Pelican

Pelican

This puzzle was a little tougher than average. The bird itself was relatively easy, but the brambles and the water gave few clues as to their position.

Nick's New Tool Set

Nick's New Tool Set

Apparently my nephew has signed up for diesel mechanics school. Fishing boats use diesel engines and you need to know something about them to get a captain's license, so maybe that's what led to this. Or maybe the erratic nature of the fishing business has caused it to lose its appeal. Last trip out they made more money in a few days catching herring than he made all summer.

I've never heard of Teng Tools before but they seem to a big deal in some parts of the world. The tools are designed in Sweden and made in Taiwan.

Savages

Found this on The Scratching Post this morning:

Going back to the Instapundit post by Sarah that motivated my dive into Comanche history, this quote keeps coming to mind.

(After a deep dive into African history), what became very clear to me is that whenever civilized (in this case defined as post-tribal) humans collide with tribal humans, tribal humans lose. (The tribal people) use the techniques that work in between tribes, imagining that their adversaries are also a tribe:

They start off with unimaginable massacres and horrible evil in the belief that this will cause the adversaries to back off... (T)he more atrocities they commit the more they aggravate the anger of the civilized people.

The civilized hold back, afraid of committing atrocities, and the tribal humans commit more atrocities, and act like victors, while doing truly horrific things.

And then at some point the post-tribal people lose it.

What comes after is usually horrific and causes college social studies majors to cry centuries later.

 

Texas Tesla Tower

Texas Tesla Tower

Somebody is taking Tesla's idea of wireless power transmission seriously. This YouTube Short got me started. Hackaday has a page about it, but it doesn't tell us much. tvecourse has a YouTube video, but it only pokes around the outside. The company that built the tower has a website, but the only page that works is the contact page. 

Tesla was great. Just based on his reputation there might be something to this wireless power transmission business. On the other hand, maybe J. P. Morgan was right and the whole scheme is doomed to failure because how could you make any money off of something you were giving away for free?

Ice Fishing

Ice Fishing

Via view from the porch

Nettley Abbey

Inside the East End of Nettley Abbey by Michel Angelo Rooker (British, 1746-1801).

Foxifier links to a Roger Pearse who links to Original Douay Rheims Bible (1582 & 1610) where I found this cool drawing. I'm no bible scholar, but I am slightly curious about the history of Christianity, and hey, look, links to follow.

Wikipedia has a page about the Nettley Abbey:

Netley Abbey is a ruined late medieval monastery in the village of Netley near Southampton in Hampshire, England. The abbey was founded in 1239 as a house for monks of the austere Cistercian order. Despite royal patronage, Netley was never rich, produced no influential scholars nor churchmen, and its nearly 300-year history was quiet. The monks were best known to their neighbours for the generous hospitality they offered to travellers on land and sea.

Gun Men

The inventor of the AK-47, Mikhail Kalashnikov (right), meets the inventor of the M-16, Eugene Stoner (left) - Sgt Chris Lawson

On This Day (May 16, 1990) tells the story:

The AK-47 assault rifle is perhaps the most famous weapon in the world. Manufactured by the millions since its creation by Mikhail Kalashnikov in 1949, it has seen action in almost every conflict since. And it has often come into conflict with armies wielding the M16 assault rifle, also one of the most famous and produced weapons in the world.

The rifles were created by arch-enemies - the AK-47 by the Soviets and the M16 by the Americans. It would only be in 1990, the year before the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, that their respective creators would meet.

Eugene Stoner and Mikhail Kalashnikov met in Washington D.C. Perhaps not so surprisingly the two men became friends, a shared bond with their unique stories, touring the city and visiting a hunting lodge.

Via a comment on Bustednuckles

Old Radios

Old Radios

I like fancy old radios. Not sure why, I don't have any, and I certainly don't want one. I never listen to the radio around the house, and I sure don't need any more stuff. I think maybe I just like the idea of old radios. A hundred years ago, home radios receivers didn't exist, then they did and then everybody had one and now they're a default feature on any stereo system. In the 20th century it was radios, in the 21st century it's smartphones. I wonder how fast dead cell phones are accumulating. In a zillion years are geologists going to discover a layer in the ground of smushed cell-phones?

Groups of People Working Together

North American Petroleum Pipelines
Foundation of our civilization

Groups of people working together, commonly called 'businesses' or 'companies', is what makes our modern life possible. Some people like to complain about businesses by using phrases like 'they aren't fair' or they are 'making obscene profits'. Businesses are not the problem. The problem is that we don't have enough people organizing groups of people into productive enterprises. I dunno, maybe it's not possible to have everyone working. Or maybe the people who aren't working don't want to work. Well, sure, there are people who don't want to work, but the problem right now it that there are a large number of people who want to work, but can't find meaningful employment, and by meaningful, I mean a job that pays a decent wage and is not soul-crushing. Just how much a decent wage is is open to debate, likewise how much soul-crushing a person can tolerate is also variable. More money can alleviate some of that soul-crushing, at least for a while.

The big problem is that people can be disagreeable. Getting a group of people to work together requires a cerain force of personality. A thick skin may also be necessary. We complain about politicians being corrupt, or stupid or in league with the devil, but they are the ones who are willing to wade into swamp and deal with all the other swamp creatures. I sometimes think I should give it a try, but that takes energy, and at this point in my life, this blog takes all my creative energy.

But you should give it a try. You can't be any worse than any of the morons who currently inhabit the swamp of politics.

If the economy gets too bad, you start getting rabble rousers calling on the downtrodden to rise up and then you get revolutions and wars. Are people in warmer climates more sensitive to slights? More likely to take offense? Is that why countries in the tropics suffer from wars and revolutions more frequently? Or is it that clear thinking in warmer climes is in short supply?

Trees, Forests & Fungi

Mark Trail

'Talk' is a bit of a misnomer, but there is some kind of communication going on. Several kinds of molecules are being transported between trees by fungi. Trees that have a surplus are emitting molecules that the fungi pick up and shuttle over to trees that are in need. I suspect that where these molecules are delivered is modulated by a chemical imbalance of some sort, so it's not intelligence as we normally think of it. It's system that has apparently evolved and seems to work, just like the chemical systems at work in all living creatures.

Anyway the comic bestirred me enough to go looking for more, and because I'm lazy, I'll give you this video:

How trees talk to each other | Suzanne Simard
TED

Suzanne's speech is a little woo-woo, but maybe that's how you have to present science to the masses. She does get into the nuts and bolts of how trees 'communicate', and those parts are pretty good.

Power Me Thinks

Joe & George

George has appeared here before.  Title inspired by this clip:

Mark Hamill does Yoda?
PopTheBountyCollector

Today's Short Videos

I watch a lot of YouTube Short Videos. Some of them are funny, some hold no interest for me, but some I find captivating. Here is today's batch:

Today's Short Videos

Starting the New Year Right

New Year Flow
HydroNYC

This guy always has scintillating descriptions of the work he is doing, but this one is just the best. Running drywall screws through a plastic pipe to secure it is 'making it one with the wall'. Glorious.

Cadillac Dream

Black Panther 6

It's summertime and I'm out on the farm walking around. The house is about a quarter mile away, uphill. This a pile of air conditioning duct work next to the house. I see one large piece of duct work start moving. Weel, that's weird, so I keep my eye on it. It jiggles around for a bit and then it slides down the hill until it is free of all the other duct work, and then it starts making a bee line for the neighbors. I figure an animal has gotten trapped inside and is pushing it along. Better go see what's goin' on. When I catch up to it, it's gone about a hundred yards, and it's not duct work anymore. Now it's some kind of fancy Champagne color Cadillac Eldorado convertible with two seats and two front axles. Well, I'll be, so I get in and go for a ride. I stop and pick up my wife and we go cruising around..I stop and and she gets out, and I drive around the corner and pull into a gravel parking area where there are several other cars. The parking lot is adjacent to a big building and there are signs on the wall above each parking space with baseball player's names. I get out of the car and look around. When I get back in, the car has a roof and the interior is more like an Escalade limousine and there are two women in there, one big and beefy and one kind of scrawny. It's hot out and they look happy to be inside this air conditioned lux-mobile. They appear to have been playing baseball. They are talking about getting sno-cones. My wife shows up and gets in and we decide that we all would like to get some sno-cones, so I start counting out some cash. So ends this Cadillac dream.

Iapetus

Iapetus, outermost of Saturn's large moons

Carolyn Porco has the story. Iapetus is certainly an oddball:

But in the meantime, what to our wondering eyes should appear … the most unique, and perhaps most remarkable feature that we discovered on Iapetus … an unmistakable, 12-mile wide, over 800-mile-long topographic ridge that coincides almost exactly with the geographic equator.

Mr. Lucky

pic.twitter.com/ez0lBFH1V6

— Bilbro Baggins (@Jbanklestankle1) December 27, 2024