Don McLean with Castles in the Air. From the 1981 album Believers, although it was actually released a decade earlier as a single.
American folk rock legend from La Rochelle, New York. This year the 'King of the Trail', who is 78, has been active for a staggering 60 years!
Mรชlรฉe with Built to Last, from their 2007 album Devils and Angels.
American rock band from Orange County in California, which formed in 2000. The band consisted of Ricky Sans, Chris Cron, Ryan Malloy and Derek Lee Rock.
Goedenacht.
MFBB.
Saturday, September 07, 2024
Sunday, August 25, 2024
POLICE STATE GREAT BRITAIN.
The Starmer government has been in power for about two months, and it shows. Boys are being arrested for waving a British flag and grandmothers for Facebook posts.
There's a red thread - no pun intended - running from Alexandre de Moraes banning X in Brazil over Maduro, over the weaponization of justice by Dems in the US, to the arrest of Telegram founder Durov in France, the imprisonment of Dries Van Langenhove in Belgium over memes by members of his organization, the suspension of Compact Magazine in Germany by Nancy Faeser, to the downright fascist behaviour of Britain's new Labour government. In almost all of the Western world, the left has embarked on an offensive against freedom of speech. And perhaps no case is more shocking than Great Britain's:
Make no mistake, those arrests - shameful as they are in themselves - serve a purpose. This is PSYOPS, this is intimidation of native Britons. It's telling them that they, too, if they don't accept the Umvolkung of their country, risk being arrested.
Be all that as it may, the new Labour government is resorting only to state terror and is doing NOTHING to investigate the unrest among British people; an unrest that is the logical result of seeing their country being flooded day and night by Third World wreckage, of learning for the umpteenth time that here and there a man, or a kid, or a grandmother has been murdered by an illegal immigrant, of having to cope financially in a harsh economy while the government is spending more than 8 MILLION £ a day to house the tsunami of welfare seekers in luxury hotels...
The next riots will see Britons use firearms against their government. And who could blame them?
MFBB.
There's a red thread - no pun intended - running from Alexandre de Moraes banning X in Brazil over Maduro, over the weaponization of justice by Dems in the US, to the arrest of Telegram founder Durov in France, the imprisonment of Dries Van Langenhove in Belgium over memes by members of his organization, the suspension of Compact Magazine in Germany by Nancy Faeser, to the downright fascist behaviour of Britain's new Labour government. In almost all of the Western world, the left has embarked on an offensive against freedom of speech. And perhaps no case is more shocking than Great Britain's:
๐จBREAKING
— Europe Invasion (@EuropeInvasionn) August 24, 2024
British boy who waved England flag outside North Yorkshire Islamic centre jailed.
UK is falling pic.twitter.com/C9Ut9CW200
Left: Killed 14-year-old British boy with a machete. Sent to prison in March, to be released in 6 months.
— Europe Invasion (@EuropeInvasionn) August 20, 2024
Right: He was jailed after shouting at a police dog during riots.
UK has fallen. pic.twitter.com/ixmcdjITM8
๐จBREAKING
— Europe Invasion (@EuropeInvasionn) August 19, 2024
A 67-year-old man has been jailed for 20 months after chanting "you're not English any more" at police officers during a violent demonstration in London.
If he had killed a 14 year old British boy with a machete, he would have been released after 6 months. pic.twitter.com/MdniioPpj2
A 26-year-old boy has been sentenced to 3 years and 2 months in prison for inciting hatred towards immigrants in the UK riots. pic.twitter.com/kZLH5yqjZH
— Europe Invasion (@EuropeInvasionn) August 10, 2024
Left: Killed 14-year-old British boy with a machete. Sent to prison in March, to be released in 6 months.
— Europe Invasion (@EuropeInvasionn) August 10, 2024
Right: Commented on Facebook during riots. Will be in prison for 20 months.
UK is falling. pic.twitter.com/4LpNw7O9w9
Make no mistake, those arrests - shameful as they are in themselves - serve a purpose. This is PSYOPS, this is intimidation of native Britons. It's telling them that they, too, if they don't accept the Umvolkung of their country, risk being arrested.
Be all that as it may, the new Labour government is resorting only to state terror and is doing NOTHING to investigate the unrest among British people; an unrest that is the logical result of seeing their country being flooded day and night by Third World wreckage, of learning for the umpteenth time that here and there a man, or a kid, or a grandmother has been murdered by an illegal immigrant, of having to cope financially in a harsh economy while the government is spending more than 8 MILLION £ a day to house the tsunami of welfare seekers in luxury hotels...
The next riots will see Britons use firearms against their government. And who could blame them?
MFBB.
Saturday, August 17, 2024
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF UKRAINES INCURSION IN RUSSIA - BY JACK WATLING.
Jack Watling, Senior Research Fellow - Land Warfare, Military Sciences, posits that Ukraine, fearing a not so unlikely scenario of a 2nd Trump Administration and what it implies for Ukraine per recent statements by Mr Trump - tying negotiations with Russia to end the war as a condition for further help - invaded a chunk of Russia in order to obtain a bargaining chip.
Personally, when the 'invasion' started on August 6, I only thought it was a raid as only elements of two brigades were involved. Primarily meant in the context of a psychological war, to give the Russians a taste of discomfort, the feeling that a supposedly far weaker adversary is, in the third year of the 'special operation', still capable not only of defending itself but even of attacking its foe on its own soil. I even thought that they were not going to hold on to their gains for long.
But in the meantime, at least 6 brigades are involved and it is indeed beginning to look like the Ukrainians plan to hold on to the conquered territory - something to bargain with if indeed a Trump Administration forces the two warring parties to the negotiation table. Per Mr Watlings column in The Guardian, Saturday August 17, 2024:
Also, don't miss these videos, per Rob Lee, to get an idea of what front operations look like:
One of the units involved is the 82nd Air Landing Brigade. Apparently the basic operational unit in the UA Army is the brigade. Nowhere have I seen divisions mentioned.
Good night.
MFBB.
Ukraine’s extraordinary incursion into Kursk has changed the narrative of the war – but is a high-risk strategy - I write for @ObserverUK https://t.co/wVoqeriZe2 @RUSI_org
— Jack Watling (@Jack_Watling) August 17, 2024
Personally, when the 'invasion' started on August 6, I only thought it was a raid as only elements of two brigades were involved. Primarily meant in the context of a psychological war, to give the Russians a taste of discomfort, the feeling that a supposedly far weaker adversary is, in the third year of the 'special operation', still capable not only of defending itself but even of attacking its foe on its own soil. I even thought that they were not going to hold on to their gains for long.
But in the meantime, at least 6 brigades are involved and it is indeed beginning to look like the Ukrainians plan to hold on to the conquered territory - something to bargain with if indeed a Trump Administration forces the two warring parties to the negotiation table. Per Mr Watlings column in The Guardian, Saturday August 17, 2024:
"Politically, the purpose of the operation is to build leverage ahead of possible negotiations. If Donald Trump wins the US presidency in November, the threat of withdrawing military-technical assistance is likely to force Kyiv to negotiate. The Ukrainian government wants to make sure that if it has to enter that process, it has things that Russia wants to trade for concessions. The Ukrainian military, therefore, must take and hold a sizeable chunk of Russian land for the duration of potential negotiations.
Another important element of the offensive is that Ukraine succeeded in maintaining operational security before launching the assault. This has been a significant problem with past Ukrainian operations, and the competence in the preparation and planning demonstrates lessons being learned from last year’s offensive that will encourage partners about the prospects for future operations.
It helped that Russian military intelligence appears to have suffered once again from a chronic lack of curiosity or imagination as Ukrainian forces were withdrawn from the line in Donbas.
So far Ukrainian forces in Kursk have been tactically successful. Undertrained Russian infantry have again performed poorly when lacking command and control, and confronted by a manoeuvring opponent without fixed points of reference. Surrendering Russian platoons are a symptom of the poor cohesion that exemplified the Russian collapse in Kharkiv in 2022.
While the Kursk operation is politically significant, a parallel series of Ukrainian strikes targeting Russian airfields is more militarily advantageous. Russian aircraft have been central to both the long-range strikes on Ukraine’s critical national infrastructure, and the glide bomb attacks on frontline positions that are inflicting heavy losses on Ukraine. Damaging planes is vital in reducing pressure on Ukraine’s defences.
There is a limit to how successful Ukraine can be. It was suffering from a shortage of troops to rotate and hold the line prior to its operation in Kursk. Now it has pulled together what was available as an operational reserve and committed it to a new axis. There is a limit to how far this force can push before it overextends, meaning it will need to dig in soon if the Ukrainians are to hold the ground until negotiations. But as soon as the front stops being dynamic, the Russians will dig defences and then bring up artillery, electronic warfare complexes and fresh troops. In the short term, the operation has diverted the weight of Russian air-delivered bombs away from Donbas, but this will be temporary. Russia has enough personnel and equipment to fight both fronts. It is less clear that this is true for Ukraine.
The military risks build with time. Having committed its operational reserve, Ukraine will struggle to plug gaps in the line, and it has not yet managed to resolve the threat posed by Russian reconnaissance drones, glide bombs, artillery, electronic warfare and operational-tactical missile complexes. Collectively these capabilities are allowing Russia to continue a steady advance to Pokrovsk, Toretsk and other towns in Donbas. These towns will soon be depopulated, and defending them will be resource-intensive...."
Also, don't miss these videos, per Rob Lee, to get an idea of what front operations look like:
Video of the breach on August 6 with a UR-77 MICLIC.https://t.co/vttpNoKnNq pic.twitter.com/25iGLXJ778
— Rob Lee (@RALee85) August 17, 2024
One of the units involved is the 82nd Air Landing Brigade. Apparently the basic operational unit in the UA Army is the brigade. Nowhere have I seen divisions mentioned.
Video from Ukraine's 82nd Air Assault Brigade of the beginning of the Kursk operation. It shows a Russian Ka-52 helicopter being shot down.https://t.co/duiJ3rKPdY pic.twitter.com/IYlgDbNJiV
— Rob Lee (@RALee85) August 17, 2024
Good night.
MFBB.
Sunday, August 11, 2024
INSANITY IN THE UK.
A truly frightening evolution in the UK, where you can now be ARRESTED and IMPRISONED over social media posts deemed 'offensive' by the government. This is the head of London Police, "Sir" Mark Rowley. If it's up to him, Keir Jong Un's goons can grab you from behind your computer even if you are posting from abroad.
Meanwhile, on London's streets:
MFBB.
Met Police Commissioner Mark Rowley threatens to EXTRADITE and imprison American citizens over online posts.
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) August 9, 2024
He does not rule out Elon Musk. pic.twitter.com/AUJhEgTTtJ
Meanwhile, on London's streets:
This is Sadiq Khan's London. In two years there will be no British people left. pic.twitter.com/ccx0OYVxyP
— RadioGenoa (@RadioGenoa) August 10, 2024
MFBB.
Saturday, August 10, 2024
SATURDAY NIGHT WENDY AND BONNIE, AIR.
Wendy and Bonnie with I realized you. From their sole album Genesis (1969).
Wendy and Bonnie Flower were Californian singing sisters from Millbrae, San Francisco Bay Area.
Air with Playground Love. From the soundtrack of The Virgin Suicides (2000).
Air is a French music duo from Versailles, consisting of Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoรฎt Dunckel. Formed in 1995, still around.
Hat tip for both OutlawDaughter. Good night.
MFBB.
Wendy and Bonnie Flower were Californian singing sisters from Millbrae, San Francisco Bay Area.
Air with Playground Love. From the soundtrack of The Virgin Suicides (2000).
Air is a French music duo from Versailles, consisting of Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoรฎt Dunckel. Formed in 1995, still around.
Hat tip for both OutlawDaughter. Good night.
MFBB.
Friday, July 12, 2024
DREADFUL STAT OF THE DAY.
Per @cdrsalamander, our longtime ally, this appalling stat which sheds light on US women's fertility:
I don't have similar stats for Europe but there's no doubt that they tell a comparable story. Also, I'm not sure about the US, but what I am sure of is that these stats highlight the fertility status of WHITE women. If the examples I can witness firsthand are anything to go by, it may be even worse.
Excessive consumerism and rejection of conservatism - read, embracing of leftist adages - having already taken their toll, in recent decades other factors have manifested themselves which torpedo a white woman's desire for motherhood even more. They are:
* incessant propaganda for gay lifestyles
* third wave feminism
* gender insanity, which is catastrophically telling very young boys and girls that they can be girls and boys by mutilating them - thereby blocking forever the path towards being a parent
* climate lunacy, which essentially is telling young people that humans are the problem and the less there are, the better it is for Mother Gaia (think Extinction Rebellion)
* economic hardships. Indeed, as the European nannystate increasingly diverts resources to welcome and settle gargantuan imports of Third World welfare seekers, taxes and prices have gone up, and the first victims thereof are whites, who have to pay for it. Your typical euro couple which despite everything still thinks of having one and perhaps two children, postpones that wish until things get better. But it doesn't look like they will.
It makes me SICK, seeing how we are wiping out ourselves.
How will this all end? Well, do the math. Take e.g. the example of Ukraine, a country that faces the additional burden of a devastating war which, very unfortunately, wipes away cohorts of young men and women in their prime who should actually be starting families:
MFBB.
I don't have similar stats for Europe but there's no doubt that they tell a comparable story. Also, I'm not sure about the US, but what I am sure of is that these stats highlight the fertility status of WHITE women. If the examples I can witness firsthand are anything to go by, it may be even worse.
Excessive consumerism and rejection of conservatism - read, embracing of leftist adages - having already taken their toll, in recent decades other factors have manifested themselves which torpedo a white woman's desire for motherhood even more. They are:
* incessant propaganda for gay lifestyles
* third wave feminism
* gender insanity, which is catastrophically telling very young boys and girls that they can be girls and boys by mutilating them - thereby blocking forever the path towards being a parent
* climate lunacy, which essentially is telling young people that humans are the problem and the less there are, the better it is for Mother Gaia (think Extinction Rebellion)
* economic hardships. Indeed, as the European nannystate increasingly diverts resources to welcome and settle gargantuan imports of Third World welfare seekers, taxes and prices have gone up, and the first victims thereof are whites, who have to pay for it. Your typical euro couple which despite everything still thinks of having one and perhaps two children, postpones that wish until things get better. But it doesn't look like they will.
It makes me SICK, seeing how we are wiping out ourselves.
How will this all end? Well, do the math. Take e.g. the example of Ukraine, a country that faces the additional burden of a devastating war which, very unfortunately, wipes away cohorts of young men and women in their prime who should actually be starting families:
So, Ukraine has a fertility rate of 1.16 children per woman.
— cdrsalamander (@cdrsalamander) July 9, 2024
There are other nations who have less, but let's say they maintain their independence, but don't increase, or decrease their fertility rate.
How long until the Ukrainian people disappear?
233 years it seems.
/1 pic.twitter.com/araPZbW5tD
MFBB.
Friday, July 05, 2024
REQUIEM FOR ALBION.
The UK elections are over. As expected, the Tories got - rightly so - a clobbering, and Farage's Reform did well. However, the UK electoral system being some kind of first past the post variety, the big winner is Labour, and Keir Starmer is the new PM.
Starmer did not lose time in announcing the new top jobs. They spell disaster.
Angela Rayner is Deputy PM and Minister for Housing:
Yvette Cooper becomes Home Secretary:
Shabana Mahmood is the new Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice:
etc
The most dangerous demographic subgroup in the West is formed by white 'progressive' women, of which there is no shortage in the new Starmer government. The UK is as good as dead.
But make no mistake: the Tories are responsible for this. Had they governed in a conservative way, the UK would be fine and dandy. It is NOT. They got punished for betraying conservatism, of which the migration tsunami which could on unchecked for years is but one aspect. The Tories got deservedly clobbered.
Unfortunately, Labour got undeservedly rewarded.
And now Britain, and Britons, will pay the price. A very hefty one.
MFBB.
The British pound will soon convert to the British Bolivar pic.twitter.com/SbV3Hb2NXM
— BowTiedMara (@BowTiedMara) July 5, 2024
Starmer did not lose time in announcing the new top jobs. They spell disaster.
Angela Rayner is Deputy PM and Minister for Housing:
Labour's @AngelaRayner has been appointed Deputy Prime Minister & Minister for Housing.
— David Atherton (@DaveAtherton20) July 5, 2024
She has promised migrants in every town, and is looking to build for them 250,000 new homes. No Brits need to apply. pic.twitter.com/0bJ7GephHU
Yvette Cooper becomes Home Secretary:
If you thought the tories had bad home secretary’s. You ain’t seen nothing yet pic.twitter.com/YoInhFQdM9
— Sick Of It ๐ฌ๐ง๐ฌ๐ง๐บ๐ธ๐บ๐ธ (@WayneGb88) July 5, 2024
Shabana Mahmood is the new Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice:
Meet the UK’s new Justice Minister.
— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) July 5, 2024
๐ฌ๐ง๐ต๐ธ
Shabana Mahmood has become the new Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice.
The ‘Free Palestine’ activist will be in charge of the administration and reform of core parts of the British justice system. pic.twitter.com/YschXz4oaC
etc
The most dangerous demographic subgroup in the West is formed by white 'progressive' women, of which there is no shortage in the new Starmer government. The UK is as good as dead.
But make no mistake: the Tories are responsible for this. Had they governed in a conservative way, the UK would be fine and dandy. It is NOT. They got punished for betraying conservatism, of which the migration tsunami which could on unchecked for years is but one aspect. The Tories got deservedly clobbered.
Unfortunately, Labour got undeservedly rewarded.
And now Britain, and Britons, will pay the price. A very hefty one.
MFBB.
Wednesday, July 03, 2024
FORMULA OF THE DAY: THE FINE-STRUCTURE CONSTANT.
Fine-Structure Constant (approx. 1/137) is a dimensionless constant that characterizes the strength of the electromagnetic interaction between elementary charged particles. Its value is approximately 1/137, and it's one of the fundamental constants of nature whose origin remains… pic.twitter.com/VIteZcu4K2
— Physics In History (@PhysInHistory) January 31, 2024
* e is the elementary charge (1.602176634×10−19 C);
* h is the Planck constant (6.62607015×10−34 J⋅Hz−1);
* ฤง is the reduced Planck constant, ฤง = h/2ฯ (1.054571817...×10−34 J⋅s)
* c is the speed of light (299792458 m⋅s−1);
* ฮต0 is the electric constant (8.8541878188(14)×10−12 F⋅m−1).
So the Fine-Structure Constant is essential in defining the electromagnetic force, one of the four fundamental forces in nature.
MFBB.
Sunday, June 30, 2024
MARINE LE PEN'S RASSEMBLEMENT NATIONAL CONVINCINGLY WINS FIRST ROUND OF PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS.
With 33% of the vote, Marine Le Pen's rightwing Rassemblement National (RN) seems to have won the first round of France's parliamentary elections. Second comes Mรฉlenchons leftwing Nouveau Front Populaire, a coalition of greens, socialists and communists, with 28%. Macrons coalition only captured 22% of the vote.
The key to her succes might just lay with France's youth, who seem to begin to see through leftist gobbledegook of which they may suspect it threatens their future... and with the very young candidate-PM Jordan Bardella (28), who ticks:
Next week the second and defining round. This is going to be interesting.
MFBB.
Marine Le Pen wins first round as France outright rejects WEF’s Macron! pic.twitter.com/5NEVb4ZfZ4
— Liz Churchill (@liz_churchill10) June 30, 2024
The key to her succes might just lay with France's youth, who seem to begin to see through leftist gobbledegook of which they may suspect it threatens their future... and with the very young candidate-PM Jordan Bardella (28), who ticks:
Next week the second and defining round. This is going to be interesting.
MFBB.
Saturday, June 29, 2024
SATURDAY NIGHT CHRIS REA, ELO.
Chris Rea with Shamrock Diaries. From the eponymous 1985 album.
The least one can say about Rea is that he's a survivor. The man got peritonitis which nearly killed him, pancreatic cancer which nearly killed him, a stroke which nearly killed him etc. I hold him in very high regard, as despite these bumps in the road he managed to produce, almost behind our backs, a string of decent hits. The one thing I'm not going to forgive him, is his championship of Jeremy Corbyn.
ELO with Can't get it out of my head. From the 1974 album Eldorado.
English rock band which formed in Brum in 1970 by songwriters/multi-instrumentalists Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood, and drummer Bev Bevan. Still around although Jeff Lynne will call it quits in OCT of this year.
Nite.
MFBB.
The least one can say about Rea is that he's a survivor. The man got peritonitis which nearly killed him, pancreatic cancer which nearly killed him, a stroke which nearly killed him etc. I hold him in very high regard, as despite these bumps in the road he managed to produce, almost behind our backs, a string of decent hits. The one thing I'm not going to forgive him, is his championship of Jeremy Corbyn.
ELO with Can't get it out of my head. From the 1974 album Eldorado.
English rock band which formed in Brum in 1970 by songwriters/multi-instrumentalists Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood, and drummer Bev Bevan. Still around although Jeff Lynne will call it quits in OCT of this year.
Nite.
MFBB.
Friday, June 28, 2024
WHAT YOU DIDN'T SEE AFTER THE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE LAST NIGHT.
Shocking ending to the Trump vs Biden debate, what most people didn't see.
— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) June 28, 2024
This says it all. pic.twitter.com/ryE6qEIdpt
Good G*d.
Who's running the United States anyway???
MFBB.
Saturday, June 08, 2024
SATURDAY NIGHT THE HUMAN LEAGUE, STEVE WINWOOD.
First The Human League with Life On Your Own. From their 1984 album Hysteria.
English synth pop band which formed in 1977 in Sheffield. Still around!
Steve Winwood with Valerie. From his 1980 album Arc of a Diver.
Winwood played all the instruments on the album: Minimoog, Fender Stratocaster, Steinway Piano, Hammond B3 organ, bass guitar...
Nite.
MFBB.
English synth pop band which formed in 1977 in Sheffield. Still around!
Steve Winwood with Valerie. From his 1980 album Arc of a Diver.
Winwood played all the instruments on the album: Minimoog, Fender Stratocaster, Steinway Piano, Hammond B3 organ, bass guitar...
Nite.
MFBB.
Sunday, May 26, 2024
RECOMMENDED THREAD: JORDAN TAYLOR'S THE OPEN ROTOR CONCEPT.
One of the best technological accounts on X is Jordan Taylor's. In this thread, which dates from two years ago already, he focuses on the Open Rotor Concept - the ultimate turbofan!
MFBB.
In this thread we'll alight on my favourite aerospace efficiency concept: The open rotor engine. This strange looking beast was envisaged in the 70s oil embargo and still promises double digit fuel efficiency improvements. Has it's time now arrived? 1/ pic.twitter.com/towBuGPBXU
— Jordan Taylor (@Jordan_W_Taylor) November 19, 2022
An update to this thread...
— Jordan Taylor (@Jordan_W_Taylor) March 20, 2023
It's happening! CFM International and Airbus are rolling the dice on this beautiful concept. https://t.co/3LwK2gISRe
MFBB.
Friday, May 10, 2024
HYDROGEN ENGINES: ICE OR FUEL CELLS?
I am against EVs for several reasons, and the most obvious ones are in all likelihood the ones that spring to mind right away: limited autonomy and charge stress, depletion of rare metals, damage to the environment primarily during the mining operations needed to extract Lithium, Cobalt etc.
Now, while all that is true in the current EV development state, these issues will probably have been solved ten years hence, what with the introduction of new battery technologies (graphene, solid state...).
No, the REAL reason I am against EVs is because widespread usage of this type of transport will make countries extremely vulnerable for any disruption in the generation and/or distribution of electricity. In our everyday lives we are already completely dependent on electricity. Imagine if on top of that we would all be driving EVs too: in the blink of an eye so to say, a country could be rendered deaf and blind. In the late nineties, NATO used graphite bombs to short-circuit the Serbian power grid and the results were devastating: no lighting or electrical appliances; no electrical trains; factories, hospitals, schools unable to function; no traffic lights, no computers, no internet, no air traffic control etc...
...but at least the Serbs were able to drive their cars.
You can see why it would be an extremely bad idea to completely rely on electricity for road transport too. Imagine that in a not too distant future Russia launches a two-pronged offensive in Western Europe with graphite bombs delivered by drones launched from the North Sea on the one hand, and hackers on the other hand. In a matter of hours, large swaths of Europe are without electricity! Now imagine, too, that greens have unfortunately had their way and we are all driving EVs...
No, if we are to phase out ICE engines using fossil fuels, we should not replace them with EVs; at least not EVs that derive their juice from a power grid. We should switch to hydrogen-powered cars, trucks and buses.
And then two options present themselves: vehicles using hydrogen in a combustion engine, or vehicles using hydrogen in fuel cells.
This chap explains why the latter option *seems* by far the best...
...until you compare the price tag, of course. While it's true that fuel cell powered hydrogen cars are roughly twice as efficient as their ICE counterparts burning H2, they are also far more expensive. Which is why there probably will be a market for the two versions. Time will tell how it will all pan out. Nite.
MFBB.
Now, while all that is true in the current EV development state, these issues will probably have been solved ten years hence, what with the introduction of new battery technologies (graphene, solid state...).
No, the REAL reason I am against EVs is because widespread usage of this type of transport will make countries extremely vulnerable for any disruption in the generation and/or distribution of electricity. In our everyday lives we are already completely dependent on electricity. Imagine if on top of that we would all be driving EVs too: in the blink of an eye so to say, a country could be rendered deaf and blind. In the late nineties, NATO used graphite bombs to short-circuit the Serbian power grid and the results were devastating: no lighting or electrical appliances; no electrical trains; factories, hospitals, schools unable to function; no traffic lights, no computers, no internet, no air traffic control etc...
...but at least the Serbs were able to drive their cars.
You can see why it would be an extremely bad idea to completely rely on electricity for road transport too. Imagine that in a not too distant future Russia launches a two-pronged offensive in Western Europe with graphite bombs delivered by drones launched from the North Sea on the one hand, and hackers on the other hand. In a matter of hours, large swaths of Europe are without electricity! Now imagine, too, that greens have unfortunately had their way and we are all driving EVs...
No, if we are to phase out ICE engines using fossil fuels, we should not replace them with EVs; at least not EVs that derive their juice from a power grid. We should switch to hydrogen-powered cars, trucks and buses.
And then two options present themselves: vehicles using hydrogen in a combustion engine, or vehicles using hydrogen in fuel cells.
This chap explains why the latter option *seems* by far the best...
...until you compare the price tag, of course. While it's true that fuel cell powered hydrogen cars are roughly twice as efficient as their ICE counterparts burning H2, they are also far more expensive. Which is why there probably will be a market for the two versions. Time will tell how it will all pan out. Nite.
MFBB.
Thursday, May 02, 2024
MAY 2nd, 2024.
It's been 13 years since my father died.
I visited my father's grave a couple of hours ago. It was overcast, cold, windy, and raining slightly. An almost complete reversal of the weather yesterday, which actually resembled a hot and sunny day in early July.
I said some prayers there, looking at my father's photograph, a good one which shows him at his best, and as he was in his final years, still a handsome man. The photo is about six inches high and 4 inches wide and thankfully its colours haven't faded yet in those thirteen years.
When I had finished praying I laid my hand on the dark polished granite, as I always do, telling dad that he is not forgotten.
I can only continue my life till I, too, arrive at the end, and I can only hope that I live it as decently as my father lived his. That, and hopefully being able to fulfill a couple of crucial goals I have set myself. I asked and got so much help from my father - and my mother, of course - during his lifetime. Would it be selfish to ask him to help me accomplish those goals from beyond death? Perhaps it is. At the same time these goals are not exactly for my own benefit, so perhaps it's not so bad after all.
My father. What an example. Even thirteen years after his passing.
"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me."
~ Psalm 23:4 ~
Rest in peace dad. You are not forgotten.
MFBB.
I visited my father's grave a couple of hours ago. It was overcast, cold, windy, and raining slightly. An almost complete reversal of the weather yesterday, which actually resembled a hot and sunny day in early July.
I said some prayers there, looking at my father's photograph, a good one which shows him at his best, and as he was in his final years, still a handsome man. The photo is about six inches high and 4 inches wide and thankfully its colours haven't faded yet in those thirteen years.
When I had finished praying I laid my hand on the dark polished granite, as I always do, telling dad that he is not forgotten.
I can only continue my life till I, too, arrive at the end, and I can only hope that I live it as decently as my father lived his. That, and hopefully being able to fulfill a couple of crucial goals I have set myself. I asked and got so much help from my father - and my mother, of course - during his lifetime. Would it be selfish to ask him to help me accomplish those goals from beyond death? Perhaps it is. At the same time these goals are not exactly for my own benefit, so perhaps it's not so bad after all.
My father. What an example. Even thirteen years after his passing.
"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me."
~ Psalm 23:4 ~
Rest in peace dad. You are not forgotten.
MFBB.
Saturday, April 27, 2024
RECOMMENDED VIDEO: EVA VLAARDINGERBROEK'S SPEECH AT CPAC HUNGARY.
Er, highly recommended! Please, watch it in full!
In these desperate times, when simply walking the streets of my small hometown means seeing the effects of Population Replacement up front - for it is no longer a phenomenon of the big cities - it's a small consolation that all across Europe young, intelligent people are standing up and calling out the evil acts of our thoroughly corrupt and ideologically perverse 'elites', who are consciously visiting upon us, the original Europeans, the crime of multiculturalism.
For a crime it is. Here's a small token:
Our 'elites' MUST be removed from power, lest they destroy this beautiful continent of ours!
MFBB.
Here it is! The full speech I gave at #CPACHungary that the establishment is losing its absolute mind about.
— Eva Vlaardingerbroek (@EvaVlaar) April 27, 2024
I spoke the forbidden truth: The Great Replacement is no longer a theory - it’s reality. White Europeans are being replaced in their own countries at an ever… pic.twitter.com/L33UE3P6tv
In these desperate times, when simply walking the streets of my small hometown means seeing the effects of Population Replacement up front - for it is no longer a phenomenon of the big cities - it's a small consolation that all across Europe young, intelligent people are standing up and calling out the evil acts of our thoroughly corrupt and ideologically perverse 'elites', who are consciously visiting upon us, the original Europeans, the crime of multiculturalism.
For a crime it is. Here's a small token:
Hundreds to Thousands of Muslims with the Organization “Muslim Interaktiv” and several other Extremist Islamist Groups held a Rally today in Hamburg, Germany calling for the Establishment of a German Muslim Caliphate as well as the Enforcement of Sharia Law across Europe. pic.twitter.com/AEZD66wucN
— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) April 27, 2024
Our 'elites' MUST be removed from power, lest they destroy this beautiful continent of ours!
MFBB.
Sunday, April 21, 2024
CULTURAL ENRICHMENT IN THE CITY OF LIGHT.
— ๐ฎ๐น RadioRoma (@RadioRoma_) April 21, 2024
Afghan migrants have been vandalizing Paris and clashing with police for 2 consecutive days.
— Visegrรกd 24 (@visegrad24) April 21, 2024
3 Afghans were found dead a few days ago in an apparent murder-suicide case but for som reason the Afghans are blaming the French police.
100 days left to the Paris Olympics
๐ซ๐ท๐ฆ๐ซ pic.twitter.com/4TzEpsr5tK
Our "elites" are responsible for this, and even now, as it is crystal-clear that multiculturalism is a colossal failure, they won't do anything to stem the flood of 3rd World wreckage flowing into our beautiful Europe. For they are counting on the votes of this scum to neutralize the authochton population which is leaning ever more to the Right.
Our "elites" actually deserve to be shot.
MFBB.
Saturday, April 20, 2024
SATURDAY NIGHT THE POLICE, TOM PETTY.
The Police with Darkness. From the 1981 album Ghost in the Machine. Imho their best.
The cover art depicts the band members, with from left to right Andy Summers, Sting with the spiky hair, and Stewart Copeland with a fringe!
Tom Petty with I Won't Back Down. From his first solo album Full Moon Fever (1989).
Iconic American rock artist from Gainesville, Florida, where he also formed Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in 1976.
Nite.
MFBB.
The cover art depicts the band members, with from left to right Andy Summers, Sting with the spiky hair, and Stewart Copeland with a fringe!
Tom Petty with I Won't Back Down. From his first solo album Full Moon Fever (1989).
Iconic American rock artist from Gainesville, Florida, where he also formed Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in 1976.
Nite.
MFBB.
Saturday, April 06, 2024
SATURDAY NIGHT MAC DEMARCO, ECHO AND THE BUNNYMEN.
Mac DeMarco with Moonlight on the River. From his 2017 album This Old Dog.
Canadian singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He sings about his father, who walked out on his mom and him because he was an addict and alcoholic.
Echo and the Bunnymen with Bring On The Dancing Horses. From the 1985 compilation album Songs to Learn and Sing.
Liverpudlian band which formed in 1978 and originally consisted of Ian McCulloch, Will Sergeant, Les Pattison... and a drum machine. Although the band always denied Echo was its name. By the time their debut album appeared, Crocodiles in 1980, there was a flesh and blood drummer, Pete de Freitas, but the name remained the same.
Nite.
MFBB.
Canadian singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He sings about his father, who walked out on his mom and him because he was an addict and alcoholic.
Echo and the Bunnymen with Bring On The Dancing Horses. From the 1985 compilation album Songs to Learn and Sing.
Liverpudlian band which formed in 1978 and originally consisted of Ian McCulloch, Will Sergeant, Les Pattison... and a drum machine. Although the band always denied Echo was its name. By the time their debut album appeared, Crocodiles in 1980, there was a flesh and blood drummer, Pete de Freitas, but the name remained the same.
Nite.
MFBB.
Saturday, March 30, 2024
HAPPY EASTER 2024!
To all my followers, like every year I wish you a heartfelt Happy Easter! At least those of the Christian faith, the others I wish a nice weekend!
God bless you and your loved ones, and may He protect you from harm.
MFBB.
God bless you and your loved ones, and may He protect you from harm.
MFBB.
RECOMMENDED VIDEO: THE IMAGES THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR VIEW OF THE MOON FOREVER (AND BLOW YOUR MIND).
A fascinating journey to our closest celestial neighbor!
If you follow this link, you can explore the Moon yourself!
Good night.
MFBB.
If you follow this link, you can explore the Moon yourself!
Good night.
MFBB.
Saturday, March 23, 2024
RECOMMENDED VIDEO: NEUTRON STARS ARE MORE BIZARRE THAN YOU THINK.
An interesting video by Space Matters on neutron stars, the collapsed cores of massive supergiant stars which had total masses of between 10 and 25 times the mass of our Sun (M☉). They are the smallest and densest known stellar objects, except for Black Holes, having a radius of about 10 kilometers (and a mass of about 1.4 M☉).
They are called neutron stars because, well, their gravitational pressure is so gigantic that atomic nuclei and their electrons are forced onto one another and combine to form neutrons. Further collapse is prevented by a phenomenon called neutron degeneracy pressure.
Nite.
MFBB.
They are called neutron stars because, well, their gravitational pressure is so gigantic that atomic nuclei and their electrons are forced onto one another and combine to form neutrons. Further collapse is prevented by a phenomenon called neutron degeneracy pressure.
Nite.
MFBB.
Sunday, March 17, 2024
THE UNITED KINGDOM IS LOST AND GONE FOR GOOD.
Three appalling tidbits of info that show how much the rot has already set in in the United Kingdom:
An adhan in the Houses of Parliament:
Cambridge University warns visitors to the Fitzwilliam Museum that viewing 200-year old paintings of bucolic "Ur-British landscapes", among them works by Constable, may inspire 'dark nationalistic feelings'.
There's about 500 mosques in London, yet they feel they have to pray in the streets. It's a signal, it's intimidation. When you want to sing gospel songs, however...
There are many more signs that Great Britain has effectively become Small Britain - think of Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, setting up a 100 million £ fund for reparations for the sin of slavery (never mind that the UK actually ABOLISHED the slave trade), the guy who was arrested for putting up stickers warning of White Britons becoming a minority by 2060 etc... but let's leave it at this for today. It's too depressing.
At some point we will have to take up arms. And use them.
MFBB.
An adhan in the Houses of Parliament:
England is lost.
— Fr Calvin Robinson (@calvinrobinson) March 14, 2024
Not by defeat in battle. Nor by a strong conquering force. But by cowardly men.
Weak and feeble politicians, and a traitorous metropolitan liberal elite.
Shame.https://t.co/7zqxEj3jQR
Cambridge University warns visitors to the Fitzwilliam Museum that viewing 200-year old paintings of bucolic "Ur-British landscapes", among them works by Constable, may inspire 'dark nationalistic feelings'.
The citizens of the United Kingdom are under a full-scale siege by forces that seek to cut off any remaining avenue of dignity or pride in one's country.
— Western Exile (@westernexile) March 15, 2024
The University of Cambridge is now attacking depictions of the British countryside itself as 'dark nationalism'.
Now why… pic.twitter.com/2fdkhSwlH5
There's about 500 mosques in London, yet they feel they have to pray in the streets. It's a signal, it's intimidation. When you want to sing gospel songs, however...
While Muslim immigrants in London can do whatever they want, Christians are persecuted by British police. https://t.co/B3THcL7z9z pic.twitter.com/NeahvR0Lfp
— RadioGenoa (@RadioGenoa) March 9, 2024
There are many more signs that Great Britain has effectively become Small Britain - think of Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, setting up a 100 million £ fund for reparations for the sin of slavery (never mind that the UK actually ABOLISHED the slave trade), the guy who was arrested for putting up stickers warning of White Britons becoming a minority by 2060 etc... but let's leave it at this for today. It's too depressing.
At some point we will have to take up arms. And use them.
MFBB.
Saturday, March 16, 2024
SATURDAY NIGHT MANFRED MANN'S EARTH BAND, LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM.
Manfred Mann's Earth Band with Davy's on the road again. It's on the 1978 album Watch, although it came out as a single in 1971 already.
English rock band which formed in 1971 and still around, despite a hiatus between 1987 and 1991. Lead man Manfred Mann (real name Manfred Sepse Lubowitz) was born in South Africa.
Lindsey Buckingham with Trouble. From his debut solo album Law and Order (1981).
Buckingham joined Fleetwood Mac in 1977, together with his then partner Stevie Nicks, and it's impossible to imagine Rumours (1977) and its success without them.
Goede nacht.
MFBB.
English rock band which formed in 1971 and still around, despite a hiatus between 1987 and 1991. Lead man Manfred Mann (real name Manfred Sepse Lubowitz) was born in South Africa.
Lindsey Buckingham with Trouble. From his debut solo album Law and Order (1981).
Buckingham joined Fleetwood Mac in 1977, together with his then partner Stevie Nicks, and it's impossible to imagine Rumours (1977) and its success without them.
Goede nacht.
MFBB.
Saturday, March 02, 2024
SATURDAY NIGHT FOO FIGHTERS, ABC.
Foo Fighters with Monkey Wrench. From the album The Colour and the Shape (1997).
In the elevator, Grohl hears a muzak version (i.e. lift music) of the FF hit Big Me, performed by The Moog Cookbook, some kind of US version of Daft Punk.
ABC with All Of My Heart. From their debut album The Lexicon of Love (1982). You read that right, 42 years old already. And still good!
English pop band, ex Vice Versa, which formed in Sheffield in 1980. The classic line-up consisted of lead vocalist Martin Fry, guitarist/keyboardist Mark White, saxophonist Stephen Singleton, and drummer David Palmer.
Bonne nuit.
MFBB.
In the elevator, Grohl hears a muzak version (i.e. lift music) of the FF hit Big Me, performed by The Moog Cookbook, some kind of US version of Daft Punk.
ABC with All Of My Heart. From their debut album The Lexicon of Love (1982). You read that right, 42 years old already. And still good!
English pop band, ex Vice Versa, which formed in Sheffield in 1980. The classic line-up consisted of lead vocalist Martin Fry, guitarist/keyboardist Mark White, saxophonist Stephen Singleton, and drummer David Palmer.
Bonne nuit.
MFBB.
Friday, March 01, 2024
RECOMMENDED VIDEO: INSIDE THE ME262 JET FIGHTER.
A marvellous video by Blue Paw Print:
And while I'm at it, you might want to check out Dan Sharp's "ME262 - Development and Politics":
Nite.
MFBB.
And while I'm at it, you might want to check out Dan Sharp's "ME262 - Development and Politics":
Nite.
MFBB.
Saturday, February 24, 2024
SATURDAY NIGHT MAC DEMARCO, EDITORS.
Mac DeMarco with Passing out Pieces. From the album Salad Days (2014).
Canadian singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer, known for his preference for vintage guitars and synthesizers.
Editors with Munich. From their 2005 debut album The Back Room.
Indie rock band from Brum. Tom Smith is lead singer, songwriter, keyboardist and rhythm guitarist.
Dobranoc.
MFBB.
Canadian singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer, known for his preference for vintage guitars and synthesizers.
Editors with Munich. From their 2005 debut album The Back Room.
Indie rock band from Brum. Tom Smith is lead singer, songwriter, keyboardist and rhythm guitarist.
Dobranoc.
MFBB.
Friday, February 23, 2024
INTUITIVE MACHINES' ODYSSEUS LANDER TOUCHES DOWN ON MOON.
After more than half a century, America finally made it back to the Moon, as Intuitive Machines's NOVA C-Lander, called Odysseus, touched down on the lunar surface near the South Pole:
Intuitive Machines is a participant in NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) Programme, another contender being Astrobotic, which in January launched Peregrine, an attempt to reach the Moon that unfortunately failed due to an anomaly shortly after launch. Astrobotic will do a follow up later this year though with a second lander, Griffin.
After IM's confirmation that Odysseus was standing upright and sending data...
...photos failed to come through though. Apparently the camera didn't deploy during descent. I suppose IM's engineer right now are hard at work to solve that problem though. In any case, with this successful landing on the heels of Japans and India's lunar landers, it's clear that interest for our celestial neighbor is finally back to late 60s/early 70s levels, and hopefully we will finally see a Moon Base in the very near future!
MFBB.
Today, for the first time in half a century, America has returned to the Moon ๐บ๐ธ.
— Bill Nelson (@SenBillNelson) February 23, 2024
On the eighth day of a quarter-million-mile voyage, @Int_Machines aced the landing of a lifetime.
What a feat for IM, @SpaceX & @NASA.
What a triumph for humanity.
Odysseus has taken the Moon. pic.twitter.com/JwtCQmMS2K
Intuitive Machines is a participant in NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) Programme, another contender being Astrobotic, which in January launched Peregrine, an attempt to reach the Moon that unfortunately failed due to an anomaly shortly after launch. Astrobotic will do a follow up later this year though with a second lander, Griffin.
After IM's confirmation that Odysseus was standing upright and sending data...
After troubleshooting communications, flight controllers have confirmed Odysseus is upright and starting to send data.
— Intuitive Machines (@Int_Machines) February 23, 2024
Right now, we are working to downlink the first images from the lunar surface.
...photos failed to come through though. Apparently the camera didn't deploy during descent. I suppose IM's engineer right now are hard at work to solve that problem though. In any case, with this successful landing on the heels of Japans and India's lunar landers, it's clear that interest for our celestial neighbor is finally back to late 60s/early 70s levels, and hopefully we will finally see a Moon Base in the very near future!
MFBB.
Sunday, February 18, 2024
THE RESULT OF MULTICULTI INSANITY: MASSIVE RIOTS IN THE HAGUE, THE NETHERLANDS.
Mass riots broke out yesterday in The Hague, The Netherlands, when two rival gangs of Eritreans numbering hundreds of individuals clashed with each other, then attacked intervening police.
Multiculturalism is a LIE, invented by leftists after the fall of the Soviet Union. It was the grand bankruptcy of all their delusional ideas, but every time they are proven wrong, they start looking for another cause to sow unrest and hatred, another group of purported victims they can claim to protect. That group was quickly found, had in fact already been on their radar for decades: the Third World. The only reason most of the Third World is a shithole is because WE keep them there, according to socialists, greens, democrats or whatever you want to call these lowlives. And the grand operation to sluice the downtrodden of the Earth towards the West began. Here at last they could benefit from all the riches we had stolen from them.
Not content with the speed of the influx, even after Madwoman Merkel's throwing open the borders of Germany, they doctored the 'UN Global Compact for Safe and Regulated Migration', which went into effect in 2018. The results are appalling. Europe is being flooded day and night with thousands of welfare seekers who can't, and won't, contribute anything of value to our continent.
It is in fact a naked power grab by Europe's leftists and greens, aimed at neutralizing the votes of autochton electorates which vote more an more rightwing - not unlike the Biden government letting some 150,000 Latin Americans in each month with the aim of keeping the GOP from power eternally.
The results of such insane policies were on full display in The Hague yesterday. Politicians who allow and facilitate the import of this scum... actually deserve to be shot.
MFBB.
Here's who devastated The Hague yesterday. We hope that this video can contribute to identification and deportation. pic.twitter.com/46Z9f1okxa
— RadioGenoa (@RadioGenoa) February 18, 2024
Het open grenzen-beleid heeft ons land totaal verwoest. Grenzen dicht en dit tuig uitzetten. Nu.
— Raisa Blommestijn (@rblommestijn) February 17, 2024
pic.twitter.com/vHmflh8slr
The Hague - Last night, foreign paramilitaries burned down the city. Deportations must start today ๐ณ๐ฑ๐ฅท pic.twitter.com/zRQnJ23Okt
— ๐ฌ๐งRonEnglish๐ฌ๐ง๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ฅ๓ ฎ๓ ง๓ ฟ (@RonEng1ish) February 18, 2024
UPDATE: o.a. door het brandende politiebusje tegen de gevel is ook in het pand van de #Opera brand ontstaan. De brandweer heeft opgeschaald naar 'zeer grote brand'. #Grip2 #Fruitweg https://t.co/aG13e1Al7b pic.twitter.com/ucFUUeX8Qh
— Regio15.nl (@regio15) February 17, 2024
Relschoppers uit Eritrea dringen het Opera gebouw in Den Haag binnen. Ramen worden vernield.pic.twitter.com/CxHFMJOaTg
— Kees (@Kees71234) February 17, 2024
Oorlogsgebied met dank aan de ongelimiteerde import van de derde wereld. pic.twitter.com/5Fz79anZPu
— Symphony (@Symphony_res) February 17, 2024
Multiculturalism is a LIE, invented by leftists after the fall of the Soviet Union. It was the grand bankruptcy of all their delusional ideas, but every time they are proven wrong, they start looking for another cause to sow unrest and hatred, another group of purported victims they can claim to protect. That group was quickly found, had in fact already been on their radar for decades: the Third World. The only reason most of the Third World is a shithole is because WE keep them there, according to socialists, greens, democrats or whatever you want to call these lowlives. And the grand operation to sluice the downtrodden of the Earth towards the West began. Here at last they could benefit from all the riches we had stolen from them.
Not content with the speed of the influx, even after Madwoman Merkel's throwing open the borders of Germany, they doctored the 'UN Global Compact for Safe and Regulated Migration', which went into effect in 2018. The results are appalling. Europe is being flooded day and night with thousands of welfare seekers who can't, and won't, contribute anything of value to our continent.
It is in fact a naked power grab by Europe's leftists and greens, aimed at neutralizing the votes of autochton electorates which vote more an more rightwing - not unlike the Biden government letting some 150,000 Latin Americans in each month with the aim of keeping the GOP from power eternally.
The results of such insane policies were on full display in The Hague yesterday. Politicians who allow and facilitate the import of this scum... actually deserve to be shot.
MFBB.
Saturday, February 17, 2024
WEEKEND MOVIE TIP: DONNIE DARKO (2001).
It's excellent.
And the soundtrack comprising material from Echo & The Bunnymen, Joy Division, Tears for Fears, INXS et al was just the icing on the cake!
Go watch it, you won't be disappointed. Nite.
MFBB.
And the soundtrack comprising material from Echo & The Bunnymen, Joy Division, Tears for Fears, INXS et al was just the icing on the cake!
Go watch it, you won't be disappointed. Nite.
MFBB.
Saturday, February 10, 2024
WEEKEND MOVIE TIP: MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001).
You know, 3/4ths into this movie I was seriously starting to think David Lynch is overrated. I was seriously starting to think of quitting.
And then I didn't.
And lucky me.
Mulholland Drive tells the story of Betty Elms, an aspiring young actress who arrives in LA only to find an amnesiac woman calling herself Rita in her apartment. I am not going to say more but remember, get past that 3/4 treshold. Besides, Rita has great tits.
Let's say I give it an 8.5/10 score. See it. Nite.
MFBB.
And then I didn't.
And lucky me.
Mulholland Drive tells the story of Betty Elms, an aspiring young actress who arrives in LA only to find an amnesiac woman calling herself Rita in her apartment. I am not going to say more but remember, get past that 3/4 treshold. Besides, Rita has great tits.
Let's say I give it an 8.5/10 score. See it. Nite.
MFBB.
Friday, February 09, 2024
RECOMMENDED VIDEO: INSIDE THE VOUGHT F4U-4 CORSAIR.
A truly enlightening and fun to watch video about a legendary aircraft...
...that, thanks to the movie Devotion (such a shame it tanked), finds itself in the spotlights again!
Some more info here. Good night.
MFBB.
...that, thanks to the movie Devotion (such a shame it tanked), finds itself in the spotlights again!
Some more info here. Good night.
MFBB.
Saturday, February 03, 2024
WEEKEND MOVIE TIP: TRACK 29 (1988).
Saw it many years ago but the favorable impression remains: 7.5 to 10, worth your time.
It's a psychological drama directed by Nicolas Roeg and starring a.o. the beautiful Theresa Russell (at the time Roegs spouse) and Gary Oldman. Russell plays Linda Henry, a doctor's wife in rural Wilmington, North Carolina, who leads a dispiriting life and feels neglected by her husband, a doctor in a local hospital. Then a young drifter shows up, Martin, who claims to be her son, separated at birth from her since as a teen mom she was judged incapable of caring for her baby; and she never had children afterwards.
All rather intriguing and then there's the final Shyamalan twist at the end. See it if you can, it's okay.
Nite.
MFBB.
It's a psychological drama directed by Nicolas Roeg and starring a.o. the beautiful Theresa Russell (at the time Roegs spouse) and Gary Oldman. Russell plays Linda Henry, a doctor's wife in rural Wilmington, North Carolina, who leads a dispiriting life and feels neglected by her husband, a doctor in a local hospital. Then a young drifter shows up, Martin, who claims to be her son, separated at birth from her since as a teen mom she was judged incapable of caring for her baby; and she never had children afterwards.
All rather intriguing and then there's the final Shyamalan twist at the end. See it if you can, it's okay.
Nite.
MFBB.
Friday, February 02, 2024
NOW IS THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT.
In most of Western Europe, farmers have taken to the streets in an unprecedented way, ostensibly - or principally - to protest high fuel prices and low profits, but what it really boils down to is their resistance to the EU's INSANE plans to curtail their number to meet... insane climate goals:
France:
Spain, France:
Ireland:
The Netherlands:
Belgium:
Italy:
Germany:
The past couple of years have shown us that globalisation has more than its share of disadvantages. In the wake of the covid crisis, Europe suddenly woke up to the fact that, as international shipping of consumer goods from Asia got severely curtailed, it had dispatched an enormous swath of its industrial production to China, Thailand etc. The result? Waiting for that new car for a year for want of essential electronics components from South Korea; only two types of Miele dishwashers available etc... Apparently Western Europe had been dreaming it could afford not to make its hands dirty any longer and become a services economy. It was a rude awakening.
Then came the Russo-Ukraine War and suddenly Europe discovered it relied to a gargantuan extent on Russian fossil fuels, a situation aggravated by green parties' insane war against nuclear energy coupled with their utopian desire to completely switch to renewables. Reality showed the dangers of that approach.
In my country there's a saying: "Een ezel stoot zich geen tweemaal aan dezelfde steen", which translates as "a donkey won't stumble twice over the same rock". But Ladies and Gentlemen, EU ministers and lawmakers are proving time and again that it would actually be better to fill the EU Commission and the EU Parliament with donkeys, since after the production crisis of 2020-2021 and the energy crisis of 2022-present, they are now to stomp on that third stone by outsourcing YET ANOTHER vital sector: farming! Indeed, what could go wrong with, say, forcing at least 3,000 Dutch farmers - who run in all likelihood the cleanest and most environmentally friendly agricultural enterprises on the planet - out of their job and import inferior quality meat and vegetables from far flung places where they don't care ZILCH about nitrogen emissions. Oh yeah, that produce has then to be shipped here by hundreds of reefer vessels and bulk carriers burning gazillion tons of diesel fuel, but for green lunatics one kind of CO2 emissions is not like the other.
The current crop of EU politicians (and most national ones in power) are all obsessed with leftist dadas, even the ones who pose as nominal center or center right. They won't stop at farmers, farmers are just the canaries in the coalmine. It is therefore advisable to Europe's citizens of whom many were indeed hampered this week getting to their jobs, what with all these tractor blockades, to not get too angry...
...for once our 'elites' have got the farmers (taken away their livelihoods, that is), they will come for YOU. And the instruments for that: CBDC, FitFor55, DSA... it's all in the works.
Therefore, FIGHT these smug, obscenely overpaid Davos bastards with ALL YOUR MIGHT, because if they have their way, a decade hence you might not even have a vehicle anymore to shore up a blockade to protest your livelyhood under threat.
MFBB.
France:
Guรฉret ๐ซ๐ท, 30-1-2024 #AgriculteursEnColeres
— Niemands Knegt (@NiemandsKnegt) January 30, 2024
Het Commissariat de Police Nationale in Guรฉret, de prefectuur van het departement Creuse, werd vanavond volgespoten met... mest...
๐ฝ️ Via @CerveauxNonpic.twitter.com/hQ1OmwIatM
Frankrijk ๐ซ๐ท
— Van Emmerick Kris (@VanEmmerickKris) January 31, 2024
Zo ziet een burgerleger van zware gepantserde voertuigen eruit!
Hoe lang duurt het voordat Macron de staat van beleg afkondigt?
Je moet het ze wel aangeven, die Fransen ๐ซ๐ท
๐๐ป๐ซ๐ท๐๐ป๐ซ๐ท๐๐ป๐ซ๐ท๐๐ป๐ซ๐ท๐๐ป๐ซ๐ท๐๐ป๐ซ๐ท๐๐ป pic.twitter.com/etdT95iMcX
Spain, France:
Boeren uit Frankrijk ๐ซ๐ทen Spanje ๐ช๐ธ…
— Van Emmerick Kris (@VanEmmerickKris) February 2, 2024
Het protest is vuriger geworden‼️
๐๐ป๐ณ๐๐ป๐ณ๐๐ป๐ณ๐๐ป๐ณ๐๐ป๐ณ๐๐ป๐ณ๐๐ป pic.twitter.com/ORyeuAoDFz
Ireland:
BREAKING: The Irish farmers have now joined the farmers protest ๐ฎ๐ช
— PeterSweden (@PeterSweden7) February 1, 2024
There's been talks of farmers being forced to slaughter 200 000 cows to reduce climate emissions.pic.twitter.com/ON50TpCgOs
The Netherlands:
Overal in Nederland breken momenteel #boerenprotesten uit. Amsterdam, Zuid-Holland, Gelderland, Groningen pic.twitter.com/1Ge2dXbnV3
— Caroline van der Plas (@lientje1967) February 1, 2024
Belgium:
The atmosphere in Brussels in EU Parliament is very warm. European farmers are very angry. pic.twitter.com/gPCE0M6DSN
— RadioGenoa (@RadioGenoa) February 1, 2024
Het zijn duidelijk geen klimaatbetogers, waarvoor extra treinen ingelegd worden. https://t.co/I4HCqWwemL
— @kuifjesdream ๐๐๐๐๐๐ (@Kuifjesdream) February 1, 2024
Italy:
Ondertussen in Italiรซ ๐ https://t.co/kFC4zY99C1
— โ๐๐ฅ๐๐ฃ ๐ง๐๐ ๐๐๐ฃ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ (@vdVeldenPeter) January 26, 2024
Germany:
The farmers of Europe are in the vanguard of the battle for freedom against an ever more tyrannical globalist establishment.
— Eva Vlaardingerbroek (@EvaVlaar) February 2, 2024
Support them. Because if they fall, we all fall. pic.twitter.com/2KZb64oQbY
The past couple of years have shown us that globalisation has more than its share of disadvantages. In the wake of the covid crisis, Europe suddenly woke up to the fact that, as international shipping of consumer goods from Asia got severely curtailed, it had dispatched an enormous swath of its industrial production to China, Thailand etc. The result? Waiting for that new car for a year for want of essential electronics components from South Korea; only two types of Miele dishwashers available etc... Apparently Western Europe had been dreaming it could afford not to make its hands dirty any longer and become a services economy. It was a rude awakening.
Then came the Russo-Ukraine War and suddenly Europe discovered it relied to a gargantuan extent on Russian fossil fuels, a situation aggravated by green parties' insane war against nuclear energy coupled with their utopian desire to completely switch to renewables. Reality showed the dangers of that approach.
In my country there's a saying: "Een ezel stoot zich geen tweemaal aan dezelfde steen", which translates as "a donkey won't stumble twice over the same rock". But Ladies and Gentlemen, EU ministers and lawmakers are proving time and again that it would actually be better to fill the EU Commission and the EU Parliament with donkeys, since after the production crisis of 2020-2021 and the energy crisis of 2022-present, they are now to stomp on that third stone by outsourcing YET ANOTHER vital sector: farming! Indeed, what could go wrong with, say, forcing at least 3,000 Dutch farmers - who run in all likelihood the cleanest and most environmentally friendly agricultural enterprises on the planet - out of their job and import inferior quality meat and vegetables from far flung places where they don't care ZILCH about nitrogen emissions. Oh yeah, that produce has then to be shipped here by hundreds of reefer vessels and bulk carriers burning gazillion tons of diesel fuel, but for green lunatics one kind of CO2 emissions is not like the other.
The current crop of EU politicians (and most national ones in power) are all obsessed with leftist dadas, even the ones who pose as nominal center or center right. They won't stop at farmers, farmers are just the canaries in the coalmine. It is therefore advisable to Europe's citizens of whom many were indeed hampered this week getting to their jobs, what with all these tractor blockades, to not get too angry...
...for once our 'elites' have got the farmers (taken away their livelihoods, that is), they will come for YOU. And the instruments for that: CBDC, FitFor55, DSA... it's all in the works.
Therefore, FIGHT these smug, obscenely overpaid Davos bastards with ALL YOUR MIGHT, because if they have their way, a decade hence you might not even have a vehicle anymore to shore up a blockade to protest your livelyhood under threat.
MFBB.
Saturday, January 27, 2024
SATURDAY NIGHT THIN LIZZY, CHANDA DANCY.
Thin Lizzy with Wild One. Album Fighting (1975).
Hard to believe TL first broke up more than 40 years ago already - in 1983, that was - and yet it is still around, since guitarist Scott Gorham resurrected it in 1996.
From the soundtrack of Devotion (2022): Jesse Crashes.
Composed by Chanda Dancy from Houston, TX. Besides a composer, she is also a violinist, keyboardist, singer AND founder and president of CYD Music.
Goede nacht.
MFBB.
Hard to believe TL first broke up more than 40 years ago already - in 1983, that was - and yet it is still around, since guitarist Scott Gorham resurrected it in 1996.
From the soundtrack of Devotion (2022): Jesse Crashes.
Composed by Chanda Dancy from Houston, TX. Besides a composer, she is also a violinist, keyboardist, singer AND founder and president of CYD Music.
Goede nacht.
MFBB.
Sunday, January 21, 2024
RECOMMENDED VIDEO: SABINE HOSSENFELDER ON WHY YOU HAVE MASS.
Sabine Hossenfelder is a theoretical physicist at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies. I got to know her (well... not personally) via X/twitter and so discovered that she also has her own Youtube Channel, Science Without the Gobbledygook.
Maybe you heard left or right already that protons and neutrons are themselves composed of elementary particles called quarks. A proton e.g. is made up of one down and two up quarks. A neutron of one up and two down quarks. Quarks are not massless and their mass can be determined. Yet here's the thing: when these masses are added up, the result is nowhere near the well-known mass of a proton or a neutron. So where does the difference come from? Mrs Hossenfelder explains it in this video: other composite particles called pions, denoted with, you guess it, ฯ, and made up of a quark and an anti-quark, are responsible for it:
You can follow Sabine on: @skdh
Nite.
MFBB.
Maybe you heard left or right already that protons and neutrons are themselves composed of elementary particles called quarks. A proton e.g. is made up of one down and two up quarks. A neutron of one up and two down quarks. Quarks are not massless and their mass can be determined. Yet here's the thing: when these masses are added up, the result is nowhere near the well-known mass of a proton or a neutron. So where does the difference come from? Mrs Hossenfelder explains it in this video: other composite particles called pions, denoted with, you guess it, ฯ, and made up of a quark and an anti-quark, are responsible for it:
You can follow Sabine on: @skdh
Nite.
MFBB.
Saturday, January 13, 2024
SATURDAY NIGHT PREFAB SPROUT, MOBY.
Prefab Sprout with Bonny. From the 1985 album Steve McQueen...
...with the iconic album cover. Only now did I find out the band is from County Durham, UK (which btw I hope to visit with my family next Spring).
Moby with Sunday (The Day Before My Birthday). Album 18 (2002).
Vocals by Sylvia Robinson, better known simply as Sylvia, a singer, record producer and record label exec from Harlem, NY.
Hat tip for both OutlawDaughter. You can see that I raised my offspring well.
Goede nacht.
MFBB.
...with the iconic album cover. Only now did I find out the band is from County Durham, UK (which btw I hope to visit with my family next Spring).
Moby with Sunday (The Day Before My Birthday). Album 18 (2002).
Vocals by Sylvia Robinson, better known simply as Sylvia, a singer, record producer and record label exec from Harlem, NY.
Hat tip for both OutlawDaughter. You can see that I raised my offspring well.
Goede nacht.
MFBB.
Friday, January 12, 2024
POLITICAL TURMOIL IN POLAND AS NEW GLOBALIST GOVERNMENT RESORTS TO STASI MEASURES.
Since 13 December Poland has a new government in the form of a center-left coalition of which the main party is Donald Tusk's PO (Platforma Obywatelska, Civic Platform). He has not wasted time in bringing back measures fit for a communist tyranny. The State Broadcaster TVP was raided by police and all personnel deemed to be PiS-aligned (the former rightwing ruling party) was ousted. This week, two PiS parliamentarians who years ago tried to set up a leftist politician (Leper) in an admittedly dubious de-corruption scheme, for which they were however pardoned by the Polish President himself, were arrested in the Presidential Palace no less, and thrown in jail.
Under former EU apparatchik and WEF puppet Donald Tusk, a globalist who can't wait to throw open Polish borders for tens of thousands of illegals in the EU's newest Umvolkung scheme, dark days have returned with a vengeance. This is former Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki:
It's of course far too early to say that Poles show buyer's remorse, and one should not forget that the Polish elections showed that PiS remains the biggest party, but in no time a demo to protest this grossly undemocratic show of force was planned...
...for which reportedly 300,000 protesters showed up, despite freezing temps:
No mean feat! I don't think Tusk has learned a lesson, so it is now imperative for True Poles to keep up the pressure. All over Europe and indeed, the West, those who want to keep our precious societies, for which countless generations before us battled and even gave their all, must unite and fight back against insane globalist schemes. The recent PVV victory in The Netherlands and the current massive demos by farmers in Germany give some hope that perhaps, just perhaps, the tipping point has been reached and native Europeans start to realize that progressive policies can only lead one way: to our doom.
MFBB.
Under former EU apparatchik and WEF puppet Donald Tusk, a globalist who can't wait to throw open Polish borders for tens of thousands of illegals in the EU's newest Umvolkung scheme, dark days have returned with a vengeance. This is former Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki:
Po raz pierwszy od 35 lat, od upadku komuny i wielkiego zwyciฤstwa Polakรณw nad totalitaryzmem - mamy w Polsce wiฤลบniรณw politycznych…
— Mateusz Morawiecki (@MorawieckiM) January 10, 2024
Mariusz Kamiลski I Maciej Wฤ sik to ofiary politycznej zemsty nowego rzฤ du Donalda Tuska.
Apelujฤ do demokratycznej wspรณlnoty ลwiata Zachodu, by… pic.twitter.com/HKHMwVZu51
It's of course far too early to say that Poles show buyer's remorse, and one should not forget that the Polish elections showed that PiS remains the biggest party, but in no time a demo to protest this grossly undemocratic show of force was planned...
๐ฅ Peลna mobilizacja! Jutro o 16:00 widzimy siฤ przed Sejmem RP, aby zademonstrowaฤ nasz sprzeciw wobec m. in. raลผฤ cego ลamania prawa i nieprzestrzegania zasad Konstytucji przez ekipฤ Tuska.
— Prawo i Sprawiedliwoลฤ (@pisorgpl) January 10, 2024
✌️ ๐ต๐ฑ Przyjdลบ na #ProtestWolnychPolakรณw pic.twitter.com/VLUse9DFkx
...for which reportedly 300,000 protesters showed up, despite freezing temps:
Temperatures are freezing in Warsaw, it's the middle of winter
— Jack Poso ๐บ๐ธ (@JackPosobiec) January 11, 2024
That didn't stop tens of thousands of Polish patriots from coming out to march for freedom
I can't believe it #FreePoland pic.twitter.com/lcXpGcUHBi
Jesteลcie wielcy! Tu jesteลmy wolni! ✌️๐ต๐ฑ https://t.co/oMJp4rONrq
— Mateusz Morawiecki (@MorawieckiM) January 11, 2024
✌️ Dziฤkujemy!#ProtestWolnychPolakรณw pic.twitter.com/VFTPTdDw8t
— Prawo i Sprawiedliwoลฤ (@pisorgpl) January 11, 2024
No mean feat! I don't think Tusk has learned a lesson, so it is now imperative for True Poles to keep up the pressure. All over Europe and indeed, the West, those who want to keep our precious societies, for which countless generations before us battled and even gave their all, must unite and fight back against insane globalist schemes. The recent PVV victory in The Netherlands and the current massive demos by farmers in Germany give some hope that perhaps, just perhaps, the tipping point has been reached and native Europeans start to realize that progressive policies can only lead one way: to our doom.
MFBB.
Tuesday, January 09, 2024
THE HUNT FOR STERILE NEUTRINOS - MINIBOONE, MICROBOONE, SBND AND ICARUS.
The hunt is on…. https://t.co/jNJQcsWw4a
— DUNE Science (@DUNEScience) December 26, 2023
"The neutrino is perhaps the most fascinating inhabitant of the subatomic world. Nearly massless, this fundamental particle experiences only the weak nuclear force and the much fainter force of gravity. With no more than these feeble connections to other forms of matter, a neutrino can pass through the entire Earth with just a tiny chance of hitting an atom. Ghosts, who are said to be able to pass through walls, have nothing on neutrinos.
The neutrinos’ phantom properties are not the only thing that sets them apart from other fundamental particles. They are unique in that they don’t have a fixed identity. The three known forms of neutrinos are able to transform into one another through a cyclical process called neutrino oscillation. In addition to being subatomic specters, they are also quantum chameleons.
Although the phenomenon of neutrino oscillation has been studied in many experiments, the data don’t tell a unified story. Based on the evidence of some experiments, some scientists have begun to suspect that there may be more than three types of neutrinos. These hypothetical additional neutrino types, unlike their familiar counterparts, would not even interact via the weak nuclear force and thus would be called sterile neutrinos.
Sterile neutrinos are not part of the Standard Model, the accepted theory of matter and energy in the subatomic world. If these extra neutrinos exist, they will force physicists to revisit the theory and possibly substantially revise it. A new experiment set to begin measurements soon may be able to settle the question of whether previous investigations have seen sterile neutrinos or not.
CONFUSING SIGNALS
The three known types of neutrinos are the electron neutrino, muon neutrino and tau neutrino, each named for the charged particle that is produced simultaneously with it. Early in our understanding of neutrino physics, each of these types seemed to be different from the other two. However, the situation became murkier in the 1960s and 1970s, when experiments began to show puzzling results.
Electron neutrinos are produced in nuclear reactions, and the biggest nuclear reactor around is the sun. Researchers used the energy output of our home star to calculate how many electron neutrinos they expected to arrive here on Earth. However, measurements yielded a third as many electron neutrinos as predicted. In addition, the cascade of particle interactions that result when high-energy cosmic protons hit our planet’s atmosphere was expected to produce twice as many muon neutrinos as electron ones. Yet experiments measured roughly equal quantities.
In 1957 physicist Bruno Pontecorvo made the daring proposal that neutrinos could oscillate, thereby changing their identity. Between 1998 and 2001, detectors studying the flux of neutrinos from both the sun and Earth’s atmosphere proved that neutrinos were changing into other flavors on their way to us.
Even prior to these observations, researchers used particle beams to investigate the possibility of neutrino oscillation. One experiment using the Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector (LSND) at Los Alamos National Laboratory produced a sample of nearly pure positive muons. As the muons decayed, they created muon antimatter neutrinos. Taking into account the setup of the experiment, physicists expected to detect electron antimatter neutrinos at a rate of about 0.06 percent of the amount of muon antimatter neutrinos. Instead they measured that electron antimatter neutrinos were about 0.31 percent of interactions, well above predictions.
Scientists can determine which neutrino they’ve detected by studying the particles that are created when neutrinos collide with atoms. When neutrinos do happen to impact an atom of matter, electron neutrinos will create an electron, and muon neutrinos will create a muon. Tau neutrinos react similarly, but it is challenging to identify tau particles.
Using their measurements (and others performed elsewhere), the LSND scientists concluded in 2001 that three neutrino variants could not simultaneously explain both their data and the array of solar and atmospheric neutrino measurements that existed at the time. However, if there were a fourth, sterile neutrino, then the experiments were consistent. The only problem was that other accelerator-based neutrino measurements didn’t support the idea of a fourth neutrino. Another measurement was necessary.
To help resolve this quandary, researchers at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Ill., built MiniBooNE (Mini Booster Neutrino Experiment). The idea was to construct a detector using a similar technology as LSND but with a different source of particles and enhanced detector capabilities to see if scientists could clarify the situation.
MiniBooNE collected data from 2002 to 2018. The 2007 publication of its early results ruled out the simplest explanation of the LSND finding, though it did observe a different excess. When scientists collected more data and performed a more sophisticated analysis, they concluded in 2018 that there was a persistent mystery.
Yet other experiments tell a different story. A separate Fermilab project called MINOS (Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search) saw no evidence for sterile neutrinos. Nor was such evidence found by the IceCube experiment in Antarctica, which uses a cubic kilometer of ice to study neutrinos from space.
Nuclear reactors provide another source of electron neutrinos, and researchers have also used them to look for sterile neutrinos. In 2011 scientists reported a 6 percent deficit of electron neutrinos at a reactor in China, compared with what they expected to see. More recently, other researchers have claimed that the earlier calculations were in error and that no deficit exists...."
Full article by Don Lincoln, senior physicist at Fermilab, here.
Don't miss this video about neutrino oscillations:
MFBB.
Saturday, January 06, 2024
WEEKEND MOVIE TIP: EUROPA REPORT (2013).
Here's another sci-fi flick you probably never heard of, Europa Report, about a space mission in search of extraterrestrial life to Europa, one of Jupiter's four Galilean Moons.
Shot on a low budget (10 million US$), yet entirely at ease visually with far bigger productions; a cast consisting of unknown actors, yet all of them filling the screen; an unknown Ecuadorian director (Sebastian Cordero Espinosa), yet he holds the reins throughout and the tempo never slacks.
Once in a while jewels are made and yet slip under the radar totally undeservedly. Europa Report is just such a movie. See it.
Good night.
MFBB.
Shot on a low budget (10 million US$), yet entirely at ease visually with far bigger productions; a cast consisting of unknown actors, yet all of them filling the screen; an unknown Ecuadorian director (Sebastian Cordero Espinosa), yet he holds the reins throughout and the tempo never slacks.
Once in a while jewels are made and yet slip under the radar totally undeservedly. Europa Report is just such a movie. See it.
Good night.
MFBB.
Thursday, January 04, 2024
"NEW YEAR'S EVE MOSTLY PEACEFUL"
In Europe anyway.
Hameln, Germany:
Antwerp and Brussels, Belgium:
Milan, Italy:
France:
Berlin, Germany:
Our politicians, who even now flatly refuse to close our borders, indeed, who are now trying to frame declaring illegal immigrants as legal ones through a new 'Migration Pact', deserve to be shot.
MFBB.
Hameln, Germany:
„Silvester weitgehend friedlich“ (ZDF)
— Anabel Schunke (@ainyrockstar) January 2, 2024
Hameln pic.twitter.com/lNJ68fP0UZ
Antwerp and Brussels, Belgium:
Het viel mee zeggen ze dan, geen grote incidenten?????? pic.twitter.com/VQLmo7GTGb
— P-magazine (@Pmagazine) January 2, 2024
Milan, Italy:
Milan Cathedral in Piazza Duomo invaded by Muslim immigrants. There are no Italians and women. The situation is more serious than we thought. pic.twitter.com/4mUe1mLRR7
— RadioGenoa (@RadioGenoa) January 3, 2024
This is Milan last night. Zero Italians, zero women and zero tourists. Only male Muslim immigrants. We are speechless. pic.twitter.com/KNr1WCBOBa
— Anshuman Singh (@indiancrusher) January 3, 2024
๐จ Remember, Italy belongs to the Italian people. deport them, and close the borders. pic.twitter.com/J0N5Lw5xdk
— เคฎैं เคนूँ Sanatani ๐ฎ๐ณ ๐ฉ๐ฉ (@DesiSanatani) January 3, 2024
France:
visegrad24: France’s Interior Ministry announces that only 745 cars were set on fire on New Year’s Eve.
— GMan (าะปะตะฝะฝ) ☘️๐ฌ๐ง๐บ๐ฆ๐บ๐ธ๐ต๐ฑ๐ฎ๐ฑ๐๐ป (@FAB87F) January 1, 2024
The figure usually stands at well over a thousands.
The NYE “tradition” of setting cars on fire started in the suburbs of larger cities almost 40 ye… pic.twitter.com/2WQQSZ6P8X
Berlin, Germany:
Was also happening in Berlin Chris. pic.twitter.com/b3U92NRGVj
— Mark Chaloner (@MarkChaloner9) January 1, 2024
Our politicians, who even now flatly refuse to close our borders, indeed, who are now trying to frame declaring illegal immigrants as legal ones through a new 'Migration Pact', deserve to be shot.
MFBB.
Monday, January 01, 2024
CERN ANTIMATTER FACTORY's ALPHA-g APPARATUS FINDS ANTIMATTER REACTS THE SAME WAY TO EARTH'S GRAVITY AS ORDINARY MATTER.
If we can forget for a moment the terrible turmoil in the world, what with the biggest war since WW2 going on in Ukraine; Gaza; Darfur; dangerous tensions between China and Taiwan/The Philippines et al, one can only conclude that we seem to be on the cusp of a new Technological Era. Think quantum computers, the imminent return to the Moon and hence the exploration of Mars, AI, Brain Computer Interfacing and its potential to give severely handicapped people a new lease on life...
... and yet none of all that made as much an impression on me as CERN's ALPHA-g experiment last fall. This post's title sums up the essence: matter and antimatter react the same to Earth's gravity, but to find that out requires being able to isolate antimatter of course. I assume that before the experiment took place, antimatter had already been isolated, but I will use ALPHA-g's feat as the reference for that scientific breakthrough.
Antimatter is the opposite of ordinary matter: composed of antiparticles with reversed charge, parity and time. According to physics' laws, any (subatomic) particle should have its own antiparticle: a proton its antiproton, an electron its anti-electron (aka positron), a neutron its antineutron, a quark its antiquark etc etc. These particles were mathematically predicted and experimentally found, e.g. Paul Dirac predicted the positron around 1928 or so, and only 4 years later Carl Anderson found it in an experiment involving cosmic rays. It was Dirac again (what a genius) who theorized the antiproton in 1933, and in 1955 Emilio Segrรจ and Owen Chamberlain discovered it in in LBNL's (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) Bevatron, a particle accelerator.
But while the consituent components of the most basic antimatter atom, the anti-hydrogen so to say, had thus been isolated, apparently it took until our days to go one step further and assemble them. Ordinary hydrogen, the basic building component of the Universe that we can see, is composed of one proton and one electron circling it. So anti-hydrogen must consist of an antiproton and an anti-electron, which from now on I will refer to as a positron.
Up until learning of this experiment, which relies on having actual antimatter of course, I thought matter's opposite number was the stuff of sci-fi and thrillers, like e.g. in Dan Browns Angels and Demons where the Pope's camerlengo wants to use an antimatter device to wreak havoc and teach humanity a lesson - the antimatter, suspended in a magnetic field sustained by a battery, expected to react in a violent annihilation explosion with matter upon depletion of the battery.
But the sci-fi is already behind us - CERN has an actual Antimatter Factory, and apparently, aside from measurable quantities of antiydrogen, comparable amounts of antihelium have already been produced also, be it at CERNs Large Hadron Collider by a team led by Ivan Vorobyev.
Anyway, the hurdle of assembly of basic anti-atoms now apparently having been taken, let's get back to the subject which was about ALPHA-g's experiment to find out whether antimatter reacts similarly to Earth's gravity as matter:
Via the CERNCOURIER:
Notice what Prof Diego Blas says: “The role of antimatter in the ‘weight’ of antihydrogen is very little, since practically all the mass of a nucleon or antinucleon comes from binding gluons, not antiquarks”. But I assume this holds true for ordinary matter also. A proton e.g. is composed of two up quarks and one down quark (and an antiproton of two anti-upquarks and one anti-downquark. Yet: an up quark weighs some 2.01 +/- 0.14 megaelectron-volts, and a down quark 4.79 +/- 0.16 MeV. That's 0.214% and 0.510% of the mass of the proton (some 940 MeV), respectively. Or the two upquarks and the one down quark which 'make' a proton constitute about 2 + 2 + 5MeV = 9MeV or... somewhat less than one percent of a proton's mass!!! It was to be expected that the same would hold true for an antiproton.
Some more videos:
And be sure to check out this one:
I wonder whether, after antihydrogen and antihelium, Mankind will also be able to build progressively heavier anti-elements? Will we one day be able to see a block of, say, 1 kg of anti-iron suspended in a magnetic field? And what would happen if that magnetic field suddenly fell away and the block boinked against the glass and metal of the device containing it?
One thing is sure, exciting days in physics ahead!
MFBB.
... and yet none of all that made as much an impression on me as CERN's ALPHA-g experiment last fall. This post's title sums up the essence: matter and antimatter react the same to Earth's gravity, but to find that out requires being able to isolate antimatter of course. I assume that before the experiment took place, antimatter had already been isolated, but I will use ALPHA-g's feat as the reference for that scientific breakthrough.
Antimatter is the opposite of ordinary matter: composed of antiparticles with reversed charge, parity and time. According to physics' laws, any (subatomic) particle should have its own antiparticle: a proton its antiproton, an electron its anti-electron (aka positron), a neutron its antineutron, a quark its antiquark etc etc. These particles were mathematically predicted and experimentally found, e.g. Paul Dirac predicted the positron around 1928 or so, and only 4 years later Carl Anderson found it in an experiment involving cosmic rays. It was Dirac again (what a genius) who theorized the antiproton in 1933, and in 1955 Emilio Segrรจ and Owen Chamberlain discovered it in in LBNL's (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) Bevatron, a particle accelerator.
But while the consituent components of the most basic antimatter atom, the anti-hydrogen so to say, had thus been isolated, apparently it took until our days to go one step further and assemble them. Ordinary hydrogen, the basic building component of the Universe that we can see, is composed of one proton and one electron circling it. So anti-hydrogen must consist of an antiproton and an anti-electron, which from now on I will refer to as a positron.
Up until learning of this experiment, which relies on having actual antimatter of course, I thought matter's opposite number was the stuff of sci-fi and thrillers, like e.g. in Dan Browns Angels and Demons where the Pope's camerlengo wants to use an antimatter device to wreak havoc and teach humanity a lesson - the antimatter, suspended in a magnetic field sustained by a battery, expected to react in a violent annihilation explosion with matter upon depletion of the battery.
But the sci-fi is already behind us - CERN has an actual Antimatter Factory, and apparently, aside from measurable quantities of antiydrogen, comparable amounts of antihelium have already been produced also, be it at CERNs Large Hadron Collider by a team led by Ivan Vorobyev.
Anyway, the hurdle of assembly of basic anti-atoms now apparently having been taken, let's get back to the subject which was about ALPHA-g's experiment to find out whether antimatter reacts similarly to Earth's gravity as matter:
ALPHA-g is the first direct experiment to observe a gravitational effect on the motion of antimatter, opening a new avenue of experimental explorationhttps://t.co/yAsuroYSnt
— CERN Courier (@CERNCourier) November 27, 2023
Via the CERNCOURIER:
"Ever since the discovery of antimatter 90 years ago, physicists have striven to measure its properties in new and more precise ways. Experiments at CERN’s Antimatter Factory represent the state of the art. In addition to enabling measurements of properties such as the antiproton charge-to-mass ratio with exquisite precision (recently shown by the BASE experiment to be equal to that of the proton within a remarkable 16 parts per trillion), the ability to trap and store large numbers of antihydrogen atoms for long periods by the ALPHA experiment has opened the era of antihydrogen spectroscopy. Such studies allow precise tests of fundamental symmetries such as CPT. Until now, however, the gravitational behaviour of antimatter has remained largely unknown.
Equivalence principle
Using a modified setup, the ALPHA collaboration recently clocked the freefall of antihydrogen, paving the way for precision studies of the magnitude of the gravitational acceleration between antiatoms and Earth. The goal is to test the weak equivalence principle of general relativity, which requires that all test masses must react identically to Earth’s gravity. While models have been built that suggest differences could exist between the freefall rates of matter and antimatter (for example due to the existence of new, long-range forces), the theoretical consensus is clear: they should fall to Earth at the same rate. In physics, however, you don’t really know something until you observe it, emphasises ALPHA spokesperson Jeffrey Hangst: “This is the first direct experiment to actually observe a gravitational effect on the motion of antimatter. It’s a milestone in the study of antimatter, which still mystifies us due to its apparent absence in the universe.”
The ALPHA collaboration creates antihydrogen by binding antiprotons produced and slowed down in the Antiproton Decelerator and ELENA rings with positrons accumulated from a sodium-22 source. It then confines the neutral, but slightly magnetic, antimatter atoms in a magnetic trap to prevent them from coming into contact with matter and annihilating. Until now, the team has concentrated on spectroscopic studies with the ALPHA-2 device. But it has also built an apparatus called ALPHA-g, which makes it possible to measure the vertical positions at which antihydrogen atoms annihilate with matter once the trap’s magnetic field is switched off, allowing the antiatoms to escape.
The ALPHA team trapped groups of about 100 antihydrogen atoms and then slowly released them over a period of 20 seconds by gradually ramping down the top and bottom magnets of the trap. Numerical simulations indicate that, for matter, this operation would result in about 20% of the atoms exiting through the top of the trap and 80% through the bottom – a difference caused by the downward force of gravity. By averaging the results of seven release trials, the ALPHA team found that the fractions of antiatoms exiting through the top and bottom were in line with simulations. Since vertical gradients in the magnetic field magnitude can mimic the effect of gravity, the team repeated the experiment several times for different values of an additional bias magnetic field, which could either enhance or counteract the force of gravity. By analysing the data from this bias scan, the team found that the local gravitational acceleration of antihydrogen is directed towards Earth and has magnitude ag = [0.75 ± 0.13 (stat. + syst.) ± 0.16 (sim.)]g, which is consistent with the attractive gravitational force between matter and Earth.
The next step, says Hangst, is to increase the precision of the measurements via laser-cooling of the antiatoms, which was first demonstrated in ALPHA-2 and will be implemented in ALPHA-g in 2024. Two other experiments at CERN’s Antimatter Factory, AEgIS and GBAR, are poised to measure ag using complementary methods. AEgIS will measure the vertical deviation of a pulsed horizontal beam of cold antihydrogen atoms in an approximately 1 m-long flight tube, while GBAR will take advantage of new ion-cooling techniques to measure ultra-slow antihydrogen atoms as they fall from a height of 20 cm. All three experiments are targeting a measurement of ag at the 1% level in the coming years.
Even higher levels of precision will be needed to test models of new physics, say theorists. “The role of antimatter in the ‘weight’ of antihydrogen is very little, since practically all the mass of a nucleon or antinucleon comes from binding gluons, not antiquarks,” says Diego Blas of Institut de Fรญsica d’Altes Energies and Universitat Autรฒnoma de Barcelona. “Any new force that couples differently to matter and antimatter would therefore need to have a huge effect in antiquarks, which makes it difficult to build models that are consistent with existing observations and where the current measurements by ALPHA-g would be different.” Things start to get interesting when the precision reaches about one part in 10 million, he says. “This is the start of a new avenue of experimental exploration that pushes the development of trapping and other techniques. If you compare the situation with the sensitivity of the first prototypes of gravitational-wave detectors 50 years ago, which had to be improved by six or seven orders of magnitude before a detection could be made, anything is possible in principle.”
Notice what Prof Diego Blas says: “The role of antimatter in the ‘weight’ of antihydrogen is very little, since practically all the mass of a nucleon or antinucleon comes from binding gluons, not antiquarks”. But I assume this holds true for ordinary matter also. A proton e.g. is composed of two up quarks and one down quark (and an antiproton of two anti-upquarks and one anti-downquark. Yet: an up quark weighs some 2.01 +/- 0.14 megaelectron-volts, and a down quark 4.79 +/- 0.16 MeV. That's 0.214% and 0.510% of the mass of the proton (some 940 MeV), respectively. Or the two upquarks and the one down quark which 'make' a proton constitute about 2 + 2 + 5MeV = 9MeV or... somewhat less than one percent of a proton's mass!!! It was to be expected that the same would hold true for an antiproton.
Some more videos:
And be sure to check out this one:
I wonder whether, after antihydrogen and antihelium, Mankind will also be able to build progressively heavier anti-elements? Will we one day be able to see a block of, say, 1 kg of anti-iron suspended in a magnetic field? And what would happen if that magnetic field suddenly fell away and the block boinked against the glass and metal of the device containing it?
One thing is sure, exciting days in physics ahead!
MFBB.
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