Second batch of classified Biden docs found at new location: report
Both batches were discovered *before* the mid term elections. The media said nothing. The FBI raided nobody.
Jan 112023
Jan 112023
On the one hand, earlier today the FAA ordered a “ground stop” to all domestic flights, basically shutting down the aviation economy:
Buttigieg responds to latest transportation crisis as he faces continued criticism
On the other hand, eggs are becoming a luxury good, unavailable to regular folks.
Egg Shortage: What’s Behind Soaring Prices – and When Will They Go Back Down?
In the Midwest, a dozen large eggs cost an average of $5.17 last week, compared with roughly $1.50 in January 2022 and 94 cents in 2021. …In California last week, the average price for a dozen eggs reached $7.37, according to the USDA’s Egg Market Overview report.
This is apparently due to a bird flu wiping out chicken in industrial quantities.
Things don’t look great for Virgin Orbit
AARRRGH, aircraft, Crazy, Gah., Hmm..., news, rockets, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ
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Jan 102023
Virgin Orbit is Richard Bransons space launch company. Their launch system, LauncherOne, uses a 747 to haul a more or less conventional expendable rocket into the air for launch to orbit. yesterday they flew a launch attempt, the first orbital launch attempt from the UK. Note “attempt.” It got close, but something went wring and the vehicle didn’t attain orbit. That’s never a good thing, but things apparently weren’t good at the company before then.
Even before Monday’s launch failure, Virgin Orbit’s finances were dismal
The math seems weird:
Independent estimates suggest that, over that time, Virgin Orbit spent as much as $1 billion to develop and test its LauncherOne rocket and air-launch system. The company made its first successful launch in January 2021 and has averaged one mission every six months since then.
An obvious question is this: With such high development costs and a low cadence for a rocket that sells for $12 million per launch, how can Virgin Orbit be financially sustainable?
How indeed. $12M per launch would require 83 launches to make a $Billion, and that’s forty years at the current rate. And $12M is the selling price of the mission, not the profit.
Jan 102023
The President of the United States has at least one absolute power: the power to declassify secret documents. There is some discussion about the process, but is *seems* that all he needs to do is say “this document is declassified,” and that’s that.
The Vice President does *not* have that power.
Biden and his legal team don’t know what’s in classified documents found in his private office, sources say
Jan 092023
Here’s your new “zombie apocalypse writing prompt:”
Study using mosquitoes to deliver vaccines has Chinese researchers buzzing
In an article published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications on December 16, researchers said they had developed new technology that can turn a mosquito into a flying vaccine carrier to immunise animals in the wild.
Oh, goodie. Commie scientists studying ways to deliver vaccines, drugs, plagues, manmade horrors beyond your comprehension, etc. via skeeters.
The ChiComs have already announced that they are working on genetic weapons to target specific ethnic groups for everything from death to dumbing-down. This seems like a decent enough way to deliver such a weapon in certain geographic regions.
Now, is the idea of immunizing wild animals against pandemics a good one? Quite possibly. Is the use of skeeters to do this a good idea? Possibly. Would I trust anything produced by people who think that Mao and his policies were good ideas? Not a chance in hell, Skippy. If you buy into socialism, you’ve demonstrated a sufficient lack of critical thinking skills and judgement that you should be kept far away from anything more scientifically complex than a wooden block.
Jan 082023
This is from a while back, but the video is *damned* entertaining if you are into spectacular engineering failures.
Mexico City: newly opened Artz Pedregal shopping mall collapses
In short: Cantilever has it’s issues. Especially when, seemingly, you’re using glass window panels and compression members.
Jan 062023
You know what we need to do? Throw open the borders. Import some of this vibrant cultural diversity. What could go wrong?
Jan 042023
A couple of tweets showing the spectacular state of American cities today…
Someone needs a tazin’…
— Clown World ™ 🤡 (@ClownWorld_) January 4, 2023
And New York City? Don’t go there.
New York City Grocery Stores right now …
2023 is so far🔥🔥🔥
🔊music …😰 pic.twitter.com/sUFfmJVGpJ
— Wall Street Silver (@WallStreetSilv) January 3, 2023
Here’s a fun related article:
Remote Work Is Poised to Devastate America’s Cities
People no longer *need* to live in big cities quite as much as they used to. The pandemic helped this process along by forcing people to work from home; and once people – and businesses – realized that people could work from *anywhere* and not have to deal with commutes and the nightmare that is the urban area, a lot of people *wanted* to bail out of big cities. Turns out Poop Central, AKA San Francisco, is seeing a *lot* of empty offices as people pull the D-rings and flee that rathole.
Jan 032023
Something like 15-20 years ago I bought a 1/18 scale P-47D “Ultimate Soldier” toy. This line of large scale accurate fighter planes was sort of peak Golden Age Of Toys For Adults, even though they sold for a reasonable price at WalMart. They make great display pieces even without structural modifications or repainting, but they are generally screaming for such.
Anyway, the P-47D spent years on a shelf in my shop in Utah. From time to time it caught direct sunlight. This discolored the paint *slightly,* but it turned the originally crystal clear canopies milky white. I’ve left them in the dark for some years to see if that would help… nope. I boiled them… nope. I nuked them, if perhaps briefly, with UV; no change. Anybody got any ideas? Why did this happen? How can it be reversed? Scrubbing has shown that this is not a surface feature, but seems to be throughout the plastic.
At some point, recasting them with crystal clear resin might be the only solution, but it’s not one I’m fond of. None of the other canopies did this, so it would seem these two pieces of plastic came from a bad batch.
Dec 312022
Maybe I’m being optimistic with the title to this post; Biden, Harris, Tate and all the rest might all rise to the challenge. But it’s a high bar:
The lawsuit from this should prove to be lucrative.