SATURDAY NIGHT PORTISHEAD, THE CHARLATANS.

Portishead with Sour Times. From their debut album Dummy (1994).





Last year during our Easter Holiday we stayed in Hutton, a little village close to Weston-Super-Mare, UK. On taking the M5 towards Bristol where we intended to visit the SS Great Britain (a.o.), I noticed the roadsigns towards Portishead and briefly wondered whether there was a connection with the band. Only now did I find out, yup, there is. The band, trip hop pioneers, is from Bristol and for some reason they called themselves after the town of the same name, eight miles west of Bristol near the sea.




The Charlatans with Tremelo Song. Album Between 10th and 11th (1992).





English rock band from the West Midlands, formed in 1988. Current line-up comprises lead vocalist Tim Burgess, guitarist Mark Collins, bassist Martin Blunt and keyboardist Tony Rogers, all of whom are vets, although only Blunt has been there from the very beginning.


Slaap wel.


MFBB.

CORE STAGE OF 1ST SLS COMPLETED.

Via Spacedotcom:

"NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine showed off the completed core stage of the first-ever Space Launch System rocket during a news event held today (Dec. 9).

The event was held at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, where the core stage of the rocket that will launch the first Artemis mission was recently completed. That flight, the first step toward NASA's goal of landing humans on the moon in 2024, will carry an uncrewed Orion capsules around the moon in 2021.

"Think of it as NASA's Christmas present to America," Bridenstine said, referring to the core stage's imminent departure for testing at another NASA facility, Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.


All told, the core stage is 212 feet tall (65 meters) and includes four engines and two liquid- propellant tanks. "I'm going to call it the ninth wonder of the world," Douglas Loverro, the new head of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, said during the event.

Bridenstine's speech was more about celebration than announcements, but the discussion left in the air several concerns that NASA is facing about both the rocket and the larger Artemis program.

NASA has contracts with Boeing for only the first two SLS rockets, Bridenstine said, not later iterations of the launcher. But it's the third rocket in the series that will send astronauts to the moon in 2024 to meet the agency's much-touted goal.

The agency also continued to avoid offering a schedule for Artemis flights or a cost estimate for the SLS rockets. Bridenstine has been demurring on offering a launch date for the uncrewed first Artemis mission, deferring that question to the new director of human exploration. Although he called Loverro up to the stage at the event, no date was announced.

Similarly, NASA has deflected questions about the anticipated price per rocket of the SLS program. In his comments, Bridenstine argued that cost will depend on how many rockets NASA ends up commissioning — the more rockets, the lower the individual price will end up. In October, the agency expressed interest in as many as 10 SLS rockets for the Artemis program..."

All of that may be true, but it is clear that great progress has been made.





You gotta let that sink in. NASA caught me, and doubtlessly many others, by surprise. For years I knew that the actual spacecraft, Orion, was being worked upon, with success, so I thought 'that's not gonna be the bottleneck. When are they ever gonna start work on the rocket?' I had a faint grasp of the gigantic work that had gone into the Saturn V and to the best of my knowledge NASA actually still has to start working on taking that hurdle of hurdles.

And then all of a sudden to hear that it's actually almost ready!

I still think that 2024 is pretty unlikely to be the year Man sets foot on the Moon again. But that we are much closer to that goal than we thought is certain.




MFBB.

INSANE: SWEDISH CHURCH INSTALLS ALTARPIECE WITH TRANSGENDER/SAME SEX COUPLES.

Via RT:

"A church in Malmo has a new altarpiece meant to celebrate inclusivity by replacing Adam and Eve in paradise with gay couples in suggestive poses, while depicting the serpent tempting them as a transgender woman.

The controversial work of art is not new. Photographer and artist Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin painted it in 2012 and tried to donate it to the Skara Cathedral just before the church was preparing to conduct the first same-sex wedding in its 1,000-year history.

The openly lesbian artist, who has a history of blending religious imagery with pro-minority activism, said at the time that she wanted to test if the Church of Sweden was as gay-friendly as it claimed to be when it embraced same-sex marriage in 2009. The Skara Cathedral politely declined the gift, saying it was about political activism and not faith.

But over seven years have passed, and now Wallin has got her way, even if it isn’t in her home city. St. Paul’s Church in Malmo accepted the painting called “Paradise” as its new altarpiece and unveiled it on Sunday, the first day of Advent. Helena Myrstener, the pastor, said that “history was written” in the hanging of the “LGBT altarpiece” as she tweeted a photo of the painting..."

Malmo you say, Malmo? Where have I heard about Malmo before?

Oh... yes.





And so, as every day offers fresh and indisputable evidence of what colossal mistakes multiculturalism, the opening of the borders and leftist/green worldviews in general are, our Moral Betters engage even more frantically in spreading their insane ideas of what society should look like. There are accounts that it was Emperor Nero who ordered Rome be set alight, and that he played the fiddle while admiring the fireworks. I do not know whether that is true. Nero, as someone who wasted money, raised taxes, left his wife and took the wife of another, and murdered his mother (they call it euthanizing these days), certainly fits the profile of an Antiquity leftist. If it's true, well yes...

... I see today's leftists and greens and their handiwork, and I understand.



MFBB.