Bine Ai Venit Pelerinii!

Despite The 'Ai' Nothing To Do With Computers

Nor is it anything out of Ol' Tolky's imaginary languages or races, as you might have pictured the Pelerinii as one of the peoples living in Angmar before the Witch-King took over.  

     Nope nope nope, it is, of course - obviously! - the Romanian for 'Welcome back pilgrims!' as we continue to trawl past BOOJUM! for posts on this same date.  Art!

     Nothing to do with the blog, I just felt like posting from a page I Bookmarked, entitled 'Metallic Bras In Space!' because both these bright young things are whizzing about in atmosphere, wearing helmets and bathing suits.  Somehow that seems under-dressed for the vacuum between planets, but I suppose it garners attention rather than logic.

     ANYWAY let us carry on with the Links for today.

2025

BOOJUM!: I Am The Law -

2024

BOOJUM!: Buddy, Can You Spare Seven Hundred And Fifty Bucks?

2023

BOOJUM!: Laud Of The Rings

2022

BOOJUM!: I Have The Future Now

2021

BOOJUM!: The Swords Of A (Hundred) Thousand Men

2020

BOOJUM!: You Don't Need A River For This Bridge

2019

BOOJUM!: When You Don't Give A Tuck

2018

BOOJUM!: The Word Absurd

2017

BOOJUM!: A Touch Of Caution

2016

BOOJUM!: " - But There Are Lemons!"

2015

BOOJUM!: THE ATOMIC COD OF NOVGOROD!

2014

BOOJUM!: Serendipity? Coincidence? Aliens Subverting Reality?

Once Upon A Time

In A Galaxy Far, Far Away

Don't get your hopes up, I'm not going to be waffling on about George Lucas and his 'homage' to 'The Hidden Fortress' and Carrie Fisher as an exotic slave girl - in a brass bra, of course - and killer koala bears.  Mind you, using that title does allow me to prod Art into semi-sentience and generate a click-baity image.

IT IS NOT A 'STAR'!

     You see, the words I want to focus on today are 'Far, Far Away'.  What is the Greek for 'Far'?  O I thought you'd never ask!  'Tele'.  What is the Greek for ''Writing'?  'Graph'.  Hence we get 'Telegraph', which you can transpose as 'Writing from afar' if there's a touch of poetry about you.  What's the name for a message sent by telegraph?  Art!

So conservative it is nicknamed the 'Torygraph'

     'Telegram'.

     For Lo! we are going to be following the recent Ruffian imbroglio involving the throttling and banning of the messaging platform 'Telegram' in their beknighted land where the shadows lie, and so do the authorities.  Firstly, Starlink was switched off by Elong Tusk, who hoped for a bit of good publicity out of it; this was the Ruffian operational and strategic-level comms platform.  Art!

Telegram icon*

     There are 75 million users of Telegram in Mordorvia, with up to 85% of people aged between 12- 24 using it, so just over half the orcs use it, meaning there has been a massive backlash about it's banning.

     Why ban such a popular platform?  Two reasons.  One is that it's an uncensored means of communication that allows the orcs to pass home truths to one another; in other words, a channel that is in competition with the official Kremlin narrative.  Two, the Ruffian state is desperately trying to get their serfs to use an official government comms channel called 'Max'.  Art!

     Max is an FSB app that turns a mobile phone into a device that works for them, allowing them to eavesdrop via the mike and read all comms sent on it.  As one young orc put it: "It's spyware.  We didn't sign up for tha," and this attitude is prevalent amongst Telegram users.  So, it has to die.  Art!

     This is an epic case of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face as well as slitting one's throat to spite one's neck, after shooting oneself in both feet and inserting them in one's mouth.  Telegram, it transpires, it essential to orcses on the front lines.  Art!

Ruffian drone

     Pre-throttle, identifying a target for drones would take as little as two minutes for the orcs.  Now, having to use radios to go vertically up and down the chain of command, and possibly horizontally to different commands, takes hours.  Targets of opportunity are thus long gone.  Likewise artillery strikes.  Also, since the orcs in Ukraine are always desperately short of essentials (such as water and food!), they used Telegram to raise funds for things like body armour, helmets, first aid packs, ballistic plates and so on, by messaging people in Mordorvia.  Now they have to go without.  Art!

    
     A brace of very, very angry Ruffian politicians calling whoever is responsible 'scoundrels' and 'idiots' and 'They should go to the SMO!'  Conrad will pass over the fact that many of these wives will be fingers-crossed that their wife-beating hubbo will get droned and earn her a nice widow's benefit**.  Art!

     That's a caricature of Peskov, the Ruffian Press Secretary and official mouthpiece for Putinpot.  I shall quote him about the Telegram shutdown: "I don't think it's possible to imagine frontline communications being provided via Telegram or some other messenger.  It's difficult and impossible to imagine such a thing."

     As shown above, Telegram was vital for the orcs on the front lines, displaying a staggering level of ignorance and complacency from The Bog Brush about the real situation.  This has, obviously, enraged Ruffian milbloggers whom are aware of the truth.  Putinpot would much rather his orcs suffer in Ukraine that have his slave population informed and up to date.  Art!

Anna

     An insight into this whole farrago was proposed by Anna Danylchuk, on the channel 'Anna From Ukraine'.  She explained that Bunker Midget Gargoyle doesn't use the internet and thus has absolutely NO IDEA how important Telegram was in communicating.  Instead, he was determined to get Max out there, and this is the consequence.  Works for me!

     'Chris_0Wiki' on Twitter has put up a long explanation on Twitter of why the Ruffians don't have a proper home-grown comms network, which I may detail at a later stage.  I bet you can hardly wait.

Conrad Rebuts

Art!

     NO!

     Next***.

Not So Sweet

More more more of TREE LAW!

     This one comes from a Comment on a 'Steve Lehto' Youtube vlog that was itself about tree law.  Art!

A maple tree

     Indicting Commenting Home Tree Owner, hereafter ICHTO, had a neighbour, Dismissive Ignorant Churlish Knave, hereafter Intrusive Churlish Knave = ICK, who was deliberately trespassing on their land to carry out landscaping for his new house.  ICHTO thus got a surveyor to come out and place a 'pin' marking the legal boundary between properties.  Art!

A surveyor's pin

     ICTHO came home one afternoon to find that this 100-foot 100-year old 4-foot diameter maple tree, firmly on his property, had been cut down by a contractor hired by ICK.  They went to court.  The contractor confirmed that ICK had deliberately moved the pin to make it seem as if the tree was on his side of the property line.  ICK brazenly stated that he'd wanted the tree gone the instant he moved in and was happy to pay the fine for having it cut down, imagining that it would only be a couple of thousand dollars.

     He thus blatantly proved he knew nothing about Tree Law.

     The court was NOT impressed or amused.  They fined him $1,000 per inch of diameter of the tree, and because this is Tree Law, the fine was automatically trebled, becoming $144,000 in total.

     ICK had to sell his house to pay the fine.

I Don't Think I've Used This Already

Probably mentioned it whilst I was reading 'British Official History Military Operations Egypt And Palestine'.  You see, the Teutons and especially the Ottomans tried to stir up trouble in Egypt during the First Unpleasantness, by bribing and arming Senussi tribes in the interior.  Perfidious Albion took a very dim view of this and arranged a punitive expedition consisting of motor transport and armoured cars.  Art!

     Motor transport in foreground, Rolls-Royce armoured cars in the background.  Art!

     

     No radios or telephones (nor telegraphs!) so they communicate with other widely-separated patrols by semaphore and you can see the other ranks keeping an eye on their compatriot's signals with binocular and telescope.  Art!

     Give up, Senussi rebels, the Camel Corps have arrived!  Art?

     An essential part of any campaign in the hinterland of Egypt: camels carrying tanks of water, as oases were few and scattered, there were no rivers, streams or lakes or ponds, nor did it rain until winter.  Art!

     A column of Ottoman prisoners being walked into imprisonment at El Arish.  Yes, there are only two guards, the chap on foot and the Egyptian on a donkey, because where can they escape to?  Boundless waterless desert on all sides.

The Krembots Are Worried

One of the people I follow on Youtube is 'Paul Warburg', an independent commentator on geopolitics, usually featuring the war in Ukraine.  He just speaks to camera in whichever part of the great outdoors he inhabits in South Canada, with no flashy visuals or graphics.  He is unabashedly pro-Ukrainian, and has been for his channel's lifetime.  Art!

     Well, evidently what he says has rattled some perches in the Kremlin, as they have now put out fake AI vlogs of him praising Bunker Midget Gargoyle and saying that Mordorvia has won the war.  A bit premature, frankly, and proof that he needs to keep on doing what he's doing, except more so.

Finally -

Another quote from my QI book, this time, self-referentially, from Ambrose Bierce.

"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography."

*  I wondered what all those memes with paper planes on fire were about

**  Some 'black widows' make a business out of serial marriages to orcs being sent to Ukraine

***  Is this lady one of these same 'black widows'?  Because I see nothing spiderish about her otherwise.

Fatty Is Batty

You Can Probably Guess Who I Mean

Fat Caligula, the Farting Flabby Fraudster, Donold Judas Trump.  Conrad will be O so sad when he keels over dead from a heart attack or turned into a drooling vegetable in a wheelchair, as he is the source of so much free blog content.  At which point J. D. Vance, Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller (possibly Heggy if he's sober enough) will all be squabbling about who takes over as Prez.  Art!

     ANYWAY I was inspired by a vlog from 'Farron Ballanced' over on Youtube, gleefully gloating about Trump's failures in the legal field.  Farron, for your information, lives in Florida, which is normally verrry 'deep red' i.e. Lizard Wizard Gizzard territory, or used to be.  Art!

Farron on hearing the box office for 'Melania'

FAIL NUMBER ONE: Federal Judge Jia Cobb - Art!

A black female judge; Donold's nightmare

     - shot down a legal assertion by Kirsti 'Puppy Killer' Noem that Senators or Representatives were unable to visit ICE facilities without giving her 14 days written notice at the Department Of Homeland Security.  Cobb pointed out that the legislation involved in building these facilities explicitly stated that they COULD visit without notice.  Meaning nothing gets swept under the rug.

     FAIL NUMBER TWO: The Trump administration has been trying to make it harder for citizens to register for absentee voting, and to even register to vote.  Judge Collen Kollar-Kotelly ruled these attempts as unconstitutional and unenforceable in law.  Thus citizens cannot now be 'assessed' before being given registration forms, which would have been another method of restricting voters.  Art!

Adds new meaning to the phrase 'feeling his Kollar'

     

     For some reason that escapes both Farron and myself, King Piggy had wanted Pete 'Braindeath' Hegseth to carry out this ILLEGAL pre-screening operation, because as Secretary Of Drinking To Excess War, it has absolutely nothing to do with his department.

FAIL NUMBER THREE: There is a conditional entitlement under South Canadian law called 'Temporary Protection Status', where foreign nationals can obtain work permits and are ineligible for deportation IF their home country is in a parlous state.  Thus it is with 350,000 Haitian migrants.  Art!

 

     Kristi Noem - that name again! - had sought to end this status for the Haitians, because she's a bottomhole and wants to pander to Donold's racist side (which is more like all sides of the saggy suet pudding).  She was ordered to keep the TPS program running by Judge Ana Reyes, who analysed the issue in an 83-page judgement and whom remarked that Noem can call the Haitians all the insults she wants, BUT she has to adhere to Constitutional law.

FAIL NUMBER FOUR: No mention of the judge involved, only that they were a Federal one.  In this case they gave the go-ahead to the Norwegian company Orsted  A/S, who have invested $7 billion in creating a wind farm off Long Island, which DJ Tango had blocked.  He has a whole hive in his bonnet about wind farms and power turbines, the senile sausage, and this is the fifth time one of his embargoes has been overturned.  Art!

Corks!  It's the Norks!

Art!

     This is Chris Cillizza, whom you may have seen as a television pundit on <goes to check> CNN (I suspected as much), but who now has a Youtube channel offering political commentary.  He's notable for a very kinetic delivery and covering a lot of bases in a short time.  He felt that this past week has been the worst for the Saggy Senile Sepia Sackbut over his entire year in office, for the following reasons.

FAIL NUMBER FIVE: A Federal Grand Jury refused to indict the 6 ex-Forces Democrats who put out a video last year, urging the military not to obey unlawful orders.  A bit of a no-brainer, that one, but it sent Pumpkinhead into a frothing rage and he got Pam Bondi (Attorney General) to bring a case against them.  Which has now fallen flat.  Art!

Now 'Pan Blondi' in BOOJUM!-speak

FAIL NUMBER SIX:  Possibly Five-and-a-half.  Heggy, putting down the bottle after chugging half of it, was also thwarted legally in trying to both demote Senator Mark Kelly (ex-fighter pilot and astronaut) and cut his pension.  This may be resumed after Heggy sleeps off his latest bender.  Art!

FAIL NUMBER SEVEN: The House rejected one of Trump's political babies, tariffs, with some Republicans voting with Democrats, which of course triggered Boorish Orange Oaf Himself, threatening them with 'Primaries'.  This used to mean he would jet out to their district when primary elections came up and campaign for one of his MAGA minions in opposition to the incumbent.  This process has now changed, as he's too infirm to manage this today, so it'll be merely nominating a MAGA minion whilst staying sitting in the White House.

FAIL NUMBER EIGHT: ICE, after 10 days under a newly-nominated leader (Tom Homan), is pulling out of Minneapolis.  He replaced the now-disgraced Greg Bovino, who had been sent there by - O what's this name again? - Kristi Noem.  You know, I wonder how long she has left in office.  Art!

The caricaturists are cruel.  But accurate.

FAIL NUMBER NINE:  No matter how much DJ Tango wants the Epstein Files to go away, they remain in the limelight.  Howard Lutnick, the Secretary For Commerce and a right Trump Toadie, insisted up to this week that he had NO INTERACTIONS with Epstein, until it was revealed that he had been to Epstein Island.  An oops! moment if ever there was one.  Art!

Lutnickers in a twist

FAIL NUMBER TEN:  Trump's polling figures all have him 'underwater' as the South Canadian pundits say, which means they are bad.  More aptly, BAD.  Significantly more people disapprove of him than approve, which he will always shrug off as 'fake polls' because if he doesn't like it then it cannot be true.

     Hmmm.  Apart, that is, for figures from the Rasmussen Research polling organisation, a conservative organisation whose figures he loves loves loves to quote, as they're usually favourable for him. 

     Not this time.  40% of respondents thought Pimpkinhead had done a better job as Prez, but 48% of respondents thought Biden had done a better job.  ZING!  That one's going to sting.  Art!

This is the  NY Times cover photo he hated, and you can see why

     Then there was his speech at the <checks to make sure> 'Washington Coal Club', where he broke down into incomprehensible babbling before accepting an award for 'Beautiful Clean Coal'.  Except coal is neither beautiful nor clean, take this from someone who had to fill the coal scuttle as a youngster.  Art!

"I proudly accept my bribe.  AWARD!  My award!  Quick, covfefe!"

     Okay, enough about Gargantuawful*.

Not For The First Time

Conrad has just seen an item in my news feed with an unusual modus operandi.  Art!

     Conrad recalls that one of the siloviki died because he'd been licking venom from the back of a live toad at a party, which you have to admit is more creative than falling out of a window.  The revolution devours it's children, and also batrachians.

I Did Warn You

Waaaay back in October of 2024, when the budget figures were coming out for 'Snow White' and there was speculation about how high the budget would bloat to, figures of $400 million being mentioned.  

BOOJUM!: Bang Bang Reshooty Reshooty

     We now know that the total expenditure ran to $336 million, which includes marketing.  Because the film shot extensively in the Allotment Of Eden, they got a tax rebate of $63 million, which is a hefty chunk of change.  Bringing the cost down to $270 million.  Art!

     The downside to that is that they have to file complete tax records detailing EXACTLY how much they spent on the film.  The box office profit was $102 million, meaning a loss of $170 million.

     BUT it doesn't end there, because this omits marketing, advertising and promotion, which at the very least adds on another $50 million and potentially $100 million.  So round that loss up to $320 million, or nearly one third of a billion dollars.

     My old joke about Disney laundering money doesn't sound so amusing now.

Finished Season One Of 'Zomvivor'

Don't worry, I'm not going to post a photo-essay.  Not today anyway.  They cheated at the end, finishing with what you, the viewer thinks is a cliff-hanger, and then adding on a coda 'One month later'.  'Ning and Wiroj are missing!' declares a minion, referring to the medical student and her incredibly misadvised professor.  Art!

     Then Nonn, her brother, wakes up in a web of restricting ropes, with a background of zombies pushing up against a fence.

     There had better be a Season Two. 

*  That's a new one.  Do you like it?

If I Were To Say 'Collapsar'

 You'd Probably Frown A Bit

Except no, because February is a dry month for me.  No, it isn't a typo either.  It's a portmanteau word coined by the author Joe Haldeman, combining 'Collapse' and 'Star' together, to convey the concept of a black hole acting as what we now call a 'wormhole' in space, allowing transit of enormous interstellar distances that consume nil time.  Art!

The best cover picture for the novel

     Yes, we are talking about 'The Forever War', a sci-fi novel informed by Joe's experiences as a grunt in Vietnam and the effects of relativistic travel on both warriors and society.  Yes, I have read it several times and have the triple-volume Marvano comic adaptation to boot.  Art!

     If there is one thing to take away from this Intro's intro, it's about the methodology of travelling between stars thanks to the collapsars, which act as a link.

    HOWEVER you are very much mistaken if you think we're here to postulate on military sci-fi, because Conrad is here to talk about another <ahem> Starlink.  Yes, Elong Tusk's internet baby powered by hundreds of orbiting satellites, able to provide secure, timely and redundant internet capability to those with access.  Whee doggy.  Art!

Elong Tusk

     Ol' Tusky was originally quite pro-Ukrainian, until the FSB showed him what kompromat they had on him, and he recoiled.  Probably not taking his library books back on time or passing port to the right, that kind of caddish behaviour.  He also turned off Ukrainian Starlink in 2022 to hamper drone operations, citing humanitarian reasons.  Then, for the next 3 years, he was perfectly happy to allow Mordorvia to use it's illegal, unregistered Starlink terminals to carry out drone strikes and as an operational level comms tool.  Art!

Say hello to Dobbinternet

     Then, a week ago, Elong - actually the head of SpaceX rather than him - agreed to disable all Ruffian Starlink terminals.  Conrad was baffled at this turnaround and wondered if Budanov had acquired even more eye-watering kompromat than the FSB.

     Well, no.  it transpires that Donald Tusk - his real name, honest - the PM of Poland, jibed at Tusk - the pseudonymous Tusk - about inflicting brand damage on Starlink by complicity with Ruffian war crimes.  SpaceX owns Starlink, you see, and SpaceX is going to move from a private company to a publicly-traded one on the stock market later this year.  Art!

     This cutoff has come as an hideous surprise to the orcs, as Starlink is heavily embedded in their comms systems for use at the operational level, i.e. well behind the front lines.  They have no substitute.  None.  The people who might have been working on a Ruffian equivalent all departed Mordorvia in 2022, going to work in NATO countries.  The irony, it explosively deflagrates.  The orcs are going to have to go back to radios, which are far easier to jam or intercept, or even <shudder> mobile phones, which are also easy to intercept and jam, and which helped to pinpoint Ruffian generals at the beginning of the SMP.  Art!

     The orcs have also been installing Starlink on drones, as it gives them Beyond Visual Line Of Sight, extending range to up to 500 kilometres.  That capability is now gone, as is their speed, which is now restricted to 50 m.p.h. and which causes the terminal to continually reboot, killing connectivity.  Ooops.

     As mentioned above, the orcs used Starlink as a comms system behind the front lines, rather than in them, being used by headquarters, senior commanders, logistics hubs, arsenals and ammunition dumps.  Overall, the number of Ruffian attacks has fallen by over 50% as they cannot communicate or co-ordinate, and we have already seen friendly-fire incidents where units have moved into target zones without anyone higher up realising.  Art!

     As a measure of how desperate they are, Ruffians have been trying to pay Ukrainian turncoats in order to register their orcish terminals and enrol them on the whitelist, for which they are willing to pay a whole $240.  The Ukrainian authorities chillingly explained that this was treason, punishable by 15 years to life in prison if caught. You might think that there wouldn't be many takers for that kind of money.  Stick around.  Art!

     Ever quick off the mark, the Ukrainian 275th Cyber Security Division, with the aid of some Ukrainian hackers, put up fake 'Starlink registration' bots, which scammed Ruffian frontline orcs out of €6,000 as they tried to get connectivity back.  Over 2,000 orc positions were precisely l

ocated, and 31 Ukrainian turncoats were identified.  Oooh-err Matron!   Art?

     That word 'desperate' keeps cropping up here.  In order to establish daisy-chains that allow Wi-Fi to function, Ruffians are trying to place repeaters on any high structure, such as the pylon above.  There are two disadvantages to this: any node knocked out immediately kills the whole chain, and the orcs themselves are horribly vulnerable to drone attack.  The one above has about 5 seconds left to live.

     Hmmmmm welllll  not everywhere.  Inevitably, orc blatherers like Solovyov feel slighted and their delicate feelings are upset, so they instantly resort to nuclear fantasies.  Art!

Yes, Vlad, keep taking the medicine

     We haven't even begun to deal with Telegram or WhatsApp yet.  I bet you can hardly wait.

Ghostly And Ghastly

We have been putting up horrible photos of King Piggy since the New Year, and I am delighted to share a new one with you all, revealing what the Boorish Orange Oaf Himself looks like when he's not stuck his face in a gravy-trough.  Art!

     He looks positively anaemic but, I think, a lot less of a sight than his sepia-tinted facespray.  O and a Norwegian posted a wicked caricature of him.  Art!

     This brought about screams of hatred and streams of invective from the MAGA crowd, all trying to say nasty things about Norway and failing because 90% of them couldn't find it on a map with GPS and a bloodhound.

'Gold Brick'

How very apt after an item on Fat Caligula.  Conrad had heard this expression in South Canadian literature but had no idea what it meant, as the contexts assumed one was up to speed on the definition.

     'Brewer's Dictionary Of Phrase And Fable' to the rescue!  Art?

     It dates from the Gold Rush days of the 1840's in California, when a scammer would sell a fake or real gold brick to his victim, substituting a fake one for the real one in the latter instance.  Then to depart at speed for far, far away, before .45 calibre justice intervened.

     By the Second Unpleasantness the term 'gold-bricking' had come to mean being incorrigibly lazy and idle, seeking to get others to do one's hard work.

This Cannot Be!

Just picked up on an item in my news feed that took me aback, rather.  Art!

     That picture looks rather similar to the cover to 'Time Considered As A Helix Of Semi-Precious Stones' by The Comsat Angels, which m

     ANYWAY I have to rebut this assertion, because otherwise it means the TARDIS and the Time Tunnel don't exist, nor did Catweazle ever make the transition from the Middle Ages to today.  Art!

     He was a magician, you see, transported from the 11th Century to England of 1970, who was forever trying to get back to his own time. I don't know why he'd give up medicines, flush toilets and Vimto for leeches, a privy and water flavoured with algae.  Still, each to their own.
     

Finally -

From my QI book.

"I eat at this German-Chinese restaurant and the food is delicious.  The only problem is that an hour later you're hungry for power."  Dick Cavett

     If you're reading this in the Allotment Of Eden, you may not be familiar with Dick.  He was a South Canadian talk-show host and you can find clips of him interviewing celebrities on Youtube.  Art!

Ant and Dick