And another one…

Bites the dust…

Yet another ‘claimant’ to be a native turns out not to be…

One of Canada’s most prominent Indigenous icons might not be Indigenous after all, according to media reports. 

Buffy Sainte-Marie, who was considered the first Indigenous person to win an Oscar, has always claimed to be a Cree Indian born in Canada who was then adopted by an American couple and raised near Boston. The singer-songwriter is known for her appearance on Sesame Street, was commemorated on Canadian postage stamps and performed for Queen Elizabeth II. 

Full article, HERE from Fox.

I know a lot of…entertainers, etc. have looked for that ‘edge’ that broke them out from the crowd, but with the depth of research tools available today, I wonder how many more will be outed…

And what will the fallout be?

State of the author…

Welp, ‘final’ checkup for the new eyeballs turns out to be NOT the final checkup.

Still having a bit of an issue with the left eye. The back of the retina is ‘lumpy’ so more eyedrops, and no flying for 30-45 days. Grrrr…

And at least a 2 week wait for new glasses, but at least they are free from the VA.

So, I’m not writing much, as it’s hard to be on the computer long without getting a headache. I’ve got ideas/plot/resolutions that I need to get down on ‘paper’ so to speak, but I get a couple of hundred words a day and that’s about it. I hope to finish the novella I’m working on by the end of the month, but I won’t get the next Bell Chronicles out before Christmas at this rate.

I have a question for my readers- Would you be interested in a collection of the short stories I’ve written for various anthologies, possibly with a new story added? I feel like I owe y’all something for putting up with my lack of production.

They are in various genres, and have appeared in a variety of anthologies over the past 5 or so years.

Meh…

Can’t find anything ‘good’ to say, so I’m not going to say anything…

Go read the folks on the sidebar, they write better than I do anyway.

Off to OKC VA for a final look and new prescription for glasses after the cataract surgeries, so maybe I’ll be able to see the computer again.

An interesting question…

Was ‘somebody’ advised of what was going to happen???

On October 7, four photojournalists who provide reporting and photos for the likes of the Associated Press (AP), CNN, the New York Times, Reuters, and other outlets were allegedly at the Israeli border with Hamas terrorists who committed acts of atrocities against innocent Israeli civilians that shocked the world. Since an Israel-supporting news watchdog website reported the claim, everyone wants to know if these Gaza-based reporters knew in advance about the attack and, more importantly, if they could have saved lives by alerting the world about it. The question arises: Did the AP, CNN, the New York Times, and Reuters know about the Hamas terror attack in advance? 

Full article, HERE.

And the Israelis would like some answers too… Officially, HERE.

Some interesting questions, and some non-answers and denials. Who really knows? I sure as hell don’t, but I DO have my suspicions…

A little humor…

To start the week!

The fattest  knight at King Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference.   He acquired his size from too much pi.

I thought I  saw an eye-doctor on  an Alaskan island,  but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian .

She was  only a whisky-maker, but  he loved her still.

A  rubber-band pistol  was confiscated from an algebra class, because it was a  weapon of math disruption.

No matter  how much you push the envelope, it’ll still  be stationery.

A dog gave  birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.

A grenade  thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.

Two silk  worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.

A hole has been found in the nudist-camp  wall.  The police are looking  into it.

Time flies  like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

Atheism is  a non-prophet organization.

Two hats  were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said  to the other:  ‘You stay here; I’ll go on a head.’

I wondered  why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit  me.

A sign on  the lawn at a drug rehab center said:  ‘Keep off the Grass.’

The midget  fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

The soldier  who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.

A backward  poet writes inverse.

In a  democracy it’s your vote that counts.  In feudalism it’s your count that votes.

When  cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of  religion.

If you  jumped off the bridge in Paris , you’d be in Seine  .

A vulture  carrying two dead raccoons boards an airplane.  The stewardess looks at him and says,  ‘I’m sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per  passenger.’

Two fish  swim into a concrete wall.  One turns to the other and says, ‘Dam!’

Two Eskimos  sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can’t have your  kayak and heat it too.

Two  hydrogen atoms meet. One says, ‘I’ve lost my electron.’  The other says, ‘Are you sure?’ The first replies, ‘Yes, I’m positive.’

Did you  hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root-canal? His  goal: transcend dental medication.

There was  the person who sent ten puns to friends, with the  hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.

Wow!!!

This one is gonna leave a mark!!!

It’s official. Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital has been found liable for the medical kidnapping of Maya Kowalski, medical malpractice, billing fraud, and driving Beata Kowalski to suicide. In a groundbreaking decision, a Florida jury found the hospital liable for every charge brought forward by the plaintiffs and awarded compensatory damages in the amount of just over $211 million. Then they awarded $50 million in punitive damages against the hospital that colluded with DCS to falsely imprison a medically complex child over false allegations that her mother had Munchausen by Proxy.

Full article, HERE.

A lot of the backstory is covered HERE.

A member of my family has CRPS, so I know how much of a problem it is, and how much of a PITA it is dealing with doctors, pain management, et al, none of whom want to be ‘on the hook’ for treatment…

I can foresee this being another Oberlin case, taking years to wend through the courts, but I really hope they win in the end!

Veterans Day…

At the eleventh hour, on the eleventh day, of the eleventh month…

We are the lucky ones that made it back. To all my shipmates, it was always ‘interesting’ serving with you.

And a special thanks to those maintainers who kept our birds flying and allowed us to come home safely. Without you, none of us would be here!

Thank you to those who are serving today and are standing the duty wherever they may be. Hand Salute!

Grrr…

My YouTube channel OLDNFO where we do the ‘Bored yet’ livestreams got attacked yesterday with at least two meat sacks and a bunch of bots.

They posted racist crap in the comments section and basically disrupted the livestream to the point that we had to end 20 minutes early because I couldn’t keep up with the blocking/reporting of the bots. After checking the YouTube info boards, etc. I ended up having to delete the entire livestream to keep us from getting in trouble with YT and possibly being banned.

If we had been monetized, I’m sure YT would have killed us on the spot.

They may have hit us because I didn’t require subscription to comment, and honestly, we are a conservative livestream with honest discussions both from us and in the chat. We also observed again yesterday that YT is blocking certain comments based on wording, so we know the YT algorithms are monitoring…

Sigh…

So much for trying to just have fun and give folks a place to get away from the madness, BS, etc. that is the net on any given day/time. I think we will go to subscriber only commenting (sorry folks), and have a few volunteers to monitor the chat stream to kill the bots, etc. when they pop up.

After three plus years of doing this, including being shadow banned on FB back in Dec 2010 and moving to YT, we’re now approaching 500 subscribers, so I guess it’s no surprise that we took a hit…

Honestly, I’m surprised we haven’t been swacked before now.

Anyhoo, the Dec 9 show is now deleted, so don’t bother looking for it. We’ll try again to Tuesday with the ‘fixes’ we come up with to see if we can keep ‘control’ of the chat… Which often has a life of its own, and takes off in directions that we never expect…

/rant off now back to your regularly scheduled blogging…

Speaking of blimp hangars…

Hangar 2 at Moffett Field has a little something that has been hidden inside that rolled out yesterday…

Photo LTA Research

As dawn breaks over Silicon Valley, the world is getting its first look at Pathfinder 1, a prototype electric airship that its maker LTA Research hopes will kickstart a new era in climate-friendly air travel, and accelerate the humanitarian work of its funder, Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

The airship — its snow-white steampunk profile visible from the busy 101 highway — has taken drone technology such as fly-by-wire controls, electric motors and lidar sensing, and supersized them to something longer than three Boeing 737s, potentially able to carry tons of cargo over many hundreds of miles.

“It’s been 10 years of blood, sweat and tears,” LTA CEO Alan Weston told TechCrunch on the eve of the unveiling. “Now we must show that this can reliably fly in real-world conditions. And we’re going to do that.”

Full article, HERE from Tech Crunch.

So the hangars ‘may’ come full circle…

Considerably larger than the GoodYear blimps, I’m really not sure what their applicability is going to be in the real world, but they would have a LONG loiter time…

Sad news…

There was a major fire early yesterday morning in Tustin, CA…

The north blimp hangar at the old MCAS Tustin caught fire and burned.

h/t to GL for the photo.

During World War II, seventeen large hangars were built to house US Navy blimps. There were seven of these wooden hangars left: Moffett Field Hangars 2 and 3, Tustin North and South, all four in California, one in Tillamook, Oregon,  and two in Lakehurst, New Jersey. Moffett Field also has Hangar 1, which is steel.

Fuller coverage HERE from the Orange County Register.

I served in all three of the hangars at Moffett Field, and have been to Tustin and Lakehurst. Folks these things are massive! Designed to hold three blimps each, they are around 1000 feet long, 200 feet tall, and 300 feet wide!

Sadly, one more piece of history is gone now, and as of this writing, there wasn’t any mention of the cause of the fire. I just hope it wasn’t arson…

If you ever get the chance to take a tour of one, do so. Until the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) was built at the Cape, the blimp hangars were the largest free standing structures in the world.