Wild Card

Wild Card Official Trailer #1 (2015) - Jason Statham, Sofia Vergara Movie HD
Movieclips Trailers
It's a Jason Statham movie, so there are a couple of fight scenes where he beats, pummels, injures, disables, cripples and eventually kills a couple of dozen bad guys. Great stuff, just what we've come to expect from Jason. But there's some clever repartee in there as well which means I enjoyed the heck out of it. My wife, not so much.

If It ain't the Russians, it's Mother Nature

AT-802F Fire Bosses at Ladd Army Airfield in Fairbanks, Alaska, July 4, 2022 - Scott Raymond/U.S. Forest Service

It's forest fire season in Alaska and it's shaping up to be a bad one. The smoke is so bad in Fairbanks (see orange sun in above photo) that aircraft are often grounded.

This is a Tank

Russian Tank in Ukraine - Maximilian Clarke/Getty Images

Since I posted Not A Tank yesterday, I thought I ought to post a picture of a real tank so you can see the difference.

Logical Thought Versus Feelings

I was listening to a tune yesterday. Maybe I'll remember a line and be able to track it down, but right now I can't name it. I've heard it many times before and I like it well enough, not enough to rate posting it here, but well enough. I'm listening to the lyrics and it suddenly occurs to me that a great deal of the noise we here on the media about politics is inspired by feelings, not by logic. That's why so much of what we hear doesn't make any sense. It's because the spouters are not trying to make sense, they are expressing their feelings. And people react emotionally to those statements.

That's why trying to have a rational discussion with political opponents so often fails. It's not because one party is wrong, it's because they aren't even speaking the same language.

Update ten hours later. I figured out what the tune was:

Broken Bells - Good Luck (Official Video)
brokenbellsmusic

The song came out two years ago, so some people might think that Trump is 'the face of evil's on the news tonight', but you listen to it today and you might think Biden is the devil under discussion. The two guys who made this tune had this to say:

"wanted to release 'Good Luck' while it felt timely and reflective of specific discussions between the two of us, questioning the state of things, as we do…"

 That's pretty neutral. However, people will hear what they to hear.

Then I found this post on Daily Reckoning:

The Deep State Is Sadistic by Jeffrey Tucker

Which prompted me to comment:

My theory of the day is that the people in white house are operating on the premise that wanting something is enough to make it happen. They are operating on feelings and dreams. They do not understand how the world works. They are smart people, smart with words and playing to people's emotions, but they are dreaming. They have no idea how the world actually operates. This can work for people at the top level, if they have competent people doing the actual work. But when all you have is true believers and you don't have any competent, grounded people available to do the actual work, you get the disaster that we see happening now.

I posted a link to another essay by Jeffrey Tucker a week ago.

Robot Air Tanker Part 2

MQ-25 Robot Air Tanker - Brandon Roberson

Defence Blog has a story about this aircraft, but it's all about software integration and testing, nothing about the actual hardware. But they did include this cool picture. The MQ-25 first showed up here a year ago.

That's Not A Tank

2S9 Nona self propelled mortar

Aljazeera included this picture with their daily update of the situation in the Ukraine, but they labeled it a tank. It kind-of sort-of looks like a tank with a big gun barrel and tracks, but it all looks too light duty to be a real tank. I posted a question on reddit and tarkin1980 was kind enough to answer.

The 2S9 is a Russian machine from 1980. They built a thousand of them.

The Terminal List

The Terminal List - Official Trailer | Prime Video
Prime Video
Ever notice how movies seem to come in pairs? You'll have one movie come out, and it short order there will be another one with almost exactly the same story, but different. Two weeks ago it was Wander, today we have The Terminal List. Both shows are paranoid thrillers, featuring a guy with a brain that is not 100%, a dead family, and an evil conspiracy being fomented by government defense contractors. Wander really make you wonder whether our hero is imagining things,  The Terminal List raises the same issues, but quickly tamps down those kind of negative waves.

In The Terminal List, we never have more than a few seconds of doubt as to whether our guy is crazy or not. In Wander, you are never really sure.

Aside from this theme, the two movies could not be more different. The Terminal List is a Tom-Clancy-esque thriller with NAVY SEALS bring the hurt to the bad guys, quickly, smoothly and professionally.

There is one scene where our hero has constructed a homemade EFP (Explosively Formed Penetrator) to attack the head of the snake. He sets it up in a van, pulls up alongside the villain's (probably armored) SUV, but about 12 feet away, slips out of the vehicle and when he is a 'safe distance' away detonates it. The resulting explosion completely obliterates his van, but you do get to see the projectile travel across the space separating the two vehicles. It goes right through the target vehicle doing considerable damage. Of course the villain escapes with only minor injuries, but the attack is enough of a disruption that our hero can chase down the villain and execute him. Very satisfying. Note that for our hero a 'safe distance' is measured in yards, I would measure it in miles. Or continents.