Stellar Orbits Around Milky Way's Central Black Hole

Stellar Orbits Around Milky Way's Central Black Hole (1995 - 2195)
I remember seeing something like this a while back, and I just came across it again on Starts with a Bang! It's just the coolest thing ever. The video is speeded up by a factor of two hundred million, but as I recall there are some planets that are so close to the center that they have an orbital period measured in days. How they managed to collect the data in order to produce this video borders on witchcraft. YouTube blurb:

This demo shows the observed and predicted orbits of thirteen stars that were used by astronomers at the Keck/UCLA Galactic Center Group to predict the position of a huge black hole at the center of the Milky Way. This data was provided by Andrea Ghez and Jessica Lu. The animation spans 200 years between 1995 and 2195.

Cheeto Jesus

Cheeto Jesus

Carteach deftly summarizes the political world:

Cheeto Jesus may be many things, good, bad, and ugly.... but he is an undeniable master at directing conversations and eyes.
In just a few tweets, he has made Cortez, Omar, Tlaib, and Cummings the very face of his opposition.
(I don't call them the face of the Republican parties opposition, because I am quite certain the Trumpster is for himself, and not for any party. The 'pubs hate him as much as the 'Dems do, and Trump was registered D for almost his entire life before swapping out just to run for election.)
In any case, he manages to control the thoughts of millions of people through nothing more than short comments. He's moved into so many peoples heads, they can't help themselves but jump at his every word, if unsteadily so given the knees jerking up and down like reciprocating saws.
Hell.... NPR will likely be bankrupt in about 5 years, since their entire business model has shifted to 'Orange Man Bad 24/7' over the last few years. I doubt they can transition back after Da Trump is out of office.
Prediction.... Whoever becomes the D's anointed candidate for 2020, Trump will tweet his high esteem for. That person will immediately be gutted like a fish, and used by the DNC as a bus drive-line oiler for the rest of the election season.
It's Trumps political world, and he runs it 280 characters at a time.

"Cheeto Jesus". Heh.

I'm not sure exactly what a "bus drive-line oiler" is, but it sound pretty awful.

The Legend of Drunken Master

The Legend of Drunken Master (7/12) Movie CLIP - The Axe Gang Battle (1994) HD
Watched this old Jackie Chan movie on Netflix last night. I'm watching this scene and I realize this is where Quentin Tarantino got his Crazy 88's for Kill Bill. Also, I think I've seen this tavern in other movies, like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, although the set seems to have been spruced up, and that might have been done to make it look more like it did a thousand years ago when the Chinese empire was in its glory.

Fear & Delight

The Correspondents - Fear & Delight (Official Video)
This just popped up on YouTube. The tune is light, the words are glib, but the video is very clever.
It has gotten 4 million views. Think other people find it entertaining as well?

Car Wash Troubles

Car Wash from Far Side artist Gary Larson

When I was kid, I thought the automated, drive thru car washes were the cat's pajamas. We probably only went once, they cost money you know, but evidently it made an impression. Since I got married, and appearances are important to SWMBO, and I had more than two nickels to rub together, I started using the local car wash, which made my inner ten-year-old very happy. Not so my daughter. Girl can travel the world without having to call home, but can't go to the car wash without her pappy. Now I know why.

I've never been very good about keeping my cars clean. As long as they ran, that was enough. I did thoroughly clean a few cars, but that was usually because I was putting them up for sale.

Anyway, I seem to have had more than my fair share of problems with Kaddy Car Washes. I took our SUV there a few years ago and once I got fully into the car wash tunnel, water started pouring in. What the heck? Seems that somebody closed the sunshade but had forgotten to close the sunroof all the way. The wet interior was the least of my problems. Seems that sunroof mechanism is kind of delicate, and it wasn't up to the task of closing while the overhead brushes are beating on it. It closed, but something in the mechanism broke and now it won't close completely anymore. I have it propped up with a couple of wood blocks.

A few months ago I took my car to the car wash. I heard a bang, it seemed to come from the car in front of me, a late model Toyota Prius. They stopped the car wash to fix the problem, and then they restarted it. A few seconds later my car is where the previous bang came from and now something is beating the tar out of the side of my car. Seems a big rotating brush had snagged the side view mirror of the car in front of me and ripped it clean off. When my car got to that brush, the mirror assembly was still caught in the brush so every time it went around, my car got beat.

Kaady did right by me, they paid to have the body shop fix it and paid for a rental car for me to use while mine was in the shop. Cost them $2,000. They also gave me a bunch of passes for free car washes.

2016 Mazda 3 Roof Trim

Yesterday, my daughter comes by and she wants to get her car washed. Usually her husband washes it by hand, but he is tied up with work, so she's going to help him out. So we go to the car wash. Halfway through there is a big bang. We look at the car afterwards and don't see anything. Once she gets home her husband takes one look and notices that one of the trim strips that line the edge of the roof is gone. I managed to retrieve the trim strip from the car wash. It is a piece of aluminum with some plastic clips to hold it in place and at least one of those clips is broken / missing. So we are going to have to find a new way to attach it. I think a generous application of silicon sealer will do the trick.

I could holler at Mazda and Kaady, but being as the damage easily can be repaired, it's probably not worth the hassle. Mazda and Toyota may want to try making their cars more car wash resistant. I mean, a car wash brush shouldn't be able to rip things off of your car. Or maybe Kaady needs find some snag free brushes. Or they need to ban me from their car wash.

You've got to know when you've crossed the line.

Metropolitan police horse Echo and Cavalry horse Sefton

A couple of months ago The Adaptive Curmudgeon explained John Wick.

Today, Brian Micklethwait does the same for soccer fans:

Concerning the football match, we later read this:

It is incredibly moving to watch a line of just six horses effortlessly holding back 35,000 fans. The relationship between the police and the British public may be troubled, but judging by this night at least, it seems the force’s equine members still draw a healthy respect.

Healthy respect? My guess is it’s more a case of everyone knowing that hurting human cops is okay, because all’s fair in love and rioting. But hurt a horse, and the whole world considers you scum. I remember the IRA hurting a horse, and the reaction from everyone was: right, that does it. I do not like the IRA any more. Bombing humans to death in places like Manchester and Ireland. That’s okay. But, a horse? Now they’ve crossed a line.

Electronical Excitement

(#0180) Spectacular Failure and Replacement of Vacuum Tube in Atwater Kent 55C AM Radio
[Action starts at 4:50 and runs to failure at 8:00]
Roberta is taking out about out an old radio transmitter and she mentions that Kennetron repairs vacuum tubes, so I go looking for pictures and I find this video. This guy isn't actually repairing a vacuum tube, he's jury-rigging an adapter in order to make use of a different tube. Now he has a bad tube which he proceeds to run to destruction for our amusement (above). Kennetron only repairs vacuum tubes which are worth repairing, i.e. big industrial / commercial tubes. They aren't going to repair the tubes in your audio amplifier.