Bullet Points:
** Bear Attack
** “Misinformation” is now a crime…
** Created by Greek inventor Kostas Soukos, “Minotaur” is a robotic platform that carries a large 300 kWh laser unit designed to destroy UAVs
Waterloo
I had a discussion about the British employing the defensive infantry square in various situations today. We discussed the relief of Khartoum, The Battle of the Buffalo River (Zulus), and Waterloo. On point, the 27th Inniskillings at Waterloo – 486 casualties from 747, or 64%. They were caught in the unenviable situation of being threatened by both cavalry and artillery, and thus were forced into a square to avoid being annihilated by the former, but became the ideal target for the latter. An officer from the 95th Rifles recalled ‘the 27th Regiment were lying literally dead, in a square, a few yards behind us.’
(video) Cavalry does not like to charge into a wall of pikes.
(video) Battle of Abu Klea – marching in square (Sudan). The British took heavy losses in the attempt to relieve Gordon at Khartoum.
(video) An odd fellow discusses the square.
Identify the Aircraft
I’ll bet the AI gets this one.
From the Days of Fighting Sail
The man who put Australia on the map
If you look at a map of Australia you are looking at the memorial of the great navigator and cartographer Mattew Flinders. In the course of his work, he survived a shipwreck and disaster and was imprisoned for many years as a spy. Although his life was short, his achievements made him one of the most important naval explorers of his time.
Matthew Flinders, miniature portrait and a sculpture of him with Trim, his loyal feline
Flinders circumnavigated the lonely continent in 1801-03 together with his loyal friend Trim- his cat on board HMS Investigator. He had previously charted Tasmania with George Bass in 1798-09, demonstrating it was an island separated from the mainland by a strait of water. Flinders proved that the east coast, charted by James Cook in 1770, was part of the same land mass as the west, which had been surveyed by the Dutch navigators during the 17th century.
As he returned to England in 1803, not knowing that England was at war with France again, he put into Mauritius for repairs to his ship Cumberland. The French governor believed he was a British spy and he was incarcerated there for over six years. During his imprisonment, he worked on his papers and charts. He was released in 1810 and allowed to return to England. Trim was with him for the first year, then the animal disappeared in a very mysterious way (according to rumors he was a victim of a very hungry housewife), but his master missed him so much and started to write down the story of his loyal furry friend called: A Biographical Tribute to the Memory of Trim
HMS Investigator by Ian Hansen
During his voyage around the great continent Flinders had noted abnormal behavior of the compass needle, and to correct for this he proposed that a length of iron bar be let into the deck, with its upper-end level with the compass card in the binnacle. Although such compensating devices were not used until the second half of the 19th century they are called Flinders bars in his honor and are an integral part of ships’ compasses even today.
When Flinders returned to England he had not seen his wife for nine years and was in poor health maybe as the result of his imprisonment. However, he immediately began work on a voyage to terra australis, which became widely read and gave the name Australia, which Flinders favored, as general currency. The governor of New South Wales used it on his dispatches to England and recommended to the Colonial Office that it be officially adopted. In 1824 the Admiralty decreed that the continent should officially be thus known, but Flinders did not live to see this as he died, just 40 years old in 1814.
He wanted to be buried in the countryside but this was denied to him. Instead, he was buried on July 23, 1814, in what was then St. James Cemetery in London. But soon, this cemetery was overcrowded and so, instead of 16.000 people, 60,000 people ended up there. Thereupon, in the year 1840, his gravestone was removed and the cemetery was overbuilt with a station extension. Within the scope of reconstruction works at the beginning of 2019, archeologists excavated 40.000 graves and thereby came across a lead plate with special content.
They had found Flinders again. As soon as his remains have been thoroughly examined and perhaps they have found out exactly what killed him, he will be reburied in a small church in his hometown of Donington, Lincolnshire.
Nobody’s Perfect
PS = for PAULM
When my father and friends were fishing on the Great Barrier Reef (Queensland, Australia) in the 1980’s about 70 to 90 miles offshore their charts still showed sections done by Flinders.
Updated by new survey and satellite imagery now. But most of his work is still applicable now.
Martinsyde semiquaver.
-Kle.
I cheated, though.
-Kle.
Slept in today. :(
Kle is correct but he had to cheat.
Is it really cheating by doing a “creative” work around? (the Kobayashi Maru challenge comes to mind)
There are no rules here unlike the Kobayashi Maru Challenge.
Normally I resist cheating, but the answer was written on the airplane.
-Kle.
I arranged that for Surly – and because it was a Blackburn aircraft.
Keep your Matrix friends close; keep your Matrix A.I. closer.
:)
Bear Attack- [Arm laying on the path with an Apple Watch…Bear is the background with the rest of the jogger] Apple Watch Speaking:
“Congratulations! You’ve just lost 158 pounds…Great job on your run today!”
“Misinformation”: And exactly who defines “misinformation”? Hell, the gov’t “food pyramid” was a total lie…so was Covid and The Not-A-Vax and the subsequent lockdowns that caused societal destruction (purposely of course). Maybe they should check their ego’s for their own “misinformation” before coming after us. Bunch of losers who need to be fitted for a striped orange jumpsuit.
Sidebar: Just saw this…clear takings by the backdoor while selling out our country for The Brown New Smell, which is not the least green but an agenda to destroy America…proving The Bride-Em Administration is a wholly owned subsidiary of China and the WEF:
https://www.dcclothesline.com/2023/05/07/owner-of-michigan-horse-farm-who-refused-to-sell-property-to-chinese-firm-placed-under-investigation-by-government/
Just once I’d like these thieves to trespass on my property demanding I bend to their will. I’ve had a good life…it’d be worth taking out a few of them who through tortured logic have convinced themselves that they own me, a position solely reserved for God and Jesus Christ and no one else, and certainly not “them”. My life makes theirs possible, yet they believe it’s the opposite.
Misinformation is defined as anything that makes democrats uncomfortable.
“My life makes theirs possible, yet they believe it’s the opposite.”
You are an animal that speaks and just happens to have the SHAPE of an actual human being. (Only probably taller. Snerk.) Anyway, the point is that they DO own you, as G-d intended.
I don’t make this (hateful and batshit crazy) stuff up: Like a parrot, being the animal that I am, I just repeat what I overhear the actual human beings telling each other.
“I’ve had a good life…”
Glad to hear that, but you have hostages to fortune. (As do pretty much all of us who have been so fortunate to have had good lives.*) Not saying you don’t have the capability or the stones to “do something” but the loss/gain calculus seems wrong, even now (at least to me).
Hmmm. This could turn into a two-thousand word essay … I should stop now.
*im increasingly of the mind that having persons you love and care for (in multiple senses of the word) is foundational to the very definition of a life well lived (which may not exactly be the same thing as a “good life”, but the Venn diagram of the two would overlap substantially).
LL has my email…I want more…that’s EPIC. (and yes, the ‘*’ is spot on…despite my tossing the gauntlet of “come and get it you bastards” comment, I’m normall a nice guy…but would go all East Coast Colonist Farmer on them if said intrusion happens…polite at first, but if it goes south (by them) it might get jiggy and they press their brand of tyranny onto my person and property…I have axes, cordless tools – including the necessary sawzall…and a tractor with loader.)
Unlike PaulM, I’m not that nice. The elites can make my life uncomfortable but if the ball drops, they can be ushered through a door from this astral plane to the next and what awaits them there?
Don’t fear the reaper.
Certainly you and others here are “tuned and trained” to knowing what to do more quickly than myself, yet I have enough pent up angst stored that the lid would blow in short order…consequences be damned.
BTW, I call the “nice” part “The Cowboy Knowing Smile”, let them talk…then drop the hammer if it goes more stupid in the follow-on “authority crap talk” (“Yellowstone-Level Consequences” is not wrong…nipped in the bud as it were). Considering bureaucrat authority weasels put their pants on one leg at a time as I do, they aren’t any more privileged or special than me…perforations have the same result.
I have an AR pistol in 7.62.
With no optics.
I’m asked how I intend to shoot anything greater than 20 feet with that.
All it has to do is cover my threshhold.
Yup. Even if the black helo’s descend.
Mike_C…revising my “Brown New Smell” to “Brown Old Smell”. Same Chicken Little crap from these people, different day/week/month/year.
Oddly enough, the horse farm owner had a visit from a representative of the Agriculture Department who deemed the farm excellently clean and went back to Lansing.
…who was subsequently visited by some “authority” with “a file showing proof of child porn”…and since his name isn’t ‘Hunter’ the threat of disappearing in some CapPol jail cell is real.
” As soon as his remains have been thoroughly examined and perhaps they have found out exactly what killed him,”
What are the odds it was Covid?
What are the odds that the Minotaur’s laser can be used on a crowd like Antifa, ah sorry, J6 insurrectionists?
Like truth, facts, and data.
“Silence!”will become the Dem’s battle cry.
Poking the dog…
Ahh, that was a reply to LL above. (need more coffee)
The Sun is over the yardarm somewhere, but it’s too early to spike the cuppa mud.
PaulM – look at the blog above for a new message.
Touche’…my super secret name today is “Sven”.
Got myself all worked up over the Bribe-Em minion governor pushing China Infiltrators over her own taxpayers. Any clue as to why she won that race? (Note to self: Bleary-eyed is no way to “comment”.)
As to poor Flinder, mayhaps being buried and forgotten led to his death?
It all worked out.
The advent of firearms/cannon was pretty much the end of the square as an effective defense.
Moved by the Flinders story.