Pergelator: April 2026

Thursday, April 16, 2026

Tone of Voice

Lone Star Parson posted a video about soldiers of the Gloucestershire Regiment. I tried watching the video, but the narration repulsed me. I can't explain why exactly, perhaps it sounds like a marketing spiel. Tone of voice has a lot to do with whether I will watch or post a video. Can anyone explain this?

Funnies

10 Video Shorts #6104

L’été des Quatre Saisons de Vivaldi prend vie avec panache [The Summer from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons comes to life with panache.]

Bonhoeffer: Evil and Stupidity

Yuriko Kotani id Brit-ish

Ham Cleaning IX Ham Cutting Competition of Monroyo, Teruel [Spain]

Неофициальный Царь зверей [The Unofficial King of Beasts - Honey badger versus python]

Funny Snooker Frame

Quando lo stampo si rompe… nasce una campana! [When the mold breaks… a bell is born!]

Wake up dude

Rock crushing

Ashley Ottesen questions for God

Wednesday, April 15, 2026

Lighthouses

It's 90% more efficient. You probably won't like it.
Chris Spargo and 2 more

We've been watching Turn of the Tide which is set in the Azores. There is a big shootout at a lighthouse, and then this video pops up. So now I'm looking at lighthouses in the Azores and there are a bunch of them, so a plotting we go.

Azores Lighthouses

There might be more, this is all of the ones listed on Wikipedia.

Turn of the tide - Netflix

Turn of the tide | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix

Pretty great story. A couple of mafiosi from Sicily are trying to sail their sailboat loaded with cocaine from South America to Europe. They run into bad weather near the Azores and their boat is damaged. They eventually anchor near one of the islands. Not quite sure what they were thinking here, but they offload the drugs and stash them in a cave on the shore. Don't want the police to inspect the boat and find a bunch of cocaine on board, I suppose. The bad weather is not quite done and soon packages of cocaine are washing up on the beach, and boy howdy, do things change in town.

The story follows four friends as they attempt to capitalize on this windfall. The four are one smart guy, our hero Eduardo, Rafael, a local soccer star, his girlfriend, Sylvia, and Carlinhos, a flaming queen. As you might expect, the local police, the mainland police, the local thug and the mafia are all interested in recovering the drugs. Chaos ensues.

The Azores are a long way from anywhere and the dozen or so islands stretch over 400 miles of ocean.

Rabo de Peixe, Azores

Eduardo and Rafael manage to get a hold of several hundred pounds of this coke and stash it in a hole on the Vila Franca Islet:

Ilhéu de Vila Franca do Campo
Appears at the 1:20 mark in episode 3
Former site of Red Bull Cliff Diving

Azores Whale Watching has a page with several photos of this islet.

Taxes

The Beatles - Taxman
The Beatles

Quotes about taxes stolen from Flares into Darkness:

Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.

- Calvin Coolidge -

What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue.

- Thomas Paine -

A fine is a tax for doing something wrong. A tax is a fine for doing something right.

- Anonymous -

The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.

- Albert Einstein -

We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.

- Leona Helmsley -

Millwright

Industrial centrifugal water pumps driven by electric motors

Busted nuckles has a fascinating post up about industrial bearing alignment. Your're thinking 'how could industrial bearing alignment be fascinating?' Go read the horror stories in the comments. You might think differently.

Funnies

10 Video Shorts #6103

Gas-Powered Washing Machine

The Grandpa Show! New Range Rover Sport

Umbrella blocks Infra-red

이게 진짜 스폿용접이다 (알루미늄 실전) [This Is Real Spot Welding (Aluminum in Action)]

Do You See It? The Journey Is Beautiful ~ But Notice at 360° We Come Back Home

Wire and cable factory production

Kelsey Plum has a cannon for an arm

Starlink Hits Ten Thousand Satellites

Giraffes fighting

Why Starship Doesn’t Need Helium Anymore

Tuesday, April 14, 2026

The Night Agent: Season 3 - Netflix Series - Update

A couple of days ago I said this series was awful, however, it is now three days later and we have finished the series and I must say that the last three episodes were much better. Or maybe it was because I was drinking tequila.

Episode 7 has a fascinating scene where the villain (the assassin) interviews our hero (Peter) after injecting him with Blue 88, a truth serum. Our hero is struggling to keep from revealing the location of his cohorts, but it's a losing battle. The villain doesn't badger Peter with direct questions, but leads him down the garden path and the information just comes out. Cleverly done.

There is also a scene where the President denies all culpability and it sounds so much like what we get from the White House (any White House, this one or previous one, or any since Kennedy), I just burst out laughing.

I wonder if they changed writers?

Knitting & Reading

Knitting via view from the porch

Fillyjonk likes to knit. Today she has a few words to say about reading for fun. I wouldn't be surprised if she knit the pigeon.

Funnies

10 Short Videos #6102

Why Starship’s Computers Hit a Hard Limit

TVR were on something back then

Nobody Perfect 😂 | That One Friend [oddball car mods]

Así funciona la maniobra de Heimlich💨 [Here's how the Heimlich maneuver works]

Just know I’m probably always one minor inconvenience away from losing my 💩

Hitchhiking Seal Rides Cargo Ship Bow

The Aztecs Were BRUTAL!

turbomolecular pump cutaway

Finishing Off The Millstone!

Wild wok woman

Monday, April 13, 2026

Orbán

Professor Schlevogt's Compass

Fine story on RT about Hungary and European Union. It's kind of long, so I've only included the introduction. The professor is a heck of a wordsmith, so it's worth reading just to enjoy the flow. As to his argument, I totally agree. Europe is going to the dogs, and quickly.

Prof. Schlevogt’s Compass No. 53: Europe’s dying heart – Hungary’s vote delivers lethal kick
Orbán’s defeat will saddle EU taxpayers with over €100bn in short order – yet this is but the tip of the iceberg.

The speechwriter of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen must have fancied himself (genderspeak: themselves) deserving of a handsome bonus when he placed the following words into his principal’s mouth: “Europe’s heart is beating stronger in Hungary tonight.”

Yet his euphoria – and the delirious jubilation of the liberal European elite at the defeat of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán by his rival Péter Magyar in the 2026 parliamentary elections – will prove short-lived.

If anything, Europe’s “heart” is not beating stronger, but faster, driven by a final surge of adrenaline: the reflex of a chronically diseased system under acute stress. What masquerades as renewed vitality, then, is merely the pathological sign of a failing organism – a last, frantic acceleration before terminal failure.

The Union’s demise will not be averted by rhetoric; it is being hastened by it. In the absence of Viktor Orbán’s restraining role, five mutually reinforcing forces of erosion across multiple landscapes will accelerate, converging to precipitate the EU’s ignominious end.

Financial Crime

Stolen entire from The Scratching Post:

Why Do You Rob States?

When asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton replied, “Because that's where the money is.”

States have a lot more money than banks.

This is a partial reply to Tim's comment on a recent post where he pointed out that even 200,000 Chinese anchor babies becoming eligible to vote wouldn't be that big of a deal. I might have thought that as little as 3 months ago. Something completely changed my mind. The California High Speed Choo Choo, as Deano calls it, flipped me.

Authorized in 2008, it was supposed to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco. Anyone familiar with California permitting and zoning red tape knew instantly that it was going to be insanely expensive and take forever. AI says that as of April 2026, the estimated cost for the full Phase 1 California High-Speed Rail project (San Francisco to Los Angeles/Anaheim) has reached approximately $126 billion to $135 billion and I have no reason to doubt it.

Not a single mile of track has been laid so far.

This sad, little bridge in Central California is just about the only solid evidence the high speed choo choo project even exists.

Someone on X made a snarky comment that completely changed my thinking about not just the high speed choo choo, but the graft and corrupting uncovered in Minneapolis, California and elsewhere as well as the voter fraud. In short, the post asserted that there was never any intention of building the railroad at all. It was all graft from the start.

It immediately rang true. When it was announced in 2008, I thought there was no way it was ever going to happen. I'd gone through the permitting processes on relatively straightforward remodels and construction and they were beyond onerous. This one, cutting across any number of habitats of strange and unusual creatures, seemed doomed from the start.

It was Willie Sutton on an utterly cosmic scale. The entire project was intentional theft. Everyone involved in it, save for the ~~Global Warming~~ Climate Change fanatics, knew it would never be built.

New hypothesis: The Democratic Party is mostly AWFLs with a pack of ruthless and intelligent parasites riding on top, directing it.

The AWFLs thought they were stopping the death of polar bears while the parasites were sticking needles into the biggest financial veins they could think to find.

Michael Schellenberger, ex-progressive, wrote the staggering San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities. It detailed the results of his inside-the-system research into how SanFran managed to spend stunning amounts on the homeless without having any effect other than increasing the size and severity of the problem. What he discovered was a huge industry that made money off of suffering.

Some of the NGOs he detailed would get money from the government at the beginning of the year and then do nothing but lobby and budget for next year's money. That was it. That was all they did. Get money and then get next year's money.

Our youngest son and I went to a Padres game recently. The stadium is near one of our zombieland areas. We had to drive through it to get to the game. Every zombie we saw had a price tag of about $80,000 per year. The money wasn't going to the zombies, it was going to government agencies and NGOs that would kick some of that money back to Democrat campaigns.

Dig this.

The Somali fraud schemes in Minneapolis were of a piece. Dittos for the Los Angeles hospice scam recently uncovered by people doing the most basic of due diligence.

In answer to Tim's comment, I'll just stop with this:

Why was the border wide open for 4 years? Why don't we have national voter ID? Why are we all along in the world in having birthright citizenship?

Add it all up. It's Willie Sutton at as large a scale as can be managed. It's not that 200K Chinese will change a national election, although if they are properly placed, they certainly could. It's that birthright citizenship is just one more tool in the graft toolbox.

Gunday Monday

RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade) by front door

Saw this image on Bustednuckles and I'm thinking this is serious home defense. And then I noticed the rug on the floor.

Afghan War Rug

Funnies

10 Short Videos #6101

Testing a DIY Leslie speaker with different instruments and source audio — trumpet bells, trombone

Baseball Highlights

Este es un Exoesqueleto que te ayuda a caminar [This is an exoskeleton that helps you walk.]

Starting with Bike Old Black Engine!! Amazing working Diesel Engine

Queen Mary’s horn

Régalage enfoncement touche blanche piano à queue Yamaha C3 [Regulation of White Key Dip on a Yamaha C3 Grand Piano]

The Art of Precision: Ball Screw Assembly

Heavy press molding kitchen sink

Indiana who?

How To Handle Death Wobble

Sunday, April 12, 2026

Funnies

10 Short Videos #6100

10 Short Videos #60100

NASA's Coffee Cup That Doesn't Spill In Zero Gravity

The Mighty Ural-5920: A Soviet Snow and Swamp Conqueror

Extreme Poor Man’s Process Shot

it's called pykrete

This 787 Dreamliner only flew for 13 hours. We found it being demolished.

He was late for work

Eşeğin Genetiğine Bakılmalı [The Donkey's Genetics Should Be Examined]

Can something go faster than it’s pushed?

Are you ready for this service ? Uber fancy jetski / car-boat.

70,000 LITRES OF PROOF [paint]

Saturday, April 11, 2026

The Night Agent: Season 3 - Netflix Series

The Night Agent: Season 3 | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix

I knew we watched the previous seasons and I sort of remember thinking it was okay. After all, looking at the Episodes on Netflix, it shows that we watched both seasons, but it's been a year so my memory was a little hazy. Should have read my blog posts about Season 1 and Season 2. It's dumb, dumb, dumb. I don't know if it's any worse than the first two seasons, but it certainly isn't any better. But my better half is enjoying it and there is a fair amount of action, so it's tolerable.

Dinosaur

Spotted at Costco

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Spy by Len Deighton

1958 The first prototype ammonia maser in front of its inventor Charles H. Townes. The ammonia nozzle is at left in the box, the four brass rods at center are the quadrupole state selector, and the resonant cavity is at right. The 24 GHz microwaves exit through the vertical waveguide Townes is adjusting. At bottom are the vacuum pumps.

This story is set in the 1970s, near as I can tell.

I'm gonna give this book a 4. I was gonna give it a solid 3.5, but goodreads doesn't allow half points. First off, I was able to read the whole thing in four days. Given that it often takes me months to get through a book, that's pretty good. Of course, time spent reading the book depends on whether the story gets a hold of me or not. This one has espionage, a doll, a dollop of science, and a heaping spoonful of the KGB (Soviet secret police), so yeah, right up my alley.

The story tells us of Bekuv, a Soviet MASER expert defecting to the USA, his wife and the CIA agents and MI6 agent assigned to pick him up. They pick him up in the Sahara desert, take him to Washington D. C. Talking to Bekuv, our agents start to hone in on a leak somewhere in the US government. Eventually their focus lands on one guy and the whole story explodes. There is a hostage scene at the airport that makes no sense, but then maybe if you are suddenly feeling this extreme pressure, you wouldn't be making any sense either. So maybe realistic. Probably wouldn't be handled like this now, but we've had fifty years of studying hostage situations, so we might do better.

Now we're back in the Sahara desert at a secret Soviet satellite communications station. The Soviets have set up shop in an old fortress with sixty foot walls. Inside the fort are two satellite antennas, each sixty feet in diameter, along with a helicopter. I'm thinking such an establishment would need to be at least 500 feet square. I looked for old fortress and satellite stations and found plenty of old satellite stations and plenty of old forts, so many that I haven't been able sort them all out. Did not find a Russian satellite station set up in an old fort, but that doesn't mean it wasn't there.

Both the US and Soviet governments want Bekuv because his knowledge of MASERs, but his interest lies entirely in communicating with alien civilizations. Quasar CTA-102 get mentioned on page 52. Look it up on Wikipedia and we find this line:

"In 1963 Nikolai Kardashev proposed that the then-unidentified radio source could be evidence of a Type II or III extraterrestrial civilization on the Kardashev scale."

Algeria
Blue are mentioned in the book. Purple are old fortresses.

I made a map with all the places mentioned in the book, well, at least all of the ones I made note of. The map also has a couple of giant Soviet radio telescopes cause that's what our man Bekuv would have liked to get his hands on.

Notes:

Chapter 1 Page 1 Adrar Algeria
Chapter 3

GAZ-69

Page 13 GAZ 59A Russian four-wheel drive field car does not exist so we have GAZ-69
Page 16 Dornier Skyservant

Desert Tour in a VW Bus

Page 17 bright new VW bus marked Dempsey Desert Tours

Chapter 4

Page 19 Washington Square New York University

Fats Waller plays Alligator Crawl (piano solo, 1935)
gullivior

Page 23 Alligator Crawl

Chinoiserie

Page 23 "it was all chinoiserie and high camp, with lanterns and gold-plated Buddhas"

Chapter 6

Dmitri Shostakovich - Waltz No. 2
The Wicked North

page 43 Shostakovich. Soviet composer and pianist.

Pulsar P3 - When a Digital Watch cost more than a Rolex - 1970s LEDs
Techmoan

Page 49 Pulsar wrist watch

Blazar CTA 102

Page 52 Quasar CTA-102,
Page 52 1924 Society - There are a bunch of 1924 Societies, but no UFO related ones. However, 1924 is the year Edwin Hubble proved there were other galaxies outside of the Milky Way. Gawd, why do we have such a pansy ass name for our galaxy? Shouldn't it be something like 'The God King Galaxy', but in Latin so it's impressive.