So a privately owned bus catches fire in New Zealand. That’s an unusual enough sight. but the bus, engulfed in flames, decides to wake itself the fark up and drive off. That’s a little unusual.
Jul 102022
Jul 092022
The sustainable cities made from mud
Where the BBC extols the virtue of buildings made from mud in a desert climate. “It is the architecture of the future.”
Every year the residents of Djenné gather together to repair and reclay the mosque, supervised by a guild of senior masons. … Everyone takes part. Boys and girls mix the mud, women bring the water and masons direct the activity.
Because buildings that require the *entire* community, down to children, to labor to repair on an ongoing, annual and permanent basis… sure, that’s “sustainable.”
Much is made of the mud architecture of Yemen. Great. Ummm… what was the last great contribution to science or engineering or philosophy or medicine to come out of Yemen?
I imagine Britain will be seeing a lot of mud buildings soon enough. As modern Britain falls to the third world, the millions of invading colonizers will, after tearing down what the natives built over a course of centuries, construct their new mud-filled civilization using the wrack and ruin they stand upon. I’m not sure how great mud will be as a construction material on an island that gets fairly constant rainfall, but, hey, such questions are inappropriate in this new world of Other Ways Of Knowing.
Jul 092022
Before the RAH-66 Comanche, there was the LHX (Light Helicopter Experimental) program of the 1980’s. Initially the need was broadly defined, and companies such as Bell interpreted it to include the possibility of single-seat combat tiltrotors. The Bell Advanced Tiltrotor (BAT) was one such design. It was design for battlefield surveillance, ground attack/anti-tank… and for blowing Soviet Hinds out of the sky. Whether a tiltrotor could be made that could be safely handled by a single pilot while doing all that craziness is far from certain, especially with 80’s-tech, but the design was certainly appealing. Unlike attack helicopters and F-18’s, the BAT could escort the V-22 on its missions.
Clearly the overall configuration has a great deal of similarity to the XV-15 and the V-22.
Jul 082022
The 1970’s Winnebago “Helihome,” a Sikorsky S-58 converted into a flying RV.
A Chinook seems like it’d work great here too.
Jul 082022
If you are determined to commit a crime, laws won’t stand in your way. The former PM of japan was gunned down with the cheapest POS zip gun imaginable.
Gun used to kill Shinzo Abe – pipes, tape, batteries, black powder
It seems even the black powder was home made.
Jul 082022
Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been shot:
UPDATE: Not just “shot” but”assassinated.”
Shinzo Abe in Serious Condition After Being Shot
One hopes the security around members of the Supreme Court is on the ball.
UPDATE:
Japan ex-PM Abe assassinated while making election campaign speech
Attacker apparently used homemade gun – NHK
Huh. Abe was apparently shot *twice* with a homemade gun… so it clearly wasn’t an average zip gun.
Jul 072022
Oh yeah. This is always a great sign.
If you know, you know.
Sioux Falls SD #sdwx @samsteffen28 @BenMaurerWX pic.twitter.com/fSdeKdJrq0
— Nathen Erickson (@TwstdSkyStudios) July 6, 2022
Unreal coloring moments ago east of Sioux Falls! This line means business! INCREDIBLE!#sdwx @NWSSiouxFalls @SevereStudios pic.twitter.com/O1qlS3gHC6
— Alex Resel 📸 (@aresel_) July 5, 2022
Sioux Falls, SD #sdwx pic.twitter.com/uH8hRKbA4G
— Nathen Erickson (@TwstdSkyStudios) July 6, 2022
Jul 072022
First up, there’s this insanity:
Adults Who Still Drink Milk: Are You Okay?
Unless you’re a hungry baby, drinking milk on its own is unsettling behaviour.’
The British author tries to argue that milk is inappropriate for adults. The author only succeeds in demonstrating that she’s some kind of deviant perv. And as it turns out, the author looks pretty much like you’d expect she would. She seems about one face tat away from grabbing a rifle and going to a rooftop near a parade.
And then there’s this, also out of Britain:
Supermarkets put security tags on cheese blocks as stores tackle shoplifting amid soaring food costs
If you think Lurpak is bad – the local Aldi and Coop have started security tagging food. There was a GPS protected tag on a pack of lamb chops as well… #ThisMorning #CostOfLivingCrisis pic.twitter.com/ajUSNsZIeE
— Tam (@Celeste_Tam42) July 5, 2022
Ummm… are you ok, Britain? Things seem kinda wrong over yonder.
Jul 072022
The planetary geopolitical situation seems to be sliding towards that “hell in a handbasket” phase. If things get really bad, international commerce could grind to a halt. Economically that is of course bad… but if you are in a place that imports a lot of your food, or imports the fertilizer and tools and fuel and whatnot you need to grow your food, things could get *really* bad. This sort of thing has happened before, of course. The usual result was regional famine. But now… thanks to modern agriculture and transport, there are vast numbers of people living where food will suddenly vanish. This, one would immediately think, would lead to *astonishing* local famines. But now, as well as having far more people we have far more transport systems. So those starving millions, or indeed billions, will try to leave for greener pastures. But in a planetary collapse situation, greener pastures won’t be able to support all that many people. Having millions of starving migrants swarming your borders means not only less food for your own people, it’ll mean less food *in* *total,* as the refugees, if they come in large enough numbers, will set upon the fields like locusts, and not only consume what’s there, they’ll trash the ability to grow more.
The obvious answer: walls, guns and a bit of a policy shift where it comes to open doors.
EDIT: Hmmm. Weirdly, the video was privated. Oh well….
According to this, Britain (and a fair chunk of the rest of Europe) is kinda up the creek. Right now they are insanely allowing a million “migrants” a year to come in, set up shop and start drawing off the dole and demanding yet more. If things go bad, it would behoove the Brits to not only stop immigration, but to encourage – as aggressively and energetically as necessary – that a few million recent immigrants explore career opportunities in other lands. other lands that won’t have them either.
And then… the Chinese will probably slap together biological warfare systems: insects, bacteria, virus, whatever, that trashes all the rice that doesn’t have a particular gene sequence that Chinese rice just happens to have. It would probably be a really good idea for the CIA and every other intelligence service on the planet to sneak out a lot of samples of Chinese rice and Russian wheat and keep a constant surveillance on any sudden change in their DNA.
Jul 072022
Biden Sold a Million Barrels From US Strategic Petroleum Reserve to China-Owned Gas Giant
At a time when gasoline is intensely expensive, selling gas to a foreign adversary seems a little weird. but then, there’s this “huh” detail…
Biden’s Energy Department in April announced the sale of 950,000 Strategic Petroleum Reserve barrels to Unipec, the trading arm of the China Petrochemical Corporation. That company, which is commonly known as Sinopec, is wholly owned by the Chinese government. … Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, is tied to Sinopec. In 2015, a private equity firm he cofounded bought a $1.7 billion stake in Sinopec Marketing. Sinopec went on to enter negotiations to purchase Gazprom in March, one month after the Biden administration sanctioned the Russian gas giant.
Huh.
HUH.
I kinda wonder who this would have gone over had it been Trumps kid…