Memes that made me laugh 302

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

Sunday morning music

 

Today let's enjoy a duo who've delighted thousands with their instrumental crossover guitar pieces.  I'm speaking of Rodrigo y Gabriela, who started performing in the early 1990's and have never looked back.  I've picked a couple of old favorites, plus an extended session with Metallica's bass player Robert Trujillo.

First, here's "Hanuman".

Next, we have "Tamacun".

Finally, from Colorado's Red Rocks Amphitheater in 2014, they're joined by Robert Trujillo for an extended jam session.

Sounds like a lot of fun was had by all concerned.  You'll find lots more music from Rodrigo y Gabriela on YouTube.

Peter

Stand by for the next Shifta War...

 

I note that the Kenya-Somalia border is to be reopened.

Kenya's border with Somalia will re-open in April almost 15 years after it shut because of attacks by Islamist militant group al-Shabab, President William Ruto has announced.

Based in Somalia, the group has masterminded a series of deadly assaults in Kenya including one on a shopping centre in the capital, Nairobi, killing 67 people in 2013 and one at a university in Garissa two years later killing 148.

The plan has been announced before, in 2023, but further attacks postponed the arrangements.

Ruto said the intention to re-open two crossings follows years of security assessments, adding that there will be a heavy deployment of security forces to ensure the move does not compromise safety.

There's more at the link.

I think this is a terrible idea.  That part of Africa - northern Kenya, eastern and northern Uganda, southern Sudan, Ethiopia, and of course Somalia - has been home to the so-called Shifta bandits for generations (of whom Al Shabab is nothing more or less than a recent reinvention of the wheel, with a religious gloss overlaid on their traditional barbarism).  The current disastrous situation - almost a genocide - in southern Sudan is just the latest atrocity in a region that's been soaked in blood for centuries.  It's family against family, clan against clan, tribe against tribe.  The so-called Shifta War was fought there in the 1960's, and despite "official" peace agreements, has never really stopped.

I spent time in the area many years ago, trying to arrange mission convoys for various church groups, getting food and medical aid to mission stations that desperately needed it.  I think my convoys were the only ones that usually got through, because I made sure to hire the meanest, most vicious Shifta bandits I could find as convoy guards against their fellow scumbags.  They would be well paid, but only after the convoy got through and returned safely.  Things got "sporty" on occasion, but my guards usually justified their cost and then some.  Sadly, some mission groups decided that my methods were insufficiently Christian, and had to stop.  (It's odd that most of their aid convoys never made it more than a few miles from their depots before being raided and robbed blind.  They were regarded as "soft targets".  My convoys were not!  I think they felt I was making them look bad to their NGO sponsors.)

There are many other places like this around the world.  Western news media seldom have anything worthwhile to say about them.  They quote government ministers or spokesmen who proclaim that everything is sweetness and light, while on the ground it's "the strong survive" and devil take the hindmost.  Shifta country is one of the worst . . . and now they want to reopen a border between two of the worst-affected parts of Shifta country.

I already know what the result is going to be.

Peter

Ukraine's rapid weapons development example is spreading fast

 

Ukraine has become well-known for its innovations in drone warfare, particularly its ability to design, develop, test and produce new models in a few months.  This means Ukraine can counter Russian innovation very quickly, forcing Russia to keep on developing replacements.  The old weapons cycle of replacing equipment every year or two is now - in some cases quite literally - replacing them every month or two.

It looks like American manufacturers are beginning to get the message.  Case in point:  a prototype of a new lightweight assault drone that was developed and built from scratch in 71 days.

U.S. Defense technology firms Divergent Technologies and Mach Industries unveiled a new autonomous strike aircraft prototype in Los Angeles on February 17.

The aircraft, called Venom, moved from concept to flight readiness in just 71 days, or about 10 weeks. The companies say the rapid timeline shows how digital manufacturing and modular engineering can shrink development cycles that traditionally take years.

The prototype was built as a flight demonstration platform. It is designed to prove that defense hardware can go from initial design to operational prototype much faster using software-driven engineering and advanced production systems.

. . .

Instead of building wings, fuselage sections, skins, and control surfaces as separate multi-part assemblies, it produced large monolithic structures. That reduced overall part counts and simplified production workflows. Fewer parts mean fewer fasteners, fewer failure points, and faster assembly.

According to the companies, this process compresses production timelines while maintaining structural integrity. The goal is to create aerospace-grade hardware at a pace closer to software development cycles.

There's more at the link.

This gets even more interesting when we recall that over the past few years, the US military has developed containerized additive manufacturing (so-called "3D printing") facilities that can be deployed along with military units, including infantry or armor brigades, naval ships, etc.  Furthermore, with modern high-bandwidth satellite communications facilities, detailed design and manufacturing blueprints and instructions can be distributed from the manufacturer to those field units, built and tested under operational conditions, and feedback and suggested improvements sent back to the manufacturer, in literally hours or days.  The advent of modern AI systems means that the process can be sped up by an unknown, but undoubtedly significant factor, meaning that the "loop" of design-build-test-evaluate-redesign can be drastically shortened.  Given an adequate basic design, the ten-week process described above might be reduced to no more than two or three weeks.  One side can have a counter to a new enemy technique or weapon almost before the latter has been fully deployed.

We're only at the start of this revolutionizing of at least some military development and manufacturing processes.  It's going to become much more widespread, very quickly - and in the process it will solve a number of problems that have plagued armed forces for literally centuries.  Want an example?  Try the under-development Red Wolf cruise missile, small enough to be fired from Marine Corps helicopters and modified agricultural aircraft, enabling those platforms to reach out several hundred miles with pinpoint accuracy.  Variations on that theme are being developed right now using similar technology, and should cost considerably less than currently-deployed equivalents.

Who knows where this will end up?

Peter

It was meant to be! (Errr... sort of...)

 

For all the fans of predestination out there.  Click the image to be taken to a larger version at the 'Pearls Before Swine' Web page.

So much for AI inspiration!

Peter

Things that absolutely should not exist, Part XVIII

 

How many of you have been to, or know the culture of, the Philippines or Cambodia?

How many of you have sampled the (in)famous balut?

If you have, you'll know why this image (courtesy of the blogger at Come And Make It) led to an instant attack of visual indigestion . . .

I can't think of anything more calculated to utterly destroy Peeps' market share!

Peter

(P.S.:  My wife's response was "Not just no, but HELL, NO!!!")