Effing New York City

Cutthroat

Handwaving Freakoutery has a post up about 'systemic racism', whatever the fuck that is. Actually he does a pretty good job of explaining it. The problem is that it was created by the same folks that are complaining about it because they are living in fairytale land and not in the real world. Man alive, we have some real fuck heads in positions of power in this country. Why don't they get voted out? Because anyone with a lick of sense doesn't want to wade into the swamp with these scumbags, there are too many other, better opportunities available in this world. So what we have is 'systemic scumbaggery'. The only people who are willing to go into the swamp are the kind of vicious cut throats that are already there. No wonder the situation just keeps getting worse.

About This Blog

Gearhead

I am a gearhead. I have an affinity for all things mechanical, logical, digital. Cars, engines, aircraft, motorcycles, computers, etc. I also wonder how the world works, i.e. what makes society tick. It's mostly baffling but sometimes I come across little bits of clarity. I try to post them when I do.

YouTube

YouTube is freaking amazing. Ask for just about anything and it will deliver a zillion videos. Some of them are great, some are feeble, some go down smooth as silk, some of them just grate on you.  Of course, different people have different tastes. Some people like long rambling videos that they can play while they go on about their business. Not me, I like videos that are short and to the point. If I am watching, I am focused. Those are the ones I post. Those and music videos, but once again, people have different tastes. I seldom like the music videos posted on other blogs, and I expect most people won't like the ones I post, but maybe some people will. I have no way of telling.

Movies and TV

We spend a couple of hours most evenings watching shows on the big screen TV.  I try to write at least a short post about what we watch, mostly to just to keep track of what we have seen. I post the trailers to refresh my memory for when I go back to check on a show. The short blurbs I write sometimes aren't really enough to bring the show to mind. The trailers help.

Pictures

I like pictures, so I try to post at least one with each of my posts. I include a caption beneath each post, partly to identify the picture, and partly so when the picture disappears (which seems to happen on regular basis), I will have some idea of what to look for. Most of the pictures I steal off of the internet, when I do, I turn the caption into a link so if you want to know where it came from you can just click the caption/link.

If there is no link it's either because it is one of my own pictures, or someone sent it to me, or I got lazy.

Pictures usually disappear either because a website disappears or it gets rearranged and the link doesn't work. To combat this I try to download a copy to my computer and then upload it to Blogger. That seems to be pretty reliable.

I try to use the largest pictures I can because big pictures are more better. Clicking on the pic should take you to a larger image. Screen resolution has been increasing and shows no signs of abating, so hopefully in ten years these larger images will still be adequate, not like the low res scans from the earlier days of digitization. Many of those are just awful.

I have accumulated a zillion pictures and have been looking for someplace to put them on the web, someplace that has a extensive cataloging / search functions. One of these days I may actually invest some time in researching this. Or maybe make my own.

Code

I like puzzles, but I only like puzzles that can be easily solved, for some value of 'easily'. I have tackled a couple of unsolvable ones, but I give up on them after a bit. The ones I really like are the ones that can be solved using a computer, that gives me an excuse to write some code, some very mechanistic code. I post completed programs on github.

Dreams

I sometimes write about the dreams I have. I am not big on interpretation. I just write these down because they were so clear and and they feel so real. Some of them will stay with me for days. It's kind of weird.

Links

I embed links to many things. That's all some of my posts are - links to other sites. Sometimes it's to stuff I really like and sometimes it's just to a site where I found some bit of information. I recently decided that links should open new tabs, so I try to remember to toggle that flag whenever I insert a link.

I should post this on my profile.

More Bananastan

Taliban fly US Black Hawk helicopter above military parade in Kandahar
The Telegraph

I put up one post about this, or maybe a couple, and I thought that would be enough, but someone put some Ovaltine in my Cheerios or something, and this article on RT pushed me over the edge.

Our withdrawal from Afghanistan looks like the biggest screw up since I don't know what. Maybe in the history of the world, I dunno. It's completely inexplicable. It's so bad that no one has even tried to explain it.

I mean, who the fuck is in charge anyway? Biden? Somehow I don't think so. He might be in charge of his faction, but he's not in charge of the military. Apparently no one is.

See my previous post on the subject for some speculation on what's going on.

Dream Pedestrians

St. John's Bridge
Something like my dream bridge

I'm driving a pickup truck along a four lane arterial street approaching a bridge in a mid-sized city. I think my wife or someone is in the passenger's seat. I'm in the curb lane. I notice a couple of guys in high visibility coats and pants, the kind that construction workers or first responders might wear. They aren't the same colors. One guy is wearing a blue jacket with high visibility lime green patches. The other is wearing an orange jacket with blue patches. They have stepped off the curb into my lane and are looking up at part of the bridge structure, apparently oblivious to my approach. I move over halfway into the other lane and blow my horn as I drive past. I'm in the center lane now driving up the first half of the bridge and these two guys coming flying by me on powered skateboards or scooters, still intent on their mission, whatever it is, and still oblivious to me. One of the guys has one of those really long Afghani rifles slung over his back.

After the bridge we turn left and enter mall-ville, just one small shopping center after another with a street that meanders through them. I'm in the left hand lane as this is evidently a one-way street. I'm putzing along as one should in a parking lot and I see a group of people coming around a bend into this road. Most of the people are walking on the sidewalk / median, but this one guy is in the middle of my lane. He's got longish hair, carrying a briefcase and wearing a full length fur coat. I'm thinking I should honk at him, or role down my window and say something because he, like the other two guys, seems oblivious to the presence of a pickup truck coming to take him to the promised land. I don't do any of those things but just go around him.

The Continuing Story of Afghanistan Bananastan

Current Status: Undetermined

It strikes me as a little odd that we haven't heard anything about how we managed to make such a mess of our withdrawal from Afghanistan. All I have heard is that the President really screwed up, but the President is just one guy in Washington D. C. Don't we have a giant military organization that is supposed to do the actual job of moving troops, supplies and support structures around? Don't we have a State Department that is supposed to oversee government employees who are stationed overseas? I mean how did this situation get so fucked up? 

Maybe I'm not connected to the right news sources. Seems unlikely, anyone who has anything to say at all, their word gets spread all over the net.

The Fire of Rome, 18 July 64 AD' by Hubert Robert

Borepatch gave me a clue. He points to The Intrepid Reporter, Bayou Renaissance Man and Charles Hugh Smith. Here's a line from the last:

It's not yet clear that there is any leadership left in America. What's playing on stage are warring camps of self-interested elites fighting to secure their power even as the foundations crumble beneath their feet. - CHS

Execution of Czar Nicolas II of Russia - Leemage/UIG/Getty Images

What I gathered from these guys is that there is a big fight going on between multiple factions: the entrenched political establishment, the military, the intelligence community (NSA, CIA, FBI et al.) and the new tech oligarchs. In light of this, the 25,000 troops deployed in Washington D. C. back in January starts to make sense. It wasn't because of the 'insurrection' by a bunch of tourists, that was just a pretext. It was because someone in the government was afraid of a real coup coming from one of the other factions.

Jigsaw Puzzle Pic of the Day

Paris Eiffel Tower
300 pieces

You can choose however many pieces you want to deal with. Working with 300 pieces on my small screen (1600 x 900) is a challenge, it takes hours. I need a bigger screen. A reference image would also help, but on the other hand I like the challenge. I glanced at the thumbnail when I opened it, but all I remembered was that it was the Eiffel Tower, I didn't absorb the surrounding stone work (I start from the outside in) so all the while I'm working on this I'm wondering if I have the right puzzle. Anyway, it turned out better than I expected. You don't really see the whole image until you put the last piece in place and all the little lines delineating the pieces disappear. Much more satisfying than a real puzzle.

I tried to find out who painted this, but after minutes of Googling I got bumpkis.

Pic of the Day

Arab Mowing his Lawn

I don't know what this is. Somebody dressing up for a photo? An Arab living in America who has totally embraced American gun culture? A refugee from a failed coup somewhere in the middle east who is expecting a hit squad from the regime he failed to topple? 

Do people in any other countries have big backyard lawns like we do?

I've heard rumors of people who have places out in the country where they go out and patrol the perimeter armed like this, but they are usually wearing blue jeans or military camouflage, not whatever you call Arab robes.