Bunker Valentin 🇩🇪 The largest submarine bunker in the world
Blitzwinkel
Silicon Forest
If the type is too small, Ctrl+ is your friend
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Majestic Cafe, Porto, Portugal |
The facade on this cafe looks perfect, and it might be, but I suspect that if you were to actually visit the place and inspect this facade you would find any number of imperfections, but because of how elaborate it is, none of those are obvious. With a facade made of large plate glass windows, any imperfections would be immediately obvious because of perfect surface of the glass. You'd would need to employ someone full time just to wipe off the handprints because they would obviously mar the perfection.
Pretty good show except for all the faggotry. Dang nab it, why do they gotta be sticking faggots in all these shows? When I watch a TV show or a movie I want escapist fantasy where all the women are beautiful, the guys are all heroic, and all the characters are straight heterosexuals. I don't need any faggots besmirching my fantasy, they are repulsive and disgusting.
But what you gonna do? Kill all the faggots? Historically, that has been the preferred solution for some, maybe all, religions. Islam still preaches that. Mainstream Christianity seems to be learning to deal with them. Western civilization seems to consider faggots people, and killing people without permission from the lord high executioner is forbidden.
Faggots, except for being faggots, can be good people. They can be smart, productive members of society. As long as they can keep their faggotiness under wraps, I am happy to deal with them.
Lesbians I don't mind near as much. I like women, mostly because I am sexually attracted to them, so I can see why women would be attracted to other women - if they are good looking. As for ugly women, well, that's why god invented alcohol.
Anyway, enough about that. Back to the show and besides my previously mentioned objections, it's pretty great. We are looking at a niche of society where the law doesn't much matter. Well, it matters enough that our players will be careful to avoid involving the police, but that isn't really too difficult, if you have a brain and can use it. We have one group of people dealing in stolen information and another group that deals in bullets, and sometimes the information thieves hire the killers, and sometimes other people hire the killers to kill the information thieves.
Samuel, an ugly little faggot, got started in this 'society' as a gofer and moved on to become a triggerman. His sexual preferences aside, he is a reliable and loyal killer.
This little 'society' has been upset by the entrance of some new, unknown, players. Previously, everyone knew everyone else and everyone eventually knew what was going on. So and so took out the bloke that was skimming from that gangster, so and so works with that mean chick, that drug dealer is overstepping his bounds. That was the world they operated in. But now someone has killed the Chinese ambassador, his daughter is missing, and somebody killed a dozen of the drug dealer's henchmen, and nobody has a clue who this is. Smells like government agents to me. Could be the SAS, or maybe the CIA, or maybe somebody from Asia has come to town for a specific purpose.
Eventually we get to the uber-secret society that has upset our apple cart, and being as we finished watching this show last week, I don't remember how exactly it played out, but I'm pretty sure it's pointing to a second season.
I worked in IT for over 20 years, and the coolest thing about IT standards for me is how you can buy a motherboard from China, a graphics card that was made in America, Memory sticks that came from a factory in Japan, a CPU that was fabricated in Malaysia, and a SSD that started out in Korean, chuck it all together like Lego bricks, slap some OS install media in it that was based on work by a guy in Finland, and dispite these manufacturers/programmers never being in contact with each other, or even speaking in a common language, folks STILL manage to be surprised if everything doesn't just work straight from the first boot up.This situations only possible because there's many hundreds of standards that cover every aspect of every single component that goes into a PC. These standards have been refined over decades to get to the point where it's not totally inconceivable that you could talk a non tech savy person through building a PC from a kit of parts OVER THE PHONE, and still have better than even odds of the finished result working as expected.This remarkable situation is something that's never lost that sense of amazement for me.
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New Chinese Aircraft Carrier |
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Mike Vining |
Saw a video by a very annoying guy about Mike Vining, who was one of the first members of Delta Force. He was involved in a bunch of very sketchy stuff, like bomb disposal. He's still alive and just a year older than I am. Reading the Wikipedia story about him I come across this line:
"He has also written articles on naval postal history,"
Naval Postal History? What are you talking about? The Navy has a postal system? Well, I guess they would have to, wouldn't they? Letters to and from for sailors sailing around the world. This leads me to the Univeral Ship Cancellation Society which has a PDF about Naval Covers Fakes, Forgeries and Frauds.
On page 59 of this PDF we find a story by Mike Vining:
1931 Wilkins-Ellsworth Trans-Arctic Expedition
Sir George Hubert Wilkins, MC, and Lincoln Ellsworth secured use from the U.S. Navy of the soon to be scrapped submarine USS S-30 for an expedition to sail under the ice cap to the North Pole. They got close to the North Pole, but no cigar. They managed to return to Norway and submarine was scuttled off of Bergen.
I tried to extract the story from the PDF, but it was going to take a bunch of mucking around to make it presentable, so you're just going to have to go read the original.
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Old Cadillac |
Ten Commandments |
I am trying to understand why the Christian religion is dominate in some countries and not others.
I like the ten commandments and I try to follow them. I found this list on BibleGateway:
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Assumption Abbey Fruitcake |
"was teaching cooking classes in St. Louis and working as the chef for Mark Twain Bank."
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Mark Twain Bank |
Why does a bank need a chef? And where did they get the name? Did Mark Twain eventually become a banker? What the heck? Turns out the Mark Twain Bank operated from 1976 to 1997 when it merged with a bigger bank. Near as I can tell there is no real connection to Mark Twain the man.
Looking through some old blog posts this morning, I noticed that one post was missing an image. Fixing a broken post used to be easy, but somewhere along the way Blogger made some changes and now it's a bit of a trick. Here's my procedure:
Clickety, clickety click. All because Blogger took away the edit button.
Great stuff from Knuckledraggin My Life Away. Follow the link for the whole story.
The CR That Wasn't by T. L. Davis
Interesting few days in congress and actually a good class on government corruption. The ugly sausage-making of the system is completely exposed by these shenanigans. Trying to back the people into a corner, the resident GOP/POS Speaker Mike Johnson attempted to dump a 1,547 page “continuing resolution” (CR) which should contain a few lines of text stating simply that current funding will be extended for a specific period of time. Instead it included a pay raise for Congress, funding of a key part of the government censorship of the people and a defense for the January 6 committee from investigation.
The leadership of the House: Johnson, Scalise, et al praised it as a tough but fair bill. It wasn’t, it was pork. It wasn’t even particularly good for the GOP. Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy and other conservative bloggers and influencers rose up against it. This is the key point, this was the people rebelling against a horrible omnibus bill disguised as a CR, not the dictates of Musk, Ramaswamy or Trump.
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Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour show, Vancouver, CA, Dec 7, 2024 - Carolyn Porco |
One more seismic event that I don't understand. Carolyn Porco (she led the imaging team of NASA's Cassini mission) went to a Taylor Swift concert and then wrote about her experience. I''ve heard a couple of Taylor's songs, but they made no impression on me. I don't even remember what they were, so all this blather about Taylor Swift makes no sense to me. Anyway, evidently Taylor's concert tour was exceptional in every way. Here are some numbers I pulled from the middle of Carolyn's piece.
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Indians |
India: It’s Worse Than You Think by Jayant BhandariMost Westerners know nothing about India beyond vague ideas about Hinduism, yoga, gurus, and maybe a dash of Bollywood. To such people, this article will be a rude awakening.I grew up in Bhopal in central India. Since as early as I can remember, I worked in my father’s printing press. I studied engineering in the nearby city in Indore and went to Manchester Business School in Britain to do an MBA. I returned to India to set up a subsidiary of a British company, which was a huge success. When I lived in Delhi, I wrote for the mainstream Indian media. I traveled widely in India and around the world.I had first returned to India with the idea of improving it, but after 11 years, I realized that India was a sinking ship, with worsening and increasingly shameless corruption, degraded people, and a society that was falling apart. I had never met an honest bureaucrat or politician. I applied to emigrate to Canada and my application was approved in a record three weeks.I now advise East Asian and Western corporations on investing in India. Most of what I tell them sounds to them exaggerated, unrealistic, and unbelievable. After much dance, drama, and a great deal of lost money, they begin to believe what I tell them. However, this learning is never institutionalized because of a refusal to understand India. This is a form of political correctness, a poison eating away the innards of Western values.
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Mosquito Pathfinders by Philip West |
Koyaanisqatsi is a 1982 American non-narrative documentary film directed and produced by Godfrey Reggio, featuring music composed by Philip Glass and cinematography by Ron Fricke. The film consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse footage (some of it in reverse) of cities and many natural landscapes across the United States. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and music. Reggio explained the lack of dialogue by stating "it's not for lack of love of the language that these films have no words. It's because, from my point of view, our language is in a state of vast humiliation. It no longer describes the world in which we live." In the Hopi language, the word koyaanisqatsi means "life out of balance".
Is that a Saturn 5 rocket taking off? Yes and no. 22over7aintpi explains in a comment:
In case you were wondering there are two rockets featured in this sequence. The first is a Saturn V on the launch pad, the second is the first Atlas-Centaur Missile launched on May 8, 1962. No one was hurt in that explosion and clues to why it exploded are a flapping liquid nitrogen line by the vernier engine and the venting liquid hydrogen some seconds into flight. The failure was determined to be caused by an insulation panel that ripped off the Centaur during ascent, resulting in a surge in tank pressure when the LH2 overheated. Beginning at T+44 seconds, the pneumatic system responded by venting propellant to reduce pressure levels, but eventually, they exceeded the LH2 tank's structural strength. At T+54 seconds, the Centaur experienced total structural breakup and loss of telemetry, the LOX tank rupturing and producing an explosion as it mixed with the hydrogen cloud. Two seconds later, flying debris ruptured the Atlas's LOX tank followed by complete destruction of the launch vehicle. The panel had been meant to jettison at 49 miles (80 km) up when the air was thinner, but the mechanism holding it in place was designed inadequately, leading to premature separation. The insulation panels had already been suspected during Centaur development of being a potential problem area, and the possibility of an LH2 tank rupture was considered as a failure scenario. Testing was suspended while efforts were made to correct the Centaur's design flaws.
Title from The Right Stuff.
As for the quotes at the end, sounds kind of like my theory of dragons:
I prefer to think the dragon legends come down to us from a previous civilization that had mechanized, flying war machines like the A-10 Warthog. After that civilization collapsed and the art of heavier-than-air aircraft was lost, how would you explain something like an A-10 to your kids? "There were fire breathing monsters that flew through the air and destroyed everything in their path". That's how.
I like Graham Hancock, the guy who's always postulating the existence of an advanced human civilization a zillion years ago, except I just now had a thought. What if this advanced civilization actually created humans from the biological material at hand (like all the existing plants and animals)? Created us as an experiment, and when the experiment started to get out of hand, they bailed out. Kind of like the archetypal mad scientist in horror movies. He brews up some mystical stew in a large pot and it reacts too well, starts bubbling over and eventually expands to take over his lab, the building and the town. Yeah, at this point the mad scientist bails out and I suspect a similar scenario prompted our createors to bail out as well.
It is doubtful we would ever find any evidence of such a civilization on account of the ice age glaciers that ground everything to dust. And if we ever did find any evidence, I doubt whether we would recognize it, much less understand it.
In British history, a remittance man was an emigrant, often from Britain to a British colony, who was supported by regular payments from home on the expectation that he would stay away.In this sense, remittance means the opposite of today's meaning of money that migrants send to their home countries.
Time for light to travel from the Sun to Earth | 8 | minutes | |||
times | 60 | seconds | per minute | ||
times | 1 | billion | nanoseconds | per second | |
equals | 480 | billion | nanoseconds | ||
divided by | 1 | nanosecond | per foot | ||
Distance to the Sun | equals | 480 | billion | feet | |
divided by | 5,280 | feet | per mile | ||
Distance to the Sun | equals | 90 | million | miles |
Distance to the Sun | take | 480 | billion | feet | |
Speed of sound | divide by | 1,125 | feet | per second | |
equals | 427 | million | seconds | ||
divided by | 22,791,600 | seconds | per year | ||
Time for sound to travel from Sun to Earth | equals | 14 | years |
We finished the 32 episodes of Kill Me Love Me tonight.
Kill Me Love Me is a 2024 Chinese television series based on the novel Chun Hua Yan by Hei Yan. It stars Liu Xueyi and Wu Jinyan in leading roles. The series premiered on Youku on October 14, 2024.
Synopsis
Ten years ago, during the war among the kingdoms of Dayan, Xiyan, and Nanyue, Prince Murong Jinghe of Dayan, renowned for his combat skills, led the Weibei army to significant victories against Xiyan and reclaimed Qingzhou city. However, on his return to court to receive rewards, all the civilians of Qingzhou were massacred and he was attacked by the common people who blamed him for the tragedy. The attack decimated all his forces and made him disable.
Mei Lin, an orphan of Qingzhou, swears to take revenge from Murong Jinghe and joins Shadow Works where she undergoes years of rigorous training to become an assassin. Soon the master of Shadow Works assigns her first mission which is to assassinate Murong Jinghe. Mei Lin enters the palace and waits for a chance to kill him not knowing that the one behind the Shadow Works is none other than Murong Jinghe himself.
(Jing=Jinghe)
We watched the last three episodes tonight. The bad General Mingju has finally gotten his wish: his king has ordered him to attack Qingzhou in order to gain access to a sacred mountain so that his lunatic king can gain immortality. His first act is to order his archers to shoot flaming arrows into a forest next to Qingzhou. This starts a forest fire and General Jing, our hero, deploys his troops to fight the forest fire, which leaves the town sparsely defended, which is what bad General Mingju was hoping for.
While the town is sparsely defended, General Minju attacks, but something happened, I don't recall exactly, and he falls back to regroup. Good General Jing uses this opportunity to mount a suicide attack on Minju's camp in order to destroy his supplies and his siege engines. Qingzhou has impressive walls. Siege engines would be useful if you wanted to attack.
They manage to sneak into camp and kill a few of Mingju's soldiers before they raise the alarm and now their situation is much, much worse. They are near to getting wiped out and Pingyan, General Jing's sidekick, pulls off the most heroic death scene ever. He gets nailed to a post with some stout looking crossbow bolts. He is shot in the chest with three or four of these bolts, so we know he's a goner. (Yes, I know it's television, and people who we think have died get resurrected all the time, but in this series only the main characters get a second chance. Second string characters die once and they're done.) The bolts have no fletching and the main target of this raid (a big pile of industrial size firecrackers) is within sight. So here we go:
Pingyan pushes himself off the post, leaving big holes in his chest and the crossbow bolts stuck in the post. He picks up a big jug of oil, throws it into the air and then hits with a club or something and smashes it. Now he is drenched with oil. He now takes a couple of running steps, leaps into the air, flies over a flaming torch, which catches him on fire, and now he flies onto the pile of fireworks which dutifully explodes. That has got to be the most spectacularly heroic scene ever.
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Bab Touma's Dandana Cafe is fully decked out for the season [Ali Haj Suleiman/Al Jazeera] |
Opening paragraphs from an Al Jazeera report:
Christmas in Damascus is different this year, after al-Assad’s fall by Ali Haj Suleiman
Damascus, Syria – There’s something different about Christmas this year, Damascenes say.
Although the decorations may have been more elaborate last year, Carol al-Sahhaf says this year’s festive mood is a cut above, less than two weeks after Bashar al-Assad fled and his regime crumbled.
On either side of the biblical Street Called Straight – or al-Mustaqeem or just Straight Street for short – lights and Christmas trees adorn the cafes, restaurants, shops and homes of Bab Sharqi, the neighbourhood nestled up to the Eastern Gate of the ancient Old City.
The alleyways around Straight Street are bustling, with a spring-like feeling in the air as shopkeepers repaint, dust off their shelves, and hang the green, white and black Free Syria flag.
Lights, cookies, and optimism
Al-Assad fled on December 8, and the country erupted into jubilation that lasted for days as Syrians celebrated the fall of the al-Assad family and the end of more than 50 years of brutal rule.
As those celebrations calmed, Olga al-Muuti told Al Jazeera, everyone turned to preparing for Christmas, New Year’s and Orthodox Christmas.
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It's Bob and Doug McKenzie, You Hosers | Letterman |
Uniberp reports:
At work today, as the days wind down for me, I was amused to see an email regarding performance of some of my tech team, using the phrase "... who really hosed that up...". Entirely unacceptable in the passive-aggressive culture that is self-styled enlightened corporate profit gouging, this email set off a flurry of HR involvement, senior management closed door sessions, and gossip enough to choke a goose, which is fittingly appropriate, culminating with the offending party being taken to the parking lot and thrown into a uncovered manhole..
I laughed, said "Finally some plain talk."
I had to explain "hosed" to one person, and looked up the origin, found this:
toward the end...
"Who, or What, is a Hoser?Hosers are nearly always white men. A hoser is, to a great extent, the Canadian equivalent of American terms like “hillbilly” and “redneck” – though without the overtly racist connotations of the latter word. A parody of the Canadian public service announcement “Hinterland Who’s Who” states that, “The hoser is often found in clusters, in habitats such as the Tim Hortons parking lot, Harvey’s and hockey arenas. Feeding mainly on a diet of smokes, coffee, poutine and beer, the hoser is a colourful animal — and a slob."
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Terrible picture of MV Bob Hope -or- MV Fisher |
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Another terrible picture of MV Bob Hope -or- MV Fisher |
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NW Hoge Ave |
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Stout, industrial strength stairs |
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that go way up the hillside |
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but ultimately don't go anywhere. |
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Seriously long stairs that got me high enough up to get the next photo |
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Costco Carry |
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Finnish belt fed .22LR machine gun |
An 80-year old man in Finland created a belt-fed .22 caliber machine gun out of an electric drill. The cam-driven weapon had a firing rate of 420 rpm (for comparison, the US M3 Grease Gun is 450 rpm). The man was not prosecuted, but he had to give up his creation.
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The Scribe, Ludwig Deutsch (1894) |
The Visual Word Form Area – a brain region that coevolved with reading and writing - Peter Frost
In ancient times, demand was strong for scribes who could write and copy texts day in and day out. Only a small minority had the stamina and ability, and they enjoyed reproductive success.
'Reproductive success', now there's a loaded phrase. Here's the opening paragraphs:
The Visual Word Form Area (VWFA) is a brain region that helps us recognize written words and letters. Without it, reading requires much more effort. When a man suffered an accidental lesion to his VWFA during brain surgery, he lost much of his ability to read while losing none of his general language abilities. After six months, he had partially recovered, but reading still took twice as long as it had before (Gaillard et al, 2006).
The VWFA is composed of neurons that were once used for face recognition:
Thus, learning to read must involve a ‘neuronal recycling’ process whereby pre-existing cortical systems are harnessed for the novel task of recognizing written words. … [Such areas of the cortex] possess the appropriate receptive fields to recognize the small contrasted shapes that are used as characters, and the appropriate connections to send this information to temporal lobe language areas (Dehaene & Cohen, 2011)
This neuronal recycling seems to have become hardwired, at least in some people. After Swiss preschoolers played a grapheme/phoneme correspondence game for a total of 3.6 hours over 8 weeks, an MRI scan showed their VWFAs preferentially responding to images of strings of letters. Yet only a few of the children could actually read, and only at a rudimentary level (Brem et al., 2010).
Humans may have initially identified words by using face-recognition neurons. As reading became more important, natural selection favored those humans who could free up more of their face-recognition neurons for reading. This selection eventually created a large neuronal population dedicated solely to word recognition, i.e., the VWFA.
He goes for a bit. I tried reading the rest of it but got bogged down. You may enjoy it.