Yes You Read That Right
"Towering Infernos" plural, and as you can see, the phrase has not been emboldened and coloured in Fuschia, which is our default here on the blog for anything with a real-world name.
Those of you with long memories may recall that, many moons ago, we here at BOOJUM! began an analysis of "The Towering Inferno" - see? it's in bold and fuschia - for reasons I cannot remember, and did perhaps one item on it before forgetting all about it. Nobody protested in the Comments, so it obviously wasn't a major hit to your reading experience. Art!
"NO! I do not refer to that classic disaster thriller "The Towering Inferno" which I have never seen to completion <hangs head a little>. Art!
 |
| Both towering and an inferno. Does what it says on the tin." |
That was from August 2021. Later that year I got hold of TTI and remedied the defect above of not having seen the whole thing from start to stop. This took place in October of that year, after which there might have been another item about it and then - nothing. Radio silence. Art!
Yes, it's that chap again, after his football career and before the criminal one. Take note of all that - ah - 'high-tec' computer gubbins in the background, because Conrad is pretty sure it was used in "Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea", thanks to the director on TTG and producer of VTTBOTS being the legendarily cheap Irwin Allen. Art!
Of course - obviously! - none of this has anything to do with what I really wanted to talk about, which is about the ongoing campaign by the Ukrainians to bankrupt the Ruffians. Clearly Putinpot doesn't care how many mobiks go to their death in Ukraine, and he can still drag fifty-year old tanks out of storage, but how does he fund the war?
(Incidentally, it's now being admitted as a 'war', just don't expect all those people sent to the gulags for ten years for saying this over the past two years to be released).
With oil and gas. Mostly oil. Art!
"Komersant Volga" if you need to know. Here we see a Ukranian long-range drone over a Ruffian oil refinery. You can't hear the air-raid sirens going in the background, quite a chilling sound, nor the wine of the drone's engin. Let us prod Art into more activity!
The drone is now just starboard of that first chimney, and the clip only has seconds to go. Your Humble Scribe was wondering if this was all, whereupon the drone abruptly dives onto target. Art!
Novokuibishev Refinery
Conrad had to comment on this clip, as it exemplifies what the Ukrainians are doing with these strikes.
No, these drones are not hitting the nearest target, nor the biggest; they are being directed to the 'cracking' towers that distil crude oil into refined products such as petrol, diesel, fuel oil, kerosene and others. This refinery had already been hit by the Ukes with production being shut down, and now even more damage has been caused.
Remember my rhetorical question about how Peter The Average funded his war? Well, NovoKay pumped 160,000 barrels of oil per day. That's $16 million worth of refined products per day, at least - perhaps up to $24 million, because refined products sell for up to $150 per barrel. Art!
Uke drone with puny humans for scale
This is the 'Lutye' drone being used for these strikes. You can see both the engine and space for a 100-pound Happy Engagement payload, though what you can't see is their immunity from jamming. They cost $200,000 each and even if the Ruffians shoot down 9 out of 10, they are still down $16 million per day. The 'shooting down' bit is highly contentious, too, as the Ruffians have 44 refineries to defend, never mind fuel depots or terminals. Art!
These strikes have been going on for two months now and the Ruffians don't have any counter or answer to them. Everything within a thousand kilometres of Ukraine is now a target, and since the Ukes are clever and good at improvising, this range may well increase, putting targets in trans-Ural Siberia at risk. As I have pointed out before, these refineries are enormous static targets bulging with inflammable product and the Ukrainians have absolutely no reason to stop hitting them again and again. The Gremlin in the Kremlin is going to have to live with going bankrupt if his Special Idiotic Operation continues!
How Very Apt
Eric Arthur Blair, who is better known to you as 'George Orwell', wrote two novels that are still referred to reverentially today. I say this as an introduction to the next item on that list of Dystopian/Post-Apocalyptic novels from Mike. Whom I didn't Favourite and now cannot easily find.
<trawls Youtube>
Ha! Art?
Mike's Book Reviews
Okay, he added "1984". Enough has been said about this novel already, and the inhabitants of Modern-Day Mordor are living it as I speak. Conrad would like to add that he considers "Homage To Catalonia" and "Down And Out In Paris And London" as better works, partly because they are fact, not fiction, and partly because Ol' Eric put his money where his mouth was and went to fight Fascism in Spain. Art!
I Discovered Why The First Bus App Ain't Working
'First Bus' has long been a staple of the blog, able to generate content reliably thanks to unreliability, long before DJ Tango was a thing. As of last week, the app that allows one to purchase tickets went toes-up, because it has been replaced with a far deadlier opponent. Art!
I note that you cannot purchase single tickets any longer, they have to be for a whole day at £5. Probably still able to use a card on the bus to purchase, which is what Conrad has been doing of late.
"City In The Sky"
We've had to put up with a bit of shizzle where the author thought he was a proper author, but I think we're successfully past that.
Interesting! mused the
watching Timelord. Clearly an electronic baffle of – aha, it’s a
programmable thin-film screen, held rigid by an electrical charge. No
doubt it shows two hectares of barren plain when seen from above, and it must
also shield against any electro-magnetic discharges. Plus, it’s wide
enough to conceal any purely physical
activity close to the base – tracks or trails or landing-sites.
Rainfall would delineate the edges where water ran off, except that out
here on the
Strange clumps of discoloured soil stood at a
specific distance from the Lithoi’s base, even if not arrayed in any kind of
order. The Doctor puzzled over these for a minute and wonderied if they
marked alien mining or horticulture, until he realised with a chill that the
ashy mixture, washed into the plains, was the remains of countless animals that
had blundered into range of the Lithoi.
None of the lizards were outside. Not
surprising. The rainclouds had evapourated or blown further inland but
the ground remained damp, wet enough to deter an aquaphobic lizard from moving
around.
I wonder where their ship is,
he continued. Stubborn. Not willing to bale out and leave. Why
can’t they just accept the inevitable defeat, stop pitting their wits against
me and fly off, chastened!
Ah, yes, about that spaceship ...
Not A Headline You Want To Read
I just happened across this on the BBC News website, that font of all that's fit to be writ. Art!
One of the less glamourous aspects of life on a cruise ship is that the crew will have a practiced procedure in the case of such an event; all engines stop, crew to watch stations on deck, at least one boat deployed to carry out search at sea. In this case it doesn't appear to have worked, thanks to the bald statement "Police, who boarded the vessel on its return to Southampton on Friday, said they were investigating on behalf of the coroner".
It's a little-known fact, but falling into water from a height above 30 feet greatly increases the possibility of fatal injury.
Finally -
Rather surprisingly, it has remained sunny all Sunday!
Okay, that's it, off to cook up the Sunday Stew.
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