Wednesday, September 23, 2026
Railroad lettering from engineering departments and draftsmen, who would create letters and designs which their railroad would use when painting its equipment. Very few lettering fonts existed in the signpainters era
Lehigh Valley never used the letter "S" but the draftsmen drew up a complete alphabet.
Tuesday, September 22, 2026
Putin blew up a stationary Ukrainian locomotive on the Polish border Saturday morning, in what seems to have been an assassination attempt on former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, former CIA chief David Patraeus, and security advisers from several European Union states.
very cool to see a classic Land Rover on the new season of Ted Lasso, it's rarely on screen, but the character that owns it (goal keeper) has nothing but trouble with it
Deputy Dumbass Carlos Ramos, was relieved of duty following a video showing him tailing a driver too closely, for a LONG time. The Galveston County Sheriff, Jimmy Fullen, called the officer's actions "inappropriate, unacceptable, and inconsistent with the department's standards,"
Hooray for dash cam, and to all asshole cops that think they are immune to punishment for their daily asshole behavior, here's notice... the day is coming faster than you think.
"As soon as she passed, he just swept over into her lane right behind her, and he rode her bumper the entire way," she said. "It was like harassment, and purposefully abusing his power just because she passed him."
Officials said the deputy tailed the driver for an extended period. It is unclear why the deputy was following the driver.
The Galveston County Sheriff's Office identified the deputy as Carlos Ramos.
According to records from the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, Ramos has been with the sheriff's office since 2018.
the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight planes, five Spitfires, two Hurricanes, a Lancaster, a Dakota and two Chipmunk aircraft, are kept airworthy for displays and commemorative events using tech manuals dating back to 1945, which assumed levels of knowledge and experience that were no longer taught.
The aircraft are flown by regular and reserve RAF aircrew between May and October, and about 40 engineers and technicians at Coningsby help keep them operational.
"We've had to have wheels made for a Lancaster because they don't exist anymore," he said.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5zjzg7mzzvdo
major gas chains, including Walmart and 7-Eleven have been using AI software to collude and keep pump prices artificially high, and a new federal lawsuit by California will prove it (but I bet they settle out of court to avoid conviction)
The case tests California’s updated antitrust law, which now treats algorithm-driven common pricing as potential price-fixing, amid statewide gas averaging $5.46 a gallon and growing scrutiny of corporate pricing tactics.
Kalibrate’s program, according to the lawsuit, encourages gas stations to upload private price data. The company’s AI-powered software, called Kalibrate Fuel Prices, then uses the data to recommend prices in real time, promising in its marketing materials to help gas companies “squeeze out profit.”
“The quintessential image of price fixing is a secret deal made between competitors over cigars in a smoky back room,” attorneys wrote in the complaint. “But as technology has advanced, so too have the mechanisms available to competitors to fix prices without the cigars, the smoke, or even the room.”
The lawyers represent two firms that include staff members who worked at the Federal Trade Commission during an era of bolstered antitrust enforcement
The lawyers represent two firms that include staff members who worked at the Federal Trade Commission during an era of bolstered antitrust enforcement
By the way, the price of gas isn't the only thing that California is #1 in more than one thing, it's also the highest price of electricity in the lower 48. It turns out that when you have made an effort for decades to prevent nuclear reactor powered generation stations from operating, and haven't worked at increasing hydro dam numbers, and are in a drought over and over, that prevents the few dams from getting enough water to run the generators, and done nothing to capitalize on your oil reserves by having state owned refineries. How the hell is California not as affluent as any other oil producing state (looking at Alaska)? Do we GIVE the oil to the oil companies? Or just let them take it, and profit from it?
I think we're 1st, or 2nd, in cost of living, and cost of rent, and cost of homes, and cost of car insurance.
So, yeah, we're number one. Yippeeeeee
Sidebar,
The cost of gas is going up, so, why is the price of oil dropping? Not just a little, but the lowest in 44 years
This idea didn't come from marketing. It was proposed by Jamie Durnin, an Aer Lingus cabin manager.
Starting October 25, Aer Lingus's Dublin-to-Nashville service will fly as EI95, a nod to "9 to 5." The return flight to Dublin becomes EI92. On approach to Nashville, the crew will identify themselves to air traffic control as "Shamrock 925."
some idiot construction crew were digging alongside an Amtrak rail line in New Jersey, and not consulting the city about what was underground... they hit the main fiberoptic line, 400 individual fibers, and stopped flights at New York's three major airports: Newark, JFK and LaGuardia
According to Verizon: a fiber-optic cable running alongside an Amtrak rail line in New Jersey. "Construction contractors working in the area dug up and cut our cable," the company said.
By early afternoon, FlightAware counted 681 flights affected. Some departures had resumed at JFK and LaGuardia by 1:30 p.m., while Newark appeared to remain grounded.
The FAA has not yet said whether the JFK and LaGuardia stops were caused by the same problem.
A Philadelphia controller shared the cause of yesterday's equipment outage with waiting pilots.
FAA administrator Brian Bedford told reporters that the primary circuit into that air traffic control facility, which carries in and out data, failed Monday morning.
Then, the agency discovered that the backup fiber optic line had been severed somewhere between New Brunswick and Newark, New Jersey.
Amtrak said that the fiber cut did not involve one of its crews. "This incident occurred on New Jersey Transit property and involved a New Jersey Transit contractor. Questions regarding the outage and related work should be directed to New Jersey Transit," a spokesperson said.
President L B Johnson was notoriously demanding and constantly complained that the cabin temperature on Air Force One was either too hot or too cold, driving the flight engineers crazy with requests to change it... so they installed a temp control knob by his seat to shut him up. It wasn't wired to anything, and did nothing - except make him feel he had control over the temp
Technicians retrofitted the cabin wall near the president’s desk with a prominent, custom-built control knob labeled for climate regulation.
Unbeknownst to Johnson, the dial was completely dummy hardware, connected to no electrical wiring, pneumatic ducting, or actuator assemblies whatsoever.
Whenever the temperature felt off, the president simply reached over and turned the non-functional dial to his desired setting, fully satisfied that he was actively commanding the jet’s internal atmosphere.
The annoying complaints ceased immediately
Monday, September 21, 2026
Forrest Kirkland drew industrial machinery for a living, and took 8 summers of vacation time to copy the ancient rock paintings of the Lower Pecos by hand, in West Texas summer heat
By 1925 he had his own advertising art studio, and his specialty was illustrating industrial machinery, precise work for people who needed to see exactly what a thing looked like.
In 1933 he came across the Indian rock paintings at Paint Rock, out on the Concho.
He had not discovered them. Ranch families and travelers had known that bluff for a long while. What he saw was that the paintings were being vandalized, and he worked out that if a trained artist made accurate copies while they were still legible, something would survive no matter what happened to the rock itself.
So that is how the he spent every vacation from 1934 through 1941. He and his wife drove out to the Lower Pecos country, and to Hueco Tanks, and into the shelters above the canyons, and he lay on his back on the stone floor to work, using a scaling method he had devised himself so the copies would be true in size and proportion.
Kirkland was a founder and president of the Dallas Archeological Society a director of the West Texas Historical and Scientific Society, a regional vice president of the Texas Archeological and Paleontological Society (later the Texas Archeological Society), and a fellow of the Texas Academy of Science
He was working on making a book, and had it mocked up when he died,
the University of Texas Press published The Rock Art of Texas Indians, featuring Kirkland’s paintings and a text by W.W. Newcomb, who also developed his own numbering system for the 1967 publication (reissued in 1996) in which the plates are geographically ordered.
When Amistad International Reservoir was completed in 1969, many Lower Pecos rock art sites disappeared beneath the waves. Other rock art sites have been damaged by vandals or by natural disasters such as major floods. And all surviving rock art, particularly pictographs, are subject to continued natural weathering.
Another book is by A. T. Jackson & his broad coverage of Texas rock art
an El Camino cab over, with an extra set of wheels... I can't remember if I posted this before
the one mistake criminals make, is getting caught at random because they were doing something stupid, like getting a parking ticket. This story has a similar idiotic loose thread / achilles heel - tinted windows!
Police stopped a silver 2025 Honda Accord with out of state plates (California) driven by Gagandeep Singh for tinted side and rear windows on Interstate 80 in Union County Penn. They discovered approximately $215,000 in gold bars and nine gold coins hidden under seats and in socks.
Ajaypreet Singh, 22, and Gagandeep Singh, 24, of Elk Grove, Calif., scammed victims out of $1.2 million by posing as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents
When they contacted the victim, police said he identified Gagandeep Singh and Ajaypreet Singh as the two men who picked up the gold he was coerced into purchasing.
When they contacted the victim, police said he identified Gagandeep Singh and Ajaypreet Singh as the two men who picked up the gold he was coerced into purchasing.
The suspects were in contact with the victim for three months and coerced him to purchase approximately $1 million in gold and silver coins to provide to them to avoid arrest
Mountain View Ark. has a race downtown, on a highway, during the chili cookoff contest
see these and the others on
the U.S. House of Representatives just passed a bill mandating the presence of AM radio in all new vehicles, and as standard equipment - it can't be some ad-on option or subscription-based feature.
the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act - isn't law just yet.
It still has to make it through the Senate, and clear the Commerce Committee.
If it does successfully pass through the Senate, that bill would then have to be signed off by the President.
If all of that happens, the Department of Transportation (DoT) would have one year to write a final rule, and then two years would pass before it takes effect for major automotive manufacturers
Those that build fewer than 40,000 vehicles annually for the domestic market would have four years or more to comply.
However, automakers who sell vehicles without AM radio would also have to justify its absence in the meantime.
https://fordauthority.com/2026/09/us-house-passes-bill-mandating-am-radio-for-all-vehicles
https://fordauthority.com/2026/09/us-house-passes-bill-mandating-am-radio-for-all-vehicles
What's the point? The last two major catastrophes in the country, 9-11 and Covid didn't use any public broadcast to help citizens, and in fact, the govt actively suppresses information every chance it gets, as much as it can, for as long as possible.
EG assassination of JFK, Pentagon Papers, Iran Contra, NSA mass surveillance post 9-11 (every cell phone, every GPS (car/truck/plane/phone), Monica Lewinsky, Epstein's murder, Jack Abramoff, Chappaquiddick, Wikileaks, Hurricane Katrina... hell, I just learned of the Union Pacific scam last week
So, do we need an AM radio in new cars? Nope. We don't/won't need it. If shit hits the fan, the govt isn't going to be honest about it for decades, no city can evacuate, none even has a plan, or place to go. When catastrophic things occur (annually or more often) FEMA consistently screws it up (can't transport water, ice, trailers, meds, etc)
Shankweiler's Drive-In, established in 1934, is the oldest operating drive-in theater in the world. It was just bought, and the new owners found this when cleaning up sheds and closets, the original source for sound for the drive-in when it was first built in the 1930s - pre-dating even speaker poles
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