Tenczyn Castle is about 16 miles west of Krakow in south central Poland. Original built in the 14th century, rebuilt in the 16th and the curtain wall added in the 17th. Burned in the 18th century after a lightning strike. Wikipedia has a floor plan and several images.
MAD White has the story about the artist's concept. They also have several images with sliders that allow you to compare the artist's renditions with older images and the with the current building. Very cool.
I saw a reaction video based on this girl with her yo-yo on YouTube. I didn't much care for the reaction and I thought this girl is pretty good, so I dug up the original. I haven't bothered to figure out how to download TikTok videos or I would have uploaded it to YouTube. Instead I just embedded it here.
Stopped in Spella Coffee yesterday for coffee. It's a tiny place, maybe ten by ten, no seating, no food, just good coffee. Noticed this door right off and even without coffee I realized I needed a pic. The pic doesn't do it justice, it is much more impressive in person.
We watched two episodes before we bailed. It was just awful. Seems like the shows creators wanted to show how people react to a horrific situation, but the situation they constructed to enable this was put together by a two year old. With a little more intelligence they might have been able to make something of it, but, I dunno, were they stupid? Or lazy? Or just didn't care. I don't care.
Did cause me to realize that there are two French colonies with near identical names. French Guiana is in South America and French Guinea is, or was, in Africa. French Guinea is now just Guinea. Problem, for me anyway, is that they sound almost alike. Guiana is pronounced gee-ana, and the African one is pronounced ginny.
Awful lot of complicated equipment on that bridge. Wiring all that up must have been a nightmare.
Her Majesty's Yacht Britannia is the former royal yacht of the British monarchy. She was in their service from 1954 to 1997. She was the 83rd such vessel since King Charles II acceded to the throne in 1660, and is the second royal yacht to bear the name, the first being the racing cutter built for the Prince of Wales in 1893. During her 43-year career, the yacht travelled more than one million nautical miles around the world to more than 600 ports in 135 countries. Now retired from royal service, Britannia is permanently berthed at Ocean Terminal, Leith in Edinburgh, Scotland, where it is a visitor attraction with over 300,000 visits each year.
Why this data center is causing a ruckus
Morning Brew
Northeast Hillsboro, where I live, is getting overrun with data centers. Seems like a new, giant, tilt-wall building goes up every week. I wonder if all this investment is going to pay off. I can see how AI (Artificial Intelligence) can be useful for some things. I ask Google questions and it usually can provide a reasonable answer, and I've seen some clever videos made by AI (I suspect the script came from a human), but nothing that could justify the zillions of dollars being spent on these techno-palaces.
I suspect the biggest use of AI is going to be running voice chat-bots for dealing with customer service calls. And given that the whiz kids have deciphered human speech and can now reproduce most anyone's voice, we are going to see scamming elevated to the next level. And all those call centers in India are likely going to be replaced by chat-bots.
Also, with the proliferation of AI and the abysmally low level of intelligence of the general population, Artificial Intelligence is going to degenerate into Artificial Stupidity,
JMSmith has a philosophical approach to all this. In his latest post he is talking about Kevin O'Leary and ends with this:
It is obvious that life’s losers do not understand the secrets of success. But it is much less obvious, at least to successful men like Kevin O’Leary, that life’s winners do not understand the secrets of failure. They imagine they understand failure because they have known low points from which they “bounced back,” but the first secret of failure is that a failure does not bounce. Life’s losers hit bottom like a bag of sand and not like a basketball. Losers go plop; winners go boing. Winners think sandbags could bounce if they only tried harder. Losers think winners are bags, or rather balls, of wind.
Competition is Kevin O’Leary’s god, and I suspect he would be delighted if the nation’s motto were changed to, “In Competition We Trust.” But he does not understand that Competition looks to life’s losers very much as Yahweh looked to a trembling Amalkite. He does not understand that most men are not eager to enter a competitive footrace because they are fat, emphysemic, or lacking one leg. Life’s losers exchange loyalty for protection, not for the right to compete in contests in which they are certain to finish last.
Notes for the uneducated, like me:
Yahweh is the personal name of the God of ancient Israel and Judah, represented by the Hebrew Tetragrammaton (YHWH) and primarily used in the Hebrew Bible. Emerging as a national deity from the Iron Age Levant, Yahweh is identified in scripture as the creator and deliverer of the Israelites, often associated with attributes of power, war, and faithful covenant.
The Amalekites were an ancient, nomadic biblical nation known as persistent enemies of the Israelites, inhabiting the Negev desert south of Canaan. Descended from Esau's grandson Amalek, they were branded as hostile for attacking the vulnerable rear of the Israelite Exodus, leading to a divine decree for their eventual total destruction.
We tried watching Remarkably Bright Creatures but I found it tedious. They do have some good shots of their star - Marcellus the Octopus - have to give them credit for that.
【本予告第一弾】大迫力の乱闘シーン公開!衝撃のクライム・アクション・サスペンスが再び。| インフォーマ -闇を生きる獣たち- 11/7(木) ABEMAで無料放送スタート
[Official Trailer #1] Explosive Brawl Scenes Revealed! The Shocking Crime-Action-Suspense Saga Returns. | Informa: Beasts Living in the Shadows — Free Broadcast Starts Nov 7 (Thu) on ABEMA
ABEMA ドラマ【公式】
Complicated crime thriller. Not too bad, but certainly not great. We've got three main characters:
Mishima, young, inexperienced, foolish and naive, hence Kihara often calls him an idiot. His one redeeming trait is that he seems to be able to hold onto a camera.
Kihara, slightly older, much more savvy, but arrogant and obnoxious.
Hirose, the cute girl who provides some glue to this awkward trio.
There are also half a dozen villains. Hirose seems to be the only decent, competent person of the lot. Since she doesn't screw up, she doesn't get much screen time. The two guys get plenty of screen time acting out their foolish incompetent bravdo.
Everyone, which includes our gang, a Thai gang led by a former Japanese detective, a gang of thugs operating under the direction of the totally corrupt Japanese Deputy Director of Public Safety, and who knows who else, is after the McGuffin, a computer chip inside a glass vile that supposedly holds files documenting all the evil deeds those in power have done for the last umpteen years.
The story starts in Japan but quickly moves to Thailand where we encounter a multitude of heavily tattooed thugs who like nothing better than beating the tar out of each other. We have several large scale brawls and at least one big shootout that leaves dozens of men dead on the ground.
You can get English subtitles by clicking on CC and then on the six toothed gear (six pointed star?) to get to settings where you can click on:
At least a dozen gunshots rang out inside the Philippine Senate building in Manila earlier on Wednesday as police and marines moved to arrest Senator Ronald "Bato" Dela Rosa on an International Criminal Court warrant for alleged crimes against humanity linked to former President Rodrigo Duterte's brutal war on drugs, a campaign that left more than 6,000 suspected drug dealers dead in operations.
Could it be that the Duterte's war on drugs was impacting the Hague's drug profits?
A French startup has completed ground avionics testing of an unusual fixed-wing aircraft with a pneumatic wing structure, targeting long-endurance cargo logistics missions with a design that trades speed for dramatically reduced energy consumption per kilogram transported.
“Celeste isn’t a blimp, it’s a fixed-wing aircraft,” the company stated. “Lift is aerodynamic, not buoyancy. What’s pneumatic is the wing structure itself: a pressurized textile envelope replacing the rigid skin and spars, which is what makes the airframe deployable, field-repairable, and gives it an unusual radar signature for an 8-meter platform.”
The DKW SB 500 was made from 1934 to 1939. About 20,000 were made. The two-cylinder, two-stroke engine produced 15 horsepower that enabled it to reach a top speed of 75 MPH.
Jack got hisself a new toy - a VILIM Vibration Therapy Ball - to help with his essential tremor. Kinda spendy at $300, but like Dennis said - that's less than a dollar a day before Jack will be able to see a specialist about his problem.
Field Mower Jackshaft and Failed Tapered Roller Bearing
Seems like every week Dennis reports more trouble with his mowers. He's got at least two, one for the lawn and one for field. Parts are on order so we expect him to have it up and running before too long.