Suicide by Robot?

Tesla stopped by Kenosha County Sheriff 

Guy was asleep in his Tesla that was going 80 MPH down the interstate. Must have a lot of faith in modern electronic gizmos, or a death wish. This was the third time he's been caught. 

Lindybeige on Cannons

Cannon loading in the eighteenth century
Lindybeige

It occured to me that I hadn't seen anything by Lindybeige lately, so I went looking. This was made a little difficult by the fact that I didn't actually remember his name. I remembered his unkempt hair, his manner of speaking and the fact that I have enjoyed some of his videos. I looked through my excessively long list of subscriptions, but found nothing. I started looking through my blog. I checked all of my history labels (history and all the various centuries). Nada. I finally recalled that he had done an advertisement in one of his videos and I thought the ad was 'hilarious'. Searching my blog for that term quickly led to the video. So now I've subscribed, and since I've gone to all this trouble I thought I'd put up one of his videos. Many of his more recent videos have gotten a bit longer, like half an hour. This one is a bit older, but it's short, and hey, cannons!

Other Lindybeige posts here.

The Big Con

TK News Racket Key
Click to embiggenate

Matt Taibbi has started a new feature on his website TK News: Racket of the Week. His premise is that many of the fancy financial schemes being run these days are nothing more than old fashioned street cons writ large. To help identify these, he has created this key to help the unwary figure out just how they were taken.

Northern Sea Route

Northeast Passage / Northern Sea Route

It seems that sailing ships across the top of the world has become viable, for a couple months of the year anyway. The linked article is all about the military buildup in the Arctic, but the map is from the Economist which has a paywall. Wikipedia has a similar map that also shows the Northwest Passage. I'm not sure anyone is using that yet. 

P.S. As Bruce points out, ice breakers are kind of crucial to traveling this route. I've put up several posts about ice breakers, and half of those posts are about the Russians.

The Woman in the Window

The Woman in the Window | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix

A well done but annoying thriller. I suspect it was only annoying because I have watched too many shows with too many of the same elements. We've got crazy people, though only a couple, but it's a movie, not an umpteen part series, so we don't have time to go hog wild. One is the woman in the title, and she's a harmless kind of crazy. The other is an apparent innocuous guy who is actually a psychopathic killer.

The show is kind of a cross between Rear Window and Panic Room with Jody Foster. Like Rear Window, our protagonist is confined to her house and sees weird stuff happening at the neighbor's and nobody believes her. Like Panic Room, we have a rich woman, living alone, in a expensive five story brownstone on the upper west side of Manhattan, and shit happens. In Jody's case she is dealing with criminals who, while evil, are at least rational. Cat lady Anna is pretty screwed up, hallucinating, seeing a psychiatrist, eating all kinds of pills.

The annoying parts? Anna gets startled way too often, and half the time she breaks a glass. Admittedly, it's a spooky old house, there is weird stuff going on and she is definitely a little flakey. Another are the conversations that slide right past the important parts. Ask the question, dang it. And then there is the climatic fight scene. The guy is down, pick up the knife you twit. Even if you don't finish him off, at least pick up the friggin' knife. And then he chases her up onto the roof. Why do they always run up the stairs? Why don't they lock the doors? Yeah, I know, it would spoil the chase scene. But then he knocks her down and instead of finishing her off, he disappears. WTF? Okay, he's a lunatic, and he just got a big thump in the head, but he managed to get this far. What's stopping him now? Whatever, gives Anna a chance and she makes the most of it.

The New Yorker has a review.

Clint

Long ago I launched my ship in pursuit of the true, the good, and the beautiful. Often, I seemed to be crashing into the rock of Clint Eastwood’s the good, the bad, and the ugly. - W. Winston Elliott III

James Bond

As an seven year old in about 1983, in the days before First Class Lounges at airports, I was with my grandad in Nice Airport and saw Roger Moore sitting at the departure gate, reading a paper. I told my granddad I'd just seen James Bond and asked if we could go over so I could get his autograph. My grandad had no idea who James Bond or Roger Moore were, so we walked over and he popped me in front of Roger Moore, with the words "my grandson says you're famous. Can you sign this?" As charming as you'd expect, Roger asks my name and duly signs the back of my plane ticket, a fulsome note full of best wishes. I'm ecstatic, but as we head back to our seats, I glance down at the signature. It's hard to decipher it but it definitely doesn't say 'James Bond'. My grandad looks at it, half figures out it says 'Roger Moore' - I have absolutely no idea who that is, and my hearts sinks. I tell my grandad he's signed it wrong, that he's put someone else's name - so my grandad heads back to Roger Moore, holding the ticket which he's only just signed. I remember staying by our seats and my grandad saying "he says you've signed the wrong name. He says your name is James Bond." Roger Moore's face crinkled up with realisation and he beckoned me over. When I was by his knee, he leant over, looked from side to side, raised an eyebrow and in a hushed voice said to me, "I have to sign my name as 'Roger Moore' because otherwise...Blofeld might find out I was here." He asked me not to tell anyone that I'd just seen James Bond, and he thanked me for keeping his secret. I went back to our seats, my nerves absolutely jangling with delight. My grandad asked me if he'd signed 'James Bond.' No, I said. I'd got it wrong. I was working with James Bond now. Many, many years later, I was working as a scriptwriter on a recording that involved UNICEF, and Roger Moore was doing a piece to camera as an ambassador. He was completely lovely and while the cameramen were setting up, I told him in passing the story of when I met him in Nice Airport. He was happy to hear it, and he had a chuckle and said "Well, I don't remember but I'm glad you got to meet James Bond." So that was lovely And then he did something so brilliant. After the filming, he walked past me in the corridor, heading out to his car - but as he got level, he paused, looked both ways, raised an eyebrow and in a hushed voice said, "Of course I remember our meeting in Nice. But I didn't say anything in there, because those cameramen - any one of them could be working for Blofeld." 

I was as delighted at 30 as I had been at 7. What a man. What a tremendous man.  - Marc Haynes

Via Astral Codex Ten