Dramatic Scene as Jakarta Mosque’s Dome Collapses in Fire
Looks like it was a sizable structure. Apparently being repaired when it caught fire. Notre Dame and the Big Butter Jesus feel yer pain, fellers.
Oct 202022
Oct 192022
Ronald Reagan chats with a Nazi in “Desperate Journey:”
The dialog from IMDB:
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[Major Otto Baumeister has told the captured crew that, since they know the location of an underground Messerschmitt underground factory, they will feel his iron fist. Now he separates Flying Officer Johnny Hammond from the rest, questioning him for intelligence]
Maj. Otto Baumeister : That plane you were flying, American-built, wasn’t it? One of the new ones. We have heard a good deal about them. We know that they are capable of operating at amazing altitudes. How do you manage to supercharge the engines at the extreme cold of those high altitudes?
Flying Officer Johnny Hammond : If I told you, the others wouldn’t find out?
Maj. Otto Baumeister : Certainly not.
Flying Officer Johnny Hammond : They can’t hear us out there?
Maj. Otto Baumeister : Quite sure. Now, about the supercharger.
Flying Officer Johnny Hammond : It’s done with a thermotrockle.
Maj. Otto Baumeister : A what?
Flying Officer Johnny Hammond : Thermotrockle amfilated through a daligonitor. Of course, this is made possible because the dernadyne has a franicoupling.
Maj. Otto Baumeister : I do not understand you.
Flying Officer Johnny Hammond : I knew you wouldn’t. The amsometer on the side prenulates the kinutaspel hepulace. That’s the entire secret. There you have it.
Maj. Otto Baumeister : I do not follow you.
Flying Officer Johnny Hammond : Well, maybe I could make it more clear if I drew a diagram.
Maj. Otto Baumeister : Certainly.
Flying Officer Johnny Hammond : [Bending over as though to draw] There’s three things you gotta understand. As I said before, the daligonitor is amfilated by the thermotrockle. It’s made by its connection with the franicoupling of dernadyne. Even at cruising speed the kinutaspel hepulace is prenulated by the amsometer. Makes no difference. Could be taking off. Snowing or raining, any pilot will tell you that the altitude, 10, 20, 30, 40,000 feet…
[flexing his arm to strike]
Flying Officer Johnny Hammond : [appearing casually in Baumeister’s doorway] Oh, Terry. He wants to talk to you.
Flight Lieutenant Terrence Forbes : Oh. The major wants to see me.
[Forbes enters Baumeister’s office and sees him under the desk, unconscious. he looks incredulously at Hammond]
Flying Officer Johnny Hammond : The iron fist has a glass jaw.
Oct 182022
Ukrainian police use AK-47s (or maybe AK-74s, I can’t tell) to try to take out Russian anti-civilian buzz bombs. The *claim* is that they shot one down, but that’s hard to determine form the footage… it could well be that the thing just crashed where it did because that’s where it was aimed. They really need to get Tom Selleck on the case.
The Ukrainians, as unlucky as they’ve been, are lucky that they didn’t defund the police and replace them with social workers. I’m not sure that clipboards and unearned moral smugness would de-escalate an incoming raid of kamikaze drones.
Oct 182022
A rotary cell phone where a lot of the functionality is mechanical. It’s a real device that is available for pre-order as a kit, for a price that seems remarkably reasonable ($390). Since it is not manufactured by a major phone or electronics company, I imagine that you’ll be SOL if anything goes wrong with it, especially electronically or with the software… customer support and repair seem like they’d be a challenge. But as a neato knickknack, it seems… neato.
Rotary Un-Smartphone Kit
Oct 162022
Why aren’t more sports cars like this? Granted, there is zero chance that I will ever end up the owner of even a bottom-end sports car, much less a Lamborghini or a McLaren, but I’d be much more interested if I knew that the car could at least take a pot hole.
Oct 142022
Answered. I *defy* you to watch this and feel nothing.
Better quality version of the video is in here:
Oct 142022
A magic trick performed on Russian TV some years ago went kinda wrong. I can’t help but compare this to a more recent bit of Russian adventurism, with Putin playing the role of the incompetent magician and the Russian people as the TV presenter who got enstabbenated for trusting him.
Oct 122022
One might argue that an ESA astronaut doing cosplay while on the Space Station is a waste of time. I would counter with: “you’re an idiot. Watch this awesomeness.”
2022 A Space Odyssey. Turns out, yes, you can walk with Velcro shoes. Slowly, very very slowly 😉#ASpaceOdyssey #MissionMinerva @esa @esaspaceflight @Space_Station pic.twitter.com/WI69RXmObE
— Samantha Cristoforetti (@AstroSamantha) October 8, 2022
To compare with:
Oct 122022
Oct 112022
Assuming the video is accurate (these days, who knows), it appears that a Ukrainian soldier swatted a Russian cruise missile on its way to a war crime using a standard shoulder-launched short range missile.
It’s unclear to me what system was used, as the video is pretty potato in quality. Doesn’t look to me like a Stinger; not enough stuff on the front of the launcher. Maybe a Grail, Gremlin or Piorun.
A MANPAD vs a cruise missile makes sense: cruise missiles fly low, generally subsonic, have no countermeasures such as flares and do not try to maneuver to avoid getting hit. On the other hand their engines are small and do not put out nearly as much thermal energy as the turbojets of a fighter; but on the gripping hand, they are also not as IR shielded as the exhausts of a stealthy airplane or a battlefield helicopter. So the trick with using a MANPAD to take out a cruise missile is to be in the right place at the right time, and to be on the ball. It’s impossible to know what apartment building or orphanarium or kitten hospital the Russian cruise missile was targeted to obliterate, but it’s safe to say that the missileer here just saved a fair number of civilians a lot of grief.