Aero L-39 Albatros

Aero L-39 Albatros

The Aero L-39 Albatros is a Czech jet trainer. They built almost 3,000 of them. Naturally the Soviet Union was the biggest customer. They were exported around the world. Some were adapted for ground attack.

This aircraft is operated by AEC Skyline, who support the Dutch air force. not to be confused with Skyline Aviation in San Angelo, Texas.

Related news:

The Russian Ministry of Defense shared footage of Syria’s new pilots flying on L-39 Albatros high-performance fighter jet trainers.  The Syrian Arab Air Force (SyAAF) has been using this type of warplane in close air support and in ground attack missions since 2012. - South Front

Cumbia Sobre El Mar

Cumbia Sobre El Mar
quanticmusic

I've been listening to the soundtrack from Chef. There is one song in there that I particularly liked when I heard it the first time, but there are a bunch of songs in that playlist and I haven't figured out which one caught my ear the first time. They are all very similar. Anyway, I think that triggered YouTube to start showing me more Latin tunes and this one showed up. I really like it.

Links

Victory Dance - Frederic Remington

KT's Theory Of Everything, Marxism Edition

What does the term "stolen land" mean if all land, everywhere, has been taken through aggression at some point in history?

Like Ham and Eggs: Anarchy, Tyranny, and the Fourth of July

“You must have experienced in your travels, Madame, a peculiar sensation on arriving in the morning in a foreign town, where all is new and strange to you—people, language, and customs.  You are in a crowd and yet you are more overpowered by the sense of solitude than if you were in the middle of a forest.  This is what often happens to me in the midst of my countrymen and contemporaries . . . . I have preserved many strong feelings which they have lost; I still love passionately the things to which they have become indifferent; and I have an antipathy which grows stronger and stronger for the things which seem to please them more and more.” - Alexis de Tocqueville

The Great White Father Is Here To Show Us A Better Way To Live

Right now, I'm devouring Empire of the Summer Moon, an account of the conflicts between the Comanche and, well, everyone else in the world. It would have been about the Apache or the Navajo fighting with everyone else, but the Comanches got to the horses first and drove the Apache and Navajo off their ancestral lands.

Justice or Just Deserts? Trump, Cosby and Georgia Cases Show Rising Cost of Political Litigation

Politically motivated cases like these impose costs that are rarely paid by those who bring them. The more a prosecutor feels it necessary to repeat that “It’s not about politics,” the more likely a case is entirely political.

Progress

Long Waves of Innovation

I like this chart for the way it summarizes the history of technological innovation. I understand the benefits from all the past waves, but I'm not sure what this new wave is going to buy us except more annoyances and more unemployment. 

Via ZeroHedge

Iridescent

Glamnetic Tweezers

This looks to me like these tweezers have either cadmium plating or a chromate coating, both of which can be iridescent. It also looks like the false color images you get from infrared cameras. In any case, I've seen this kind of thing on cheap metal parts, but I've never seen it used on tools. Leave it to the fashion industry to show us the way.

Kerosene lamps

I don't know about these two videos, at 30 minutes they are a little longer than the stuff I usually post, and there is something about the presenter that is a little off putting, but I watched both of them all the way through so he must be doing something right. He does do a thorough job of explaining kerosene lamps, including a molecular explanation of how they work, their history and the history of illumination in general.

Why do hurricane lanterns look like that?
Technology Connections

Kerosene lamps are widely used for lighting in rural areas of Africa and Asia, where electricity is not distributed or is too costly. As of 2005, kerosene and other fuel-based illumination methods consume an estimated 77 billion litres of fuel per year, equivalent to 1.3 million barrels of oil per day. This is comparable to annual U.S. jet-fuel consumption of 76 billion litres per year. - Wikipedia

How the gas mantle made lamps 10X brighter
Technology Connections

The book he mentions, Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century, sounds like it might be interesting. You can get a paperback copy from Barnes & Noble for $30, or if you have money to burn you can get a hardback copy from Amazon for $900. Are you kidding me? Who shells out that kind of money just to get the hardback version? All I can say is that the world is full of strange and wondrous things.

He recommends a video about limelight, but I like this one better.

The Lime Light
Jonathan Bastow
The other video does mention the Charlie Chaplin film Limelight. Must be old comedians week.

Squid

I saw this line on Schneier on Security:

“When an Eel Climbs a Ramp to Eat Squid From a Clamp, That’s a Moray.”

and I immediately recognized it from the cadence. Thought that was a little odd, but the mind works in mysterious ways. The last word helped. Took me a bit to nail down just what the original was, but I figured it out eventually.

Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis That's Amore (Colorized)
Color History