Curiosities

1. The safety gear on the ancients pouring the molten metal is pretty cool. Is that real? With the exception of not having safety glass, it looks good even for today. Yeah, your pupils will shut down and it’ll be harder to see things after the pour until they adapt, but it’s going to offer better chances to avoid burns than nothing.

   Makes me think of the picture I saw of a Chinese welder who had a sheet of newspaper over his face, with cutouts for his eyes and safety glasses over that. The sheet of paper isn’t going to protect as well as this.

   • Yes, I think that it’s accurate to the extent that archeological finds are representative of how the business was managed.

     • That’s what the pottery and the carvings show. Decent aprons, shoes, the complete kit and kaboodle.

       Curiously, the removal of lead anchors and replacement by iron or steel anchors hastened the destruction of many archeological sites. Now they’re using titanium and plastics. Can’t use lead, because regulations.

       • Some joker probably wanted to sell the lead to scrappers and replace with cheaper ferrous substitutes, and used “think of the children” to get his side hustle grant-funded.

         -Kle.

2. I am wondering whether Joe Biden’s re-election campaign will suffer after his botched Afghanistan withdrawal. Will voters forget/will Republicans bring it up? The guy is the worst president ever, but my fellow Americans don’t seem to all agree on that.

   • The Ministry of Propaganda says that it’s all Trump’s fault… There are a lot of people who put their faith in what Chris Cuomo tells them.

   • He’s hardwired to last 1 day into his 3rd year, that way whomever is his VP gets almost 2 complete years and can potentially serve an additional 8 years.

     His job was to do a Glossu Rautha job on America and make whomever is VP seem like Feyd Rautha in comparison. Which means both are complete scum, just one is flashier than the other. The real question is who is in the role of Baron Harkonnen?

     • Calling the Ho flashy will take a lot of airbrushing, smoke and mirrors. They have to cure her of “the cackle”. Maybe electroshock?

       • Yeah, 100kV at about 3 Amps should do it….

         • You’re a charmer, DRJIM.

       • She’s not going to be around for long. She’ll ‘resign’ and some slick devil who makes her and the Xiden look like the incompetent fools they are will step in, to save the White House.

         And that’s when, after the new has been in for a while, Xiden will drop out or drop dead or something.

         Probably will have the first name of Damien or something.

     • I used to know what the term “re-election campaign” meant, but I can’t remember…

       -Kle.

3. “According to National Geographic in Spanish , the cost for a three-day stay to sleep in the stars is around 5,000 dollars (approximately 99,898 Mexican pesos).”

   Hahaha! First, the low-hanging fruit: Nothing is APPROXIMATELY 99,898 pesos, seeing as that is a very exact number. And that is “approximately 100k” pesos. (It’s like people converting from pounds to kg and carrying an entirely spurious three decimal places on the kg value. “Bob is about 150 lbs. That’d be about 68.027 kg.”

   Sniping and low mockery out of the way, $5k for three nights? That wouldn’t cover the wet wipes, condoms and lube used over those 3 days. It is highly unlikely to cover other consumables (water and O2 alone, much less free-range, fair trade, organic cocaine and other “elite” dietary staples). It certainly doesn’t cover transport.

   A lazy websearch suggests maybe 1.4 to 3.0 kilobucks ($usd) per kilo to low earth orbit. Let’s call it a thousand bucks per pound since this is all order of magnitude guesstimation anyway. The average psychopathic “elite” pervert being, hmmm, 150 lbs (or 68.027 kg 😉), and probably wanting at least 50 lbs of luggage, we’re talking $k200+ to get to the station. (We’re going to assume getting back down is essentially free, which it won’t be.)

   There are doubtless subject-matter experts (or close enough) reading this blog who could have actually useful input on this (as opposed to my WAG) but I’m not sanguine about literal orders of magnitude reduction in cost to LEO over the next 7 years. The real question will be whether ANYONE will have orbital-launch capacity by then.

   • There is a lot of THC in those cage-free, organic cookies that will be boosted to orbit. There are a lot of Beltway Billionaires or Pharma Trillionaires who would think nothing of spending a couple of million to boost themselves and their “niece” or “nephew” (depending on how their tastes run) into low orbit for a couple of days of drugged haze.

     I just paid a hotel bill that in addition to the basic room charge, added state tax, county bed tax, local tax, plague cleaning surcharge, a fee for me using a visa card, and a resort fee (it’s not a resort). I can only imagine what add-ons the space hotel might factor onto the bill. I’m sure that there will be an O2, H20, and gravity charge. One can only guess what it will cost to have a pizza and a sixpack delivered to your room when you have the munchies after feasting on the ‘brownies’.

4. Fireship- Like our Kabul Embassy, except the billion they spent on it was too painful to set alight, so I guess the Taliban – who’s leader was let out of Gitmo in 2014 by The Bow-er, Obama, with the promise he would “not terrorize again – get all it’s contents, like they got our left behind military gear.

   Stupidity on steroids. But will this America free fall be the Dem’s downfall? Could be, assuming DHS doesn’t gather up those calling for Mr. MAGU’s resignation…because dissent is now a crime against government. Too bad the Mid-Terms aren’t this November.

   • Jo/Ho are democrat icons. There will be statues built to them (in the same location as the torn-down statues of Washington and Lincoln).

     • I’m sensing Mr. MAGU steps down [for “health” reasons] before Sept. 11th just in case something happens from his massive bungling of EVERYTHING, Harris gets the hot seat/blame, then chaos ensues at the Capital as things get tossed into disarray when Madam Pelosi decides she’s now president.

       I heard Mr. Haaavaard speaking how they were assured “our people will be afforded safe passage.” I guess he read that in a book in college. Probably wears skinny jeans and has a boyfriend. Friggin’ snowflake morons.

       In the meantime a large Christian organization is trying to get cash to secure flights to extricate people from Kabul.

5. I did not know that ancients on both sides of the pond tied stones together like that. Also did not know about the slang definition for a fire ship. Thanks again for the continuing education you provide with this site.

   As far as the hotel in space, well maybe if you apply the same cost inflation that government space programs have then the prices might be pretty accurate. Five thousand dollars becomes 500,000 dollars etc.

   • Virtual Mirage takes a stab at trivial

6. Will our Overlords set up in space and rule the serfs from orbit? Anything’s on the table, I’d say.

   The A10 is cool.

   • The feature film, “Elysium” had all the elites in space. So maybe life will imitate art yet again.

     • I wanted to see “Elysium four weeks later” after they space-bussed all the noble diversity up there.

       But orbit may not be far enough from the madding cattle. In Howard Chaykin’s “American Flagg” the elites had “temporarily re-positioned” to Hammarskjold Station on Mars, leaving the US run by a corporate front called The Plex while sucking it dry financially under the cover of a “Tricentennial Recovery Commission”.

       Protagonist Reuben Flagg is a softcore porn star IIRC who becomes a law officer, one of the elite Plexus Rangers*. But everything is porn (“interspecies love hour”) in 2031, unless it’s negro sports or explicit violence, so it’s not as if Flagg has particularly poor moral character. The political power blocks of Earth 2031 are the Pan African League and the Brazilians. It was an interesting comic for about a dozen issues but went straight into the crapper after Chaykin let others write.

       *Plexus Rangers. Heh. Say what you will about Chaykin’s (he was the illustrator too) pervy obsession with shiny crotch-binding trousers and garter belts (on men and women, respectively, at least), but the man could turn a phrase.

       • I think that the elites could find new hope and a new sense of purpose on Pluto….the planet (or KBO) with half a heart.

         • Wakka Ding Hoy !
           -Kle.

     • I was thinking just that. Hmmmm.

       • Great minds think alike, LSP. They will found their new woke colony free of notions of freedom. It’s big I tell you. They need to hurry and go before Trump is re-elected.

7. NASA says Russian media allegations US astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor had a nervous breakdown and drilled a hole in ISS ‘not credible’
   https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/NASA_says_Russian_media_allegations_US_astronaut_drilled_hole_in_ISS_not_credible_999.html

   No idea if this is a credible source (what is (present company excepted)) but it’s the first I have heard of this incident. NASA felt compelled to respond yet doubtful it’ll ever reach ‘news worthy.’

8. The idea North and South America was isolated, and unknown, from the rest of the world and Columbus was first is fantasy. I doubt Columbus set forth not knowing something was out there, and not India.

   Of course, not all knowledge was freely shared throughout the world. No internet.

   • Imagine, a world without the Internet?

9. Surprisingly, there is a lot of controversy in the academic world of basketry. Seems the Norse and the Amerinds in the Northeast had roughly the same basket styles. Did the Amerinds (skraylings) teach it to the Norse, or vice-versa? My feelings is it’s parallel evolution. Both places had lots of wood, and little long grass or willow-bushes. So splint-woven (slats of wood) basketry developed concurrently. And then maybe some trading of styles.

   I feel it’s the same in the architectural world. Pyramids are… easy to make, don’t tend to fall down. Doesn’t take a genius to make them.

   Vertical walls, especially tall vertical walls, takes more smarts. Thus stone-links. Again, I feel parallel evolution is the answer.

   People get too caught up on who did what first. And fail to notice when a concept appears in similar environments vastly divided.

   I mean, we see it in… Deer and kangaroos. Both are large herbivores with brownish and whitish coats, both jump, both can kill full-sized trucks. Look at a deer head and a ‘roo head and the similarities are startling. Parallel evolution to fit a need or a niche.

   It happens with animals, plants, fungus, ideas, concepts and stuff. A jacket made in China in 1000 AD looks like a jacket made by Inuit in 1000 AD looks like a jacket made by Norse in 1000 AD. Somewhat different materials maybe, but side by side comparison, even down to the closures, is startling. Of course the Chinks will take credit, but, no, parallel evolution due to similar environments.

   You also see it in equatorial lowland peoples. You know, the people that don’t have to work hard to survive (except by plague, or killer fish, or other equatorial lowland peoples…) Same style huts, same lack of innovation, same slack-jawwed concept of technology. Seriously. Take a Pacific Islander and plunk him down in sub-Saharan Africa or the Island cultures of the Carribean and they’ll fit right in, or be eaten or killed or eaten and killed. Parallel evolution or parallel de-evolution.

   Seriously, you feckless academics, pull your collective heads out of your over-pampered arses and actually take a look at the real world for a second or two.

   • Kennewick Man is believed to have traveled from Asia to Washington State, likely hugging the coast in a small boat. Trading was a lucrative business and through that, you have what might be thought to be concurrent development. I don’t argue with your thesis, Beans, I think that over thousands of years, there was interaction. The Amerimds did not develop into ironmongers but they were good with copper and alloyed copper – and of course, they had significant access to gold, lead, and silver. And there was concurrent development as well. The Amerinds never developed a wheel. The Vikings had it but how much did they use it? There are a lot more questions than answers. From the Guatemalan Highlands to the West Coast of South America, the cultures seemed to be very distant from Europeans in every way from growing potatoes and tomatoes, to livestock, military weapons, etc.

     • Actually, the Aztecs had the wheel – they just forbade it’s use for anything meaningful, to try and enforce cultural stasis.

       -Kle.

       • They understood that something round would roll. It wasn’t just the Aztecs who didn’t use it. Incas, Olmec, Toltec, etc. avoided using the wheel constructively. Maybe to enforce cultural norms?? I don’t know enough about those norms to comment.

       • No real draft animals. Small dogs and deer in Central America. Llamas in South America, but terrible terrain. You could use teams of slaves?

     • The Norse/Vikings used the wheel a lot, in flat land. They had a wagon that was convertible from wheels to skis, like that Russian thingy.

       The whole Norse/Scandinavian culture thingy was much more advanced than people realize. Something about the world being about 4-5 degrees warmer starting around 700 AD and allowing all the snow-covered fields to be uncovered and grow, and the huge food surplus being turned into nice young Norskers… A very evolved culture, where even slaves had rights.

       And, yes, people from there came here, here went there, lots of interesting tech trading. There’s reasonable evidence that Vikings made it to the Pacific Northwest via the Northwest Passage over now-Canada, and maybe even made it to Japan or China or Siberia (before the Rus-Vikings made it to Siberia or Japan…)

       But parallel evolution seems to be a theory that fits well, and answers a lot of questions. So of course it’s hated in modern academia where having weird pulled-out-of-one’s-arse theories are more popular.

       Common sense says that man, overall, is way too clever and inquisitive (except for, well, sub-saharan Africa, where Africa always wins) to not think shit up.

       Like the theory of why Western Europeans were so damned good. Because they had to be exceptional generalists, with knowledge across a wide spectrum of things, to actually make a living in Western Europe, especially the northern parts. Asia? Africa? Even most of South or Central or North America? Easy living. Western Europe? Not so much. So by the time the big civilizations came, Western European man had changed the environment for the better. (Well, that, and repeated glaciations and deglaciations providing some really fertile soil once the floods, glaciers, forests, nasty elves and such were cleared up.)

10. Interesting. I never knew they used “tie bars” in ancient construction. Agree with SiG on their PPE. Almost looks contemporary.

    Not sure about the space hotel. $5k for three nights might be doable, but how much to get there? $10mil?

    I’ll believe it when I see it. I think Bigelow’s (?) inflatible modules would be better for a first-time attempt.

    The Hog looks right at home in the WWII livery. No D-Day stripes, though?

    Don’t get me started on the F-35. By the time they get it right, it’ll be obsolete…..

    • The F-35 is a maintenance nightmare.

      • There’s a reason the USAF went to an ‘internally designed’ next gen fighter/attack craft that fills the role of the F-22 and F-35 and is less complex, maintenance-wise. Supposedly.

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