White Linen

View of Haarlem with Bleaching Grounds - Jacob van Ruisdael 1665

The painting's title takes me to Wikipedia which leads to asking Google about linen bleaching which gets me this:

In 1670, the linen bleaching process was a slow, multi-step photochemical method. Centered in places like Haarlem in the Dutch Republic, it required weeks of washing, boiling in alkaline lye, soaking in massive amounts of sour buttermilk, and prolonged exposure to sunlight on open grass fields (bleachfields).

More from Wikipedia:

The success of the linen-bleaching industry in Haarlem had reached its climax at the time that Ruisdael painted this work. There were other linen-bleaching centers in the Netherlands; however, none of these locations were endowed with the perfect mixture of natural resources that Haarlem had. During the seventeenth century, linen bleached in Haarlem was highly sought after and quite expensive; this was the cause of the economic prosperity in Haarlem and the wealth of Haarlem linen merchants. All linen bleached in Haarlem received the name toiles de Hollande, or "Haarlemmer Bleek," which means Haarlem bleach. Regardless of where the linen was woven, if it was bleached in Haarlem it was called toiles de Hollande.

I thought for sure 'wrapped in white linen' is a line in the song Lucky Man by Emerson, Lake & Palmer, but it's not. The line is from The Streets of Laredo by a host or artists.

Construction Physics got me started.

The Battle of Terheide by Jan Abrahamsz Beerstraaten

The Battle of Terheide by Jan Abrahamsz Beerstraaten, 1660

From Google:

The Battle of Terheide (also known as the Battle of Scheveningen) was the final, decisive naval engagement of the First Anglo-Dutch War. Fought on August 10, 1653, between the English Commonwealth and the Dutch Republic, the clash successfully broke the crippling English blockade of the Dutch coast, though it cost the Dutch their legendary commander, Lieutenant-Admiral Maarten Tromp.

At that time, the population of England was about five million people and the population of the Netherlands was about two million.

From Wikipedia:

Both sides claimed a victory: the English because of their tactical superiority, the Dutch because the strategic goal of their attack, the lifting of the blockade, had been achieved.

Belligerents
English Commonwealth	Dutch Republic
Commanders and leaders
George Monck  Benjamin Blake	Maarten Tromp †
Strength
130 ships[1] 4,000 guns 17,000 men[2]	125 ships[1] 3,450 guns 13,000 men[2]
Casualties and losses
950–1,200 killed and wounded 2 ships lost [1][3]	2,000 killed and wounded 1,000 captured 12-30 ships lost[2][1]

Ter Heijde

Rhino

Neushoorn Naima

Female black rhinoceros at Rotterdam Zoo.

Puzzle of the Day

Canal Snow Netherlands

Puzzle of the Day

Dutch Fishing Boat

Indian Roadmaster - King of the Cruisers

This might be the biggest motorcycle in the world:

Indian Roadmaster at the King Cruise 2025 in Raamsdonksveer

Okay, the caption on this image is a little nuts. Indian motorcycles are known, at least among motorcycle people, as Harley Davidson's nemesis, King Cruise sounds like a big motorcycle party, but where the heck is Rammsdonksveer? It doesn't sound like any American town, though it could be. There are pockets of funny soundin' town names all over this country, mostly in places like Michigan & Iowa. Shoot, there's even a little town called Verboort a stone's throw from where I sit.

So where is Rammsdonksveer? It's in the Netherlands and King Cruise is an American car and motorcycle party. Shades of Richard Hammond. Who'd a thunk it?

KING CRUISE 2025 - Official After Movie // Car Show // Indian Motorcycle // Octane Show Paddock
King Cruise TV

Coincidentally I stumbled across this video comparing Indian and Harley motorcycles.

How Indian Makes 43% More Power than Harley-Davidson
FortNine

P. S. Just realized that I had already posted the Fortnine video comparing Indian and Harley motorcycle engines a month ago. I guess that's why I have this blog, I have to write everything done because my memory is getting weak.

Havenhuis

Port House - Antwerpia Belgia

I don't like goofball buildings like this one. I think they're a stupid waste of money, but I am always curious about them which, I suppose, is the point. They get people's attention and it certainly got mine. Once they have made an impact on our collective consciousness they become landmarks so that whenever you happen across it you'll think of the city that built it, in this case Antwerp.

Zaha Hadid Architects has a page of photos. Wikipedia also has a page about this building.

Vauban Returns

Fort Bourtange, Netherlands

Gee, that looks familiar. It's another fort designed by Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban. The earthworks are more extensive than shown in the above picture. Wikipedia has a page.

Fort Bourtange, Netherlands

I suspect Fort Sedan was also one of Vauban's designs, but there isn't much left of the original earthworks.

Fort Sedan, France

I didn't find much when I went looking for a plans or drawings for the original Sedan Castle, but I did find this short video someone took of a model in the castle itself.

Chateau Fort de Sedan 02
Cormack Roadtrip

I originally got started on Fort Sedan because of a movie about some women dealing with the impact of WW1 on their little village. There was a big battle at the Fort, which wasn't too far from their village.

GANGLANDS Trailer (2021) Thriller Series

It's got all the pieces it needs to be a really great show, except. Except for a couple of hiccups in the plot. On one hand we have a small group of guys who specialize in big time, strong arm robberies. They come in like Al Capone, machine guns blazing, grab the big pile of loot and disappear. I mean, if that's what you're doing, that's the way to do it. On the other hand we have big-time drug dealers. They have the city carved up into territories and everything is running smoothly until one slimeball decides that he has been disrespected and now we've got a war going on. Cool, lots of bad guys shooting and the pros are mowing down the drug dealer's gunmen.

First problem is when they try to exchange several kilos of coke for a hostage. Mr. Slimeball runs off with the coke and doesn't return the hostage. Seems to me that reneging on the deal means no deal and if Mr. Slimeball wants to start shooting then you return fire. Should have been better prepared, and shouldn't have brought the hostage's lover along. 

Second problem was with hijacking 300 kilos of coke from a shipping container. Seems the importer had guys working the docks and were able to direct a specific container to a specific truck. All this strikes me as unnecessary. You let the normal process of container delivery happen just as if there was no contraband hidden inside. Once the container is in a secure location, then you open it up and retrieve your goodies. Of course if you want to hijack that coke, you need to know where that secure location is and your target is liable to have several such locations, most of which are engaged in legitimate business and so serve as a smoke screen for your illegal activities. So there would have been more surveillance and less car chase action, but you still would have had a big gunfight.

I suppose I should mention problem zero, which is what triggered this whole cascade of violence. A couple of teen girls are running a scam posing as hookers. Once they get the guy alone in a room and handcuffed to the bed, they steal all his stuff and run away. This time however, the mark is a courier with a duffel bag full of coke which they grab. Okay so far, but then we meet the boys in their gang and a more clueless bunch of fools you've never seen. Well, unless you went to high school. I suppose they are about par for their age, but boy, are they dumb.

Rough Diamonds | Netflix Official Trailer | English | Series & Documentary

We've got an old, orthodox Jewish family of successful diamond traders living in Amsterdam. One of the sons (Yanki) develops a gambling problem and starts making secret deals to cover his losses. This goes on until he makes a deal with the Albanians who decide they don't want to pay him. This precipitates a family crisis, severe enough to drag back the estranged son, Noah, from London. Noah's boss, Kerra, is hounding him to get back to London to take care of business. And what kind of business is that, you might ask. Distributing illegal drugs of course. Which they are buying from the Albanians and paying them with rough cut diamonds. Meanwhile, the cops have tripped over this business of paying for drugs with diamonds and start snooping around. Mean-meanwhile, the Albanians are never satisfied, they want more diamonds and Kerra wants more drugs so Noah piles one deal on top of another. Plus his ex-girlfriend is there confusing the issue. It's pretty great, but the way these deals are stacking up seems almost insupportable. Will it all come crashing down, or will they manage to hang on long enough for there to be a season two?

P. S. Isn't The Netherlands kind of a crummy name for a country? The nether regions has kind of a negative connotation. I like Holland much better.

Termination Shock - Notes Part 1

Notes on the book Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson. The book is set in the not-too-distant future.

Part 1 - Texas

Part 2

Princess of Orange
Possible future queen of Holland

The Queen of Holland flies into Waco, piloting an aging private jet.

Dassault Falcon 900EX

They have flown from Amsterdam, a distance of 5,000 miles. There are numerous business jets that could make the trip, the Dassault Falcon is just one. It's been in production since 1984, so an old one is entirely possible. The current Dutch Airforce One is a 737.

Noordeinde Palace

Noordeinde Palace is where the future queen will have her office.

Waco Texas airport, dam, and confluence of the North Bosque and Brazos Rivers

Texas has a real problem with feral hogs. Rufus has made is his mission in life to kill as many of them as possible. He hunts them at night using a rifle with a night vision scope. Rufus is a character in the book, but his technique is real.


107 Hogs Down | Hog Hunting with Thermal Night Vision in Texas | Zeus Pro 640
Ultimate Night Vision
Feral hogs get onto the runway at Waco. The plane runs into them just as it is touching down and crashes. Everyone survives, the plane doesn't catch on fire, but the hogs are a problem, and then Rufus shows up and saves the day.

The Takeover - Netflix Movie

The Takeover | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix

Not a bad little cyber thriller. It's got all your standard elements - cute girl hacker pursuing environmental bad guys, friendly old dude who knows all the tricks, and evil white men conspiring with giant evil Chinese corporation to steal everyone's personal data.

Our girl has a day job checking the security of corporate software. One day she discovers someone has hacked into the servers that operate a self-driving bus. She disrupts their connection and spikes their computers which pisses them off to no end. The bad guys try to capture her, but she is clever and manages to elude them,  so they use facial recognition software to superimpose our girls face over that of a bad guy in the process of shooting another man and publish the video on the web. It finds its way to the police, so now the kopskis are looking for her.

Some of it is good, some of it, like the self driving bus rampage through downtown Rotterdam, are very silly, but it puts some action on the screen. I suspect anyone who had gotten their automatic bus to the point where there are giving a demonstration would have done a bit more testing and would have some decent safety protocols implemented. Now whenever self driving buses have become a reality for long enough that used ones are finding their way to secondary markets and parts are available on the used market, well then, I could see how safety protocols could be compromised.

A Lazy Sunday Afternoon

Dutch Windmill

A nice story about Holland by Cynthia Bagley.

Tulips

Gainbrige Tulips Commercial 2019 from David Eeles on Vimeo.
I don't know nuttin' 'bout Gainbrige, but I enjoy their story about Tulip mania.

LOFAR

LOFAR Radio Telescope, Holland

LOFAR is a new kind of radio telescope. This site contains the bulk of the antennae, but there are other smaller sites scattered around western Europe. They are all linked to a super computer which grinds the signals from all the sites into . . . something. This circular island is about 1200 feet in diameter. At first I thought this might be a picture of an meteorite impact crater, but evidently it is just the Dutch trying to make a dry spot out of a swamp.

Via Starts with a Bang!