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.

Bird Man of Amsterdam

91 Utrechtseestreat Amsterdam

From a YouTube Short. Video zooms in very quickly from outer space, so quickly it's a little tough to follow, but I'm compulsive so I persist. Some of these videos tag on bogus endings, but this one actually delivered.

Links

Read some good stuff on the web this morning.

The last days of Jeremy Corbyn is about left wing of politics in the UK. The link goes to Unherd which places a limit on free articles.

‘Amsterdam’ Review: Three Amigos Try to Save America in David O. Russell’s Ungainly Period Dramedy. The movie is about social unrest in America in the 1930's and the Business Plot.

14 Things We Know About The Mysterious “Explosions” That Severely Damaged The Nord Stream 1 And Nord Stream 2 Pipelines - I suspect the we (the USA) did it, though I can't comprehend why. I mean we have a knucklehead running the country, but surely there are people with brains in the White House. They can't all be incompetent psychopaths, can they?

Traffic Lights

Traffic Light with Bicycle Indicator

Saw this the other day at the corner of Terwilliger and Capitol Highway in Portland, Oregon. The old lady contingent is trying to turn Portland into Amsterdam with its bicycles and trams. Stupid idea. The west side of Portland is covered with hills, Amsterdam is flat. We still have room to expand, though the 1,000 Friends of Oregon hates that idea. The only people who ride bicycles in Portland are the super fit maniacs who think everyone should ride a bicycle on city streets alongside 20 ton trucks rumbling by at 40 MPH. Portland is not Amsterdam. If that's what you want, you should probably move there. Trying to remake Portland into Amsterdam is going to be like stuffing a bull into a pair of skinny jeans. It just ain't gonna happen.

Silver Skates

Silver Skates (Trailer)
SPM MUSIC GROUP

It's pretty much a fairy tale woven together from elements of several stories, including fast and fancy ice skating (Hans Brinker), a gang of pickpockets (Oliver Twist) who are living on an abandoned sailing ship (Peter Pan). A poor boy and a rich girl happen to meet and in a tale as old as Hollywood, proceed to disregard all the sage advice of their elders, believe love will triumph all, and the script writers make it happen. There was a moment when we thought this might be an actual Russian story when the boy dies, but then he wakes up, 'returns from the dead' the doctor says, so we can have our Hollywood ending.

It's set in 1900 in St. Petersburg, Russia. The scenes are great. We have scenes on the ice in the canals through town, which serve as roadways during the winter, and scenes of the city and the palaces.

Dmitri Mendeleev (1834-1907), father of the modern Periodic Table, makes a couple of appearances. Seems our girl is a budding chemist and wants to study at the university instead of marrying the handsome, brave, strong nobleman her parents have picked out for her.

Our hero has some very fancy ice skates that his father picked up in Amsterdam. I looked for a picture but I didn't have any luck. If I watched the entire film over again, I might be able to find a shot or two, but it's two hours long, and I'm busy. Busy, very busy.

Flying Horses

Ash and smoke from Popocatepetl volcano seen from Puebla, central Mexico

A KLM flight from Amsterdam to Mexico City turned back because of a volcanic eruption near Mexico City. You may remember when all flights over Europe were shut down a few years ago because of a volcano erupting in Iceland.

Eleven hour flight to nowhere

This one made the news because the flight was already over North America when they turned back which meant the passengers enjoyed an eleven hour flight to nowhere. You might think they could have landed in New York or some other big airport (I certainly did), but when you compare the inevitable hotel bills and the hassles with immigration with the actual cost of the flying the airplane, maybe turning around makes sense. Then you add in horses and all of sudden I have no idea.

Flying Horses

Seems they had a big cargo of horses as well as humans.

KLM Boeing 747-400 Combi Floor Plan

Mobil Oil Flying Horse Logo

If you remember ever seeing this sign on your local gas station, you might be old.

P.S. The Prague Zoo is flying horses to Mongolia. I do not know why.

Via Flight Aware

Iaman Reports from Vacouver BC

Burnaby, Vancouver BC

Vancouver BC Monday 10/21/2019

Hi from Canada,

I’ve been in rain for the past week, but the temperature is cool not cold, not hot.  Pleasant if you are dressed well.

I have a basement Airbnb room,  quiet, warm.  The décor, paint and finishes were familiar, then I learned the owner is an Indian meditator family.  Yellow, gold and whites.  J who is the tenant rents out the 6 bedrooms to people like me.  J is cute Asian gal ~40? Disheveled sunglassed smiley solicitous spacey upon first meeting her, happy upbeat but looks like she stumbled out of bed at 4 in the afternoon.  J has had many careers including lead singer with a a number of small jazz bands.  J  is deep into the older VBC music culture.  Yesterday she had a invite to MC at a memorial to a Jazzman,  30 minutes later she shows up glamourous in black evening gown and  a wig. Modern, svelte and cool.  J  has pictures on the walls of her well attended house parties complete with live jazz bands.  I wondering if the sunglasses are to cover pinpoint pupil of an addict?

J wants me to stay and unilaterally without telling me first,  blocked the rooms off Airbnb for the rest of the month.  Waiting for her to get up at 4PM to discuss a reduction in rent or maybe trade work to stay (1 hour a day?) lots of simple maintenance to be done here.

Plan B is head back south, maybe into the rain shadow of the Salish sea. Or Portland area...or farther south to the 72 degree weather of Redding CA.

Fellow roomers; M & Irene. M is a 76 singer & P&P (pension & a paper route).  Has TV music videos of himself singing professionally in the early 1970s,  very professional and good.  Then went on to MC at dinner & strip clubs.  Strippers never excited him, being as they are  "paper and paste", he volunteered the only time he was aroused by a performer was on a amateur night a regular normal unadorned woman stripped to her natural self, he liked that. M still sings & strums guitar at church and small events. He is embarrassed about his bad and missing teeth, but is on a government waiting list to remedy that.

M’s wife Irene is a simple dumpy gal who was once beautiful.  Her mind wanders and tends to bore others with astrology theories. M is tolerant, mostly. I wonder how they will get on, especially if Irene is in early dementia?

M & Irene are financially strapped, hence the paper route when they are 75 & 69 YO.  They had lived in the same apartment for 40 years then after a long eviction fight, settled for $10k to move out, now they are here in a room for $1200 a month and sharing the house with travelers that pass through.  They like me, they are not happy with their situation.

Another roomer-tenant is Tony who everyone seems wary of.  I finally met him big black strong young guy with a scowl.  I introduced myself and shook hands, and he opened up with a smile and a hello.  The other residents seeing this later expressed their amazement,  in the 3 years Tony has been here that is the first smile and most words they have heard him speak.  His accent is Dominican.  They say he works construction,  but I suspect more of a underground profession.

Unitarian Church

Clarence had a card table set up in the Unitarian Church hallway during the after-service-coffee-klatch.  76 and wheelchair bound he expressed a happy demeanor, was neatly dressed with spiffy cap and manly necklace and rings.  He was offering to sharpen peoples knifes for free, my chisel and screwdrivers would take more than a honing. Asking about his conditions he related he was a mine mechanic (like me) deep in the Canadian Rockies,  had a nice lake house with a 3’ diameter fir tree that had fallen across a ravine.  Cutting it into sections, the trunk shifted and fell breaking his back.  “It is what it is, I’m happy to be alive and functioning.”

I’m going to call him today about a Shark Tank episode I saw today about Knife Aid (mail-order knife sharpening $10 a blade)…. Well…. I called Clarence,  he has no PC nor smartphone, not interested in my story, he was written up in the newspaper as a interest story and the police called him to enquire about his Biz, then the landlord in his subsidized housing reminded him he couldn’t have a Biz in his apartment. So he doesn’t charge people, does it for free, "it was never about the money".    He invited me over to see his themed subsidized housing décor, complete with a camouflaged out door machine shop on his patio porch.

Swimming

Big 50 meter pools here in VBC,  and many swimmers, mostly Chinese.

Differences; unisex locker rooms- similar to Amsterdam,  wanting clarity I asked a attendant about the etiquette of coed sharing the locker room,  they said there are privacy changing booths but sometimes people strip in front of everyone…unusual but there is not a rule against it. I'll need to try that. ;)

Showers, one is labeled “cold shower” with warm side spray. Strange,  high entry walls below the dive blocks,  kids can scamper up, but I need to swim to ladder.  Signs in shower say "no spitting or other personal hygiene allowed in shower."  Apparently Chinese like to spit,  a lot.

Chinese.  Burnaby was a sprawling suburb now has a high rise city center like I imagine Hong Kong, mostly Chinese signs, all pedestrians Chinese.  Not racist,  but what happens when you are suddenly surrounded in your home town by people who don’t look like you speaking a language you don’t understand.  Just so many of them. ..  I had a preview of this in Croatia, when Chinese cruise ships loaded in Dubrovnik and I was suddenly transported from a Dalmatian mindset to the land of China.

And  coincidentally the housing market became unaffordable for the average Canadian, many like M & Irene.

Burnaby’s 20 year old houses are being raised for incoming high rises.  Mostly Chinese I am told.

Report from Europe

Freedom Coffee Shop, Amsterdam,

Iaman reports:

Hello from Amsterdam, Dam to the locals.

Found nice pool blocks away on the edge of a canal. 5eu entry fee gets you an encoded wrist ban for entry/exit and opens a locker. Coed locker room (with individual booths) and showers, people shower with suits on.

Swimming became crowded 8 of us looping in a lane, most everyone oddly breaststroking. Met swimmer Wilma, she said the Dutch are required as children to first master breast stroke, then to master swimming fully clothed including shoes. So much water to fall into.

She was indifferent to Trump. Wilma explains the difference between Mediterranean and northern Europe due to effective accurate tax accounting in the north and the black economy of the South.

My compatriot anxious to sample Dam's "coffee shops" bought a 3eu spliff at the American Freedom coffee shop. Lighting up back at apartment, he chokes on the tobacco smoke, 90% tobacco. That is the preferred blend here, 100% pot needs to be sought out, harder to find.

---

I don't know what's going on, but the text in all of Iaman's emails run off the right edge of the screen. Word-wrap, which is what fits the text to the available width of the display is an old, old technique, so I don't understand what's going on here. It may be a turf war between Microsoft and Google, or it might be that text coming from a smart-phone is wrapped in some kind of package that regular email cannot decipher. I have a cell phone, but I'll be damned if I am going to sign up for some $100 a month package so I can read text messages on an itty-bitty screen.

The Hitman's Bodyguard

The Hitman's Bodyguard Red Band Trailer #1 (2017) Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson Action Movie HD
Very silly, action packed, silly love story. Samuel L. Jackson cursing loudly the whole time. Lots of stunts, an endless supply of bad guys meeting their doom at the hands of our heroes. One chase involved bad guys in cars chasing a speed boat through the canals of Amsterdam. That was interesting, haven't seen too many movies set in Amsterdam.

The villain is the dictator of Belarus. He is portrayed as being an evil man, like many East European dictators. Belarus seems to have some problems, but it doesn't seem as bad as some places.

Amsterdam, Part 2

Leading lights, left to right: Bobby Day (Robert Glenister), Lucy Cannonbury (Lesley Sharp), Alec Wayfield (Dino Fetscher), Nina Suresh (Indira Varma), Michael Niles (Neil Stuke)

We watched Paranoid, an eight part murder mystery series on Netflix this week. Despite the title, no one in the show exhibits any of the symptoms of paranoia, although given what's going on, maybe they should. But if 'they' are really out to get you, you aren't paranoid then, are you? There is an undercurrent of some nefarious evil running throughout the show, but it is pretty much overshadowed by all the front line crazy we see in every episode.

And we do have a nice sampling of front line crazy. Bobby suffers from panic attacks, Nina's biological clock is ticking and, presumably, that is what is behind her episodes of 'crazy woman' behavior. Lucy had some problems in the past but is working hard to stay calm.  Alec's mother is an inveterate* liar. Niles (the boss of the three detectives Alec, Bobby and Nina) deserves some sympathy since he is in charge of this squad of lunatics. Niles seems sane enough, but that might be because we haven't examined him too closely. This is just the main characters. We also have a whole town full of people, all of whom seem to have an affliction of one sort or another. Kind of like real life.

The story is set in a small town in England, but it is quickly established that the origins of this crime are in Amsterdam, where we find Linda Felber (Christiane Paul), the cheeriest detective you have ever met. She is a real bright spot on this otherwise dismal stage.

Amsterdam, Part 1, is S. G. Collins video about the Amsterdam transit system that was the subject of my last post. More Amsterdam posts here.

*having a particular habit, activity, or interest that is long-established and unlikely to change. "he was an inveterate gambler"

How Not To Do Mass Transit

'Don't kill my trams' met NLse ondertitels
I don't particularly care for mass transit, mostly because I am not willing to pay the exorbitant rent that is required to live in a place where it might actually be handy. Or maybe I just don't like being around other people. But I can see that it could be useful, especially in those places where traffic is congested and parking is non-existent.

This video does a good job of laying out the problems with mass transit planning. They are not unique to Amsterdam, they apply to any large city. I'm not quite sure what they mean by 'metropolis'. I thought any big city qualified as a metropolis, but maybe that's not the case. Maybe metropolii are not a good idea. Yes, I know, the idea of a city with a population of a zillion people is impressive, but I wonder if it is really good, useful or beneficial. Maybe we would all be better off if cities weren't any bigger than a million people and were at least 100 miles apart.

This video was made by S. G. Collins. I've been following him for a while now. He has a day job as a cameraman, and he produces his own little videos on the side. Some of them are pretty great.

Admiral

Admiral International Trailer 2
We started watching this on Netflix tonight and I was totally blown away by scenes of the 17th century warships duking it out. How have I not heard of this movie? It's like Neal Stephenson's Baroque Trilogy come to life. The only question in my mind is how did London get to be more important than Amsterdam? Or maybe that just depends on whether you speak English or you live on the Continent, as mainland Europe is called by those who live in that neighborhood.
    Do not confuse this movie with The Admiral, which is a Korean move about some Korean battle. I could have sworn that Netflix labeled this movie as The Admiral, but Google only delivers the Korean movie. You have to did deeper to get the Dutch one. Probably because it's in Dutch and you have to read the subtitles, and stupid, lazy Americans hate to read subtitles. Or so one might surmise.
    Anyway, it's a great movie, best old-time-sailing-ship-battle-scenes I've ever scene, especially the parts where you see the opposing fleets maneuvering. We had to stop halfway through because mama has to get up for work in the morning.
    Wikipedia has an article about this guy (the Admiral). His attack on the Medway is famous. (Map).

How the Dutch got their cycle paths

    I like riding my bike. I suppose the proliferation of bike lanes is a good thing. However, many of them are only marginally safer than no lane at all.
    Bicycles are good for commuting short distances, three or four miles. Any farther than that and it starts to seem more like work. Note in the video they mention an average daily travel distance of less than 4 kilometers. That's like two and a half miles. You also need to realize that the Netherlands is a very small, and very densely populated country. Some of our East Coast cities may approach the density and area of Holland. I am sure that anything West of the Appalachians is way more spread out and probably only a tenth as dense as Amsterdam. So while Amsterdam's solution might be good for small, densely populated areas, it is not going to work for the whole world.
    One of the popular places to put bike lanes is between a travel lane for cars and a parking lane for cars. This can work fine if everyone minds their P's and Q's, but when someone gets out of their parked car they are going to open their door, and that door is going to swing right into the bike lane. Any biker who happens along at that moment is going to get a nasty surprise. If they are really quick, they might have time to decide whether to run head on into the door, or swerve into the traffic lane where they can be run down by the electric car they did not hear coming up behind them. Running the bike lanes the other direction might alleviate this problem, but that would be sacrilege.
    Out here in the boonies, we have bike lanes alongside some high speed rural, two lane blacktop roads. I suppose there might be a couple of commuters that use them, but mostly they are for the spandex crowd that goes for a ride at lunch or on the weekends. I'm not sure I approve of spending tax payer dollars to give these muscle buns a place to play. On the other hand, it might save on cleaning bills. Dead Man's curve even has bike lanes. I am dreading the day I go through there and find a mess.

Wafflenator

Gouda's Gilde Originele Stroopwafels

Wayward daughter got back today and brought us a box of cookies from Amsterdam. They are like thin crisp waffles with caramel filling and they are really good.

Update November 2016 replaced missing picture.

Economic Outlook

The Atlantic has a long article by Richard Florida titled How the Crash Will Reshape America. I found these paragraphs about New York's future encouraging:

"Amsterdam stood at the center of the world’s financial system in the 17th century; its place was taken by London in the early 19th century, then New York in the 20th. Across more than three centuries, no other city has topped the list of global financial centers. Financial capitals have “remarkable longevity,” Cassis writes, “in spite of the phases of boom and bust in the course of their existence.”

The transition from one financial center to another typically lags behind broader shifts in the economic balance of power, Cassis suggests. Although the U.S. displaced England as the world’s largest economy well before 1900, it was not until after World War II that New York eclipsed London as the world’s preeminent financial center (and even then, the eclipse was not complete; in recent years, London has, by some measures, edged out New York). As Asia has risen, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Singapore have become major financial centers—yet in size and scope, they still trail New York and London by large margins."

This one about homeownership was surprising.

And while homeownership has some social benefits—a higher level of civic engagement is one—it is costly to the economy. The economist Andrew Oswald has demonstrated that in both the United States and Europe, those places with higher homeownership rates also suffer from higher unemployment. Homeownership, Oswald found, is a more important predictor of unemployment than rates of unionization or the generosity of welfare benefits. Too often, it ties people to declining or blighted locations, and forces them into work—if they can find it—that is a poor match for their interests and abilities."

Something to think about. He also mentions something about requiring banks to rent foreclosed houses. I don't think we need to do anything about foreclosed houses. If there are too many houses on the market, their value is going to fall. If a bank forecloses on a house, what are they going to do with it? Sit on it for months waiting for it to not sell? It's going to cost them two or three grand a month to do that. They could bulldoze it, but then they lose the whole value of the house (they would still have the land, which is maybe a sixth of the value). They could sell it on the open market for maybe half of the original price. I'm pretty sure they could find buyers then. But then they have to take an immediate hit on their books. Or they could change the terms of the mortgage so the current homeowner could keep the house. You know, something like cut the interest rate to, say 1%. Since the payments on new mortgages are almost all entirely interest, that would make a big difference.

That would allow them to keep the property on the books at it's full value. Of course they are probably paying more than one percent to the Fed, which is where they got the money in the first place. But you know, if people aren't paying the loans you made to them, it doesn't really matter what the interest rate is, because when the aren't making any payments your effective interest rate is like minus one thousand percent. That is going to still make a big dent in their books, but it is likely to cost less than any other option.

So if the bank is threatening to foreclose, make them an offer. Start with telling them you will only charge them a thousand a month to stay in the house and protect it from vandals and looters. You will probably need to go up from there, but give it a shot. With the large number of problem mortgages, they are going to be willing to listen to anyone who has any kind of solution.

Via Tam.