Real Reality

Nico's Epiphany
Drew Talbert

Drew must have made a zillion of these Bistro Buddy videos. This one is exceptional.

Cirrus SR-20

Cirrus SR-20 (VH-QOL) & his big buddy

This photo was taken at Shellharbour Australia, which is about 50 miles south of Sydney. Cirrus built 1,800 SR-20s 1999. 

Star Trek

Star Trek Flags

The Penguin

The Penguin | Official Trailer | Max
Max

New series just started. Next episode comes out in, I dunno, two weeks maybe. Anyway, it's pretty good. The makeup department's transformation of Colin Ferrill makes him unrecognizable. If they hadn't told me who it was I wouldn't have recognized him. Might be why they have him introducing this trailer.

You watch The Godfather and you might be led to believe that gangsters are really just honest, hard working guys trying to catch the American Dream. They get a little violent sometimes, but sometimes a little violence is called for. Okay, sometimes there is a lot of violence, but usually there is a reason.

This show is full of sleazeballs who would cheat their own mother. Well, all except for Oswald, he loves his mom. And he takes this black kid under his wing. Still periodically threatens to gut him like a fish if he fucks up, but he hasn't done it yet. So maybe he really is human, or maybe they are just showing us his weak points. All in all a pretty great show.

Other notable characters:

• Sofia Falcone / The Hangman: Carmine's daughter and a psychopathic serial killer who is a former inmate of Arkham Asylum. - This one promises to be a big problem.
• Francis Cobb: Oz's mother who suffers from early-onset dementia.
• Salvatore Maroni: A mob boss and drug trafficker whose operation ended following a historic drug bust, in which Carmine was the informant.
• Eve Karlo: A prostitute and Oz's mistress. - Defromed and ugly as the Penguin is, he still has a girlfriend.
• Alberto Falcone: Carmine's son and Sofia's younger brother, who struggles with drug and alcohol addiction. - Oswald has already dealt with him in the first episode.
• Carmine - the recently deceased head of the Falcone crime family.

More English versus Metric

New Tool Day!
AvE

I enjoy the way this guy mangles the English language. He's great.

Then I realized not everyone might be familiar with hooking up the PTO on a farm tractor. This guy shows you how it's done on a modern machine.

How to connect a Drive Shaft to the tractor PTO Shaft
Quality Implement

On older equipment there is no locking ring - there is a hole through the connector that you need to line up with the shaft and then insert a pin. Even when the weather is nice it's a pain-in-the-wazoo. Out in the mud and rain it can be annoying. In those conditions a pokemon could be a big help.

Cessna 182Q Skylane

Cessna 182Q Skylane

Cessna has built over 20,000 Skylanes since they began building them in 1956. There have been 23 models identified by the trailing letter. The Q model came out in 1977, which is almost 50 years ago. Most float plane photos I come across are from Alaska. This one is from Massachusetts.

Nuclear AI

Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant

Computers are taking over the world. Well, not actually. Computers are stupid and are completely lacking in motivation. But people are smart, at least some of them. Unfortunately, some of them are crazy, and some of them are highly motivated to do something. Mix those three together and you get things like the AI (Artificial Intelligence) craze. I'm not sure that AI is going to bring us any great benefits. The one thing I can see it being used for is answering the phones at medical and medical insurance offices. This is big time sink for everyone involved. Nobody cares about the callers (clients / patients / victims), but the expense of hiring staff to answer the phones, that cuts into the bottom line. Never mind that the legions of women employed in these roles will be out of a job, it was horribly job that nobody ever wanted to do in the first place, right?

Besides entertainment and replacing phone drones, I'm not sure that AI will be good for. I suppose someone might use it to discover / invent something that could have a wide ranging effect. We'll just have to wait and see.

I'm pretty sure that advertising is what's paying for all the big data centers. Oh, there are some private enterprises that make use of them, but what they spend on them is a cost they want to minimize. If you are using them for advertising there is no end to the demand.

Anyway, I thought this was interesting:

Microsoft AI Needs So Much Power It's Restarting Site of US Nuclear Meltdown

The owner of the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania will invest $1.6 billion to revive it, agreeing to sell all the output to Microsoft Corp. as the tech titan seeks carbon-free electricity for data centers to power the artificial intelligence boom.

Constellation Energy Corp., the biggest US operator of reactors, expects Three Mile Island to go back into service in 2028, according to a statement Friday. While one of the site’s two units permanently closed almost a half-century ago after the worst US nuclear accident, Constellation is planning to reopen the other reactor, which shut in 2019 because it couldn’t compete economically.

Via Zerohedge