First Of All
WASH OUT YOUR FILTHY MINDS! I'll get that out of the way immediately as I know what sleazy reprobates you all are. Secondly, NO! that is not a mis-print or typo for the James Bond film "Goldfinger". Mind you, now that we've used that title I can bring in a picture to fool any passers-by. Art!
Ah me, nerve gas and atom bombs, what a delightfully Cold War relic this film is, as well as that nonsense about 'skin suffocation'.
Here an aside. Yes, already! That epic amongst television programs, "Mythbusters", has already tested the truthfulness of getting covered in gold paint. Art!
Jamie, resplendent in his semi-naked glory
Because they were thorough about matters, a medical assistant was present with a set of meters and monitors. None of that guff about 'skin suffocation', what mattered was radiated heat; with an insulating layer over his whole body, Jamie began to overheat dangerously, and quickly, too. At the insistence of the MA, the layer of gold latex was stripped off.
Where were we?
O yes. Gold. For millennia it has been lusted over and coveted by Hom. Sap. for some peculiar reason, because it's not really that useful. You can coat optics with a vanishingly thin layer of gold, in order to protect from glare. Art!
I believe it also has applications in micro-circuitry. Yes yes yes, you can make jewellery from gold, but you can make jewellery from cast iron if the feeling so takes you. My point is that it's the metallic equivalent of <thinks> Art!
Beautiful but useless. Except as a variety of specie, and a hedge against misfortune, since gold tends to hold it's value over time. O and it used to be a dental filling, possibly because it doesn't corrode easily, although since it conducts electricity really well, I wonder if anyone got short-circuited teeth?
Here another aside, and irrefutable proof that Conrad is, indeed, a terrible person. I quite forget the author and even the title, but waaaaay back in the Eighties I remember a book looking at future warfare and weapons, and they came up with an induction gun, which could heat up the gold fillings in one's teeth to red hot.
It might not be fatal, true, yet what enemy soldier is going to be thinking offensively when his jaws are aflame? <stops typing to laugh out loud>.
ANYWAY what I really wanted to yark on about was more Mordor Money Misery, following on from yesteryon's notes as taken from Joe Blogs. This Intro is using data from Konstantin of "Inside Russia". His refrain during the vlog was "It's not looking good". Well, not unless you're NAFO it's not. Art!
Ruffia always has an extra-specially big deficit in December, as this is when they pay off all the bribes, probably. This has, for the past year, been paid off from the National Wealth Fund, a.k.a. Putin's Piggy Pot, because alliteration. Big K. explained that, on the last working day of 2023, there was a bit of financial activity. Quite a bit. In fact, an awful lot. The Ruffian Ministry Of Finance sold off €573 million, clearing out their entire stock of Euros. They then sold off ¥114 billion, the equivalent of $16 billion. And, in a sale that gives today's blog it's title, they sold off 230 tons of gold. Art!
230 of these
That amounts to $16 billion. I am deliberately using dollar values here because it annoys Charlie Chipmunk Cheeks.
So, to pay off December's deficit, the MoF blew through $31 billion. That's a significant portion of Dimya's Personal Piggy Pot and if the MoF is selling off the state's gold reserves, that implies they've got little else left. One expects that Peter The Average will have five tons or so aboard his Get Out Of Dodge Escape Jet, too.
According to Big K, there is still 358 tons of gold left, to the value of $23 billion, and ¥270 billion remaining, to the tune of $37 billion, thus $60 billion in total. So the Ruffian economy can keep staggering along for a few more months, after which one imagines the money printers will be going full speed and inflation will skyrocket.
It's looking good! said - Art?
It's actually worse than this. I like to keep a little something in reserve, though. Maybe tomorrow.
From Gold Bullion
To Slieve Gullion. We all know by now that Conrad's mind is an unpredictable place that works, if it can be said to do so, in mysterious ways. Thus it was with this name. It must have bubbled to the surface of the septic stew that serves for my thought processes, thanks to me thinking about "Gold Bullion".
Does it actually exist? is the next question.
Why, yes it is. It's a mountain in County Omagh, Northern Bit Of Ireland.
Quite why Your Humble Scribe knows about it is anyone's guess.
Make Mine Mega
Yes, yet more Lego megastructures from SpitBrix's Top 20. I forgot to add in yesteryon that people are always seeking to become the builders of the tallest Lego structure, so that the record falls every five or six years. The current one has been held since 2017 so I guess someone new will have this title in their sights. Art!
One Conrad can really get behind. This nerd-do-well has a collection of 3,310 unique Lego Minifigures, which he's been collecting for ages. According to the narrative, some of these figures go back to the Seventies, so he may have begun when still in short pants. Art!
They're a good choice for a collector thanks to their inherent robustness. Conrad has just had to empty his DeHumidifier, because thanks to his precious books, I need to keep it running 24/7. Those Minifigs will shrug off anything less than a flamethrower or a steamroller.
"City In The Sky"
The author is certainly milking the extra-environmental excursion by the Arc's Lunar Lander, isn't he?
The chief pilot looked over
banks of guages and meters. If they
matched velocity successfully with the Trojans, they needed to keep a wary eye
open for smaller objects travelling at high speed relative to the debris
field. The mass of their inbound missile
needed to be within fairly strict parameters as calculated by the astronomy
staff: too small and it would merely explode in the upper atmosphere without
any effect apart from a loud noise; too large and it would cause earth tremors
guaranteed to destroy the coastal communities, not to mention a gigantic
fireball and radioactive fallout.
Once they got there, the real
fun would begin. Ace needed to drill
into the chosen rock at a precise angle to a precise depth in order to place
the solid fuel rockets correctly, and the rockets needed to be ignited at the
correct time to drop the rock into the
Time ticked slowly away. Temperatures inside the spacecraft increased
to become slightly clammy, forcing a small dehumidifier to come into operation. Condensation still speckled the big external
windows, blurring the view.
At three hours into the
mission, he incautiously fired a set of verniers at full displacement without
gradually increasing their thrust (as he had done hours before) to invert
Pangolin and allow the main motor to begin deceleration.
Hmmm. Nothing's gone wrong. At least, not yet .....
Conrad Strikes Again
You ought to know by now that Your Modest Artisan loves to muck around with words and language, and on his way back from posting an unmentionable sample, he conjured up a portmanteau word from two others. Art!
Troll Troglodyte
TROLLGLODYTE!
This is one of that species of unpleasant, anti-social, unwashed basement dwellers who infest the internet, rather like Conrad but with less charm and al the wit taken away. You tend to get flocks of them on social media and Conrad has a sneaking suspicion the vast majority are bots. I'm happy to tar them all with the same brush, however.
Finally -
Another storm due? This is altogether tooooo much of a good thing. We've already had nine of them, within the space of a single month. Floods, power cuts, dogs and cats living together - gosh it's almost like Moscow, except with heat and eggs.
No comments:
Post a Comment