Bloody hell, not Monday AGAIN. Honestly, they really suck in general, but this one sucks harder than a vacuum cleaner, because I’ve managed to catch a cold from somewhere. (I blame the idiots in the gym who never, ever wipe down the barbells. Assholes.) It’s nothing too severe, especially compared with what I had to deal with back in July, but it’s still deeply unpleasant to sit alone in a cold apartment, sneezing constantly, with abominable weather outside.
And that’s on top of the fact that I’ve spent the last three days locked up in a workshop, learning about fintechs and blockchain applications. Oh, it was interesting, don’t get me wrong, but also bloody EXHAUSTING. And I’m certainly not done with all of my various projects yet – there’s PLENTY more where those came from.
So, y’know, while I bitch about Mondays in general, I’ve really got reason to bitch on this one. Trust me, bro, I feel you.
Which is why I perform this rather arduous weekly public service of putting together the Great Mondaydact Browser Buster. It’s not easy – takes hours of effort on the part of two different people – but it IS quite good fun. And here we are, to enjoy the results.
This week’s theme was actually suggested by our good friend, The Male Brain, for last week, but given the colossal f**k-ups at Facebook, I couldn’t just let that slide. So I decided to save the suggestion for today. This week’s theme concerns a chap named Grigory Potemkin (Григорий Александрович Потёмкин-Таврический, to be technical), of whom you may or may not have heard in the past. Suffice to say, he was quite the character.
Take it away, Dawn Pine:
Most of you hear the phrase “Potemkin village” (construction (literal or figurative) whose sole purpose is to provide an external façade to a country that is faring poorly, making people believe that the country is faring better). So today we are going to honor the man behind it – Grigory Potemkin. The original story was that Potemkin erected phoney portable settlements along the banks of the Dnieper River in order to impress the Russian Empress; the structures would be disassembled after she passed, and re-assembled farther along her route to be viewed again as another example.
Grigory Potemkin, in full Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin, (born September 13 [September 24, New Style], 1739, Chizovo, Russia—died October 5 [October 16, New Style], 1791, near Iași [now in Romania]), Russian army officer and statesman, for two years Empress Catherine the Great’s lover and for 17 years the most powerful man in the empire. An able administrator, licentious, extravagant, loyal, generous, and magnanimous, he was the subject of many anecdotes.
Educated at the University of Moscow, Potemkin entered the Horse Guards in 1755. He helped bring Catherine to power as Empress (Царица) and was given a small estate. He shone in the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–74 and became Catherine’s lover in 1774. Made commander in chief and governor-general of “New Russia” (southern Ukraine), he remained friendly with her, and his influence was unshaken despite Catherine’s taking subsequent lovers.
Potemkin was deeply interested in the question of Russia’s southern boundaries and the fate of the Turkish empire. In 1776 he sketched the plan for the conquest of Crimea, which was subsequently realized. He was also busy with the so-called Greek project, which aimed at restoring the Byzantine Empire under one of Catherine’s grandsons. In many of the Balkan lands he had well-informed agents.
After he became Field Marshal, in 1784, he introduced many reforms into the army and built a fleet in the Black Sea, which served well in Catherine’s second Russo-Turkish War (1787–91). The arsenal of Kherson, begun in 1778, the harbour of Sevastopol, built in 1784, and the new fleet of 15 ships of the line and 25 smaller vessels were monuments to his genius. But there was exaggeration in all his enterprises. He spared neither men, money, nor himself in attempting to carry out a gigantic scheme for the colonisation of the Ukrainian steppe, but he never calculated the cost, and most of the plan had to be abandoned when but half accomplished. Even so, Catherine’s tour of the south in 1787 was a triumph for Potemkin, for he disguised all the weak points of his administration—hence the apocryphal tale of his erecting artificial villages to be seen by the empress in passing. (“Potemkin village” came to denote any pretentious facade designed to cover up a shabby or undesirable condition.) Joseph II of Austria had already made him a prince of the Holy Roman Empire (1776); Catherine made him prince of Tauris in 1783.
When the second Turkish War began, the founder of New Russia acted as commander in chief. But the army was ill-equipped and unprepared. Potemkin, in a fit of depression, would have resigned but for the steady encouragement of the empress. Only after A.V. Suvorov had valiantly defended Kinburn did he take heart again and besiege and capture Ochakov and Bendery. In 1790 he conducted the military operations on the Dniester River and held his court at Iași with more than Asiatic pomp. In 1791 he returned to St. Petersburg, where, along with his friend Alexander Bezborodko, he made vain efforts to overthrow Catherine’s newest and last favourite, Platon Zubov. The empress grew impatient and compelled him in 1791 to return to Iași to conduct the peace negotiations as chief Russian plenipotentiary. He died while on his way to Nikolayev (now Mykolayiv, Ukraine).
This is the chappie in question:
Here’s a video about the great (and controversial) man:
#BasedTucker is based:
The Male Brain has lots of stuff to keep us busy today – and he kept himself quite busy assembling it all, believe me. We start with a rather interesting video from Mister Sweet about Generation Zyklon and their rather… odd sense of humour:
Unfortunately, we’re still doomed.
Academy of Ideas provides a simple, powerful explanation of how you can enslave the world through a very straightforward lie:
Reason explains what a libertoonian James Bond might look like – apparently it involves quite a lot of bacon, which is actually highly sensible to me:
This “honest ad” from Cracked with respect to cryptocurrency is quite timely, given that I literally just finished a 3-day workshop on fintechs and crypto:
The Babylon Bee continues its impeccable record as America’s most reliable news source in producing this excellent video about the The Woke Zone:
Apparently there is some new Netherflix series called The Squid Game, which is supposed to be a really big freakin’ deal – so the Screen Junkies guys made an Honest Trailer about it:
Dawn Pine says it’s pretty accurate – he watched it with his kids. Personally, I don’t have the first clue, since I don’t bother keeping up with anything even remotely modern on TV. But if that’s your thing, go for it.
I don’t follow very many Instagram accounts, but the handful that I do follow sometimes send me links from Russians, who have a very particular sense of humour that is quite refreshing if you happen to live in the thoroughly politicised West. The title of this video essentially says, “If Netflix would have filmed Harry Potter“, and honestly, I think they’re absolutely spot-on:
Oh yeah, I probably should have issued an “EYE-BLEACH” warning before you clicked on that, right?
Oops. Soz mate.
Mark Dice explains how a staple of American television died over time:
Dave from Blue Collar Logic examines the latest polling data that confirms what we all know by now – Red and Blue America absolutely HATE each other:
Bill Whittle and his friends are greatly amused by the rather transparent attempts by Rotten Tomatoes to hide the negative reviews surrounding the new movie about Dr. Fraudci:
Paul Ramsey really doesn’t like Katie Corrupt, and with good reason:
PJW dumps on the Olberschmuck’s unhinged ranting about the unvaxxed:
The lovely and charming Dr. Sam Bailey did a long interview about the Coof Scamdemic with a real scientist – not one of the midwit morons that I excoriated earlier:
Again, Odysee embeds don’t always work that well, so if you can’t see it, here is the YOOTOOBZ version.
Lord Razor of the Fist Clan can, once again, say, “F**K YOU I WAS RIGHT!!!” about Stupidman:
At this point, the only way that DC Comics can destroy its core audience faster, is by lining them all up and MACHINE-GUNNING them to death.
The Apostate Prophet and his buddy The Dizzle are doing their level best to annoy as many Izzlamists as possible, and evidently they are succeeding beyond anyone’s wildest expectations:
Dr. Jay Smith from PfanderFilms concludes his series on the numismatic history that demolishes the Standard Islamic Narrative with his French pipe-smoking friend, Odon Lafontaine:
Al-Fadi from CIRA International and Dr. Jay Smith explain that Mecca could not possibly have been the origin point for Islam:
Dr. Frank Turek from Cross Examined has no patience for the silly old saw that “socialism actually works, it’s just never been done right before”:
China Uncensored looks at the other major flashpoint in the Indo-Pacific region concerning the CCP:
America Uncovered looks at the headlines that really matter:
Jared Taylor from American Renaissance points out that refusing to hold Blacks responsible for their own violence and savagery hasn’t exactly worked out very well:
Terrence Popp puts on his sober hat for a bit to explain what could go wrong, and right, when (not if) uncivil war finally breaks out in the USA:
Midnight’s Edge examines the likely box-office performance of the latest instalment in the Halloween franchise:
Overlord Dicktor Van Doomcock reports on some pretty horrific developments emerging about Indy 5:
The solution to this problem is REALLY simple:
DON’T WATCH THE NEXT INDY MOVIE.
The franchise dropped out of the sky and splattered its brains all over the sidewalk in Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. That was a TERRIBLE movie. It did have a FEW good points, but mostly, it was just a complete shit sandwich. Harrison Ford hates the character. Queen Karen Kennedy does too. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is a hugely overrated hack whose woke wankery apparently had to be HEAVILY edited out of No Time to Die in order to make it a less retarded film.
So we know, beyond any shadow of doubt, that the next Indy film is going to be awful. Let us therefore simply dump it out of our minds and let Queen Karen’s supposed vengeance upon the fans, bomb at the box office.
The Drinker breaks down one of the more odd horror flicks released in recent times:
Your “Science is F***ING WEIRD” moment of the week consists of a genuinely hilarious own-goal by the High Priests of Scientism:
The biggest mystery concerning the history of our universe is what happened before the big bang. Where did our universe come from? Nearly a century ago, Albert Einstein searched for steady-state alternatives to the big bang model because a beginning in time was not philosophically satisfying in his mind.
Now there are a variety of conjectures in the scientific literature for our cosmic origins, including the ideas that our universe emerged from a vacuum fluctuation, or that it is cyclic with repeated periods of contraction and expansion, or that it was selected by the anthropic principle out of the string theory landscape of the multiverse—where, as the MIT cosmologist Alan Guth says “everything that can happen will happen … an infinite number of times,” or that it emerged out of the collapse of matter in the interior of a black hole.
A less explored possibility is that our universe was created in the laboratory of an advanced technological civilization. Since our universe has a flat geometry with a zero net energy, an advanced civilization could have developed a technology that created a baby universe out of nothing through quantum tunneling.
This possible origin story unifies the religious notion of a creator with the secular notion of quantum gravity. We do not possess a predictive theory that combines the two pillars of modern physics: quantum mechanics and gravity. But a more advanced civilization might have accomplished this feat and mastered the technology of creating baby universes. If that happened, then not only could it account for the origin of our universe but it would also suggest that a universe like our own—which in this picture hosts an advanced technological civilization that gives birth to a new flat universe—is like a biological system that maintains the longevity of its genetic material through multiple generations.
You do see what these boffins went and did, right? This Avi Loeb chap essentially tries to get around the immense problems of Godless paradigm of the Universe, by… positing that the Universe was created by a highly advanced alien civilisation as a sort of vast experiment.
In other words, even the world’s top atheist astrophysicists and scientists are, very reluctantly, coming around to the idea that the Universe had a beginning, and therefore a beginner.
It will be hysterically funny to see their reactions when His Hugeness decides to show Himself at the end of days and point out that He was right and they were, of course, wrong all along.
Your long read of the week is from Dawn Pine consists of an attempt to explain where all of the massive global supply chain shortages are coming from:
No doubt you’ve heard how the world’s supply chain is being stressed like never before, resulting in shortages and delays in everything from semiconductors, to cars, sneakers, exercise equipment, and Rolexes. Initially this was because factories in Asia (for example) had to close for weeks or even months because workers were sick with the coronavirus. That was true and still is the case in Vietnam, for instance.
Now the pain point has shifted to ships. What we are witnessing is a massive, unprecedented traffic jam of humankind’s largest sea vessels that is at the very core of the conundrum.
“I don’t think anyone’s ever seen anything like this in their careers, anyone who’s alive,” says a board member of a large shipping company whose family has been in the business for decades. “Containergeddon,” is what Steve Ferreira of shipping consultancy Ocean Audit calls it, according to Reuters.
How bad is this? How did it happen? What does this mean going forward? How will this impact the U.S. economy? And how and when does it get resolved?
Let’s start at the very beginning, (as Maria von Trapp might say). First understand that 90% of the world’s global trade is shipped by sea, with 70% in containers. Over the past two decades, a number of trends have shaped the business.
First, when it comes to the United States, we have been increasing our outsourcing and reliance on imported goods. Example: In January 1985 (as far back as data went), we imported $293 million of goods from China (and had a positive trade balance). Flash forward to today, in August of this year, our imports from China totaled nearly $43 billion. That’s up 146-fold in 36 years. Our imports from Asia across the board are up. China is the No. 1 exporting nation to the U.S., but Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam are also on the top 10 list.
Second, companies and consumers increasingly count on just-in-time inventory systems to order goods. That makes for lower inventories, which reduces costs for U.S. companies and allows consumers unprecedented immediate gratification from a global cornucopia of goods. Example: If Pottery Barn needs 50 couches from China, the company orders it, and two weeks later or three weeks later, the couches are on the West Coast of the United States.
Third, the shipping business over the past decade has not been very profitable — ”a fricking nightmare” my source called it — until now (see below), which meant there was little investment in new ships. Meanwhile in the U.S., railroads have been cutting costs and reducing headcount. This on that last point from an AP story:
“More than 22% of the jobs at railroads Union Pacific, CSX and Norfolk Southern have been eliminated since 2017, when CSX implemented a cost-cutting system called Precision Scheduled Railroading that most other U.S. railroads later copied. BNSF, [owned by Berkshire Hathaway] the largest U.S. railroad and the only one that hasn’t expressly adopted that model, has still made staff cuts to improve efficiency and remain competitive.”
Linkage is good for you:
- The Chinese do tend to be blowhards when it comes to their military capabilities, and their trumpeting about some sort of quantum-phased radar array that can detect the F-22 and F-35 strikes me as quite a lot of hot air;
- The Clownipornians clearly have their priorities straight, because their legislature just banned gender-specific toy aisles in stores – honestly, just build a wall around the entire damn state and be done with it, already;
- Over in Chiraq, the Chicago Art Museum just fired all of its volunteers because apparently they’re not “diverse” enough, or something equally stupid;
- Russian ex-President (and ex-Prime Minister) Dmitri Medvedev has some extremely harsh words for the Jewish comedian in charge of Ukraine with respect to whom “Ze” owes allegiance;
- Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the (deepest) water, a giant squid shows up to photobomb an underwater expedition – yes, they are real, and incredible;
- The Russkies just can’t catch a break – now the lying scum among the Limey whorenalists (some redundancies there) have accused them of stealing their Coofvax formula from the Oxford/AstraZeneca team;
- The whorenalists in question really should have done their damn homework before making such an idiotic accusation – otherwise, they might have avoided having to retract their own idiotic story;
- One of PommieBastardLande’s most senior Anglican bishops has gone over to the Catholics – I applaud and admire his refusal to give in to woke wankery as the rest of his “church” did, but the Catholics honestly aren’t doing much better;
- Marine Le Pen is saying all of the right things with respect to tearing down wind turbines – I of course thoroughly dislike the Frogs, and the feeling is mutual, but I have to admit, she talks an awful lot of good sense;
- The Z Man examines the futility of democracy, and I think he’s got rather a good point – “democracy” is essentially nothing more than a safety valve allowing the people the illusion that their view matters;
- Pat “Mr. Paleoconservative” Buchanan rails against the global 15% minimum corporate tax, correctly noting that this is nothing less than another step along the road to a global government;
And some more from Dawn Pine:
- The Frog media do their level best to elicit sympathy for the Pore & Stervin’ African “refugees” being dumped in the desert by the Tunisians – sorry, got nothin’ for them, and LOTS of respect to the Tunisians for securing their own borders;
- Sometimes, even during the wokest and stupidest of times, logic still prevails – as it did recently, when (if I understood this correctly) the IDF banned the use of gender-neutral language, because it doesn’t actually conform to Hebrew;
- A lot of waitresses bitch (correctly) about horrible customers, but sometimes, we customers have a right to complain too – and it might not hurt to be nicer to us, especially if one of us happens to be a policeman and arrests you for shitty service;
- And here’s your “We Are Doomed” moment of the week – there’s a chap somewhere in the middle of a love rectangle with his wife, his mother-in-law, AND his sister-in-law… honestly, the Sodom-and-Gomorrah treatment can’t happen fast enough…;
- Gents, I’m gonna make this really simple for you – if you plan to pop The Question to your woman, KEEP THE DAMN DOG ON A LEASH, or else he might decide to park his breakfast right when you’re proposing;
- You know shit’s gone WAY meta when the actor who played Superman on TV says that the writers behind the Superman comics are getting all woketard by insisting that Stupidman(‘s son, technically) is bisexual;
- The Bablyon Bee continues to predict the news with chilling accuracy with respect to the upcoming season of The Squid Game, featuring a Fraudci-bot;
The Neo-Tsar is quite amused by American attempts to catch up to his country’s capabilities with hypersonic weaponry:
History lessons of the week:
HALO Infinite competitive play system settings have been revealed:
And HALO: MCC just got another major update (oh, wonderful… yet another 20GB update to download and run…):
And our favourite lunatic, Mint Blitz, has done a very thorough review of HI‘s latest flight:
But that’s not as much fun as watching him borking the physics engine:
Wazzocks gonna wazzock:
In case you’re wondering – “swaffelen” is, in fact, a Dutch word, and it really does mean what Jezza said it meant.
Kitchen Nightmares with the Angry Scot:
Comedy hour:
Pics, guns, girls, starting with some memes related to today’s theme from our good friend Dawn Pine:
This is the same Catherine the Great, by the way, that supposedly had sex with a horse (she categorically did not) and came to power in the first place by overthrowing her husband. Potemkin had a strong stomach, really.
Onward – with the knowledge that the “Let’s Go Brandon!” thing just refuses to die:
For my friends in the Red States who don’t know quite where to aim when the shooting starts – that map will be very helpful to you.
Headlines of the week indicate that Floriduh Man has gone full sausage-smuggler, and WILL NOT be taken alive:
Floriduh. Enough said.
Oh, but we’re not done yet:
The hilarious and/or horrifying thing is that I can actually imagine that happening.
Your “Leavin’ On A Jet Plane” moment of the week:
Your “Put That In Your Pipe and Smoke It” moment of the week:
Your “Whale Farts” moment of the week:
This one needs no craptioning:
Your… uh… y’know what, just read this:
Yeah. Clownipornia. What did you expect?
This pair of headlines tells you everything about the times we live in:
Your “Great Balls of Fire” moment of the week:
This next one had me laughing like a drain:
And speaking of the world’s most overrated band:
This next one is the dick move to end all dick moves:
If I find one of those stupid eco-boxes, I am going to do exactly what Jezza likes to do to shitty old cars – I’ll drop a piano, caravan, or skip on it.
Your aminules are adorkable moment of the week:
And also your animals are absolute DICKS moment of the week, to balance things out:
Trash pandas – complete pests in the USA, cute little buggers in Russia. Just goes to show how different cultures look at things.
Gym beast props this week go to Julius Maddox:
Wise Uncle Chael the American Gangster has absolutely no patience left for the excuses made by Jon Jones for his own conduct:
Jesus loves knockouts:
Related – some wag by the name of Mojahed Fudailat animated the manner in which Tyson “The Gypsy King” Fury absolutely beat the SHIT out of Deontay “The Bronze Bomber” Wilder:
All jokes aside, Wilder took a COLOSSAL BEATING in that fight. I’m shocked he was able to stay on his feet for as long as he did. Fury took everything he had to throw, including several punches that would have floored ANYONE else, and shrugged them off.
Fury is a genuinely incredible fighter, and I don’t say that about too many boxers. He has very high fight IQ – you can see it when you watch him move and when you see how he drained Wilder’s energy and kept him at bay. He takes intelligent, measured risks – and sometimes he miscalculates, like he did in the 4th round of that trilogy fight. But overall, his skills and fight IQ are first-rate.
Shufflin’ keeps things groovin’
#EnterTheMetalWorld
OK, finally, after much toil and trouble, here we are – the Instathot to get the week started, who will hopefully put a bit of bubble in your morning tea. Her name is Ivana Knoll, age 28, born in Frankfurt, Germany, but actually Croatian by blood and hailing from Zagreb. She apparently became famous through her work as a pole and belly dancer (which isn’t surprising when you look at her), and apparently switched over to modelling a few years ago after finishing as a finalist in the Miss Croatia 2016 contest. (I have absolutely no clue what that means.)
Personally I think she’s a bit of a butterface, but it’s not really my call, is it? I report, you decide.
All right, lads, wrap it up and get your buts back to work. Ain’t nobody payin’ you to sit around and stare at pretty girls – unless you work in PR0N, and if you do, you’re probably looking at the wrong website.
1 Comment
RE Science of the Week segment:
This is a 30 minute documentary by a group out of LA called Quantum Gravity Research. I don’t know enough physics to pretend to actually understand their mathematical pretenses, but I did enjoy it enough to watch it 4 times over the past 3 years.
https://youtu.be/w0ztlIAYTCU
First: It’s a quality piece of art and film that tastefully presents complex concepts in effective condensed formats.
Second: They take an ax to the regular academy of intellect, shredding Taleb’s Intellectual Yet Idiot class.
Third: They describe with near perfection the Colossians 1:17 description of Jesus, “And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
Fourth: At the last 10% they evacuate the God construct and flee into feigned ignorance because of course, they couldn’t be describing the divine in whom we all live and have life.
Fifth: Paul knew these types to well, 1 Corinthians ch3, 18Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. 19For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” 20and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.”
The miniature pumpkins meme is tremendously funny.