Intel's Ronler Acres Plant

Pergelator

Silicon Forest
If the type is too small, Ctrl+ is your friend

Thursday, March 28, 2024

Turn and Burn


GIRAR UNA MOTO +230 KG SITUACION EMERGENCIA
Kirian Mirabet Vidiella

Cute trick. Via IAman.

Sea Shanty


I wrote a sea shanty
Elle & Toni

The video starts with a minute long introduction. The song starts at 1:25.

Inflation

French Assignat from the 1792 issue: 400 livres


Everyone thinks of inflation as being purely a financial phenomenon. However, it is much more than that. It is also a social phenomenon. As the inflation accelerates, an opportunist class rises to the top of society, and the productive class is impoverished. Inflation re-orients all economic activities, encouraging speculation at the expense of work, and forever changing the people who experience it. This societal aspect is rarely discussed.

Via ZeroHedge

Successful businesses, real estate and precious metals are the only things with real value. Money is defined by what it can buy. The stock market keeps going up and up and up, but it's not because all those companies are being more productive, it's because the dollar is worth less and less. Nobody with any money is hanging on to it because its value continues to go down, down, down. They are buying things that have real value.

30 years ago going out for lunch at a sit down restaurant cost about $5. Now it's more like $25. That's like a 5% increase every year, except since Mr. Mumbles rolled into town. Now it's like 25% every year.

Assignats

Assignats were paper money (fiat currency) authorized by the Constituent Assembly in France from 1789 to 1796, during the French Revolution, to address imminent bankruptcy.

By 1796 they were pretty much worthless. We aren't there yet, but we're edging ever closer to the edge.


Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Battle of Trafalgar

HMS Victory Copper Bottom

Liz goes for a cruise on the River Tawe and picks up some tidbits:

Three facts from my trip: Swansea has the second biggest tide in the world; the battle of Trafalgar was won thanks to the copper-bottomed boats of the British Navy, the copper having been produced in Swansea; and the only known occasion when yellow fever was transmitted in the UK was when a number of infected mosquitoes travelled to Swansea from Cuba with a cargo of copper ore.

Liz, Swansea and the River Tawe are all in Wales. Have I posted anything about Yellow Fever before? More than I realized. 

Dial Up Modem


Dial Up Modem Handshake Sound - Spectrogram
Scotty H

2600.network

2600.network is a public service for dial-up users. It's purpose is to allow users of old, vintage, and outdated hardware to dial in with real modems to real systems.

Via Detroit Steve

 

Starlink

Starlink Satellites

Go Elon, go:

SpaceX Starlink

Starlink is the world’s most advanced satellite internet constellation, beaming terabytes per second to the most remote parts of Earth. Made possible by the advent of reusable rocketry, Starlink marks the beginning of a new age of orbital technology.

In the Starlink constellation, there are 5,601 orbiting satellites.

The links go to a page that shows the satellites in motion. With so many satellites in orbit, it's hard to believe that they are not colliding with each other all the time. Of course, space is a big place. Even if all of the starlink satellites were all following the same orbital path, they would still be four miles apart.


Norfolk Southern Proxy Fight


East Palestine Train Derailment Explained
Practical Engineering

Seems that every year publicly owned companies select people to serve on the board that governs the company. Normally, if the company is making money, these proxy votes, as they are called, are of no interest  to anyone and the election of the board is uncontested.

Every once in a while something comes along to upset the apple cart and then we get a proxy fight. I got a notice of one at Norfolk Southern this morning. I doubt whether my few shares will make any difference, the fight will be between big factions. It might be interesting to see how this one plays out.

Ancora Holdings Group is challenging the board. They wrote a letter to the current chairman that included this line:

We made clear that your current CEO has presided over industry-worst operating results, sustained share price underperformance and an ineffective and tone-deaf response to the preventable derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.

You remember the train wreck in East Palestine, Ohio, right? 

A train derailment occurred on February 3, 2023, when 38 cars of a Norfolk Southern freight train carrying hazardous materials derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, United States. Several railcars burned for more than two days, with emergency crews then conducting a controlled burn of several railcars, which released hydrogen chloride and phosgene into the air. As a result, residents within a 1-mile radius were evacuated, and an emergency response was initiated from agencies in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Virginia.

Phosgene is some nasty shit.