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| Tupolev Tu-22M3 Khmeimim Air Base in Syria |
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| Khmeimim Air Base in Syria |
I'm watching this video about the Baldwin Centipede locomotive, and he mentions the La Vergne 608SC diesel engine and I get distracted. He don't show a picture, or at least not a good one, so I go looking and found some passable images on The Baldwin Diesel Zone.
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| La Vergne 608SC Click to embiggenate |
The 608SC shows up in 1945, but the company was around for another 20 years. So what were they building? In 1964:
The last 600 series engine was built at Eddystone. Stationary 608A #7113
Eddystone, where's that? Ask Google and the first interesting thing that pops up is the Eddystone Generating Station - Constellation Energy. Okay, a power plant is not a locomotive, but they are like brothers from different mothers, brothers under the skin, so to speak. They are both industrial power machines, which is close enough. Besides, I have a soft spot for power generating stations, so I go take a look. On Google Maps, Eddystone is a suburb of Philadelphia and the power plant looks like this:
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| Eddystone Generating Station The image is about one-half mile across |
Eddystone Generating Station plays a critical role in delivering reliable power through fuel diversity. Owned and operated by Constellation, this six-unit, 820-megawatt (MW) power plant is located on the Delaware River in Eddystone, Pennsylvania, just south of Philadelphia.Eddystone Units 3 and 4, each with a capacity of 380 MW, were installed between 1967 and 1970. These subcritical steam boiler-turbine generator units can operate on either natural gas or oil, providing flexibility based on market conditions.Units 10, 20, 30 and 40 are oil-fueled peaking units with a combined capacity of 60 MW. They are designed to run during periods of high demand and were installed in 1967 and 1970.Construction of Eddystone began in the mid-1950s, with the now-retired Units 1 and 2 coming online in 1960. Both were supercritical steam boiler-turbine generator units that operated on coal. Unit 1 was retired in 2011, and Unit 2 followed in 2012.
An aside: While I was writing this post I tried to copy the phrase
Eddystone Generating Station - Constellation Energy
from Google's search page, but when I pasted it I got:
Eddystone Generating Station - Constellation Energy
Curious as how this was being done, I used Blogger's html mode and found that pasting that line came with 3KB of html fluff. A little poking around reveals that including this little bit of text:
style="display: inline-block; transform: scaleY(-1);"
inside a <p> tag will do the trick.
P. S. When I looked at this post on Feedly, the inverted text was not inverted.
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Horseshoe Curve Pennsylvania - on the way from Altoona to Gallitzin |
The narrator in this video repeats some of his stuff a little excessively. I don't know whether he is just filling time, hoping to pound these phrases into the listener's brain, or whether he just likes the sound of his own voice. Is that even a real thing? Liking the sound of your own voice? I don't even know what I sound like, I guess my voice is acceptable. Anyway, I suspect the phrase 'liking the sound of your own voice' is just something some wag made up to describe someone who talked a lot.
The point I was trying to make is that I have seen several videos like this, and I guess I got to give these guys credit for putting together a polished video. Not everybody can do that, but I suspect some of these, especially the ones where the narrator never appears, are just having an AI read a script.
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| Mount Elgon |
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| Mount Elgon |
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| SS Tjitjalengka at Amoy Harbor in China - Robert G. Lloyd |
The 16,700 ton British hospital ship Tjitjalengka. Built for the Java-China-Japan-Line in 1939 and owned by a Dutch shipping company, the Tjitjalengka was requisitioned for Admiralty service on 8 July 1942 and was converted in Liverpool, England to accommodate 504 patients. After service in the North Atlantic and Indian Oceans, she was transferred to the British Pacific Fleet. After the Japanese surrender, she carried Allied Prisoners of War (POWs) repatriated from Japan to Australia. On her final voyage, she carried invalids and Naval casualties from Colombo and Durban to Liverpool, England and was then returned to her owners.
Royal Navy Research Archive has a longer history of this ship.
The artist, Robert G. Lloyd has done numerous marine paintings.
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| Tjitjalengka, Indonesia |
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| Kompozitor Rakhmaninov at the Port Olya in Astrakhan Oblast, Russia |
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| Port Olya Reka Bakhtemir Map is about 50 miles top to bottom |
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| View Looking Northwest from Beaufort Castle |
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| Southeast Corner Beaufort Castle |
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| West Side Beaufort Castle |
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| East Side Beaufort Castle - Getty / dpa |
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| View from Beaufort Castle |
I tried to logon to United Health Care and it couldn't, so it suggested I delete some cookies from my browser. I did that and now all my pictures and links are screwed up, I so I don't even know what these pics are anymore.
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| Beaufort Castle Streetview Map |
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| Philippine Clipper Arrives Hong Kong October 23, 1936 |
The Martin M-130 was a quad-engined commercial flying boat designed and produced in 1935 by the Glenn L. Martin Company in Baltimore, Maryland, for Pan American Airways. Intended to fly transpacific flights, three airframes were built: the China Clipper, the Philippine Clipper and the Hawaii Clipper. A similar flying boat design called the Martin 156 and named Russian Clipper, was later built for the Soviet Union; it had a larger wing (giving it greater range) and twin vertical stabilizers.
Martin named them the Martin Ocean Transports, but to the public they were the China Clippers, a name that became a generic term for Pan Am's large flying boats - including, retroactively, the smaller Sikorsky S-42 (first flown in 1931) and larger Boeing 314 (first flown in 1938).
All three aircraft were lost while in service. Hawaii Clipper disappeared in 1938 on a flight over the Pacific, Philippine Clipper flew into a mountain in poor conditions in 1943, and finally in 1945 China Clipper broke up during landing at Trinidad and Tobago. In their time, they blazed trails as one of the first aircraft types to operate transpacific routes (some of the longest airline routes at the time) and also served as transports during World War II.
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| San Francisco to Manila |
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| Trans Pacific Air Mail Stamp |
After losing her brother to a government execution, a young girl takes a dangerous journey to reclaim his body and raise the money for a proper burial.
A Foggy Tale is set during the period of White Terror—a nearly four-decade era of martial law, political repression, and authoritarian rule by the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, or KMT) under Chiang Kai-shek—and, for most of its runtime, Chen Yu-hsun films those oppressive years as though they were distant memories recalled decades later. The result is a mostly detached and unsentimental tale told with the observational restraint of a documentary. Through the eyes of a young Taiwanese girl named Yue (Caitlin Fang), Yu-hsun captures the ordinary lives of citizens living during the White Terror. By keeping a child at the center, Yu-hsun refuses to sugarcoat her proximity to physical harm and dangers posed by predatory men and the police officers. After arriving in Taipei from Chiayi, Yue is abducted by a child trafficker, and when she angrily accuses a cop of killing her brother, another officer kicks her and violently beats her. Yet when Yue blames the police for her brother's death, she isn't accusing a single individual so much as the entire repressive system.A Foggy Tale opens with Yue and her brother, Yun (Tseng Jing-hua), discussing what they hope to become in the future. From there, Yu-hsun cuts to one year later and takes us to the moment when the news of Yun's execution by firing squad arrives at Yue's residence. The implication is clear: under oppressive rule, dreams, ambitions, and futures are abruptly cut short by a regressive, close-minded system. There are other sentimental touches, like Yue finding a brother-from-another-mother in Chao Kung-tao (Will Or) and reuniting with her elder sister, Hsu (9m88), who was given up for adoption years earlier. Yet Yu-hsun never exploits these moments for melodramatic effect. He remains curiously level-headed throughout. Scenes that might have turned cloying or excessively brutal in the hands of a lesser filmmaker are presented in a matter-of-fact manner.When Yue is taken to a room at Paradise Funeral Home to identify her brother's body, what stands out in the foreground is the employee's casual lack of empathy in the face of her discomfort. Even then, Yu-hsun shows little interest in launching direct attacks against any particular person. Cruelty is not sensationalized, and acts of kindness arrive without sentimental fanfare. Such a style of filmmaking often results in impersonal work, yet there is something about A Foggy Tale that prevents you from dismissing Yu-hsun's efforts. He casually introduces elements like a Robin Hood-style figure or Kung-tao making a deal to murder someone in ways that initially leave you taken aback. Is Yu-hsun assembling different varieties of vignettes to depict a particular moment in history? Does the key to the puzzle lie in the titular tale that Hsu tells her sister?
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| Train from Chiayi to Taipei |
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| A house in Mala Tokmachka damaged by shelling, April 19, 2022 - Ed Jones / AFP / Scanpix / LETA |
Ukrainian media outlets and bloggers, meanwhile, have turned Mala Tokmachka into a symbol of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ resilience. By their count, the battle has lasted more than 1,500 days, ostensibly longer than any successful defense in world history.
Then I wondered just where this place is.
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| Mala Tokmachka, Ukraine |
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| Pena Palace |
This castle was built in the middle of the 19th century, maybe twenty-five years before King Ludwig II built his fairytale castle in Bavaria. Pena Palace was built for King Ferdinand's amusement, so it was never a fortress. It was built on top of the ruins of a monastery that was built in 1493, the year after Columbus discovered America. Wikipedia page here.
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| Pena National Palace, Sintra, Portugal |
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| Pena Palace |
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| Château Royal de Collioure |
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| Château Royal de Collioure |
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| Château Royal de Collioure looking south |
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| Château Royal de Collioure looking west |
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.
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| Hillsboro Data Centers I swear none of these buildings were there last week. |
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.
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.
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| Aerial view of the August 2025 landslide and tsunami near South Sawyer Glacier in Alaska |
Nick informs me that Prince William Sound is under a kind of tsunami watch (pdf). They (the guys who watch these things) have latched onto Barry Arm as a potential disaster in the making. I am not quite sure what Barry Arm is, whether it is an arm of a glacier or a piece of land, but there is a glacier involved. The prediction is that sometime in the next 20 years, Barry Arm is going to collapse into Prince William Sound and that is going to trigger a tsunami 1600 feet high which will be like the biggest wave ever! It would cool to surf it, hey? 1600 feet. I can't even imagine. Of course it will dissipate very quickly, it's not like a major underwater fault shift. Still, it will probably be felt all over Prince William Sound, and since all the fishermen up there know about it, it is liable to influence the choice of fishing grounds.
Tam's link is talking about Tracy Arm. Is that in the same place as Barry Arm? No. They are 500 miles apart.
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| Alaska, Red placemarks: Barry Arm (left) & Tracy Arm (right) South Sawyer Glacier is practically on top of Tracy Arm |
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| J.R. Oregon Tires & Auto Care |
Daughter got a flat tire this morning while she was driving up West Burnside road on the way out of Portland. Hit something hard, probably a pothole. She tried to fix it herself but immediately ran into a problem when she couldn't loosen the wingnut that was securing the jack in the trunk. So I got called to assist. She was right, the wing nut was tight. I couldn't loosen it until I applied some Channellock pliers. I know who the guilty culprit is. He tightens everything super tight. Now we need to get to the lug nuts. The YouTube video she has pulled up has mag wheels while she has steel wheels and hub caps. So the lug nuts are behind the hubcap. Lugnuts revealed, she tries to loosen one. No go. She stands on the end of the wrench. Bounces. Still no go. I stand on the wrench and bounce and my heftier weight (double hers) does the trick. That was the toughest one. Thanks, Costco. She was able to break loose the rest of them.
Got the tire changed and looked around for someplace to get it fixed (it's Sunday) and find J.R. Oregon Tires & Auto Care in Beaverton. It took him maybe 15 minutes to fix the tire and only charged $20. I call it a deal.
Now I'm on Google Maps looking for Streetview images of this place. The one at the top is the first and it doesn't really give a good view of the place.
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| Union 76 |
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| J.R. Oregon Tires & Auto Care |
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| Far Side 1987 |
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| Strait of Hormuz |
Based on reports as of April 2026, Iranian forces around the Strait of Hormuz have not been fully destroyed despite significant damage from U.S. and Israeli strikes because of the asymmetrical, dispersed, and unconventional nature of Iran's maritime capabilities, which are designed specifically to withstand such an onslaught.While U.S. and Israeli airstrikes have destroyed key Iranian missile launchers, ships, and infrastructure, several factors prevent complete neutralization:
- Asymmetric "Mosquito Fleet": Iran's primary threat comes from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy, which relies on a massive, dispersed network of fast attack boats, drones, and uncrewed vessels. These small assets are hard to target compared to large, conventional naval vessels.
- Geographical Advantages & Hiding Spots: Iran uses its rugged coastline, small islands, and underground naval facilities to hide launchers, making them hard to completely wipe out.
- Mobile and Low-Cost Drones: Many of Iran's disruptive weapons, such as sea drones and missiles, are launched from mobile platforms on land, making them difficult for intelligence to track and destroy in their entirety.
- Persistent Naval Mines: Iran has deployed acoustic mines that are challenging to detect. Clearing these would require an extensive and slow-moving mine clearance operation, even while IRGC forces are hunted.
- The "Human Shield" of Shipping: The Strait is extremely narrow, with shipping lanes running close to Iran's coast. Full-scale destruction of all Iranian capabilities risks civilian collateral damage or catastrophic, immediate oil market shocks.
- "Destroyed" vs. "Deterred": While US officials aimed to destroy the Iranian navy to remove the threat, the IRGC continues to operate in a guerrilla-like fashion.
As of mid-April 2026, despite a US naval blockade, Iran still maintains a "strict control" posture over the waterway, using the threat of its remaining capabilities to disrupt traffic.
