Even The Weather Hates Putin

Yes, This Intro Will Be About Peter The Average

A.K.A. Petroleum Pimp, Bloaty Gas Tout, Kremlin Gremlin, Putin On The Fritz, Tiny Toxic Terror Toad and Dimya The Woeful Weepy, because he salts his borshcht with his tears, not the least cause of which is BOOJUM! being horrid to him.  Art!

      Instead of the Kremlin, Vladolf Putler decided to have a bunch of his usual coterie of actors dressed in uniform behind him.  That blonde to port has been identified in at least three other videos, to the point that people are filling out bingo cards about her.  So, no, these are not soldiers, they are actors who will have been rigourously scrutinised and vetted with family members held hostage.  Dimya still doesn't trust them, because as is clearly visible in one scene - Art!

     - he's wearing a bulletproof vest.  Probably as protection from being stabbed in the back, as none of the actors will be allowed ammunition for any weapons they may be carrying.

     That's not all.  During his less than sixty seconds, Dimya was hacking and coughing all the way through it.  It sounded less like a frog in his throat than a slew of alligators, and this will have been the best take of his speech that they dared to put out.  Clearly something is wrong with him, and one can only hope it's slow and painful.

    

Heh.

     'What's this about the weather?' I hear you quibble, querulously.  Well, you see, it was Dimya's Cunning Plan to cut off fuel to Europe so that we'd all freeze in the bitterly cold winter weather.  And this would, thanks to magic and crossed fingers, somehow enable him to win in Ukraine.

     Alas for Putler, the weather has not been co-operating.  For the past couple of weeks it's been relatively mild, with lots and lots of rain, which is how Your Humble Scribe discovered one of his shoes has a hole in the sole.  No, no, save your sympathy, I can tough it out.  That was the extent of his Cunning Plan: I Hope It Gets Really Cold.

     The weather in Ukraine hasn't been co-operating very well, either.  Art!

     This is footage of an extremely switched-on Ukrainian unit liberating a village called Novoselivske, which is north-west of the Ruffian's defensive hub Svatove.  That is, it's in the north of the Luhansk oblast, where you'd expect the weather to be most severe as the further north you get the worse the weather.  Except note the vehicle tracks across open ground; that mud's only a couple of inches deep, not three feet of brown porridge.  Hence today's title!

     O and about that freezing bit; they're not confessing or gloating or admitting anything, but the Ukrainians have recently hit a Ruffian power plant near Belgorod, so now Putin's people are getting a taste of their own medicine.  Art!

Monkey see monkey do

More Of Manglement

Because everyone enjoys seeing a bottomwipe of a manager getting their richly-deserved come-uppance.  This story comes from Quora, where the Original Poster doesn't normally identify the business for legal reasons.

     Okay, so OP was part of a team that operated on data that came in to them, which would then be passed on to another team once processed.  Art!

     Their problem was that they relied on another team sending this urgent data in to them, and the first team were tardy and unreliable.

     So, Idiot Manager has a brilliant idea - she's not going to pay OPs team whilst they are waiting for data.  They have to punch out until the information arrives, and then punch back in.

     The employees argue that if they're punched out, they can leave.  IM says no, if you do that it'll cost time and money contacting everyone again.

     The employees then warn her she's breaking federal law (for this tale is set in South Canada).  IM then argues back that the company is an international one so doesn't need to follow South Canadian law.

     Thus the whole team had to spend half an hour in the break room until the data came in.

     The next day this policy was dropped, as was Idiot Manager as well.  Unsurprisingly, as she put the business at risk of a class-action lawsuit that could have cost them hundreds of thousands.  All for the sake of 30 minutes saving on labour.  Art!

And nobody was sad

"The Sea Of Sand"

The Doctor, entirely without tact or subtlety, is attempting to persuade the rest of his mixed party about the correct course of action, that is to say, his course of action.

Tam commented with an inaudible reply.

          ‘ “So what”? So it means the bio-vores can create an endless supply of silica machines, especially since they now have human vehicles to recycle and use for the metallic components.  You may have destroyed two or three or four, but they will be replaced by fifty or a hundred others.  Similarly with bio-vores.  They reproduce by ingesting energy.  Having drained the life energies from over a hundred – maybe a hundred and thirty? – humans, they can replace all their losses within days.’

          Sarah felt as if punched.  Back to square one after all the effort and sacrifice they’d endured?  How could that be!

           The Doctor stood in the rear compartment of the desert car, seeking to assert himself by virtue of his sheer presence.

          ‘Mere blind bashing, weight of metal, or military application, has all so far proven useless.  We need to apply intellect to the problem.’

          Stunned silence fell over the small audience.  Taking this as acquiesence, the Doctor carried on.

     Ah well, if it's intellect you're after, the Doctor's your man!  Well, humanoid alien looking like a man.

Say Hello To My Great Big Friend

It came years  behind schedule and well over budget, yet the James Webb Space Telescope has certainly delivered the goods in 2022.  It required a lot of unfolding and working-up before sending back any images, and at any point if something went wrong it would be the world's most expensive piece of scrap metal.  Let's have an image up.  Art!

     This is the inevitably-named 'Cartwheel Galaxy'.  Most spiral galaxies have 'arms' but this one has a whole array, which seems a bit greedy, caused by a head-on collision with another galaxy.  The whole thing is about 150,000 light years across and it sits 500 million light years distant from us, so a bit far for a commute.

Fingers Crossed For Bean Sprouts

Conrad is preparing to go do the weekly shop shortly, as this is Day Four of his rotation and the car is available.  In the past fortnight I've only got there after 20:00 hours and, as predictably as the Cartwheel Galaxy being named so, some shelves are empty.  No eggs at all, for one thing.  Nor beansprouts, which jiggers up some Korean recipes I'd like to try.  O humble bean sprout, how we miss you!

Finally -

We only need a few words here to hit the Adjusted Provisional Ton.  What to witter about?  Ah!  I know.  Back in April last year Pink Floyd released their first new song in 8 years, "Hey, Hey, Rise Up" which, almost inevitably, was inspired by the war going on in Ukraine.  Art!

     Big Dave Gilmour, the chap behind it, stated that it's a one-off charity deal and the Floyd have no plans to reform.  Good.  Always leave 'em wanting more.