Deja vu

President Donald J. Trump

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

  

Link maintenance

I've made a couple of changes to Flares' links. Powerline's article feed stopped working, so I moved it from 'Blogs of Interest" to the 'Recommended' section. Don Surber has moved from Blogspot to Substack, so I updated his link as well. Their new links:

• Don Surber
• Powerline

  

Gone fishing

Gone Fishing by Teresa Trotter
(click image to enlarge)

I'm headed out on a vacation and won't be around for a bit. I have some posts lined up to auto-publish. They are a kind of low effort, but truth be told, most of my posts are low effort so you probably won't spot a difference. If nothing else my spam bots will be happy that they can run amuck. In the meanwhile, don't click on any links in the comments.

 

Soldiers smoking cigarettes

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This post was inspired by a video I watched a couple of days ago. It was from the Ukraine War. Three captured Russian soldiers were kneeling, with their hands zip-tied behind their backs. As a small act of kindness, the Ukrainians gave each of the POWs a cigarette to puff on as they worried about their future.

Although these days it is frowned upon, if not outright banned, the image of a soldier relaxing with a cigarette is common. These pictures are from various armies and eras. 

Gone fishing

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I'm going to be away for a bit. I may or may not post for a week or so. To my few regulars, and my horde of faithful spam bots, try your best to contain your grief over that announcement. Nobody likes a crybaby.

 

Female soldiers on parade

This isn't the usual 'hot military babes' picture click-bait post, instead it just is of female military units marching in parades. I have odd search habits looking for curiosities to post about, and I suspect the various search algorithms sometimes struggle with figuring out just what the hell it is I'm interested in so's advertisers can bombard me with their nonsense. 

Recently the above video popped up in YouTube for me. I had done a post called Calloused feet showing an Indian military parade.  While probably not the case, I like to think it was combined with my post about a visit to a Japanese girls bar to come up with that video of a parade full of Indian female soldiers. I've included a few other videos of women soldiers high stepping down boulevards from the site.

The site is Russian. Along with marching damsels it also has a lot of Russian propaganda songs. They're quite strange. The Great Patriotic War lives on in Russian music.  If you watch any, turn on the captions so can get the lyrics.

Better late than never

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Recently I discovered, from the ChatGPT program, that this blog is actually about a group of friends who enjoy nocturnal camping and post about their adventures. Imagine my mortification when I realized that, in the 18-year history of this blog, I had never once posted about any of that. Seesh, talk about taking my eye off the ball.

Anyway, since AI chatbots obviously know best, I decided to rectify that oversight by posting this small collection of nighttime camping paintings. Please forgive me for my previous failings.  

Flares & AI

Homer and I are both confused
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Uhhh... about this ChatGPT program...

Q: What is the Flares into Darkness blog about?

A: Flares into Darkness is a blog written by a group of friends who share a passion for exploring and documenting their adventures through the night, from camping to star-gazing and more. The blog is a platform for them to share their experiences, stories, and photos from their nocturnal journeys.

I've been doing this blog all wrong, I guess.

 

Selling fountain pens

Above is a video of the Matsuya Fountain Pen Hospital in Nagasaki, Japan. Fountain pen stores are called hospitals because they used to repair fountain pens as well as sell them. The store must do a decent business as three clerks are shown when we enter. Our customer is served by a fellow, I think the owner, who sports a tie and delivers a very dignified sales pitch. The pens the customer is looking at go for $75 although some go for considerably more than that.

Below we have a video of a craftsman making a pen. This link shows the parts and workings of fountain pens.  You don't think of fountain pens as being handmade but, as the video shows, some are carefully hand crafted. 

I'm almost back

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Late yesterday afternoon I got my power back. I have a generator that can power my entire house, but I was using it sparingly to preserve fuel. Now that worry is gone.

My internet is still out. With luck I'll get it back tomorrow evening and I'll soon be able to resume posting. 

Below are pictures from my marina. My boat survived unscathed, but the other two there had worse luck. They were blown off their jacks, with one losing its mast in the process.

Batten down the hatches

Sandbags

It looks like it is going to be at least a couple, if not more, of rough days for me. Hurricane Ian is headed my way. Above is a sandbag location I visited yesterday. I went smooth, just drove up and got the ones I needed. Last time I need sandbags the location was a zoo. I spent several hours filling bags by hand and helping little old ladies load them into their cars. Much smoother this time.

My yard has been cleared of potential projectiles and I have enough food and whatnot to last. I also have a generator so I should be able to keep power for a bit. Finally, I got my boat pulled and it is in the yard. Hopefully the wind doesn't blow it over or unwind my sails. We shall see -- it isn't looking good.

Anyway, who knows how spotty my posting will be. 

 

What an insane headline

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My browser is set to get the default Microsoft news feed. Today I saw this doozie of a teaser headline: Abortion, slavery and marijuana: Here are the ballot questions to watch in 2022 midterms. 

Slavery? On the ballot?

It turns out that these 'slavery' issues on the ballots actually have to do with prison labor reforms. Talk about headline hyperbole. From the article:

Voters in Alabama, Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont will decide whether to abolish slavery as a part of a larger criminal justice reform movement aimed at prison labor.

The 13th Amendment to the Constitution ended slavery and involuntary servitude when it was ratified in 1865. But a loophole allows it as punishment for someone convicted of a crime and roughly 20 states have a similar exception. 

I know nothing about prison labor, but I do have opinions about ballot initiatives. They are complex issues reduced to simplistic emotional marketing. I've told the story before about the Florida ballot initiative regarding pig farming. It was pitched to save the poor pigs from inhuman treatment. My thought was, "what the hell do I know about pig farming?" Apparently, most voters thought they were up on the ins-and-outs of pig farming and the initiative passed. It was quite a mess untangling the problems that caused. 

 

The inner workings of Big Ben

It's always the quiet ones

 

Happily Ever After

Gone fishing

Bad Fishing Day by Julianez

I have visitors and I am also going to travel a bit. My already erratic posting may get even more erratic for a week or two. 

As for the picture, I like to imagine the mermaid affixed the boot to his hook to protect her fish buddies. Then again, maybe mermaids eat fish, so she was just saving her dinner. It's hard to say who's the villain of this piece.

   

The worst place on earth

A quick tour of the steel mill in the BaoGang Steel and Rare Earth Complex in Baotou, Inner Mongolia. Looks like a delightful place to work.

 

Airplanes vs apples - which will triumph?

Link maintenance

I've added two new links to the site's Recommended links category. (mobile users don't see the link lists, switch to desktop view if you're interested).

Detritus of Empire posts about a variety of things: oddities, life in Northern Wisconsin, and teaching computers and robotics to middle school kids. I figure that The Robotolizer would like the robotic stuff. Detritus is always an interesting read.

Thinking Out Aloud is an Oz based free lance educator (whatever that is) who posts long and well thought out posts on social issues. His view of things is always interesting and well reasoned, even if you disagree with him you'll find value in his musings.

Check them out. You might find you want to add one or both to your regularly visited blogs.

 

The meteor craters of Earth

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Above is one of the craters in the Kaali Meteorite Crater Field on Saaremaa Island, Estonia. There are a total of nine meteor craters in the area which were formed 7600 years ago when a meteorite broke up after entering the atmosphere. The largest impacted with a force of 20 kilotons of TNT (slightly larger than the Hiroshima a-bomb). Needless to say, there was widespread destruction in the area. The Kalevala, the Finnish national epic, has descriptions of fire falling from the sky which destroyed houses and fields as well as killing numerous people which might be a memory of the meteor strike.   

Below are images of more meteor craters from the Amusing Plant post The Most Visually Impressive Impact Craters on Earth. The first is the Kamil crater in the Egyptian desert. It is young, 5,000 years old, and because of its location it has not yet eroded badly so you can even see the ejecta rays. The others are older and have been more heavily eroded.

He must be an awful dope

Sailor Boy Bill goes on shore leave with a cocky attitude and seven months pay on him. He meets a friendly young lady in a bar and gets drunk. What could possible go wrong?