Welcome to Friday Night Photos everyone. Your once a week break from the daily madness of the crazy world we live in. Post any photos, memes, music, or whatever else you find of interest that helps you escape the madness.

In 1975 the city of San Diego built a velodrome (a track for cycling) in the northeast corner of Balboa Park. I figured since I've lived in San Diego or surrounding cities since 1977 it was about time to go check it out. Races are held Tuesday and Friday nights. Already having a regular Friday night online gig, I went last Tuesday night.
The track is a 333m banked oval. For those that don't do metric (raising my hand), 333m converts to 1092 ft or 1/5 of a mile. The bikes are single speed constant drive, which means the size of the front and rear sprockets determine top speed and unlike the bike you ride around the block on, there is no coasting/neutral. If the rear wheel is spinning, the pedals are turning.

Economist Prof. Dan Ben David, argued that the Israeli economy is held together by 300,000 people (the senior staff in universities, tech companies, and hospitals). Once a significant portion of these people leaves, he says, “We won’t become a third world country, we just won’t be anymore.”
So guess what has happened since October 7? People fleeing Israel has increased 285%.

This is the strangest life, I've ever known. -Jim Morrison

Daedalus told his son Icarus: Don't fly too close to the sun or it will melt your wings and into the sea you will plummet. Don't fly too low or your wings will collect water and into the sea you will plunge.

Yet, Icarus in his exuberance flew too high and paid the toll of greed, ambition and hope with his life.

There is but one thing on this earth that comes close to matching the power of the sun. We as a species, as a country, as a polity are forgoing Daedalus's warning of balance between the extremes. Madmen are in the throes of greed and ambition in lieu of hope, as we potentially soar ever closer to our metaphorical watery cortege.

Not Surprised...

I can't say I'm all that surprised about the revelations Jeffery Sachs and Matt Taibbi have brought forward about the US's interest and involvement in the ending of Communist Russia and the development of whatever Russia is now. I will admit to be depressed by such revelations, because it just confirms how idiotic our leaders are.

Remember the fall of the Soviet Union? Everything was going to be hunky dory, supposedly, and every country, including Russia, was going to turn to capitalism and prosper - or so we were told. And TPTB sent people, like Sachs, to do that for countries like Poland. But Russia? Naw. It seems that TPTB always wanted Russia, the former Soviet Union, to fail, to remain our enemy. Our military industrial complex needs it. And so TPTB set that up to happen. Sachs details some of that in his article 'A True Shock? Economist Jeffrey Sachs Reveals Secret at Heart of U.S.-Russian Relations'. The sub-title of the article says it all: 'The U.S. was advised toward a "Marshall Plan" to help rebuild post-Soviet Russia as a democracy, but a key witness says the Cold War never ended, because we didn't want it to'.

Taibbi and Sachs discussed all this recently on Counter Points - 'Jeffrey Sachs, Taibbi: How The West DESTROYED Russia' (the discussion is 50 or so minutes long):