Shadow and Bone Part 2 - Netflix Series

Shadow and Bone: Season 2 | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix

We started season 2 this evening. It promises to be just as good as season 1.

Serebin the Hero

Anya Taylor

I keep falling back to Alan Furst's stories about espionage in Europe on the brink of WW2, I'm just in that kind of mood. I see this picture and I realize this is exactly the kind of thing you would run into in his stories.

The book I'm reading right now, for the second or third (or fourth time?), Blood of Victory, follows one Serebin on his travels around Europe, running errands for the big shots (his betters?) who are plotting to disrupt the flow of oil from the Ploesti oil fields in Romania to the factories in Germany.

Serebin gets an allowance that is like three times the average clerk's wages, so he's fairly comfortable. He's not a big shot, but he's well supported. He spends his time going to meetings or one sort of another. Some are in a community hall, some are in bars and cafes, some are in private residences, and some of those meetings are with girls, like you might see in the picture above. Funny thing is I didn't really have any idea of what those girls might look like until I saw this picture, possibly because I don't recall Mr. Furst mentioning anything about furs. But I think this is the caliber of people we are dealing with. Beware, because grading caliber by appearance is only valid on a couple of scales, and really has no bearing on their loyalty or honesty which are really the only measures that count. But if you are operating at this level, at least some of the players are going to have this caliber of appearance. And certainly all the girls Serebin has relationships with.

So Serebin's life goes on, he travels across Europe, mostly on trains, and he meets people, stays at hotels and eats in restaurants, much like any traveling salesmen does now. (Are there still traveling salesmen?*) But eventually the big shots decide they have enough information and decide on a course of action. And who do they ask to do the job? Well, none other than their man on the spot, Serebin. Up till now he hasn't done anything really dangerous. Mostly he's just had to endure the normal bureaucratic hassles of having his papers checked by Nazi thugs every time he crosses a border. Remember, technically we aren't at war with Germany. Yet. He has traveled using false papers, but very good false papers. Remember, this isn't a budget operation. The powers that be are pouring a veritable waterfall of money into this venture because if it succeeds it could bring this war to a close before it really gets started.

Things are different now. There are liable to be people with guns who are going to try and stop him, if they somehow get wind of what he's doing, and because the people with guns are very aware of how critical this supply of oil is, are going to be very sensitive to the least little whiff of trouble coming their way.

But for Serebin, there is no hesitation. This is what he signed up for. Everything up till now has just been the equivalent of cleaning your gun and filling your magazines. Here we go. He's really just like James Bond - he's one of the good guys, he's competent, he's got a mission and he's going to do his duty. He doesn't plan on getting killed or seriously injured, but he realizes that is a real possibility, and he's okay with it and he goes ahead on.

* They cover less territory, see more clients, spend more money, earn more money and stay away from home less. Now, there are more customers than before with more income and more buying impulses and, as a result, there are now more traveling salesmen, an estimated one million according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. - The New York Times in 1971!

P. S. Anya Taylor was the star of Queen's Gambit.

Delivery Drones

Amazing Invention- This Drone Will Change Everything
Mark Rober

This guy is a little too bouncy and cheerful for my taste, but he brings some good info to the party, so I'll let him slide. He talks about two different delivery drones being built by Zipline. One kind is a quadcopter  that delivers packages to your backyard by lowering them on cable. The other is more like an airplane. This one is being used to deliver packages, including emergency medical supplies. They are doing this in, of all places, Rwanda. Rwanda? The country with a zillion dead Hutu and Tutsi? Apparently things have changed and Rwanda is now a relatively prosperous country. The BBC has a decent summary. Wikipedia has a very long and very tedious article. I read a couple of pages before I gave up.

Small Planes, Small Towns

Piper PA22 Pacer at Roy's Motel & Cafe

Roy's is in the 'town' or Amboy, California, population 4. It is roughly in the center of a triangle with Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Phoenix at the tips.

Rome Station, Oregon

Rome Station is the sole business in Rome, Oregon, population too low to count. It's equidistant between Portland and Reno, and just a little farther to Sacramento.

Peddling Across Norway

My Electronically Enhanced Gym

I've been riding an exercise back lately. I got tired of the built in videos that Peloton provides, so I thought I'd try YouTube. There might be a way to get YouTube on the Peloton screen, but maybe not. Not my Peloton, so I don't want to mess with it. Besides there's a big screen TV on the wall. I think the girls had the idea of turning this into an exercise studio, but I think I'm the only one using it. I'm using my laptop to play a YouTube video over the HDMI cable, and YouTube Music to play tunes using the headphone jack which is connected to an old soundbar I had laying around. Both audio and video are coming over WiFi, but the Peloton is connected to the internet with a wire. It's supposed to have WiFi but for some reason the WiFi doesn't want to cooperate.

The video is the view out the front of a train as it travels from Trondheim north to the Arctic Circle. It's 10 hours long. At the rate I'm going I should be there by summer. I posted a short excerpt from a trip from Birgen to Oslo.

I used to ride real bicycles outside in the real world and it was great, some of the time. Then my heart flaked out and I realized why it was only some of the time, so I gave it up. Also meant I wasn't out playing in traffic which always made me a little nervous. I mention this because I drove over to St. Johns today and because the weather was pleasant the bicyclists were out in force. I don't like having to watch out for them, it's a little nerve racking to be bombing along a country road and have a cyclist suddenly appear on the scene. Where there is a straight road without much traffic, it's not too bad, but the road to St. Johns (Germantown) is neither straight nor low traffic. Nobody in their right mind would take a bicycle up Germantown road, but today they were there, lunatics anonymous, peddling their little hearts out. 

Special Effects from the Dawn of Time

Amazing Effects in Classic Films - How Did They Pull It Off?
Film Riot

Just all around great.

Spin that Wheel

Pilatus PC21 of the Roulettes, the 6 aircraft display team of the Royal Australian Air Force

Seems like an apt name for a dangerous occupation. The PC21 is a military training aircraft made in Switzerland.