Here is a little more on the laser technology.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3230589/chinese-military-scientists-claim-have-achieved-huge-breakthrough-laser-weapon-technology

It is paywalled, so first go to

https://12ft.io/

Copy and paste the scmp link and there is the article.

Is this true? Or is someone just messing with me?

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Well, because that’s the way they built them in England, and English engineers designed the first US railroads.

Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the wagon tramways, and that’s the gauge they used. So, why did ‘they’ use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that same wheel spacing.

Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break more often on some of the old, long distance roads in England . You see, that’s the spacing of the wheel ruts. So who built those old rutted roads?

Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England ) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since. And what about the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match or run the risk of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome , they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder ‘What horse’s as came up with this?’, you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses’ asses.) 

Now, the twist to the story: When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah . The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses’ behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature, of what is arguably the world’s most advanced transportation system, was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse’s ass. And you thought being a horse’s as wasn’t important? Ancient horse’s asses control almost everything.

OK, Malema. He is a horrible hater, of anything white. They are taking him to court now again (local social groups) for singing the song … Kill the Boer – kill the white farmer – Hate Speech. He started singing it just a few weeks ago (as part of political speech as an election is coming up). It is a drone song and is nicely within the dancing and shuffling of some of the black tribes. I grew up with the song and can do it as well as anyone else.

The thing is, he is said not to even be a South African, but moved from the North – I don’t know, but listening to his speech, he speaks the more Northern accents.

Let me tell a story. We were in Zimbabwe, and there is one tribe that cannot say L .. it is just a sound that they do not have in their own language. So, they translate it to R. So, we were there, and we had a cook. It sounds bad, like slavery, but no, it was a paid and beloved cook and it was not a thing of the women could work in the home. We all had our outside work to do. The cook’s name was William. But not being able to say R, it was translated to Wirriam .. and for short, wirm. He was the best cook in the world, and one time I came back from the big city with a new food processor, thinking it would help with making butter – we made a lot of butter because we did a lot of baking, and this all was stirred from cream, by hand. Well, end of story, Wirriam chased me with his chef’s knife (a panga) – I had to remove the food processor, because it was not his thing, and the kitchen was his, so what was I doing there anyways with my machine? That evening, he came in as usual to take ‘orders’ for light dinner, and for me, all I could have was shirred eggs and Wirm’s evil eye! And he probably spat in my eggs. Nothing more for me. I had to beg him to allow me to use my machine for baking and I could only do that when he was off shift.

So, Malema, in the same language as Wirriam would speak, sings songs of killing all the whites. He probably has a grade 3 education, but when people started talking about it, he received some kind of degree from some kind of school, so he is all Educated now.

Africa is a vibe. Malema is still fighting the old fights. Since he again started singing the drone song from the political platform, the killings of farmers just increased. It is back to court for him.

Here he is, telling Elon Musk he is illiterate. Its been a long story. I have no respect for him, because he has no respect for me.

Drugs, pornography, war — yikes.

I’m trying to move from that just a little and have been writing a ‘green technology’ piece on what is happening in China.  This thing does not want to finish – If I have to do it right, it will be like AHH’s Lineaments and never stop.

Anyway, AHH posted an old method to cool air from the dry middle-eastern climes.  I said it won’t work for us as it works well in dry air, but not moist air.  So, this Chinese designer made a continuous airflow thing work by changing the shape of the flow – and this is for moist air.  I was entranced and now I’m looking for the details.

Summers in Chengdu are hot and humid with little wind. To keep the buildings cool amid the heatwaves while maintaining low carbon emissions, architects designed hourglass-shaped alleys inside buildings, which can increase air flow and thus take the heat away.

https://english.news.cn/20230726/902bca9846c147e5acfd4f457b750222/c.html

Oh dear, we’re in tropical climate.  If it gets too humid, we have to do something, if only to rescue all computers and similar technology because equipment rusts very quickly.  It is cheaper to deal with a little aircon, than with buying computers every year.  And I tend to love my computers, so, I don’t always want to replace them.

This season .. well, its hot!  We have two rooms airconned.  One is the office one, and we use both of them to full ability of any machine this year.  Things are just strange.

But the rice dish?  Oh boy .. pilafs, swedish rice puddin’ which is what it reminds me of, risotto – etc etc..  Flied Lice .. for those that do not say the R.  It is like the pancakes that I wrote up!  Goes around the world and feeds people.   We have a family rice dish that has never failed to impress … I’ll write it up.

In the mean time we had a soft tropical downpour today.  I hope for another tomorrow or in a day or two.  Doors, windows and anything are open for the fresh air and we will sleep well tonight.  If all goes according to plan, about middle August this heat will dissipate.  If it is a weird heat phenomena, all bets are off and we have to nurse our basic aircons.

But back to rice.  I did a course in Cuban Cooking years ago, and they have 28 (don’t call me a fibber but it is thereabouts?) methods to prepare rice.  I was true to my course but halfway through, the family was kinda saying .. well, are we ever going to eat anything different than rice in this house?

Rice has such a history.  We were on some Caribbean Spanish Island and husband flew in from somewhere else, having bought a good container of black rice as a gift to me .. rice actually is seed.  So, they wanted to know at the import department what this was?  He screwed up, and said it was Oro .. which is gold!  Instead he needed to say Aroz which is rice.  That is a crazy story.

Anyway, you talk rice, I talk paella … the king of food!

I’m not sure about Medvedev .. I think he was giving a warning.

Got a 2nd source for India.  Site is a bit messy!

BRICS: India Might Back Out From Launching The New Currency

The Ancient Cooling systems are great for their climate.  When we lived in the desert, we had one of these evaporative coolers (electrical) and it was fine up to a certain temperature and then it was just hot!  They’re called swamp coolers.    For us, tropics, they are not effective whatsoever as the air is moisture-laden anyways.  We have air conditioners running around the clock now because it is just hot!  If it does not rain regularly, we get baked into the earth and the cool tiles in the house are hot under my feet.   A little rain, and the earth cools down.  I’m gasping for the end of August and then we will have decent and lovely weather again.   I usually step out first thing in the mornings to get a look at what the outside looks like, and these days, first look is up to see if we have cloud cover between us and the sun.  Today, it is whispy – oh boy.