Bret Weinstein just said something that won't leave my head:
For the first time in 300,000 years of human evolution, we removed the cost from the single biggest reward nature ever invented - sex and pair-bonding.
Reliable birth control + abortion = you can now cash the evolutionary lottery ticket without paying the 20-year mortgage of pregnancy, diapers, sleepless nights, and college funds.
Result? An entire generation of 18-35-year-olds walking around with the energy, libido, hormones, and protective instincts that evolution spent millions of years calibrating for child-rearing... but with zero actual children. That energy didn't disappear. It got redirected.
Heather Heying's observation is brutal: young women especially began treating ideologies the exact way evolution wired them to treat babies. Climate change, social justice, whatever the cause of the month is - it gets defended with literal mama-bear ferocity, the same neurochemistry that once guarded a toddler from predators now guards an abstract idea from wrong think.
I'm thinking I should get Linux up and running on my computer, I mean I bought it a year ago for that purpose. I've been sluffing along on Windows since then so I started looking through my old hard disks looking for a suitable candidate and came across this video, so I thought I'd share. Search on YouTube for The Cranial Nerves Songreturns several videos, but they all seem to be just portions of this one.
We've almost finished all five seasons of Slow Horses. The soundtrack is one of the best parts of the show, so I look it up and what do I find? The intro is sung by Mick Jagger. Who'd a thunk it?
Darling daughter decided she needed a ladder and she also decided I should be the one to go pick it up from Home Depot today. I have a ladder I could have lent her, but if I did that, then sure as shootin' something would come up and I would need my ladder back. To forestall that happening I agreed that getting her own ladder would be the right thing to do. As a bonus, me having a ladder on hand reduces the odds of my needing one a hundred fold, which is a very good thing because at my age I probably shouldn't be climbing on ladders at all.
The parking lot at Home Depot was pretty full, but I managed to snag a spot close to where you drive in so I didn't have to spend untold seconds cruising up and down looking for a spot. On the downside, this put me at the opposite end of the building from the ladders, so I got a good little hike in. I took the boss's car on account of I wasn't sure whether the ladder would fit in the trunk of my car. You can see from the pic that it's only about four and a half feet long when it's collapsed and folded. I did have to fold down the back seat to accommodate it, but I could have done that in my car as well. Oh well, better to have extra capacity and not need it than vice versa.
P. S. Amazon sells some Gorilla stuff, but not Gorilla ladders. They do sell similar ladders from another maker.
I seem to fall fallen into a hole lately, I've been spending rather too much time doing these jigsaw puzzles. This one appears to be a rather elaborate depiction of a silly submarine originally designed for a Saturday morning cartoon show.
The Russian neurotechnology company Neiry claims to have begun field testing a flock of pigeons with chips implanted in their brains, allowing researchers to steer the birds from the laboratory into the wild and back. According to reporting by Forbes Russia, Neiry says its operators can upload flight patterns to pigeons by stimulating specific areas of the brain. Neiry spokespeople said that through this process, the bird itself “wants” to fly in the directions chosen by researchers. “There’s no training required: Any animal becomes remotely controllable after the operation,” the company claimed.
The surgeries are performed on a production line with a precision-guided setup that inserts electrodes into targeted regions of the brain. Neiry says its researchers “seek a 100-percent survival rate for the birds undergoing the procedure,” though it did not provide current survival figures. The device emits signals that influence the bird’s impulses, prompting it to turn left or right. The bird’s location is tracked by GPS, and the onboard electronics run on solar panels affixed to the bird’s back.
Neiry says its “biodrone” technology has applications for monitoring power transmission lines, gas distribution hubs, and other types of infrastructure.
Since the mid-20th century, Russia and Europe have established a complementary and mutually beneficial relationship in the energy sector. Now, very few people remember, but when Putin came to power in 2000, one of the new president’s ideas was to strengthen Europe’s political independence by combining the continent’s technological and industrial capabilities with Russia’s abundance of natural resources. For Putin, a united Europe was paramount to establishing continental peace, based on a fair relationship between the West and Russia. Nevertheless, in order to achieve this unity, both sides had to abandon the past stereotypes of the Cold War era; otherwise, there could be no ‘Greater Europe’, much less a united one. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, politicians in Washington were also aware of these talks about combining Russian energy assets with Europe’s industrial might.
That’s why, starting in the early 2000s, United States policymakers began to raise concerns about Europe’s “dependence on Russian energy” during official talks with their Atlantic partners, instilling fears that the continent was about to become hostage to Moscow’s ‘geopolitical ambitions’. Taking things a step further, after the Ukrainian crisis of 2014, Washington began threatening European companies with sanctions for their involvement in geoeconomic and geostrategic projects, such as the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which was slated to connect Germany and Russia via the Baltic Sea.
Finally, following the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, the world witnessed the most consequential act of infrastructure sabotage in European history, with the Nord Stream explosions of September 2022. In fact, the Nord Stream blast seemed to follow one of the most critical tenets of 20th-century British politics, formulated by the geographer Halford Mackinder, who advised against an alliance between Germany and Russia, as this would enable the Eurasian landmass to grow stronger than Great Britain’s sea power. Within that context, the cutting of Russia’s ‘umbilical cord’ to Europe represented the materialisation of Mackinder’s very advice, but at the cost of European taxpayers.
Before the blasts, Nord Stream 1 alone supplied about 55 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas per year, covering roughly 15% of all European gas consumption. The sudden loss of this infrastructure contributed to the surge in energy prices across the continent: by late 2022, wholesale natural gas prices in Europe had spiked to more than €300 per megawatt-hour—over 10 times higher than the average between 2016 and 2020. Industries dependent on cheap gas, especially in Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands, saw production slowdowns and temporary shutdowns, with German chemical output falling by roughly 10% in 2022. Households also faced soaring heating and electricity bills, prompting EU governments to spend over €600 billion in subsidies and emergency measures to cushion the impact. Beyond the economic shock, the explosions increased Europe’s vulnerability by forcing rapid diversification toward costlier liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports and exposing the strategic risks of critical infrastructure sabotage.
An economic reshuffling also took place in Eurasia, while the amount of Russian gas flowing to Europe dropped to a minimum. Until 2021, Russia’s share in Europe’s total imports of natural gas was 43%. In 2023, this figure was down to only 14%. In Europe, the response to the Nord Stream explosion, as mentioned earlier, was marked by a diversification of gas suppliers and a change in gas logistics. If, in 2013, 82% of European gas imports came via pipelines (234 bcm) and only 18% (51 bcm) in liquefied form (LNG), by 2023, the situation had drastically reversed. LNG now represents approximately 60% of all gas imports (169 bcm) in Europe, while pipeline imports have fallen to 40% (111 bcm). That marks a 331% increase in LNG purchases by Europe over the course of a single decade! In this new scenario, the United States emerged as the leading supplier of LNG to Europe. Now, the North Americans account for approximately 45% of Europe’s LNG imports, followed by Qatar, which contributes 12% (on the other hand, Norway established itself as the largest pipeline gas supplier, accounting for about 33% of Europe’s total imports). As a result, Europe has increased its dependence on the United States, both politically and economically.
American voters ... are unabashed in their belief that the American way of life is based on an abiding principle: that individuals have an inalienable right to improve their circumstances in life by their own efforts. If they find that their aspiration and determination are frustrated by things that are beyond their control like inflation or competition for jobs from illegal migrants, they expect the government to act effectively on those problems. Traditionally in the United States, it has been believed that this was what government was for: to remove obstacles to individual achievement and progress.
Much more recently the European model of state intervention and the creation of a welfare state which is designed to protect the disadvantaged and to care for those who, it is believed, cannot succeed on their own, has been brought into the US electoral arena. It is espoused by Left liberals like Bernie Sanders and the new mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, who have gained a hearing but whose ideas are still considered exotic and profoundly at odds with mainstream discourse. It is important to appreciate this because, paradoxically, it could help to illuminate the identity crisis that European democracies are undergoing.
Slow Horses — Official Trailer | Apple TV
Apple TV
Everybody's a villain here, except for the MI5 employees known as Slow Horses who have been exiled to Slough House, a small, seedy, three floor walk-up office building in a crummy part of London. All the action is at a higher level. On one side we have the Sons of Albion, a right-wing nationalist group. Over at Regent's Park we have Miss Stinky Pants Kristin Scott Thomas (Taverner). She's Deputy-Director of MI5, so she's got the power of the government behind her, in particular a tactical unit called the Dogs.
Pretty great show. MI5 - British version of the CIA, I guess - Gary Oldman (known by me as Zorg in The Fifth Element) is the disgustingly crusty old man running Slough House. First desk, AKA MI5 Director, is off on some diplomatic bullshit mission and while she's away Second Desk decides to cook up a false flag operation that will get blamed on the right-wing nationalists. She thinks this will give her an excuse to, in her words, "roll them all up". Her agent provocateur gets some white boys (three stooges) to kidnap a brown Briton who happens to be the nephew of some big shot in Pakistan, the idea being that when MI5 rescues him, it will help the Uncle feel more favorably toward Britain. Seems like a long shot to me, but you know you just can't trust those power hungry, liberal, white women with short blond hair like Hillary. Anyway, the plan goes awry and one of the white boys takes exception to Miss Stinky Pants' agent and lops off his head, so now when Miss Stinky Pants' dogs show up to rescue the hostage and kill the kidnappers, there's nobody there, well, except for the dead guy.
Menawhile, a very nervous reporter who has gotten wind of this fiasco, but since he has apparently fallen from grace he can't get anybody to listen to him. But somebody is interested in him, which gets our boy River interested, and since all he does at Slough House is busy work, he starts following the reporter around. Up till now, nothing very much is happening. But then River sees someone break into the reporter's house and now everything dissolves into chaos.
I question whether Sid is 'our girl' because she gets shot early on and we only see her once more in hospital and at the end Roddy and Jack find that all of the digital records of her have been erased, it's like she never existed, which is weird, but it kind of paves the way for her to return in later seasons. Or not, I dunno.
Note that the character names of the three stooges are in the fact the names of the Three Stooges. Ok Moe was actually an MI5 Agent sent in to stir up shit and Zeppo is technically a Marx Brother, but you get the idea.
Gotta give this guy credit for knowing his limitations, his persistence, his unwillingness to just use an off-the-shelf computer, and finally building a machine that works, all just to keep himself entertained.
I was captivated by an image that only showed the lower portion of this graph - i.e. the portion that shows that the number of births to women under 20 is now lower than the number of births to women over 40. That seemed a little alarming, so I went and dug up the full graph. Those two groups (under 20 and over 40) contribute only a small portion of all U. S. births. 25 seems to be most popular age so I am reassured.
I like the way the little tungsten weights pop when he pulls them out of their holes when they are test fitting them (9:30). They are using Green Loctite, which I am not sure I have heard of before.
This video is two or three times longer than it needs to be. The first few minutes he's talking about this king size light bulb, after that he's just using it to set things on fire.
Wikipedia. Tungsten melts at just over 6,000 degrees. It is roughly the same density as Uranium or Gold.
P. S. The One Pound Tungsten Bar might look big on the screen, but it is smaller than a credit card. A bar of tungsten the size of a deck of cards would weight almost five pounds. Definitely chunky.
I'm not sure whether this is AI or carefully staged. Everything in here could be real, there is nothing impossible. Chrome plated machine tools are possible, but I don't think I've ever actually seen any. There is more kinds of factory automation crammed into this one short clip than I seen anywhere else.
The Grumman LLV Has Finally Reached The End Of Its Mail Delivery Days — Revelations w/ Jason Cammisa
Hagerty
I didn't realize the LLV was that old, but it doesn't really get a lot of attention. It's like it's part of the scenery, eternal and unchanging. You might think that a standard production vehicle could do the job as well, or better, but United Parcel Service also builds their own custom designs. The fun part is that after Jason gets done telling you all about the LLV, he takes it for a spirited ride, just like he does when he makes a video about a sports car. Hooo, baby!
The CS1 was a Nortonmotorcycle between 1927 and 1939. Originally built as a TT racer, and Norton's first design of an overhead cam engine, it proved successful as a TT Replica road bike.
After the early 1930s redesign of Norton's cammy models by Arthur Carroll, the CS1 became an upmarket road bike. The 500 cc CS1 and its smaller sibling 350 cc CJ1 continued on until the outbreak of WW2 in 1939.
Many later touring CS1 models were upgraded for racing, by adding and subtracting all the optional racing bits for Internationals. The Norton catalog had a long list of such parts available. The identifying feature of 1930s CS1 Models is the stub fitted carburettor - Inter models had a bolt-on TT carburettor.
Development
The Norton Camshaft Senior Model 1 (CS1) engine was designed by Walter Moore in 1927, based on the Norton ES2pushrod engine and re-using many parts. The frame was a new full cradle design and with a close-ratiokickstart-less gearbox, 8-inch brakes, Amal TT carburettor, Lucas Racing magneto and a 3-gallon petrol tank. The CS1 was the standard for racing Nortons for the next 20 years. The magneto was moved to the rear of the engine and the bottom end was a traditional Norton design, but in the side of the crankcase was the oil pump housing and a pair of bevel gears to drive the long shaft which ran in a tube up the side of the engine to a second pair of gears driving the overhead camshaft.
Unknown rider Tim Hunt won the Amateur TT in following year on a Norton CS1, setting a new TT record. He later used the same motorcycle to win the gold medal in the Scottish Six Days Trial.
In 1928 a Junior version of the CS1 with a 348cc engine and designated the Norton CJ was entered for the Isle of Man TT. The bore and stroke of this engine was 71 x 88 mm and it looked promising but 1928 proved to be an unlucky year for Norton, as there were technical problems with Walter Moore's redesigned cambox and only one major race was won that year. 1929 also went badly with reliability problems and only one win in the Spanish GP of 1929.
In March 1931 on Pendine Sands Joe Craig and Tim Hunt achieved a best speed on the CS1 of 118 mph. Also in 1931 the Norton CS1 took the first five places in Junior and Senior events, starting what was to prove Norton's most successful period, and until the end of the 1930s Norton dominated international events with wins in both classes throughout the decade. Tim Hunt became the first rider to win two TT races in one week, with success in the Junior TT Race in 3 h 34 min 21 s at an average speed of 73.4 mph and also the Senior TT Race in 3 h 23 min 28 s at an average speed of 77.90 mph.
Real life crazy, as opposed to imaginary crazy. Of course, the story is just a fantasy put together like a movie. I wonder how much they had to pay el presidente.
This is just kinda nuts, on several levels. Some of these scenes, maybe most, are kinda nuts. The amount of processor power need to generate these scenes is also kinda nuts, or at least it would be if we weren't creating another teraflops of processor power (i.e making another zillion CPUs) every day. We've got more processor power than we know what to do with. Generating these scenes must have consumed zillions of CPU cycles, which probably cost some dollars. CPU cycles are almost too cheap to measure, but thanks to nuclear power, we know that isn't true. Somebody is counting those cycles and computing the rates and sending you a bill.
Cute little video, cleverly done, all to the tune of some French pop song. At least I think that's what it is. The guy hanging from the 'chute, presumably that's Jean-Baptiste Chandelier, is talented and skillful.
So the stuff the guy brings in is junk, but what is that gun-like thing the shopkeeper is using? Whatever it is, he seems confident in the readings he is getting.
It's not a Tricorder, but we're getting there. There are several companies making these things, and they've been doing it for a while. New ones cost between $20K and $40K. Used ones can be picked up for a tenth of that.
The major X-ray tube components are the cathode, anode, the tube envelope, the tube housing, and the window.
Cathode
The cathode serves to expel the electrons from the circuit and focus them in a beam on the focal spot of the anode. It is a controlled source of electrons for the generation of X-ray beams. The electrons are produced by heating the filament, i.e., a coil of wire made from tungsten, placed within a highly polished nickel focusing cup providing electrostatic focusing of the beam on the anode. Heat is used to expel the electrons from the cathode.
Anode
The anode represents the component in which the x-rays are produced. It is a piece of metal, shaped in the form of a beveled disk, connected to the positive side of electrical circuit. The anode converts the energy of the electrons into X-rays and dissipates the heat, considered the byproduct.
Envelope
An airtight enclosure that houses the cathode and anode. It is often made from metal and ceramic because these materials are able to withstand the tremendous amount of heat generated during X-ray production, but they can also be made of glass.
Housing
Provides protection and absorbs excess radiation.
Window
The X-ray tube window typically is made from beryllium because it allows X-rays to pass through but has sufficient strength to hold the vacuum required for the X-ray tube to operate. When an electrical current is passed through the cathode, the electrons generated by the cathode are accelerated by high voltage towards a metal target, or anode. X-rays known as Bremsstrahlung (“braking radiation”) are produced when the electrons are suddenly decelerated upon collision with the anode. When an atom in the sample is struck with an X-ray of sufficient energy (greater than the atom’s K or L shell binding energy), an electron from one of the atom’s inner orbital shells is dislodged. The atom regains stability, filling the vacancy left in the inner orbital shell with an electron from one of the atom’s higher energy orbital shells. The electron drops to the lower energy state by releasing a fluorescent X-ray. The energy of this X-ray is equal to the specific difference in energy between two quantum states of the electron. These X-rays all have sufficient energy to pass through the X-ray tube window and reach the sample. The measurement of this energy is the basis of XRF analysis.
The earliest handheld energy-dispersive XRF probe was built by United Nuclear in the early 1980s, which was originally used to investigate highly radioactive holding takes, as well as the presence of uranium in the soil. Weighing over 70 pounds, this tool comprised of a measurement head connected to a cart, where the electronics displayed the received data.
Modified between 1982-1983, United Nuclear commercialized the MAP-1 device, which had the capability to detect uranium, as well as other elements in the soil through the creation of a “front pack,” while also reducing the weight of the instrument to 50 pounds. The evolution of these instruments continued through the 1980s as United Nuclear developed MAP-2 and MAP-3 analyzers for enhanced lead detection purposes.
XRF For Commercial Use
In 1994 electric contracting company Amptek developed the XR-100 X-ray detector for commercial use. This thermoelectrically cooled and simple to use detector replaced the need for liquid nitrogen to cool detectors in many applications. The XR-100 device was selected for the Pathfinder Mission to Mars, where it successfully analyzed rocks and soil in a cost-effective and precise manner.
The first fully-handheld XRF detector was created in 1994 by Niton Inc., a Massachusetts-based company, in which this Niton XL-309 instrument offered intensified analytical performance at a lower price than the previous instruments on the market.
As interest in these analytical systems began to grow, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in conjunction with KeyMaster Technologies designed the first TRACER II unit, which included an argon transmission target. This aspect of the instrument allowed NASA and KeyMaster to create a portable vacuum XRF analyzer that had the ability to perform on-the-spot chemical analysis, which was a task previously only possible in a chemical laboratory.
The first applications of the TRACER II unit allowed NASA to quickly and accurately determine elemental composition on large objects, such as a rocket motor, which was a major breakthrough for this organization. Modifications to the TRACER II unit allowed increased sensitivity to specific metals, including a new ability to measure magnesium and aluminum content in aluminum alloys.
As demands for increased accurate and efficacious handheld XRF tools began to rise, competition between industries to produce grew as well. In 2008, Brucker Elemental produced Bruker XFLASHTM silicon drift detector (SDD) technology that was integrated into the first-ever SDD-based handheld XRF unit, also known as the S1 TRACER. Still a unit with one of the best resolutions, Bruker’s S1 TRACER allows the analysis of light elements, including magnesium, aluminum, and silicon in air, while also providing an increased concentration range for these elements of interest.
He's introducing the video and he says "I think I might have to add it to my encyclopedia of cute machinery along with the Renault FT tank and the Myford Super 7 lathe."
Pretty. I like the gold wheels, I shouldn't, chrome plated steel is only correct kind of wheel for a motorcycle. The picture is out there on the internet, but that's all, no information on who made it, or when, or where. Just something to tantalize those of us who spend our whole lives on the internet. There is a real world out there, totally disconnected from the digital one.
From The Guardian. Charlie Kirk was standing in the University Quad (lower right end of red line). Shooter was on the roof of the Losee Center (upper left end of the red line), 400 feet away.
I wrote this a couple of months ago, but I didn't really have anything to add that hadn't already been all over the net. so I didn't post it. Before this happened I had never heard of Charlie Kirk or Turning Point USA.
I have been thinking about a One-Handed Keyboard off and on since college, some 45 years ago. I wrote up some thoughts I had on the subject and posted them here back in 2007. That's all I've done, I never got any farther than that. I doubt I could adapt to one now.
Line from a letter to Willamette Weekmight explain why Oregon consistently elects Democrats:
One party rule: That’s because the R’s keep nominating folks out of step with Oregon. Some 20 years ago a former Republican elected official said: The Oregon Republican Party has been hijacked by an extreme right-wing Libertarian faction. So that no longer can it elect anyone in a statewide election. (I think since then, 2 R’s have been elected to a minor post.)
This leads me to think that Oregon Republicans are dunderheads more concerned with ideological purity than actually trying to improve our situation. Also, frogs like water and water, at least in cartoons, is blue.
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