Urban landscapes by eBoy

Urban landscapes by eBoy
300 piece jigsaw puzzle
Click to embiggenate

Very difficult puzzle. The pieces are so small and the image is so detailed that there are virtually no areas that can be assembled by simply matching colors. In addition, half the time the pieces don't even look like they should go where they fit. If you are lucky you will eventually find the spot where a piece fits, but you can only get there by trying to fit in in multiple places. Took almost 24 hours to complete. Maybe four hours of actual work.

Looking around I found this story on Toner Magazine about the eBoy Pixel Art group. Seems there are a bunch (a few? zillions?) of people making digital pictures like this and they have amassed a data base of individual elements, so anyone use them to make their own fantastically complicated picture.

The Joker and the Thief

The Joker and the Thief
Via The Feral Irishman (NSFW)

Now, where have I heard that line before? Oh yeah, now I remember:

Jimi Hendrix ~ All Along The Watchtower ~ US Navy & Marine Fleet Air ~ Vietnam War
Aurora Borealis

Not Top Gun

F89-D Scorpion armed with rockets - John Mollison

Tam digs up some ancient history:

In the early Fifties, our nation's first line of defense against Rooskie nukyular bombers was "all-weather" fighters with on-board radar for finding the incoming targets. 

The weaponry needed to destroy jet bombers once the radar-toting fighter had located them was the sticking point. Guided missiles were still in their infancy, machine guns lacked the power required to bring down a big bomber, and even cannon weren't a sure thing since a head-on pass by a 600mph Lockheed F-94 Starfire at a formation of Soviet M-4 Bisons doing 500mph would be over in an eyeblink. A 20mm autocannon might only chug out a few rounds in that blink.

Stealing an idea from late-WW2 German jet interceptors, the USAF turned to unguided rockets. The Northrop F-89 Scorpion carried a hundred and four of the things, split between two wingtip pods.

She goes on to talk about an incident that demonstrated just how effective these rockets were.

The Scorpion has appeared here before.

Send in the Clowns

Joaquin Phoenix as The Joker

JMSmith has a few things to say about the Democrats January 6th clown show.

On a vaguely related topic, driving into Portland yesterday afternoon I was surprised to find myself in a traffic jam much like you might expect during rush hour. Where are all these people going? Don't they have jobs? Why aren't they at work? 

I suspect that only about half of the jobs require people to be working at one place all day, every day. The other half require people to be out and about. Delivery drivers, obviously, but also repairmen, construction workers, salesman, inspectors and a host of other jobs. Because prices are shooting up, people are striving to make more money because they need more money to pay their bigger bills, so more people working, more traffic and presto, traffic jam in the middle of the afternoon.

Then I was struck with a vision of how 'woke' nonsense gets accepted and promoted by companies. It's not because the leaders of these companies believe this nonsense. It's because most people doesn't care about this nonsense, they are concerned with getting their job done and making money.

But there are people in advertising and marketing who are always looking for an edge, and what better way to stay in tune with the current fads than to watch what's happening on social media. So some new nonsense pops up on Twitter or one of the myriad of other digital social networks and some whiz kid in marketing latches onto it, and sells it to his boss as a way to gain a few customers, and boom, we have an idiotic ad campaign.

It's not because anyone believes in it, it's just American capitalist bull running wild in the China shop.

Helium

Gazprom Helium Service

The first road bridge between Russia and China just opened. They built a railroad bridge a few years ago, but this is the first road bridge. The new road bridge is just over a thousand meters long. I suspect the big trick was making a bridge that is strong enough to withstand the ice in the winter and during the spring thaw when the ice starts to break up and big chunks start careening downstream, smashing everything in their path. 

Cool bridge, but what caught my eye was this line:

On Friday, the first eight China-bound Russian trucks from the Gazprom Helium Service fleet, powered by liquefied natural gas, crossed the bridge via the Kani-Kurgan-Heihe checkpoint.

Helium use in the USA used to be controlled by the Federal government, but that was a while back. Evidently there is plenty available now, baring industrial accidents and political wrangling.

Smokin'

Ukrainian service members in the Donetsk region prepare shells for an M777 howitzer near a front line on June 6 [File: Stringer/Reuters]

Funny how the story on Ukraine suddenly changed from 'Ve vill defeet ze Russians' to 'Ukraine is getting their ass kicked'. Ukraine must not be doing too badly, after all they still have cigarettes.

Coffee

Luigi Bezzera and his Espresso Machine circa 1900

Today's Google Doodle got me started and I found this cool old photo. Everybody seems to have this image, but nobody has any information about it. I think it's a photo of Luigi, but who knows? It might be his cousin Bob.