed in Africa due to terrorist attacks or tribal warfare or something. I've never heard any coherent explanation of the overall situation, so I kind of just wrote them off as just crazed third-worlders running amok. I mean, what can you expect from such backward savages?

Today I came across this piece and the author lays it out pretty clearly. Here's the first couple of paragraphs. Follow the link to read the whole thing.

Russia’s Aims in Africa by Robert Bergkvist

As the 2022 invasion of Ukraine sparked international outrage, a different picture was being drawn half a world away. Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, hosts a peculiar, life-sized statue . Honoring the defense of the city against attacking rebels in 2021, it portrays a woman and two small children, huddled together behind a line of armed defenders: Central African and Russian soldiers, holding assault rifles. Around the time that Wagner Group mercenaries were taking part in the invasion of a sovereign European state, that same group was being lauded as a protector and liberator by a crowd of Central Africans, carrying flowers and Russian flags. How did Russia’s influence in Africa grow so strong and what are its aims going forward?

One recent example is eye-catching. In the beginning of this year, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso announced their withdrawal from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), instead forming an “Alliance of Sahel States” (AES). Having undergone coups in the 2020s, all three countries are now run by military juntas. There are massive security concerns: the trio is locked in a brutal struggle against  trans-African terrorists. Jihadist organisations to the North with al-Qaeda and ISIS affiliations conduct lethal  attacks  on military and civilian targets, leading to massive fatalities. As such, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso are all on the top 10 list of countries affected by terrorism, according to the  2024 Global Terrorism Index . Burkina Faso is considered the most terrorism-affected country in the world with over 2,000 deaths, placing it above states like Israel, Afghanistan and Iraq.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I suspect the Islamic Jihadists that are causing trouble are being funded by Iran. Russia is cozying up to Iran on account of their being neighbors and both are declared enemies of the West. They may not like each other, but they both dislike us more. It's a fine example of the old saw "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", at least until our common enemy is defeated, then you and I can fight.

Or it might be that the Jihadists are followers of some heretical version of Islam and so in Iran's eyes they are infidels and deserve to be destroyed. But if that's the case, who's funding them? Saudi Arabia? Who else could it be? It could be some rich man, but war is an expensive hobby. Far as I know the only people can afford the cash to pay for a war are places (like countries) that have a regular, sizable income, from either taxes, oil, or drugs. Might be Qatar, they have oil.

Are all wars religious wars? Or maybe religion is applied like a blanket over the crowd that is bent on going to war and somehow this makes everyone feel better? Anyway, we've got Eastern Orthodox (Russia), the Catholics (Europe), the Protestants (USA), Islam (Shia in Iran, Sunni in Saudi Arabia, who knows what in Qatar). Thank God for the Himalayas are we would have even more wars going on.

It just occurred to me after I wrote that last paragraph, that if the Catholics are really the dominate religion in Europe, it might explain the elites plan to fucking destroy the European economy by fomenting this war in the Ukraine. Pretty sure most of the elites are either Protestant or atheist. The only way you destroy the Catholic church would be if you destroyed their base, and killing their economy just might do the trick.

*Note about the map: I like the map, because it shows members of the two, regional, competing blocks. Guinea isn't technically part of AES, but the page where I found this doesn't acknowledge the existence of the AES. 

Wikipedia refers to the Alliance of Sahel States as ASS which makes sense in English, but French is the second most popular language in that region, after the native gibberish, so in French it's Alliance des États du Sahel which is how you get E instead of S.

Wikipedia page about ECOWAS

Hong Kong

Hong Kong

Cathedral Styles

Secrets of Cathedral Styles
magnify

Over the years I have come across numerous descriptions of churches and speculations about what the builders were thinking, but they were always about one church or style. This covers a variety of styles and provides a nice summary.

It's also much better than the news which all seems to be all about Biden, or whoever is calling the shots in the White House, pushing for WW3. Who is calling the shots? Is Biden still directing his minions? Or is some one behind the scenes running the show?

Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost Lunar Lander

The Silicon Greybeard reports on  Lunar Lander. He quotes from this story:

Firefly Aerospace completes Blue Ghost moon lander for January 2025 SpaceX launch

It sounds cool and it sounds like it is getting launched to the moon in January. These lines from the story caught my eye:

Blue Ghost will carry a variety of payloads to the moon, some of which are in support of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. CLPS pairs scientific payloads developed by NASA with commercial lunar landers headed for the moon on private missions. 

They bestirred me (was I triggered?) enough to comment:

". . . commercial lunar landers headed for the moon on private missions." I am curious to see just what those turn out to be, and if any of them will be long term successful. Tourists would have to be #1. At current cargo rates you should be able to put a person in orbit for $100K. In a capsule designed for people it would be more. I expect that within five years you will be able to buy a seat on a rocket to the moon for a million dollars. You know there are a bunch of people out there with money who would jump at the chance.

I am sure there are any number of schemes in the works. Tourism might not be the biggest enterprise in the long term, but it ought to be a big seller to start with. Maybe enough to even make it real business. 

Funnies

Cuban Railroad

Cuba's Railways are TOTALLY CRAZY!
Nonstop Eurotrip

The narrator's cheerful demeanor is totally at odds with his environment. 10 hours to get a ticket and then 10 hours to make 5 hour trip?!? Google Maps says you should be able to drive it in three and a half hours. As if. This is Cuba after all.

Note that the pretty 1950's era automobiles shown early on are basically jalopies that are only still running due to the ingenuity and diligence of the Cuban equivalent of redneck engineering. That $10 bribe is likely the equivalent of a month's wages in Cuba.

Cuba runs on crime. People can't survive without it. Everyone has to give a cut of whatever they get to 'the beard' as Castro was known.

Havana to Santa Clara

Cuba is the only island in the Caribbean that has an extensive railroad. The Dominican Republic has some rail lines that serve the sugar mills and Puerto Rico has 10 miles of transit lines in San Juan, but that's about it.

Previous related posts about Cuba:

• Hershey Electric Railway
• Making Money in Cuba
• Cuba Cars

Note on temperatures at the train station:

• 35 degrees C = 95 degrees F
• 45 degrees C = 113 degrees F

Effing F-35

F-35

I never liked the F-35. The idea of dragging around a giant fan that only gets used for VTOL (Vertical Take Off and Landing) seems like a really dumb idea. They should have built the thing to land on it's tail like a Flash Gordon rocketship. Yes, it would have been a trick, but with modern electronics and controls it should have been cheaper, lighter and easier than carrying around this stupid fan. Modern jet engines are plenty powerful enough to support vertical takeoffs. In any case we have a story about a couple of problems the F-35 is having with heat:

F-35’s Cooling Crisis: Design Flaws Fuel $2 Trillion Dilemma for Pentagon by Mike Fredenburg

Then again maybe I'm just jealous that I wasn't in on the development of all the fancy software that went into this machine.

Previous posts about the F-35. I was surprised there were so many.

Fly Away

Lenny Kravitz - Fly Away (Official Music Video)
Lenny Kravitz

Heard this on the radio this morning. Came out in 1998.

Close Call

Driving north on Jackson School Road this morning, I see a man jogging on the sidewalk. He is also heading north and he is on the portion of the sidewalk closest to the road. You might think he is going the wrong way if the normal rule of 'keep right' applies, but this sidewalk is special. The left lane, if you can consider that sidewalks have lanes, is for bicycles and the other one or two lanes are for people walking.  Jogging is not walking, so you might consider jogging in the bike lane the correct choice.

As I catch up to the jogger, he encounters a woman walking a couple of dogs and one of the dogs takes exception to the jogger and makes a lunge toward him. Was the dog just trying to say hello, or was he trying to take a bite out of him? I couldn't say. I only saw this for a split second, long enough to see the startled jogger take a step toward the road. If he had taken two steps we would have collided.

I did not even think about braking until I was past them and there was no bang or bump, so I just drove on. Disturbing to say the least.

Sukiyaki

Kyu Sakamoto - Sukiyaki (Lyrics + HQ)
mzyxetp3

This song showed up in the USA in 1963. I'm surprised I remember it, I was only 12 years old at the time but I remember it vividly.

Spinny

How fast can a HDD spin
Cskirt

If I don't get enough sleep I become a zombie and end up spending hours watching YouTube short videos and you get this one. I never wondered about this because I assumed that the electronics would be designed to work at a certain speed, so there would be no point to changing the speed of the disk. Even if the electronics could be adapted to work with a faster disk, it wouldn't make a significant difference in performance because the limiting factor is the time it takes the heads to move to a different track.

Russian Missile Fired at Ukraine

Here are a couple of video of warheads from a big Russian rocket impacting in Ukraine. Some people think the missile was an ICBM, other people say no, it's just a big rocket. But the first video says it's a MIRV - Multiple, Independent targeted Re-entry Vehicles. Watching the video, it looks like there are like six groups each containing maybe six elements. Groups are spaced about one second apart. An American ATACMS missile travels about 1 kilometer per second, and ICBM travels at like 7 kilometers per second. I don't understand how either one could deliver multiple blows at one second intervals. I think I'm missing something.

BREAKING:

New video shows a Russian intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) striking Ukraine.

The video shows reentry vehicles from its MIRV hitting the city of Dnipro.

It’s the first time in history that an ICBM is used in war. pic.twitter.com/o198cJXvXm

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) November 21, 2024

This footage captures a major attack unfolding in Ukraine, with Zelensky claiming it was caused by an ICBM—missiles designed to deliver nuclear or conventional warheads and nearly impossible to intercept.

This marks the first-ever deployment of an ICBM just days after Ukraine… pic.twitter.com/kaLwLIDFsd

— Shadow of Ezra (@ShadowofEzra) November 21, 2024

 

Bravo Zulu

Stolen entire from Borepatch:

The Bad Guys are on a losing streak

Earlier this week we saw a bunch of Russian hackers sentenced to prison, now we see Interpol execute a massive take down of multiple groups of Bad Guys:

Interpol is reporting a big win after a massive combined operation against online criminals made 41 arrests and seized hardware thought to be used for nefarious purposes.

Operation Synergia II – the follow up to the first Synergia raids that were announced in February – saw cops in 95 countries crack down on phishers, ransomware extortionists, and information thieves around the world. The operation was carried out in conjunction with the corporate world, specifically Group-IB, Trend Micro, Kaspersky and Team Cymru.

In addition to the arrests, Interpol revealed 65 people are still under investigation and claimed to have shuttered 22,000 IP addresses, taken control of 59 servers and 43 other computing devices.

Bravo Zulu, y'all.

Bravo Zulu? Navy term for 'well done'. 

Cyber criminals are the worst. The Beekeeper springs to mind, as does the ransomware attack on an engineering firm I hired a couple of years ago. On one hand you could blame the victims for not ensuring their computer systems were secure, but on the other hand with exponential growth of the computing industry, is it even possible to make your system absolutely secure? Well yes, if you cut all the wires and lock it in a Faraday cage. Okay, it needs to be secure, but it also needs to be usable, so we have to balance these two requirements and when we do, sometimes security gets short-changed. That's why we've got to wade through these annoying identification protocols when you call most any business about most anything at all.

Lusitania

RMS Lusitania departing New York - Ossie Jones

I'm reading a story about the Chinese plan to build a railway across the Andes mountains in South America. Okay, that sounds nuts, but it also sounds like something China might try.

Well, let's see if we can find a map. I found several speculative plans, but nothing definite. I'm reading about one and they mention Lusophones, which is a new term for me. Look it up and it turns out it means people who speak Portuguese and comes from the name of a Roman province which was located where Portugal is now.

Just bugged me that there were so many disparate things that all used the same name.

Communication Channels

My Wiring 'Closet'

I finally got around to replacing the across-the-floor ethernet cable with one routed across the ceiling and inside the wall. When we started the big remodeling project over a year ago, we moved into the basement and we took our TV with us. The remodeling project was only supposed to last a few months, so it's okay to have a cord running across the floor. I mean, we're in the basement. Actually the only place it ran across the floor was at the bottom of the stairs and we covered it with a rug, so it was practically invisible. But it's been a while, and the TV is still in the basement, so I ran a new cable in a more secure and permanent manner.

The Portland Trail Blazers, Oregon's NBA team, have been having a rough time since all their star players have moved to greener pastures. They're getting better, slowly. They beat the Atlanta Hawks Tuesday night in a nail-biter. Since they are rebuilding the team, they are also trying to rebuild their fan base, which has been decimated since the all-star team they had is no more. To that end, they are now broadcasting all of their games on commercial TV - Charge! 2.2. We have an antennae in the attic, let's see if we can pick it up. Plug the upstairs TV into the coax and bingo! NBA basketball clear as a bell. The antennae is a big old thing that I probably set up 30 years ago. It's not one of these miniature things they are using for their ridiculously high frequency, but it works fine.

Since I was running a new ethernet cable, and since we discovered a new use for coax, I figured I might as well run a new coax cable as well. Plug in the basement TV and run setup to scan for broadcast channels. It found, I dunno, a couple of dozen including the one channel we care about. 

But then I remember that new stuff has been showing up on the ROKU, so I go take a look. One of the new things is TV channels, and there are a bunch of them. ROKU displays a list and I spent a couple of minutes scrolling through it looking for Charge! 2.2. I must have scrolled through a hundred channels. I did not find Charge! 2.2 and I did not find the end. It might be there. Seems as though everybody and their mother that has a broadcast license is making the content available over the internet. I noticed half a dozen news channels from around the country.

There is only one coax cable running to the upstairs TV and no easy way to run ethernet, so now I'm wondering if I can send ethernet signals over the sane wire as the antennae signal. I mean, what frequency domains are we talking about here? Are they even in the same ballpark, or are they in different leagues, playing in different cities, on opposite sides of the country? I have no idea. 

Turns out you can run both broadcast and ethernet signals over the same coax and both signals come through loud and clear. Previous post about the Hitron adapters I used. I am only using one set of signals at a time, so it's possible if you were using both sets of signals simultaneously there might be some interference.

Those stupid screw-type coax connectors are a royal pain. If you hold the cable at the correct angle, the nut screws on easily, but get just a little off center and it jams up. You make or break half a dozen of these connections and your fingertips start complaining. It's basically ridiculous, but it's what I've got. There used to be quick connect coax connectors that just plugged in, no nut screwing required. I think those came with video games, but I don't have any of those connectors and all my coax cables have threaded connectors.

Our country has a zillion video channels all being broadcast simultaneously. YouTube has like a zillion channels, but each of those YouTube channels only put up new stuff intermittently, like once a week. But there are a zillion people watching those channels. How many channels are active at one time? Channels where we have someone broadcasting and somewhat actually watching? Is it a zillion times a zillion times a zillion? Or maybe the cube root of a zillion? If you had access to YouTube statistics you might be able to come up with a number. Of course, YouTube is only one player in the great social media landscape, and all of the traffic that involves an actual person is no doubt dwarfed by the tsunami of bits flowing between machines.

Meanwhile, over in Finland, somebody cut one of their undersea communications cables:

Undersea data cable between two NATO countries breaks 

Excerpt: 

“Disturbances occur from time to time and there can be various reasons,” Bergstrom added. “For example, they are susceptible to the weather and damage caused by shipping.”

Finland’s Security and Intelligence Service (SUPO) told Yle that it was too early to assess the cause of the cable break, noting that around 200 undersea cable breaks happen around the world every year.

“The most common cause of cable breakage is human activity, such as fishing or anchoring,” a SUPO spokesperson said.

Two days later we get this report:

Danish Navy Hunts Down Chinese Ship Suspected Of 'Sabotaging' Baltic Sea Cables

From Michael Every:

So, if you want to worry, look at less glamorous but arguably more significant headlines that don't point to world war, per se, but to world disruption, and major world market volatility.

Official allegations of sabotage were made in the EU as: two of Finland's five nuclear plants had to be shut down; a key Norwegian oilfield was shut by a power outage; the support cable on a Finnish suspension bridge broke; and two key Baltic EU data cables were severed. The Chinese vessel Yi Peng has been flagged as a possible cable culprit and at time of writing was forcibly moored in Denmark. This is likely to prompt a strong Chinese diplomatic response; and perhaps an EU one if it proves a Chinese ship damaged key seafloor infrastructure (again: this also happened to a gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia in October 2023).

Blithe spirit

Uniberp reports from the Midwest:

I am leaving the company I work for at the end of the year, and in the intervening time I am trying to keep good relations there.

It is a somewhat absurd and flattering situation, where I am required to scan in through the door 3 days a week, but have no real duties. 

I can't help myself, though. I listen to a 10am daily meeting, but when it turns into a technical soapbox with various managers simultaneously skirting blame and taking credit for getting through the day's snafus, I feel the urge to tweak them and speak up. Yesterday I interrupted and asked them to confirm that the problem was "Issue A", and when confirmed, I cautioned them not to conflate  that with "Issue B"  although I did not use the word conflate because none of them know what that means. It cleared up the conversation and the next steps were settled in the next 2 sentences by my 2 compadre techs who are generally too timid or jaded to speak up in these bureaucratic feedlots.

The VP does not like to hear me speak since I announced I was leaving. My butting into a conversation with clarity confounds his efficiency model.

It was a really good tweak.

It's a miserable environment, with regular large layoffs, and people admittedly scared for their jobs. The cube farm appears to me most similar to an egg farm, with all the chickens in their cages straining their buttholes to produce an egg for the master so they don't go into the stew. Or maybe that's just me feeling superior. So I find a far flung conference room in the giant and 80% empty modern suburban office building on campus. I should try another building, although the scan report may show an anomaly. I don't know why I care about that. It must be habit. 

To make my drive to the office worthwhile I consolidate my errands, and 2 days a week for the past couple weeks I've gone to Middle School at 12:45 to 'help' with the 5th and 6th period art classes. It is the most engaging thing I've done in years, basically just sitting with 7th-8th graders doing clay ceramics projects. My mere hulking presence seems to exert a calming effect on a sometimes disruptive group of brats. I hope to be going there regularly. It is an unbelievable contrast to the chicken coop. The time flies at school, whereas at the office it's just grim death.

I get to work with clay and follow quite clear and supportive instructions from the teacher. Again, a massive contrast.

It could all be a delusion, that enjoying myself like this is just a downward spiral into ... what? Like I haven't been there several times before.

blithe: adjective

showing a casual and cheerful indifference considered to be callous or improper.

(I never knew is had a "callous" denotation. I've been called that, but I hope we are generally known as polite.)

Spherical Cow

Giant Train Signal
Chris Boden

I got a chuckle out of his line about brakes on a train.

Entomology

A sculpture by artist Pete Beeman depicts a Megarhyssa "stump stabber" wasp atop a microscope, symbolizing the entomology labs at the North Valley Complex facility. Photo by Samantha Swindler.

The North Valley Complex is in Wilsonville, Oregon, about 15 miles south of Portland.

Old & New Computers

Artificial Intelligence - Intelligent or Stupid?

Two of my favorites posted about old computers today. The Silicon Graybeard included the above quote about Artificial Intelligence. I think it's spot on.

The posts:

• Stu Savory: Podcast: AI in the 1980s
• The Silicon Graybeard: Blast From the Past

America’s new caste system

Interesting take on the hostility shown in the recent political campaign:

America’s new caste system - The education gap has dented democracy by Mark Lilla

He starts off quoting the opening paragraphs from Tocqueville’s Democracy in America:

“Of all the novel things which attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, none struck me more forcibly than the equality of conditions. I had no difficulty in discovering the extraordinary influence this fundamental fact exerts upon the progress of society; it sets up a particular direction to public attitudes, a certain style to the laws, fresh guidelines to governing authorities, and distinctive habits to those governed.

“Soon I came to recognise that this very fact extends its influence well beyond political customs and laws; it exercises no less power over civil society than it does over the government. It forms opinion, creates feelings, proposes ways of acting, and transforms anything it does not directly instigate itself.”

Malcolm X

Malcolm X

I've been seeing a number of stories about people getting out from under the yoke of the Democratic war machine lately, and I can't tell if there really is an upsurge, or it's just normal, but those kind of stories were overshadowed by the runup to the election. In any case, I like this story from RT. It has a couple of points:

1. Malcolm's family is going after the FBI & CIA for their role in the assassination, and
2. It's got a brief history of Malcolm and his extremist views. I'd kind of forgotten about that part so it's good to be reminded.

Introduction to the story:

CIA and FBI sued by family of Malcolm X

Three of Malcolm X’s daughters have filed a lawsuit against the CIA, FBI, and New York Police Department, accusing the agencies of complicity in the assassination of the militant black activist.

Filed in a Manhattan court on Friday, the suit alleges that the CIA, FBI, and NYPD were aware of a plot to kill Malcolm X, but did not act to stop it. It claims that the NYPD arrested his security detail days before the assassination, while the CIA and FBI’s undercover agents – who were present on the night of the fatal shooting – stood by while the militant leader was gunned down.

The lawsuit alleges that there was a “corrupt, unlawful, and unconstitutional” relationship between the agencies and “ruthless killers that went unchecked for many years and was actively concealed, condoned, protected, and facilitated by government agents.”

Malcolm was killed in 1965.

Special Ops: Lioness - Amazon Series

Special Ops: Lioness Season 1 Trailer
Rotten Tomatoes TV

This show is just insane. Tough girl joins the Marines, gets recruited by the CIA, goes undercover in Kuwait to infiltrate filthy rich family in order to get close to the patriarch, a terrorist for hire. Black Ops, helicopters, operators dispensing death and destruction left, right and center.

Unlike many of the shows we watch, the soldiers here are competent. They're also cowboys. They know what they are, they know their jobs and how to work together and that's all that counts.

It's weird how the amount of money you have available can completely change your view of what's important. Poor people squabble over a dollar. When daddy has a zillion dollars you don't flinch at paying a thousand dollars for a T-shirt because it's 'cute'. Actors have to mimic both kinds of attitudes and the entire range in between.

Ballerina - Netflix Movie

We watched this again this evening. We watched it once before exactly one year ago. Entertaining but I guess there isn't much substance to it because I didn't remember any of it.

Once upon a time our girl had a friend who was a ballerina. She gets a phone call from her one night, hasn't heard from her in a long time, so she goes to pay her a visit. When she gets there the apartment is apparently empty, so we take a look around. The apartment is something like you might expect if Barbie were Korean. It's wild. Meanwhile the ballerina has committed suicide and is floating in the tub. She leaves a cryptic note asking her to avenge her. Okay then.

There were a number of entertaining bits.

• The movie opens with four thugs going into a convenience store and being thugs. In the middle of this robbery our girl walks up to the counter to buy a snack. The cashier, understandably flustered is unable to make change, so our girl pulls out the change she needs from the thug's bag of loot, and then all hell breaks loose. The thugs are armed with knives and our girl is armed with canned goods. Naturally she lays them all out flat in short order.
• Choi, the chief villain, is exceptionally strong. He demonstrates this by performing some full body pushups while doing a handstand. He is also a sexual pervert who is into BDSM.
• The bad guys have taken over a small hotel and turned into a private brothel where they keep a harem of young women. The decor in the rooms is beyond gaudy.
• At the hotel, when our girl gets into a fight with Choi, the couple from the front desk show up to put a stop to it. The woman shows up with a shotgun and lets loose multiple shots, none of which hit our girl because she is so freaking fast. Also because she is lucky, or the mattress is shotgun proof.
• Our girl escapes down the hall, but the guy from the front desk shows up with a chain saw. He's running down the hall when a door to one of the rooms is flung open into the hall. He runs into it, falls and cuts his foot off with the chain saw.
• Now our girl needs some guns, but this is Korea and guns are illegal, but she has contacts, which she uses to arrange a meeting. The meet is in a big open field. The gun dealer shows up in a largish, battered van. The dealer is a pleasant elderly couple, they look like somebody's grandparents. The open up the back of the van and reveal that it is carnival game booth. They have drawers crammed full of all kinds of guns. The girls, because our girl has picked up the girl who flung open the door at the hotel, pick out some handguns, a derringer and, wait-for-it, a flamethrower. I mean, why not? Grandma demonstrates its use by shooting a flame out 20 or 30 yards. The field looks to be dried grass which ought to catch fire easily, but the flame goes out horizontally and never touches the ground. Imagine that.