Houthi Ceasefire

This was a surprise:

Iran-Backed Houthis Reportedly Declare Ceasefire Shortly After Trump Victory by Tyler Durden

Former President Trump isn't even back in the White House, but news of his historic victory in the US presidential election has already sent shockwaves through the top leadership of the Iran-backed Houthi rebels. Reports on X indicate that the rebels have declared a ceasefire, halting a year of missile and drone strikes on Western-linked commercial and military vessels across the critical maritime chokepoint in the southern Red Sea.

According to Defense Arabia on X, Houthi spokesman Yahya Sarea stated, "Our operations in international waters were purely defensive, and we announce their final cessation."

I don't know whether this demonstrates clear thinking on the part of the Houthis or just the general flakiness of Arabs. And I'm not sure just what kind of 'clear thinking' led the Houthis to think that Trump would be good for them.

Black Sails - Netflix Series

Black Sails First Trailer
IGN

We started watching this series the other night. It looks promising. We've got some familiar names like Silver and Flint, convincing looking sailing ships (they might even be real), bloody piratical violence, horny women, and shabby looking pirate towns. Flint is obsessed with a Spanish treasure galleon that should be enroute to Spain, but where is it? Supposedly there is a schedule with a list of dates and locations, but how accurate / useful could such a schedule be? I mean, they are sailing ships, they are totally at the mercy of wind and weather. It isn't unusual to be becalmed for days or even weeks in the doldrums. But hey, somebody wrote the schedule down and somebody hid it and somebody else found it and Flint would move heaven and earth to find it if that would help. It won't. I expect it will fall into his lap any - minute - now.

Sports

Ben Simmons leads the 76ers to a thrilling finish vs. the Trail Blazers | 2019-20 NBA Highlights

Watched a couple of games on Saturday: the University of Oregon Ducks college football team against the University of Southern California Trojans, and the Portland Trailblazers professional basketball team versus the Philidelphia Seventy-Sixers. Both games held a couple of surprises.
Both games were playing at the same time, so we switched back and forth between them. The Ducks trounced USC. At one point we switched over just in time to see USC kick-off, an Oregon receiver caught the ball on the goal line and proceeded to run straight for the other goal and score a touchdown. I don't think any of the USC players managed to lay a hand on him.
The final seconds of the Blazers game was also surprising. The Blazers started the fourth quarter with a good size lead (10 points maybe?), but the 76-ers managed to whittle that down. In the last minute of the game the lead changed four times. The 76-ers pulled ahead and with something like 10 seconds left, the Blazers got the ball and managed to sink a shot and get the lead back. That left something like 4 seconds left. Surely the 76-ers aren't going to be able to score in that short amount of time, but they did, which left something like half a second on the clock. The Blazers managed to inbound the ball and get off a hail mary shot, but it missed. Actually not sure if Damian Lillard got it off in time.

I don't like my cable bill, but it gets us what we want, so I pay it, but YouTube has been advertising YouTube TV and it sounds like you can get all the sports stations you want, but you can't. The NBA has their market sewn up tight. The only way you can get your local team is through your local station, unless it is being broadcast nationally, or it's the 3rd Sunday after a full moon. I got cross-eyed trying to sort out all whose-its and where-fores, but eventually the line about local stations sank in, and then I realized that the only way to get what we want is by paying the cable company a bunch of money.

Except there is something called nbastream. It used to hosted on reddit, but reddit isn't doing it anymore. Not to worry, the torch has been picked up by the nbastream website. They blather on about how they have all the games and they are free, and so on, but there is no mention of where they are getting their feeds. Are we really depending on some big hearted guy uploading his cable feed to this website? Actually, a dozen guys would have to be doing it every day to keep the demands for nbastream satisfied. The world is full of sports enthusiasts and computer aficionados, so I could see that there could be enough people that were both that they could be the source.

So, I could drop cable and get the Blazers off of nbastream, but what about the college football games? There is a probably a similar site that provides the same service, but I'd have to go dig them out. And what happens if the NBA gets excited and decides to bring the smack down on these pirate sites? And what happens if that happens right before the game starts? I don't think the cable company can reconnect me in a matter of minutes, I would expect them to take days, which kind of screws our game watching. Actually, they could proably connect me in a matter of seconds, but being as it's a giant, soulless corporation, I doubt whether anyone there cares whether I get connected now or in a week.

Now it might be that the NBA knows about the piracy but lets it go for the same reason that musical groups (mostly) stopped trying to take their stuff down from YouTube - the exposure leads to more sales. Having more people watch the game increases the ciritical mass of people ensuring that everyone will hear about it.

Tam

Made me laugh this morning.

Children's Books

I am reading The World At Night by Alan Furst, a really excellent tale. Mr. Furst has written several books about life and espionage during WWII. This one takes place in France. I am reading along and this pops up in the middle of the page:

Seize hommes sur
le coffre d'un mort,
yo ho ho
la bouteille de rhum

Boisson et diable
ont tues les autres
yo ho ho
buvons le rhum

Yo ho ho? Hommes is men, mort is dead, bouteille sounds like bottle, rhum sounds like rum. Um, could this be 15 men on a Dead Man's Chest? Yes, it could and it is. I haven't heard this in like forever, so I went a Googling. I found several recordings on YouTube, but none that I thought really captured the flavor of the song, so you will just have to sing it yourself. And for that we have the lyrics (from Midi Melodies). It was never a real authentic sea chanty. It started as just a couple of lines in Treasure Island, but then it took on a life of it's own.

1. Fifteen men on a dead man's chest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
Drink and the devil had done for the rest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
The mate was fixed by the bosun's pike
The bosun brained with a marlinspike
And cookey's throat was marked belike
It had been gripped by fingers ten;
And there they lay, all good dead men
Like break o'day in a boozing ken
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.

2. Fifteen men of the whole ship's list
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Dead and be damned and the rest gone whist!
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
The skipper lay with his nob in gore
Where the scullion's axe his cheek had shore
And the scullion he was stabbed times four
And there they lay, and the soggy skies
Dripped down in up-staring eyes
In murk sunset and foul sunrise
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.

3. Fifteen men of 'em stiff and stark
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Ten of the crew had the murder mark!
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Twas a cutlass swipe or an ounce of lead
Or a yawing hole in a battered head
And the scuppers' glut with a rotting red
And there they lay, aye, damn my eyes
Looking up at paradise
All souls bound just contrawise
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.

4. Fifteen men of 'em good and true
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Ev'ry man jack could ha' sailed with Old Pew,
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
There was chest on chest of Spanish gold
With a ton of plate in the middle hold
And the cabins riot of stuff untold,
And they lay there that took the plum
With sightless glare and their lips struck dumb
While we shared all by the rule of thumb,
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

5. More was seen through a sternlight screen
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
Chartings undoubt where a woman had been
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
'Twas a flimsy shift on a bunker cot
With a dirk slit sheer through the bosom spot
And the lace stiff dry in a purplish blot
Oh was she wench or some shudderin' maid
That dared the knife and took the blade
By God! she had stuff for a plucky jade
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.

6. Fifteen men on a dead man's chest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
Drink and the devil had done for the rest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
We wrapped 'em all in a mains'l tight
With twice ten turns of a hawser's bight
And we heaved 'em over and out of sight,
With a Yo-Heave-Ho! and a fare-you-well
And a sudden plunge in the sullen swell
Ten fathoms deep on the road to hell,
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!