Bullet Points:
** “Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his lie comes to a point where he cannot distinguish the truth within him or around him and loses all respect for himself and others. And having no respect, he ceases to love.” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
** John 20:29 – Blessed are those who believe without seeing.
** Global Warming Chart (historical) Maybe man-caused warming will save us?
** If you are an obese African American and eat ten glazed donuts a day, only 2 of them are your fault. The other eight are because of Slavery and Jim Crow, even though Slavery has been gone for eight generations and the Great Society has been around for three.
If you are one of the many Senegalese who has arrived here illegally in the last three years and you are stunned to learn that in America, 80% of your health is in the hands of people who have been dead for over a hundred years or in the current Wisemen of Government, don’t worry. You’ll get used to the stupidity and gaslighting madness. Just be sure to vote “Pedo Joe Biden” since that is why you’re here.
** In Alaska – If you’re not the lead dog, the view is the same.
** Sad to say, but employee theft is a principal loss point. Some sellers try to take only electronic funds to keep their employees from having any interaction with cash. It’s not all an aversion to cash that the woke seem to have.
** On Acting – you learn to love ’em.
** I saw this and thought of WSF. I couldn’t help myself:
Q – WSF, Where’s my Antarctic Blue Super Sports Wagon with CB and optional Rally Fun Pack?
WSF – This is the Queen Family Truckster – and I’ll give it to you at the same price because you’re a regular customer. If you think you hate it now, just wait till you drive it.
** Astronomy Tech and a new telescope concept. Interesting.
It’s like a House of Cards
Frank on Tucker
There are a lot of us who would like to, “push a journalist in the right direction.” That was the most satisfying episode in House of Cards (Netflix).
In Burma/Myanmar
China-backed the military takeover in Myanmar in 2021. And it’s interesting because the military coup was against another pro-Red China government.
After the 2021 coup, ethnic militias like the Arakan Army, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, which make up the Three Brotherhood Alliance, have been leading the charge against the Tatmadaw. In many cases they have also allied with People’s Defense Forces groups (PDFs), militia groups formed or supported by the shadow National Unity Government (NUG).
The recent October 27 offensive — which the Three Brotherhood Alliance calls “Operation 1027” — likely took months of planning and has shown impressive coordination between the alliance, other ethnic armed organizations, and PDFs. That’s a new dimension in the ongoing fight against military leadership.
The ongoing war is disrupting the flow of opium->#4 heroin in a market being increasingly dominated by fentanyl (synthetic opiate) that China is producing…oops. Do you think that the Chinese could be behind the ongoing civil war?
In Gaza
The anaconda strategy is working as Israel gains control over more Hamas territory in Gaza, and the place is being demolished.
A Historical Moment
Greenland – July 1968, these were the P-Mountain Line-of-Sight to Canada communication screens. You could not ascend the final mile if they were in use due to the 30-megawatt radiation. In June 1968, some communication engineers from the ARMY were testing and mistakenly interrupted the communication frequency, causing SAC to trigger an ALERT and scramble some B-52s, thinking that Russia was sabotaging the BMEWS. It was all a big mistake. The incident was eclipsed in that period by a B-52 crash that absorbed all the press.
Identify the Tanks
1
And identify its main battery…
2
Two tanks to ID
3
Unreliable, its name means stubborn. That said, the gun racked up impressive kills.
Parting Shot
The claim is 81 million votes – but the point is the same.
(1) Wasp flamethrower vehicle (I think), built on a universal carrier.
(2) Jagdtiger in back, I can’t remember the name, but it looks like a Pz 35(t) hull with a new turret and upgunned.
(3) Maybe the Dicker Max ?
– Kle.
Work on #3, you’re close. 128mm rifle.
Identify the Tanks:
1. Wasp flamethrower based on Universal Carrier chassis
2. Front: Italian P26/40; rear: Jagdtiger
3. 12.8 cm Selbstfahrlafette auf VK 30.01(H) “Sturer Emil”
Yes!
Regarding #2. P26/40 in front, Jadgtiger in middle, Jadgpather in the far far far rear.
Hah, didn’t even see it there, Beans!
– Kle.
Happy New Year, wonderful article about advances in Astronomy.
I purchased something this last year that has really impressed me as another advancement, this for the casual Astronomers out and about on this planet not space telescopes.
When I first encountered this it claimed what a lot of new products claim:
“Breakthrough, new technology, wonder of this age”
After falling for the sales pitch because it was more than 1/2 the cost of competing tech, I finally got to try it out after waiting 4 months because of backorders, shipping from China etc etc etc.
Note, while it is “off the shelf” tech, not “groundbreaking”…
What they have done is made it small (6lbs) and the software integration and communications make it Very easy to learn and quick to setup and operate.
Setup from the time I take it out of the box, till I am sitting inside observing over my tablet or phone is 15-30 min!
The first week I had it up and running I had a good solar image, full moon images and video and several Great pictures of M42 Orion Nebula.
Two disclaimers: it does some things better than any other telescope I have had, mainly imaging Nebulas, Galaxies, deep sky objects even with a fair amount of City Light. Plus it does solar imaging as well.
It does Not do Planetary images very well due to the rather short focal length.
Second disclaimer: I have no interest in selling these or profiting from their sales.
I just enjoy the heck out of mine.
for those interested the product is:
Company: ZWO
Model: SeeStar S50
(If this is to much product pushing for this blog feel free to delete, if you would like some examples of M42 shot from light bright North Texas send me a message)
What no sitting out in the cold trying to adjust focus with numb fingers and listening to the pack of coyotes (four legged) scrabble through the brush, can’t be real astronomy. Hmmm, I will look into it though, good idea, thanks MSG Grumpy.
Thanks for the tip… Awesome technology. I’ve had several telescopes in the past and have spent way more than this telescope costs. I did have a some problems with the website and contacted customer service. In less than one hour they replied and sent a new website to order from
https://www.zwoastro.com/product/seestar-s50/
A million votes here, a million votes there, and sooner or later you’re talking about real money.
:)
But never real voters.
Tucker- That was spot on, fully encapsulating in a few minutes what We The People need…yesterday. Never watched House of Cards, and in a way PDJT says similar but certainly more Queens than Deep South…but…I completely did not know that Spacey was found not guilty, both here and in England, on all sexual assault allegations.
Always liked him as an actor, exceptional. But in this world of the fickle public you can’t un-clang the character assassinationbell regardless of truth or fact or winning a lawsuit. That is the opposition’s When did you stop beating you wife? modus operandi, with PDJT’s possibly being the worst ever, with people in political prison as collateral damage. Nick Sandman won his lawsuit in spades against the usual suspects, but even that “in your face massive loss” did not stop the corrupt media from continuing their destruction of anyone not them</em).
2024…Day 2. What will it bring at the hands of a bunch of losers and reprobates? Popcorn is on deck, at the ready to watch the ensuing s–tshow.
Kevin Spacey is homosexual (flamer), and because he is, there was a sense of believability to the allegations. I know a guy (straight, as far as I know) who was a roommate of Dax Randall Shepard, an actor that Spacey kept hitting on many years ago. Said guy went to parties where Spacey was trolling for friends and continually hit on Dax Shepard, who was mid-twenties at the time. He said that Spacey preferred them in their twenties. That doesn’t mean he could not cut a younger male out of the herd. The guy I know said that Spacey, who he liked in the acting sense, seemed unlikely to do what was alleged. Now, he’s been cleared. I’m sure that fighting the charges cost him millions and the loss of work, many tens of millions.
I sold some screenplays in the 90s and was close to selling a series that I wrote treatments on. That’s as close to Hollywood as I wanted to get. There were Hollywood names who lived in my neighborhood in SoCal. My daughter Emilie worked for a female who is/was known and, as an assistant, went to many Hollywood parties/events, including the Oscars, etc. Names you would recognize kept thinking that the celebrity was EMILIE’s assistant, and she was subsequently fired, which Emilie considered a good thing. She never had stars in her eyes and thought the Hollywood crowd was far less than they thought.
A good script I sold to Madonna (Mustang Films) in that period wasn’t made. Another film I sold was “re-written,” ruined, made, and went straight to video. Because it was “re-written,” the purchaser, David A. R. White, put his name on it through credits. White does Christian films. I was never impressed by White or his coterie. I was paid, so there you go.
I digressed from the Spacey story to point out that I saw Hollywood, and from my point of view, there wasn’t much to it. There are a lot of trust fund babies who wander around the place and populate the industry, hoping for their big break. I had an agent who ran interference with me almost 100% of the time, so I didn’t deal with them personally any more than I had to. Even at this late time in my life, I know people who rub elbows with the great and near great, getting invited to the right parties, and those people (who call me still) are scrotes (I tried to find the right adjective and felt that “turd” was a little too unkind). It sometimes makes watching movies painful because I know how the sausage is made and by whom.
PS – MRSLL was an executive in the fashion industry at the time and also rubbed shoulders with the Hollywood crowd completely independent of me. I was in and out of the country on unaccompanied tours at the time. On one occasion, I was at an event with MRSLL, and she introduced me to Sharon Stone, who was a name at the time. I pretended not to know who she was and MRSLL said that it embarrassed her. So it went.
Always the operative I suppose, built-in behavior. But funny.
I am conflicted watching movies with certain actors who can’t keep their mouths shut, like anyone cares (De Nero, great actor, lousy person). Fame is a construct and fleeting once past a persons sell-by date. Some don’t get the message. Big headline this morning was “Khloe Kardashian’s [skinny by starvation] body transformation”. This is what is important to Biden/Harris voters, tabloid crap, all smoke-n-mirrors.
Spacey is a fine actor, and I like his roles so can watch his roles without prejudice. But yeah, your backstory paints a typical picture of those in that world. FoxNation (now dead to me) had TC Today show interview with Amanda Milius, daughter of writer/director John Milius (Red Dawn,etc). A Conservative, her commentary growing up in the weird world of Hollywood should be required watching for any aspiring actor/actress. She got out ASAP saying it’s a deranged bubble, especially for kids and young adults.
I was at an LA restaurant/club/Hollywood spot called Club Babylon. The same guy who owned that owned the Roxbury. It’s years ago when Beverly Hills 90210 was big on TV. I was working at the time but it wasn’t a “cover” type of thing. I forget why I was there. Maybe to meet somebody. Anyway, I sat at a table, and at the next table over, Shannen Doherty was drinking with her posse. Memory fades but I was sitting next to my tech guy and another guy so the Op must have been over. Anyway, Shannen asks me to take a picture of she and her girls. I said, “Sorry, I don’t sign autographs and would rather if you didn’t take my picture.” Shannen (who has a pretty good sense of humor) tried to clarify her request, and I stood up and said, “I’m tired of you people bugging me for my autograph, wanting to take a picture with me,” etc.
I called a waiter, complaining that she was bugging me for an autograph.
So Shannen (younger and very popular then) comes over to my table, sits down, and says, “Who are you?” And I was wounded that she didn’t know, asserting that she was playing games with me because SHE wanted a picture with me. She’d been drinking a little, but she was fun. It took her a few minutes, but she got it, and we chatted for a couple of hours until her posse got bored. I took the photo with one of those little disposable cameras that were popular at the time.
Epic play.
Now I get to go to town, the one to the South. Oh joy. If I meet someone “famous” I’ll try that…heh.
“She’d been drinking a little, but she was fun. It took her a few minutes, but she got it”
I believe that’s an example of what the kids are calling “the rizz”. Therefore I take back the White Rajah of Sarawak comment. Maybe they should have had you take over from Craig Ferguson. Instead of that cringe-inducing fat f*ck Corden.
In a New York Minute – I’m downgraded from being the White Rajah of Sarawak where I can converse as an equal with the King/Sultan of Malaysia and the Sultan of Brunei, living off oil revenues, with a harem and a regiment of Ghurkas and my own helicopter assault squadron to being a corpulent/ample belching American civilian with a late-night show on CBS, forced to live in The Big Apple as a condition of employment. Thanks a lot.
Sic transit and all that …
I always thought some book or TV show should have a redshirt character called Gloria Mundy. And when she got killed the hero would quip “Sic transit Gloria Mundy.”
Eh? Eh???
I’ll show myself out, then, shall I?
Right.
I wonder what “transgressions” Spacey committed that made him fair game. He can’t possibly be the most egregious person (homo or not) in Hollywood. My quick look at LCDP (lowest common denominator propaganda, ie wiki) says that Spacey reported, in late 2022, that his father was an abusive white supremacist “Nazi supporter”. This apparently was long concealed (by Spacey) and then revealed for unclear reasons at that time. A cynical man might guess that this was an attempt to re-ingratiate himself with the professional victims who have such power over infotainment and popular culture by portraying himself as Your Fellow Victim, but fortunately I’m not a cynical man. Nope. Not one bit.
My own minuscule sliver of Hollywood is that a childhood friend (from first or second through 9th grade) became very successful as a writer then producer of action movies. The guy was (is I suppose) genuinely talented, but had (has) no few personality issues. He went from a smart, nerdy kid who liked, and drew his own original, comics (in something of a John Romita, Sr style) to a backstabbing weasel around the time puberty hit. We lost touch. (Ironically in high school I became quite close with a remarkably pretty girl, not at all part of my regular crowd, who I previously barely knew, after he told her I was going around spreading terrible gossip about her. She confronted me, we got to talking, and became friends. Still have no idea what he was trying to achieve, but … thanks?) When I heard years later that he’d made it big in Hollywood I burst out laughing, which surprised the person who’d just told me that. I didn’t mean to laugh, but the revelation was just too good.
When I learned that Former Friend had written many of the scripts for a certain B action star it all made sense. Said BAS was always wandering into town and getting bullied by the locals for no reason at all. Despite BAS being a tough-looking guy, and handsome to boot. FF was projecting himself into his scripts! Incidentally I read FF’s LCDP page. In it he claims that in elementary school he was relentlessly bullied for his ethnicity, and reports the specific slurs used. Now we didn’t spend every minute together of course, but we hung out, ate lunch together, etc regularly. He WAS bullied, but I don’t recall anyone calling him what he claimed happened. In fact, his ethnicity never came up. He got called “faggot” or “asshole” or “freak” more than strictly necessary, but not the other thing. Maybe his bullies were simply afraid to use The Epithets in MY terrifying presence 😉, but I doubt it.
FF/Former Friend sounds like a Person I Used to Know (PUK-e) who reinvented himself and included me without permission in his new self-story. In the new story, which has absolutely no relation to the truth, he is a pious hero (think of Ghandi meets Pope John Paul II meets George Patton) of monumental achievements and at the same time even more enormous works of charity. In other words, he’s humble and proud of it.
I read the bio – he even produced a video – and I laughed and then just became disgusted. I called his office and left a message. He didn’t bother to respond. I think that his third wife and new family lives in this aura of his past…whatever.
People twist their past to meet their current mentality, happens all the time within family’s..especially with siblings, 3 recall relatively the same history while one reinvents everything that makes no sense to the other 3. Worse is when confronted the one so convinced themselves of their fantasy they’ll refuse to accept the proper narrative.
There’s a sermon in there somewhere.
What Spacey did? Came out as a not totally left-wing batshite crazy moonbat. He actually stood up to someone over something trivial. And then got run over for it by The Mob.
“The claim is 81 million votes”
He might have actually gotten the other 3.
I believe that Pedo Joe received 3 million actual votes nationwide.
It is likely some of the script writers for Family Vacation had an unsatisfactory retail automobile purchasing experience.
Back in the day we all had to attend a 8 am Monday morning sales meeting. Our crew wasn’t on shift until 3 pm. My house was five minutes away, had a nice covered deck, and a grill. We would gathering to cook steaks and watch Used Cars (VCR/television). We considered the movie a training aid.
Many years ago, I bought a new car at a dealership. The salesman looked at the paperwork and saw my address. He said he lived right behind me, and he did.
I walked to his house once and we visited. Good guy.
I never felt cheated.
I later owned a newspaper.
A used car dealership wanted to advertise. This was a dealership I had bought a ’76 Monte Carlo from in the early 80s that somebody had repaired the rust on a front fender dogleg with a milk carton and bondo. Excellent job. I didn’t spot it til it fell off.
I hung out in his office on occasion waiting for him to show up to work on copy, listening to the sales guys.
I felt guilty letting him advertise in my paper.
2002 – 2005 The owner had me conduct offsite sales in smaller Colorado cities. During that time I met several town newspaper publishers. As you can imagine, the local car dealers didn’t want us setting up shop in their town. It was, for me, an interesting look at who respected the 1st Amendment. One, in Sterling came and interviewed me. He had questions which were answered truthfully and he published our adds. Another, in Gunnison, accepted our ad for a sale in Montrose but not in his town. Yet another, Alamosa, flat refused our ads.
My best advertising was direct mail. I used an agency that could put our flyer in every address or mail box in a given zip code. Where we could we advertised in the local papers and radio stations. This was more for community goodwill than a business need.
The man I worked for, Steve Lance, gave me three ‘commandments’. “Do it right, do it legal, and don’t cut corners”. We went from a used pickup, utility trailer, and stock trailer operation along !-25 in Longmont to four Kia Stores and the first organization to sell 1,000 Kias.
I never lied to sell a vehicle for two reasons. First, it wasn’t necessary. Second, it usually came back to bite the ass of those who did.
Did I ever lie by omission? Hell yes. They needed to wear their big boy and girl britches.
:)
“Trust me.”
My late brother, the used car lot owner, had a favorite saying when somebody would ask him if it was a good car; he would reply; “I looked it over personally very close, and to the best of my knowledge it’s a good car, but it might break in half on the way home. The good news is you will own both halves!” Used Cars was also his favorite Kurt Russell movie. F Hubert
Why do I have a hankering for pea soup after seeing that abomination of a station wagon?
It’s as if you vomited Soylent Green all over it.
Eh, I’ve seen worse. Both in color and in body styling.
It made a statement. Not a good statement but the intent was there.
My wife is poison to car dealers, as she grew up in garages and gas stations, even wrenching on an all-girls race team in college.
I’ll go in and get info-overloaded and she’ll just look dour and start the negative feedback loop on all the things wrong with the vehicle we’re looking at and I’d smile inside watching the salesman, the floor manager, the general manager and the owner get slowly beat down. $50 here, $100 there, drip drip drip went all the excess and fake fees like dealer prep and things like that.
Then they’d bring up financing, with a little glint in their eyes that said to us that the financing charges would be a big stab in the back. She’d string them along while they appealed to me and finally I’d just say to my wife, “I wonder how much they’d knock off if we paid cash, here, now?”
The screams of their tortured, anguished souls still cheerfully resonate in my memories. Muhahahahaha.
The last time we bought a vehicle I did it all myself. Saw a van on line that looked pretty good, researched the basic vehicle, showed up at the dealer with a tape measure, got a nice young lady who thought I would be a pushover, spent more time measuring seat height to ground, actual rear door opening height, height to curb, interior room, all sorts of weird things that normal people don’t need because of wife’s wheelchair and by the time I was ready for a test drive the poor saleslady was just about broken down in tears because I’ve been keeping a running dialogue of all the woes and worries that we’ve experienced in the last few years (like the existing van, she’s getting too weak to climb up into it (lie, damned lie, well, a lie based on some truths) and between her and the lady sales manager who was listening in, man, I had them crying, actual crying. Got a great deal and a great van. Muhahahahaha
Actually, the trick with those billboards was to throw a flashcube up in front of them at night.
“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his lie comes to a point where he cannot distinguish the truth within him or around him and loses all respect for himself and others. And having no respect, he ceases to love.”
Ain’t that the truth. I’ve always loved that book.