Lupin - Netflix Series

Lupin | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix

Another video series we watched a while back but I never got around to posting.

The show stars Omar Sy in the role of Assane Diop, a man who is inspired by the adventures of master thief Arsène Lupin, a character created by Maurice Leblanc in the early 1900s. - Wikipedia

Lightweight and entertaining.

Update November 2023 replaced missing video. Apparently I never put the video id in and never bothered to check. Very sloppy.

Il Processo - Netflix Series

Il processo - Il trailer ufficiale
Mediaset Infinity

Il Processo - The Trial - an Italian murder mystery. We watched this last year, but I never got around to publishing this post.

The above trailer is in Italian. We watched it on Netflix with English subtitles enabled. You can turn on subtitles in the above clip, but they are in Italian. YouTube has an auto-translate feature, it works on some videos but not on this one. The video clip will give you the look and feel of the show.


Locations used in the show

The show is set in Mantua in northern Italy. Several old, fancy buildings are shown and used.

Palazzo Te

Fall of the Giants - Giulio Romano ~1530
Palazzo Te Ceiling Fresco

Nomadic Niko has a page about some of the places in Mantua.

Wikipedia has a history of Mantua. It's quite the place.

The tune in the clip is by Billy Eilish:

Billie Eilish - bury a friend
Billie Eilish

The video is a little odd, but you know, kids these days.

Santo - Netflix Series

Santo | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix
Gruesome story of a drug dealing cult operating in Brazil and Spain. It's a bit confusing because it jumps back and forth in time, though enough sequences are repeated that it eventually starts to fit together. But then we throw hallucinogens in the mix and now nobody really knows what's going on. The jumbled time sequences work to illustrate how confused our players are. Six episodes, 45 minutes each.

High Altitude Mosquito

De Havilland Mosquito: The wooden fighter-bomber that could do it all
Imperial War Museums
I'm reading Night Soldiers by Alan Furst, a WW2 espionage novel. In part 4, our hero, the Russian trained Bulgarian spy Khristo is now working for the allies. He has been parachuted into 'Czechoslovakia' and is skulking around Prague doing basic spy stuff, collecting information and radioing it up to a Mosquito flying in orbit around the city in the middle of the night at 35,000 feet. 35,000 feet? Really? Then the above video pops up on YouTube and yes, they did fly at 35,000 feet. But how did the pilots survive, not all of the Mosquitos were pressurized? Which brings us to the second video.


High Altitude Flight during WWII
390th Memorial Museum Foundation

Seems oxygen was one of the lessor problems of high altitude flight. The cold was the biggest problem.

Nothing Burger

My mind seems to have entered an empty space. Almost nothing on Feedly interests me. Likewise Quora seems to be overflowing with stupid and / or ignorant questions. There might be something of interest on reddit, but I can't seem to find a list of all the categories, though I suspect that might not help.

Meanwhile the new house remodeling project (going on three years now) continues. This morning's project is try and get some parts from Pella to repair a broken awning window. Then I need to draw up a plan for the master bathroom remodel. Fortunately I don't have to design it, the girls have already figured out what they want, we just need to nail it down so Osmany will have a plan to work from.

I have a couple of little computer programs I should finish and post on this blog. I think I have figured out the technical problems with making them run, I just need to polish them up a bit, but I don't seem to be able to focus.

Mean-meanwhile I am reading Night Soldiers by Alan Furst and his insights into how the Soviet Union operated under Stalin are a bit distressing. Sounds a lot like Genghis Khan, except Genghis was long enough ago that we have dressed up his actions as rational (submit or die was his modus operandi), but actually he was just like Stalin - kill anyone and everyone you want, and the more painful and gruesome their deaths, the better. They were savages. Western civilization frowns on that kind of behavior. Kill your enemies if need be, but do it without torturing them.

Putin might be a thug, but as Michael told us in The Godfather, all powerful men are thugs. 

Bonhoeffer‘s Theory of Stupidity

Sounds a whole lot like our current situation. I wonder if this might be an effect of evolution. Groups of people who could suppress their ability to think in order to go along with the group were more successful in wars against groups of independent thinkers.

Notes on Night Soldiers by Alan Furst

I'm reading Night Soldiers by Alan Furst. It is the story of Khristo, a Bulgarian peasant recruited by the Russian NKVD and trained as a spy. He is sent to Madrid to help the Republicans in their war against Franco and his Nationalists. Today toward the end of the section titled Blue Lantern I came across a couple of interesting bits.

Django Reinhardt - In A Sentimental Mood - Paris, 26.04.1937
Heinz Becker
On page 157 Faye is listening to Django Reinhardt & Stéphane Grappelli on an Emerson radio.

1938 Opel Kapitän

One page 165, Khristo and his gang are working with SIM (Republican secret police) to round up nationalists who are hiding out in embassies that have been abandoned because of the ongoing civil war. The SIM thugs are driving an Open Kapitän.

Degtyaryov machine gun

Khristo and Ilya are sitting in the back of a Citroen with Degtyaryov machine guns on their laps.

Port Bou railway station

Khristo and Andres barely manage to avoid arrest in Madrid and are deciding which direction to take to make their escape (p.174). One of their options is head to Port Bou in northeastern Spain. Never heard of this place, but when I look on Google Maps I see a huge railyard. What the heck is this? You see big railyards like this in big cities, but Port Bou is like a little fishing village. Turns out this is a break-of-gauge station. Evidently French trains and Spanish trains use a different gauge for their railroads.

Portbou was a small but important point for the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War, as it was one of the few places from where they could get supplies from abroad. - Wikipedia