Intel's Ronler Acres Plant

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Monday, September 22, 2025

Injustice Is Britain’s Operating Principle

Unite The Kingdom supporters gather at Trafalgar Square after the rally. ©  Andy Barton / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images

Curious take on Britain from Timofey Bordachev on RT:
The demonstrations in London earlier this month – up to 150,000 people protesting immigration and government incompetence – drew attention in Russia and abroad. Some observers even wondered if Britain might finally be approaching a breaking point. Perhaps, like Nepal or France in past years, mass anger could reshape politics.

But such hopes are misplaced. Britain will never experience revolutionary upheaval. Its culture is not one of defiance but of endurance. The United Kingdom has, over centuries, become a bastion of injustice disguised as stability, where ordinary people are conditioned to accept their powerlessness. This cultural inheritance, once an imperial advantage, now guarantees slow decline.

Britain is unique in Western Europe: it was created not through union or invitation, but through conquest. In 1066 Norman knights crushed the native English and divided the land into fiefdoms. Unlike Russia, where foreign warriors were invited to defend the realm, or Hungary, where nomads fused with locals to form a people, England’s story was one of subjugation.

That pattern hardened in 1215, when barons forced King John to sign the Magna Carta. Propaganda later elevated the charter as the foundation of English liberty. In reality it entrenched oligarchy: the power of the wealthy over crown and people alike. Where monarchs elsewhere often stood with peasants against feudal tyranny, in England the crown itself was shackled by landowners. Injustice became not an aberration but the system’s operating principle.

Geography reinforced the pattern. For centuries there was no frontier of freedom. Only in 1620 did dissenters finally flee on the Mayflower, planting English settlements in North America. By then, 600 years of endurance had shaped a national character: patient, fatalistic, and resigned.

You can read the whole thing here.


Israel's New Iron Beam Laser Interceptor


Jawdropping moment Israel's new Iron Beam laser interceptor blasts drones out of the sky
The Sun


Sunday, September 21, 2025

Paul Revere & The Raiders - Indian Reservation HQ Sound


Paul Revere & The Raiders - Indian Reservation HQ Sound
Jec0

Coincidence hits again. We were listening to this tune yesterday and now ambisinistral mentions the band in his post (on Flares into Darkness) about hot dogs. Mark Lindsay was the singer, but there is a Paul Revere in the band. He plays the organ.


Monday, September 15, 2025

Why Only Three Countries Bother Building Ships Anymore


Why Only Three Countries Bother Building Ships Anymore
Micro

This is something I have wondered about for a long time and, as he points out, I thought labor costs were the big reason. Turns out that is not the case. The video is a little long, but it is information dense, so much so that I didn't even notice how long it was. 

Most all I know about shipping comes from the news, and news organizations really give a poor description of what's going on in the world. They're too focused on scurrilous tidbits and give short shrift to whole picture.


Quote of the Day

Rachel Marsden is talking about Britain's immigrant problem and their solution:

Why the U-turn? Maybe it has something to do with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party currently polling at 35% – a record 15-point lead over Starmer’s Labour. Self-preservation always trumps virtue signaling. 

And nothing shifts a politician’s priorities like the sound of voters measuring you for a political coffin.

 

Murder

Homicide rate by state. FBI. 2022 data.

I was glad to hear that Trump sent the National Guard into Washington D. C. might be sending them into Chicago. From the news, it seems like crime is out of control there. Then I mentioned that there had been 238 murders in Chicago this year, and my friend replied that Chicago is a big city. That wasn't the response I was expecting.

So let's see if we can make sense of this. Population of the Chicago metropolitan area is 9.4 million. Call it 10 million. The number of murders last year was almost 600, so the murder rate is 6 per 100,000 (seems to be the number that Wikipedia uses). The rate overall for the USA is like between 3 and 10.

Looking at the map (above), Illinois had a murder rate of 7.8, which is not much different than 6, at least compared to some places, like some Caribbean islands and Mexico.

Countries with the most homicides

I suspect that there are problem areas in Chicago where the murder rate is very high, but that doesn't bother most of the people in Chicago because they don't live in those areas. Which is kind of like me not caring about the murder rate in the Caribbean.


1972 Citroen SM

1972 Citroen SM

This car was Motor Trend's Car of the Year in 1972. Citroen listens to the beat of a different drum. My Uncle Eddy had a Citroen DS about a zillion years ago. They are kind of cool, mostly because they are different. Nobody else makes a car like Citroen. Wikipedia explains:
This car was unusual for France – production of luxury cars was heavily restricted in the country by post-World War II puissance fiscale horsepower tax, so France had not had a production vehicle in this market sector since before World War II. The SM had an engine of only 2.7 liters owing to these regulations; it was the first response to the luxury/performance sector since the export oriented Chrysler Hemi V8 engine Facel Vega in the late 1950s.
. . . .
Contemporary automotive journalists were effusive about the SM's dynamic qualities, which were unlike anything they had experienced before. The SM provided a combination of comfort, sharp handling, and braking not available in any other car at the time. The magazine Popular Science reported that the SM had the shortest stopping distance of any car they had tested.

Automotive journalists marveled at the resulting ability to travel for hours at 124 mph in comfort. In 1972 Motorsport (U.K.) noted ..."that rare quality of being a nice car to be in at any speed, from stationary to maximum." The touring range based on the SM's fuel economy and the large 24 US gallon fuel tank made long, fast, relaxing journeys possible.
The car had a sophisticated power steering system - DIRAVI. I found some technical descriptions and schematics of this system, but I think this picture does it better.

DIRAVI Components

 Since Wikipedia mentioned French horsepower tax, I'll tack on this little clip.


This is a wonderful scene
Pixel Drift

The clip is from the movie 1923, so they are talking about WW1. Funny how people will become so enraged that they will spend their entire fortune on destruction and then steal the country's future to buy more death and destruction. People shouldn't be in charge. I can't wait for AI to take over the world. Oh, wait, all that AI knows they learned from humans. They'll probably be more efficient at killing people, so maybe hoping for an all powerful AI isn't such a good idea.