You Might Be Confused
So, we shall explicate a tad in order to provide enlightenment. Looking in my 'Collins Concise English Dictionary' I see the word 'Concord' defined as "Agreement or harmony between people or nations; amity" and is ultimately derived from the Latin <hack spit> 'Concors', meaning 'Of the same mind'.
The thing about concord is that it frequently doesn't arrive or deliver as advertised. Art!
This is Concord, Massachusetts, looking like a chocolate-box illustration. How very splendid! Except it was one of the first locations fought over in the treacherous traitorous American War Of Stabbing GREAT BRITAIN In The Back <pauses for blood pressure to diminish>.
Then we have the ill-fated Concorde - note the additional 'e' added because of the French. It was a supersonic airliner produced by the British and - you may be ahead of me here - French and it literally left every other airliner standing still. There's an awe-inspiring British Airways advert where it tools up at the end, doing Mach 2 and making everything else in the sky look old and tired. Art!
You can see the variable-geometry nose here, in the 'down' position before it transitions to supersonic flight.
The fleet was retired in 2003, thanks to the extremely high cost of running them, not helped by the fatal crash of a Concorde in 2000, which rather knocked public confidence in them. You might say British Airways and Air France had a concord about Concorde. Art!
No, this isn't the 2000 crash. What you're seeing here is the crash of a Sinister Tu-144 at the Paris Air Show in 1973. The two aircraft were similar in external appearance, so much so that the Tu-144 was dubbed 'Concordski', whereas there were a lot of internal differences. The crash occurred because the Concordski pilot made violent evasive manoeuvres, to possibly avoid having a French jet take photographs of the canard foreplanes. Which sounds suspiciously like an excuse as it's a lot easier to take photos from the ground. ANYWAY the recovery from the pilot's barnstorming overstressed the port wing, which fell off, and that was that. It also tanked foreign interest in acquiring any Concordskis, so you might say other nations had a concord about Concordski.
I think you'll agree when I say 'Concord' is a bit of a mis-nomer.
ANYWAY AGAIN here we come to the meat of the matter, because I am going to feature an entry from the 'Be Amazed' Youtube channel, about - Art!
The first section concerns the collision and sinking of an Italian cruise liner, the 'Costa Concordia', and you can tell this isn't going to be a pleasant excursion because of 'Concord's track record to date. Note that the date for this incident is the 13th, another ill-omen. Art!
The liner was scheduled to set sail from Civitavecchia, the port for Rome and yes, I've been there, and spend a week tooling around the Mediterranean in what must have been pretty chilly weather, it being January. Art!
Captain Schettino ordered the CC to deviate from it's normal route in order to execute what the narrator and Google call a 'salute', near a brace of islands. None of the bridge crew protested this ill-advised action, which was supposed to impress passengers and anyone ashore.
Well, guess what the island of Giglio had in abundance? Underwater rocks. When Schettino ordered a course correction, the helmsman misunderstood and steered into the rocks. Ooops. The Costa C ran aground, putting at risk over 1,000 crew and over 2,000 passengers. Art!
Looks expensive
If you want a metric, that hull damage was nearly 80 yards long. Evacuation procedures were not followed as the Costa capsized, creating panic and causing the death of 32 people. Art!
Schettino was tried and found guilty, getting a 16-year sentence. What made the court especially unsympathetic was discovering that, during the salute, he had been derelicting his duties in order to canoodle with a Moldavian exotic dancer he had brought onto the bridge. No, I'm not making this up.
In 2023, over a decade later, an attempt to re-float and salve the Costa began, costing an eye-watering $1.2 billion, which is twice the cost of the ship itself. Art!
Then there were the lawsuits and compensation, which tacked on another $93 million, and breaking up the CC for scrap, costing another $100 million.
In total it cost over $2 billion to salve and then break up the CC, which had itself cost only (!) $612 million to construct. Counting the Costa.
Stupid Items Sub-Editors Create Out Of Desperation
I am going to post the Snip and then comment. Art!
There's a never-ending stream of items like this on my news feed, featuring fatuous titles detailing stupid ideas. I get that people have to create content but come on! use a tad more imagination. And no more oscilloscopes, please.
O look, here's another one. Art!
Bah!
King Piggy Punctured
Or, more gentle shoeing. DJ Tango loves to boast about all the cognitive tests he's taken, because he's so senile that he believes the indicate how intelligent he is. The reason you've taken so many, Donold, is because your doctors are worried about your cognition, as well they might. Art!
The tests involve drawing a clock and numbering it correctly, naming as many words beginning with the letter 'B' in a minute as they can, then naming the date, day of the week and what city they are in. This, Donnie Dorko, is hardly a rousing statement of intellect. Art!
Here's the Nodfather falling asleep in a meeting again. The consequence of staying up into the small hours ranting and tanting on social media. He needs an aide armed with a bamboo skewer to prod him at intervals to ensure 1) He's awake and 2) He's still alive.
Will I Or Won't I?
Hmmmm pondering. I know I say that our charter excludes Politics - that above is merely mocking the feeble of mind - but I have saved a detailed analysis from Prof Roth about how the Hungarian elections provide insights for the South Canadian political opposition to Pumpkinhead. Maybe at a later date. I bet you can hardly wait. Art!
Orban claims he's going to lead the opposition in parliament, which is a fragile hope, since he's going to either end up in prison or flee abroad. Given that he's been funding MAGA political funds, South Canada might not be a good fit for him. There's always an apartment next to Assad in Moscow. Or North Korea.
Interestingly, the President of Slovakia, Fico, has done a 180ยบ now that his mate The Weretoad is gone and is now best mates with Prez Zed, implying that Putin no longer has any European allies. Poor Dimya!
UTTER NONSENSE!
Grrrr whom is responsible for this drivel? Art!
It jolly well DID appear, but woo-woo sites like this one pretend otherwise, because in photos taken with much better definition, the 'Cydonian Face' resembled nothing like a face. Art!
That took all of 10 seconds on Google.
Finally -
Going out with another Biercism.
"Comfort,n: A state of mind produced by contemplation of a neighbour's uneasiness."