- The world's fastest rocket to reach space 🥶.
- Is This The BEST MAGIC Trick? 🤯🤣 - I'm still not sure what happened
- Induction Levitation Melting 😳.
- Peltier Element + Hot Water
- TITLE THE DEER THAT DIVES - Moose in water
- The Art of Gabi Butler - Cheerleader gymnast
- Meteorite jewelry, is it expensive? - Deep metal detecting
- This is a crazyrc duck 😂 - RC decoy
- The Bourne Ultimatum Shot That Required Real Guts 🎬💥
- DON'T BLINK 👁️⚡ 0.01mm Precision Lens Cutting
Thursday, October 1, 2026
10 Short Videos #6272
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Strategist Kanbei - Netflix Series
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| Kuroda Yoshitaka (1546-1604) was a chief strategist under Toyotomi Hideyoshi. |
I wrote my take on this show and it doesn't feel wonderful, so I went looking for other reviews and I while I did find some, I didn't find anything wonderful enough to post here. Maybe this post will be better when I get done messing with it.
I am kind of wrapped up in this show. We spent two or three hours a night for the last three weeks watching it.
Suprisingly there is no trailer for this show on YouTube. It's a long series, 50 episodes, roughly 45 minutes each.
The show sucked us in and didn't let go until we got through it all. I suspect it was due to the acting and the soundtrack. Soundtrack is pretty great, mostly invisible, but occasionally in tense situations it would become heavy. There wasn't much else unless you count the samurai armor, which appears to be half voodoo talismans and half actual armor, if bamboo can be armor. I don't know what their armor is made of, but it ain't plate steel.
The acting is what made it. Several characters had specific traits and after a while we got to where we could tell how a scene was going to go, based on the well-known characteristics of the people involved.
Starts in the mid 16th century and goes till Kanbei's death. Most of the scenes are interiors, about evenly divided between court proceedings and domestic discussions. Everyone is barefoot all the time, unless they are going to war, then they wear straw sandals. Or you are Hideyoshi, when you get to be king you wear golden slippers that look like they are made of Mylar. The buildings are very nice, but the interior furnishings are very sparse. I suspect the show was made on a shoestring budget. Later episodes have more stuff, more outdoor scenes, more elaborate battle scenes, that sort of thing. The earlier episodes are very spare. Frugal, mind you, not stingy (quote from the show).
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| Map of Japan in the 16th Century CE Not like any seen in the show |
There are some battle scenes, but they are very brief and only serve to show you that there is fighting going on. Maps are frequently shown, sometimes black & white paper maps are shown in court or in commander's meetings, and sometimes color maps are shown on the screen, but I was never able to make head or tails of them. I don't think they were oriented with north at the top.
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| 16th-century Japanese atakebune coastal warship |
Once in a while a scene showing dozens of ships would appear on the screen for a few seconds. Evidently the navy was big deal. There was even rumors of an armored ship. We saw a drawing of it, once, in court.
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| Portuguese carrack in Nagasaki, 17th century |
Jesuit priests from Portugal showed up early on, and Christians were present throughout the show. Hideyoshi kicked out the priests when he became king on an account of them getting uppity.
Mostly the show is about the various lords negotiating alliances with their neighbors in anticipation of a battle with another alliance. Half the time these guys renege on their promises and switch sides which leads to lots of teeth knashing and hair pulling. Oh yea, most of the lords have the tops of their heads shaved leaving only hair on the sides and back.
The show mostly makes sense, but every now and then something happens that doesn't, which leaves me wondering wtf is going on here? For instance, there are no instances of single combat. If someone does something they don't like, they just store it away even though everyone is armed with swords. Seems like in Europe, fights got picked at the drop of a hat. Now the fact that there are no chairs and everyone is sitting or kneeling on the floor a good ten to twenty feet away from the others - means that to attack someone, you are going to have to get up. Maybe that's to give the guards time to step in and quell the unruly. No chairs until you go to war, then when the commanders have a meeting everyone has a stool to sit on.
Everybody has like six names: the name they were born with, the name they got when they became an adult, when they achieved a certain rank, when they had some cosmic insight. And as they are all multi-syllable, alien concoctions of letters, we gave them all nicknames, so we could tell who we were talking about. Monkey remained Monkey even when he became king of the world. Kanbei could be Kan-bey or Kan-bee. Nobunaga was No-mumble-mumble. On one hand I want to say No-bun-aga, but on the other hand I think No-bu-na-ga is more like the correct pronunciation, or as close as a western tongue is going to get. So whenever I wanted to say his name I had a dilemma. Do I say it this way? Or that way? And I couldn't make up my mind before the word needed to come out of my mouth, so the tongue was on its own and you get mumble-mumble. As usual, only very rarely I can distinguish the names in the audio.
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| Japanese arquebuses of the Edo period |
The Jesuits brought guns. Lots and lots of guns, which they apparently sold to anyone willing to pay.
Oh, let's not forget about the invasion of Korea. What a good idea.
AI
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| List of 5 Best AI Code Generators in 2025 |
I think I've figured it out how this AI (Artificial Intelligence) biz got started.
I saw a short video recently. I've gone back and looked for it but no luck. In it some professor dude is talking about three kinds of people:
Those who are
- good with speaking,
- good with writing,
- good at making things.
The last one he calls talent. Being any one of these types doesn't mean you have no skill in the others, but people tend to concentrate on what they are good at.
Writing computer code takes a certain amount of talent. Writing good computer code takes talent, but it also needs some of #2, the writing, because one of the things that makes computer code 'good' is that it is intelligible to other programmers. I was going to say other people, but I suspect that to most people, even intelligent people, computer code is like an alien language. Kind of like how Japanese is to me. Anyway, 'good' code is readable by people other than the author.
There are few people who are good at writing code and at motivating other people to work for a common goal, which is what you need to succeed in business. Doesn't mean you will succeed, but you have a better chance if you have a clear direction to pursue, and that generally requires one person being in charge.
The big problem comes when you have large numbers of people working on computer programs. You have no idea who is a good programmer or not. Meanwhile, all conventional computer problems have been solved, we have libraries of code to do anything you could possibly want. All you need to do is stitch them together into a somewhat coherent whole. And that's where AI comes in. Some smarts and some money go together and said, we don't need no steenking programmers, we can just dump all these libraries in a big pot and give the machine a list of simple instructions and whamo! zhamo! A new program!
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10 Short Videos #6271
- Things moms consider common sense🤣
- Helicopter Landing on Tuna Boat
- Mount St. Helens Eruption
- Smooth skills
- Amazing Blue Precipitate Reaction
- smooth skills 096
- Mission impossible 😅🤣 - Bug on board
- 🌷🌸🐝🍯 - Honeybees
- Not to be dramatic.... - but yes, very dramatic entrance
- When your dog sees magic for the first time
Tuesday, September 29, 2026
Digger
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| Tom Cruise as Digger - ©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett C |
I'm not sure why this picture triggered me. I mean, I like Tom Cruise, but I didn't recognize him right off. In any case it prompted me to take a look at Variety's review of Cruise's new movie Digger which starts like this:
“Digger,” starring Tom Cruise as a Texas oil tycoon who unleashes forces even more powerful than himself, is a movie that thinks it’s delivering something bigger than a mere message; it thinks it’s bringing us the word. Cruise, under pounds of jowly make-up and thinning disheveled white hair, plays Digger Rockwell, an ancient Southern fossil-fuel titan who doesn’t just lord it over his company. He’s a man who rules the oil industry, and therefore rules America and maybe the world.
Both the movie and the review are kind of nuts, but I did read a science fiction disaster story where something (nuclear bombs maybe?) had unleashed a titanic amount of methane (from seabed mineral nodules, maybe?) and to combat this they set the methane on fire (using more nuclear bombs, maybe?), reasoning the CO2 is less of a greenhouse gas than methane.
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10 Short Videos #6270
- Круто, ловко, синхронно! - Cool, clever, synchronous! - Horse & acrobat
- This Furnace Spins 20 Tons of Molten Glass Into a Telescope Mirror
- The Ultimate POV Rally Driver Experience
- 5 inch 38 as WWII's most effective AA gun - thanks to the proximity fuse
- Sticky Tape Can Make X-Rays
- Samboan, Cebu Island, Philippines 🇵🇭 beautiful beach 🏝️ - beautiful woman
- 1000 VS 5000 Rounds per minute - anti-aircraft weapons
- 环塔SS10卡玛兹大猛兽 - Ring Tower SS10 Kamaz Great Beast - Truck crossing sand dunes
- They tested whether Leonardo da Vinci’s design actually worked 💀
- He flew onto a navy ship - using a jet pack
Monday, September 28, 2026
Ultrasound Surgery
What Is MR-Guided Focused Ultrasound?
Northwestern Medicine
Jack has been suffering from essential tremor. A week ago he went in for ultrasound surgery to stop the tremor in his right hand. I had no idea there was such a thing.
MRI-guided focused ultrasound surgery for essential tremors was first used to treat a patient in 2009 during proof-of-concept clinical trials, and it later received FDA approval in 2016.
Surgery was done at OHSU. It apparently worked. I stopped by to see him the next day and he was fine. They told him if he wants to, he can come back next year and for the other hand. Right now he's thinking the procedure was so arduous (tightening the bolts that hold the frame to his head) that he's not interested in repeating it. After all his good hand is working fine now. We shall see what he has to say next year.
Spaghetti
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| Old Spaghetti Factory |
Went for a walk down in South Waterfront this morning and found myself by the Old Spaghetti Factory. It's an impressive building, somebody was obviously having grandiose thoughts. I think it's kind of cool, so cool that I thought we should get the family together and go down there sometime for dinner. Then I noticed signs attached to the inside of some of the big plate glass windows. The signs faced inwards and read Do Not Touch The Glass. I suspect the reason is that families bring their rowdy kids there and the kids smear their grubby little hands all over the glass and the manager isn't willing to pay someone to stand by the windows and keep them clean. Is this related to the elimination of corporal punishment in schools? Anyway, if that's the situation, I don't think I wanna go. I'll go to Giovanni's instead.
The picture is from Google Earth.
My Watch Stopped
Of all the gin joints in all the world
Andrew Barbin
But having snuck into the room of this American and arranged for a message to be delivered, it suddenly struck the Count that Humphrey Bogart would never turn down an offer of a drink after midnight. In fact all evidence suggested that Bogart preferred his drinking after midnight - when the orchestra had stopped playing, the bar stools had emptied, and the revelers had stumbled off into the night. That was the hour when, with the saloon doors closed, the lights turned low, and a bottle of whiskey on the table, Men of Intent could speak without the distractions of love and laughter.
P. S. The volume on the above clip is very low, so I looked around for a do-dad that could boost the volume and found YouTube Volume Control 2.4.1, a Chrome browser extension. Coincidentally, the Ctrl-Shift-Left Arrow key combination quit working. (I use this when I want to highlight several words.) Was it a coincidence? I have run into problems with the keyboard before where something that used to work just fine quits. Surely I would have made a note in this blog about it, but look as I might, either here or on Google, I could find nothing that would explain it, which seemed really odd. And then I came across this piece, and boom, we're back at the volume control extension. Turn it off and Ctrl-Shift-Left Arrow resumes working normally.
P. P. S. My watch has also stopped, but I still wear it. If I don't wear it my hand feels funny. It was never a very good watch for telling time, it's a chronometer with some extra dials cluttering up the face which makes telling the time kind of iffy. I use my phone for the time now, so my watch is just jewelry. Some people like gold and diamonds because of their value. I like my Aluminum watch as it is a lovely example of the fine art of mechanical engineering.
10 Short Videos #6269
- Eagle power attack
- Nobody would believe that if it weren’t for the camera 🤣
- infinite floor
- The power of doubt (and an announcement) - African mountains
- Not Your Typical Landing… IL-76 Edition 😳
- Glad this guy managed to get a job - parking fines
- Do you like this mini turbine engine model? - transparent jet engine
- This “New” Chinese Jetpack Demo 🚀
- When southern ppl FINALLY go to the doctor
- Launching a fighter jet with a button.
Sunday, September 27, 2026
Rollin', Rollin', Rollin'
September 25, 2026
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| Syrian Tankers en route to Iraq - Reuters/Orhan Qereman |
Syria Opens Overland Fuel Transit Route To Iraq Amid Hormuz Closure
The video at top looks suspiciously like it was generated by AI, the photo looks real enough.
It seems they are shipping gasoline from Syria to Iraq and crude oil from Iraq to Syria. I wonder if they are using the same tanks for both.
Via Zerohedge
All of which is just an excuse to post this:
The Blues Brothers (1980) - Rawhide Scene (5/9) | Movieclips
Movieclips
Russia Today
Great story on Terry Cowan's New Notes from a Commonplace Book that starts off like this:
I read a good article in RT today.
Ahem. My how times have changed. Only three years ago, back in the bad old “rules-based international order” days, any reference to Russia Today or any other such source would have been dismissed with a snort as “Russian disinformation.” RT hasn’t changed, but in the current information age, the environment it has fostered certainly has (for good and bad). Dissident voices now have many platforms, allowing small-fries like this site to follow in their wake. The lid can no longer be contained on the Established Narrative, what I like to call That Which Must be Believed.
I've been following RT since at least 2013. Nobody I know reads them, and if the topic comes up, most people deride it, including my family, so it's really nice to hear someone else endorse them.
After the introduction, he gets to the meat of his post, which starts like this:
The story that brought this to mind is Evgeny Norin’s The ‘stab in the back’ That Wasn’t: Why Stalin sent the Red Army into Poland.
WW2, the war that keeps on giving.
Trouble Again
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| Northern Ireland Protestor |
Thousands of protesters blocked a road leading into a Catholic area of Northern Ireland ahead of an Orange Order march permitted for the first time in 28 years, reviving a bitter marching dispute that was a major flashpoint during the Troubles.
The linked story is supposed to have a video, but it no worky. No matter, the blurb pretty much covers it all. Apparently nobody involved has learned anything. Or maybe hate is an essential family value. I'm beginning to think the two sides really deserve each other. At least the trouble is confined to a small area of Ireland so all the meatheads can concentrate there and leave the rest of country alone.
Anyway, it's an excuse to post this tune:
Grateful Dead - Casey Jones (Winterland 12/31/78)
Grateful Dead
10 Short Videos #6268
- 3D Printing a Boat
- DO YOUR JOB 🫵🏻 - Big Merla
- How Real Truckers Row a 31-Speed "Twin Biscuit" Transmission! 🤠
- Recirculating Ball
- 19 de julho de 2026 - Women's exercise / dance class
- Nobody Rides Sand Like Jeffrey Herlings 🤯 - Motorcycle on sand
- AR Shotgun with DRUM
- Jet Powered Harley Davidson is Ridiculous
- Peeling Open A Giant Wasp Nest To See Its Multi‑Layer Inner Structure
- China CNC Machining Services | 5-Axis CNC Machining for Complex Parts
Saturday, September 26, 2026
Sounds very African to me...
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| Leijdekkers at the New Year’s service. |
Bayou Renaissance Man has a fabulous post about one Jos Leijdekkers. Go read the whole thing.
Sounds very African to me...
I'm amused to read about a Dutch drug hitman who has apparently "captured" the entire African nation of Sierra Leone, effectively making its government and security forces dance to his tune.
There isn't a movie about this guy yet, thought I expect there will be one in the works shortly, if it hasn't already happened. Meanwhile we have a tune:
Leijdekkers is celebrated in krio rap, the English-based creole spoken in Sierra Leone—“Ar change di game e name lek Umar Sheriff” runs a lyric of Drizilik’s recent hit “Sabi Road”. . .
Drizilik’s recent hit “Sabi Road” is on YouTube. It's not bad, and it's pretty entertaining. As a change from what passes for popular music here, there was nothing overtly sexual and no swearing, just talkin', which is just rap is, right? Well, at least as near as I can tell. The cant they use is like a distant third cousin to English. I tried embedding the video but Drizilik won't allow it.
Not sure who this Umar Sheriff is, is he talking about Omar Sheriff? No, that's just me being old. We're talking about Africa, not the west, so he's no doubt talking about:
Mohammad Umer (1955 – 2021), known professionally as Umer Shareef, was a Pakistani actor, host, comedian, director, producer, writer, singer and television personality.
On no evidence at all, I suspect Umer of being Pakistan's James Bond.
P. S. I haven't read the article linked by the photo caption. It's late and I've got a lot of nonsense to deal with.
P. P. S. YouTube has an apparently infinite selection of videos on Jos. I'm probably not going to watch any of them. I have seen his story told in an endless series of crime sagas on Netflix. It will probably appear on our Netflix home page. I'm sure Google and Netflix are in cahoots. Right now, I'm busy watching Strategist Kanbei, which is all about Samurais in sixteenth century Japan. Coincidentally, My Daily Kona has been posting about Samurai.
Chicago Concert
Chicago - Saturday In The Park (1973)
MTVArchives
Went to the Chicago concert at the Hillsboro ballpark last night. A fine show. The crowd surprised me, though it shouldn't have, this is Oregon after all. In any case it seemed to have pulled all the old hippies out of the woodwork. Very different from what we saw in Las Vegas. Next time I go to a concert I need to remember to take the day off and rest up in advance of the evening festivities. I didn't and now I'm going to be resting up for days before I recover.
We bought tickets from StubHub and for the second time they failed to deliver. We ended up buying tickets at the gate. We should get a refund from Stubby brains. We shall see.
P. S. They sang 25 or 6 to 4. I recognized the tune, but that's all, so I'm trying to figure out what's going on with the numbers. I'm hearing 25 oh 6 2 4 and that's only six numbers. Is it because he forgot the last one, or maybe he didn't hear it? Or maybe it was the first one. That, at least, seems plausible. Wouldn't think he would miss a number in the middle, but I suppose if someone's drunk and it's late at night and they're in a hurry, it's basically a miracle he got six numbers. You only have to try each of the ten digits in seven places - 7 times 10 is 70. That's all, he just has to try 70 different numbers. Just hope she isn't using a satellite phone that has like 25 digits, that would change the situation. Anyway, those are my idle thoughts on matter. When I finally looked it up I found this:
". . . Lamm's dynamic but cryptic "25 or 6 to 4" (Chicago's first Top 5 hit), which is a reference to a songwriter trying to write at 25 or 26 minutes before 4 o'clock in the morning"
Robots
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| Robots Installed in 2025 |
From Construction Physics:
The US passed Japan to be the second largest installer of industrial robots in 2025, with 38,400 newly-installed robots against Japan’s 36,200. China is still far ahead of both with 354,000, almost 10x the US. [IFR]
I was hoping to post an animated video of an endless parade of marching robots, something similar in scale to the old Soviet Union's May Day Parade's, but all I found were videos of marching Chinese robots at Bejings Ice Ribbon Stadium and marching American robots at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. While impressive, they aren't endless. Yet.
Weird Asteroid
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| University of Arizona's Dr. Allison McGraw |
The Silicon Graybeard reports:
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has named an asteroid for singer/comedian Al - better known as 'Weird Al' - Yankovic, it was reported on Wednesday, Sept. 23.
Allie nominated Al and presented the award to him before his concert in Tuscon.
10 Short Videos #6267
- THE BEST THERAPY WHEN SHE GETS MAD AT ME🤣
- Do you know why do Chinese are massive producing this 550cc Rc engine? 😂 - Because people in war zones are buying them to power their drones.
- At Least There was a New Truck 😂
- Alistándose Para Despegar De La Campana Tamazula Durango - Getting Ready to Take Off from La Campana, Tamazula, Durango
- That cow had no chance. - Cowboys rounding up strays
- Widgeon - flying boat takes off from water
- Howard DGA-15P - Landing
- 400 TONS REVERSED IN TWO SECONDS - River Don (UK, not Russia) engine powers rolling mill
- The First Carrier Strike in History; Tondern, 1918
- The Reindeer Cyclone
Friday, September 25, 2026
10 Short Videos #6266
- Safe Disassembly of Hydraulic Breaker Nitrogen Accumulators. - for breaking rocks
- Bahn schwingt: Wie ein alter Caterpillar zum Reisebett wird - The train swings: How an old Caterpillar becomes a travel bed
- Chef Mr. Zhuzi slices a potato
- Un vaso de agua sobre la LIMA - A glass of water over the lime - learning to file flatly
- Radial Impeller Drone Hovering
- من الاستلقاء إلى الانتصاب التام! روبوت بشري ينهض من بطنه ويتمشى بسلاسة خيالية! 🤖🚷⚡ - From lying down to a full erection! A humanoid robot rises from its stomach and walks with incredible smoothness! ⚡
- Getting to know Babóca 🏹 - woman shoots a dozen arrows from horseback
- Jus for fun 😂 - Walking on your own bricks that you carry with you
- POV: That friend with a strict curfew
- That last bop at the end 😂 - Coach secures young gymnast's hair
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