Open Thread FR 22 SEP 23 ~ Astronomy Day
During the day, over 12,000 large mirrors reflect sunlight at the 100-megawatt, molten-salt, solar thermal power plant at the western edge of the Gobi desert near Dunhuang, Gansu Province, China. Individual mirror panels turn to track the sun like sunflowers. They conspire to act as a single super mirror reflecting the sunlight toward a fixed position, the power station's central tower.
During the night the mirrors stand motionless though. They reflect the light of the countless distant stars, clusters and nebulae of the Milky Way and beyond. This sci-fi night skyscape was created with a camera fixed to a tripod near the edge of the giant mirror matrix on September 15. The camera's combined sequence of digital exposures captures concentric arcs of celestial star trails through the night with star trails in surreal mirrored reflection.
Pretty trippy!
Our intrepid hosts are out on the road today, so this serves as today's OT. Lots of political
and military news out this morning. exlensky bombed-out during his US tour. Russel Brand is
getting the meetoo treatment. Congress is playing chicken with the budget (what's new?)
Please feel free to fill in the blanks below the fold.
Credits:
star trails picture: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/
Thanks C99!
Comments
Lighthouse Mushie
Painting by Nicole Gustafsson
http://www.nimasprout.com
https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2023/09/nicole-gustafsson-mushrooms/
question everything
Thank You, QMS, You helped me to listen to all the music I could
find. It helps a lot.
Depression and lonelyness - I want you to go away.
Thank You all for this place C99p. it is the best thing that could happen to us.
https://www.euronews.com/live
This seems almost appropriate
Although a bit on the dark side.
Sorry to hear of your state of affairs.
viel Glück
question everything
Have a nice weekend everyone
Corruption = turkeys
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/zelenskys-terrible-horrible-no-good#...
As if that wasn’t bad enough, U.S. appears to be facing severe sabotage or just the typical slow-decline of a decadent, overwrought civilization. Two days ago an F-35 crashed in South Carolina, to which the military authorities had to issue an embarrassing public appeal to help find the plane.
But the much more alarming sub-story revolves around rumors that there’s a coverup as to what really happened. The incident has many incongruities, and a top cyber security expert now claims the entire software security suite for the F-35 has been compromised:
Green Hills Software produces the Integrity 178B Operating System that powers the F-35, F-22, F-16, and B-2. It also powers the Airbus A380. It was also quite possibly leaked. Now you understand why the entire USMC air fleet has been grounded. Fun fact: the CEO of Green Hills Software is none other than infamous Elon Musk hater Dan O'Dowd.
The leak of air traffic control audio from the crash seems to suggest the ‘zombie’ plane flew on by itself after the pilot ejected, which is what resulted in their not having a clue where it actually crashed:
And why would a pilot even eject from a plane that’s still capable of flying for a long time on its own afterwards? It would almost suggest someone took remote control of the plane and hit the ejection button.
Footage of the “debris field” shows no clear—or even unclear—signs of debris, giving echoes of 9/11’s strangely disappearing jumbo jets. It also seems odd that all aviation was grounded, pointing to a potential compromise that affects every platform:
On Monday, the Marine Corps reportedly issued a two-day stand-down for all aviation units over the military’s missing F-35 that disappeared after its pilot safely ejected due to a “mishap.”
This could all of course be speculation, but it feels like there’s something rotten in Denmark. If there’s even a hint of truth to any of it, it suggests the U.S. military has much bigger things to worry about than their floundering Ukrainian campaign.
And this is the plane Zelensky’s now clamoring for?
I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley
This is so funny
The pentagon wants to spend $1.7 trillion on flightless birds. Supply chain issues and
trained labor shortages have resulted in the embarrassing situation where only
1/2 of these wonder weapons are flight capable. Like the busted little ships Sima
highlighted yesterday. And now someone has hacked their operating software?
We are watching the demise of the military machine. Next up, submarines are going to
have collisions under the China Seas. Rockets are going to fail. Ammunition will be duds.
Hell of a way to run a railroad.
question everything
No transponder?
I've witnessed in one way or another quite a few military aircraft accidents and mishaps. For this reason I admit to being deathly afraid of flying. We did have a pilot and back seat RIO eject for no apparent reason in one total loss accident. It was a USMC fighter aircraft in our air wing. It was a volitional command ejection by an inexperienced flyer. The plane did continue to fly for some time after. I don't think it was ever recovered. Both the pilot and back seater survived with no serious injury. Embarrassing to explain that to your superiors.
Also, a command wide even service wide "safety stand down," is not unusual after one or more such accidents.
語必忠信 行必正直
More zebras.
There's not much left of the plane that looks like a plane, because it augered into a stand of trees in an uncontrolled descent at cruise power before digging its final crater. It was probably moving at 400+ knots when it experienced its unfortunate sudden superprompt disassembly. They'll probably find the core of the engine buried about 4 feet deep.
Speculate away, but let's also keep in mind that the military has clamped a very tight lid on this- so you aren't going to see anything that is identifiable as an F-35. In the absence of concrete information, speculation will run rampant- and will almost certainly be wrong.
Even when there is concrete evidence, the people who get off on conspiracy theories will come up with something absurd. Like, for example, the people who are already convinced that the Lahaina fire was cause by a directed-energy-weapon, presumably so that some oligacrh could expand their palace, even though there is video of the start of the fire from wind-downed power lines.
Recall also that there has been a blanket prohibition about flying the F-35 in thunderstorms for quite some time: since lightning strikes can seriously scramble its systems as well as damaging its airframe and fuel tanks. The military has openly admitted as much. We almost lost 2 near Japan when lead and wingman flew into the same thunderstorm and were both disabled at the same time, forced to land at the nearest public airfield (much to the consternation of the people who would prefer that that sort of thing not happen).
So in this case, the lead and wingman flew into a cloud, and only one came out. When talking to responders, one of the pilots apparently said "he just lost it in the weather". The link has the ATC audio in transcript form. The fact that the incident aircraft was declared NORDO (no radio) early on indicates a major system upset of some form. And that is likely all that we are going to get, until Aviation Leak and Space Mythology prints the sanitized/vetted/redacted version of events.
Now, having said that: I absolutely agree that the thing is an overpriced piece of shit, and that we've been fleeced all to hellandgone to fund it. An all-weather fighter that can't be flown in anything but clear blue skies is worse than useless. It should be cancelled immediately: our putative enemies already have demonstrated electronic warfare capabilities (high-powered jammers) that will guarantee that the damned things will never get within 50 miles of the site of a conflict. One EMP and the thing will either fall out of the sky, or never get into it.
I just can't bring myself to believe that every incident of any form is the result of some vast conspiracy or enemy action: the unquestioned fact is that we are incompetent enough these days that incidents like this are just the normal course of business. We've pretty much come to rely upon that convenient excuse to cover up all of our fuckups.
We really are that bad at this stuff these days. Our overpriced Swiss army knives fall apart with appalling regularity. Somewhere, there are a bunch of engineers that should be committing seppuku, if this is the best that they could give us for our tax dollars.
Faugh.
On edit- I apologize for the overly arch nature of this post. I'm just overly stressed about the current state of affairs. Mea culpa.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Trying to remember...
Keeping people from driving to safety is enough to make anyone wonder wtf really happened.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
It was turned off
about an hour in. It was still on for the original fire response. Apparently, they had the initial fire mostly controlled, but with the 60+mph winds, they had a rekindle in areas they had already worked, and it was off to the races.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Covid and Coffee covered this today
and rumors are that the plane’s software has been hacked the pilot had to eject because he couldn’t control the plane anymore.
Someone commented that if we go to war with China all they need to do is send a lot of planes into the air and when we send ours they just go home and then half of ours will be out of service for awhile because of how shoddy they are made. Might could happen…
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
Hey gg, I did just a quick check...
I guess other countries are laughing yet again.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
An earlier Chinese perspective
The Tao models itself on Nature
Took this screenshot from a China travelogue being hosted by a South Korean Chinese studies Phd that we watched August 29. Kept it as a note to myself and lost track of the original video source. The caption from the screenshot labels the scene, On the way to a vertiginous Taoist temple built at the mountain's summit. The way of the Tao depicted on the image in traditional Chinese and Hangul-
People model themselves on the earth,
The earth models itself on heaven,
Heaven models itself on the way,
The way models itself on nature.
爲無爲
Taoism, Daoism
From the same article on Taoism-
語必忠信 行必正直
Tao
question everything
Awesome!
語必忠信 行必正直
QMS, how beautiful. Thanks for the OT.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
And so it begins..
.
I think there is one city in NY that has either done this or has plans to do it. However I haven’t given my consent for the government to nullify my rights nor do I think they have the power to do so.
Also I have been writing about the UN power grab that would rescind our national sovereignty, but are you aware that states are also planning on doing this same thing?
Check out this article. It mainly focuses on Arizona (again) but other states are also doing it.
Not only no, but HELL NO!
But whatever you want to call it, this is Orwell’s 1984 on steroids. And it’s coming soon to a city/state/country near you. Now is the time to be making plans and preparations for how you will live outside of this burgeoning beast system.
Indeed, George.
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
equilux
Hope all are well... and had a good equinox...
That day the sun passes over the equator on its trip back south. The equiLUX is a few days after the equinox. The equilux is when the day and night length are the same. As in equal light. Most folks know the nox, but not the lux, as the nox lobby was strong, and the lux lobby weak. This phenom occurs mostly due to the refraction of the earth's atmosphere. But also partly due to the sun's flattened shape when distorted on horizon. As I presume you know, when we see the sun go down, it is already down, only atmospheric refraction has us seeing it after it is actually below the horizon. Where I am at 30deg.N (as roughly San Antonio, Houston, New Orleans, Jacksonville, etc.) the equilux is about 4-5 days after the equinox. If you are further north, it may be only 2-3 days later, it can be a week after further south.
This public service announcement was not funded by the lux lobby.
Astronomy - Live 1976
Astronomy Dominie Live BBC 1967
contra Hans Keller (interviewer), at 12 I was TOTALLY ready for this.
Great to see Syd so together still then
Have a good equilux!
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
Thanks
@#33.1.1 Lahainians lost, Black Rock won.
And Oprah.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981