Dam Ruffians!

As A Counterpoint To Today's Earlier Post
This whole item was triggered when I spotted an update by the endlessly fascinating "Ushanka Show" on Youtube, a channel I heartily recommend if you have any interest at all in the former Sinister Union, as Sergei, who runs the channel, lived there up until 1995.  He has a lot of insights that the Sinisters would not have liked the Evil Capitalist West to know - like the Three Strangers Rule, where three perfect strangers pool their money to purchase a litre bottle of vodka and then proceed to get pie-eyed on it.  Or maybe only a bit tipsy; them Ruffians can handle their drink.

Mum did the weekly shop -

     Actually that's very naughty of me, and I shouldn't stereotype like that, except it's so hilarious to see that vein in Dimya's temple throb so.
     Okay, let us balance the modest ridicule of our Slavic brethren with some honest admiration.  
     Siberia!  Which is what makes up a very great deal of Ruffia and has done for centuries.  It used to be the destination for those exiled from European Ruffia back in Tsarist days, and is still only lightly sprinkled with human populations.  The Sinisters, back in the Fifties, when they were attempting to engineer everything and cover the map with concrete, saw an hydroelectric opportunity at the Yenisei River in Siberia.  Art?

Thus

     They realised that there was potential for damming the river and thus creating hydroelectric power, which, once you've built your dam, is FREE!  And nothing gets a government interested more than the word FREE, with or without an exclamation mark*.  Art?

The river, with flowery backdrop

     It took them years to construct the dam, with more turbines being added up until 1972, and they'd started in 1956.  To date there have been no safety issues, leaks, collapses, deaths or anything untoward with the dam, which is probably why you've never heard of it.  Art?

With puny human cars for scale**.

     Given that the dam has created a huge artificial lake, there has been significant impact on the local environment, with frequent fogbanks created when masses of air with different temperatures collide.  Also, since the water released by the dam is above freezing, the Yenisei doesn't freeze downstream of Krasnoyarsk for hundreds of miles.
     The tale is not over yet, because the Sinister engineers also constructed a ship lift.  Art?

Thus

     We are going to go into a lot more detail about this incredible bit of engineering - but not today.
     There.  I think I've been positive enough for anyone east of the River Bug to forgive those cracks about vodka.

Except Dimya.  He's a bit of a harder sell.

     Sorry, no comments for the motley; it fell in the lake whilst we were fishing, swallowed a lot of water and had to have it's integument flensed before getting an internal activated carbon flush.

This Is Matchless
Whilst poking around the corners of Youtube last night - hey, it's lockdown, a man's got to have some hobbies - I came across one that looked legitimate, although it might have been bodged together in some way.  It was done mostly in time-lapse, for reasons that will become very clear as we go on.  Art?

      This is being constructed out of thousands and thousands of matches.  You probably can't tell what it is at the moment, and I shan't keep you in suspense.  Art?

No!  Not a light bulb.

     It's a cannon.  Got that?  As in an artillery piece that fires a cannonball.  Art!

Obviously

     The creator then added a few thousand trimmed matchsticks as the projectile, and by now you must realise why it was done in time-lapse, as the whole thing must have taken hours to construct, in between leaving the glue to set. He then took his artefact out to a - well, I hope it was distant and deserted spot - then set up a trail of vertical matchsticks that led to the cannon.  He lit them and moved away apace, which was only sensible.  Art?

The eruption begins

     You can see things beginning to kick off here as the cannon starts to both ignite and prepares to launch it's payload.  Art?

      This whole sequence lasted about a second.  He did film it from four different camera angles and played each back in slow-motion, getting a bit more mileage from the event.  Predictably, there was little left of the cannon.  Art?

The sad remnants

     Some people have altogether too much time on their hands***.
     Oh, as you may have noticed, if I go to Full Screen on these Youtube videos then the synchrony bars that have been an issue disappear.  There is still the reflection of some white-haired old duffer to cope with.  Sorry about that.

Back To Rolling Stone's List And Number 43 -
The Man In The High Castle.  Art?

      Conrad started watching this when it came out but didn't follow up on it and would now have to start back from scratch, which is not altogether a bad thing.  I recall seeing adverts for it on the way into work one morning and was utterly flabbergusted - like flabbergasted but even more so - that it ever got made.  I mean, Philip K. Dick has been pretty successfully filmed in the past, but a television series where the Axis won the Second Unpleasantness?  It ran for three seasons and created a world with a lot more depth and twists than PKD had managed.  You know, I shall have to track it down and start from S1Ep1 again.  What a chore***!

An in-joke

This will all make sense on Facebook, honest -

Finally -
A small anecdote to help us hit the Compositional Ton.  Your Humble Scribe set his alarm for 08:00 this morning, then wickedly stayed in bed for another 20 minutes, before getting up, getting dressed and re-posting the blog links on Facebook and Twitter.  Then I ambled into the kitchen to get a pot of tea going, and a mushroom and cheese toastie.  As I put the toastie into the microwave I noticed the display.  "09:42" and at first I thought someone had set it to cook and not zeroed the clock.
     No such thing.  I paid attention to my Fitbit and it was indeed 09:42, because all the digital kit around the house had automatically updated.     So, yes, bah!

Yeah, yeah, mock away

     I think Horologia is getting it's own back for me going on about smashing clocks to bits yesteryon.  Just you wait, clocks; I'll get my own back.  O yes indeed.

     And with that, we are done.


*  "Mark" not "Point".  South Canadians take note.
**  Big sucker, isn't it?
***  This is irony.