Troubled bridge over waters

First ... Microdave's analysis:

Re "The Black Swan Event"

I spent some time researching the systems on the MV Dali last night. Wiki tells us that it has a single main (propulsion) engine, a Two Stroke MAN B&W S90ME, coupled to a fixed-pitch propeller. For manoeuvring in ports, it has a single 3,000 kW (4,000 hp) bow thruster. Electricity is generated onboard by two 3,840 kW (5,150 hp) and two 4,400 kW (5,900 hp) auxiliary diesel generators. So there is plenty of redundancy in the electrical side of things. I then found (and downloaded) a 353 page installation and operating manual for the S90ME. It's for a slightly later version, so there may be some detail differences, but the main features should be the same. Here's a section of text from the Engine Control System section:

The ME system has a high level of redundancy. 
It has been a requirement to its design that no 
single failure related to the system may cause the 
engine to stop."

Being a modern "Common Rail" design, it has duplicate control computers, which run in parallel, so if one fails the other instantly takes over. They each have separate AC to 24v DC power supplies with battery back up. Each cylinder has its own control module which operates the fuel injector, exhaust valve & air starting valve. These valves all need a high pressure oil supply to work, and that comes from multiple electric pumps, and (standard) crankshaft driven pumps, which will keep the engine running alone above idle speed. All this lot, and multiple control positions, run on two separate computer networks.

It strikes me that the only "Accidental" way the main engine would stop is IF the engine driven pumps were not specified during construction, and then electric power was lost. 

But if a crew member (or anyone able to gain access during a stop over) planted malware in the system, then potentially just about everything on the ship could be remotely controlled. This could include the generators, their synchronisation & switching systems and possibly even the bow thruster. Just this sort of scenario is now being reported in the world of cars & trucks, but has been shown to be possible even WITHOUT direct access, via Bluetooth, Wifi or Cellular communications.

I have to assume the rudder is moved hydraulically, and that's going to need electric pumps, so won't have been controllable during the blackout. Even once power was restored it would take time to move from one extreme to the other. It's also a limitation of such vessels that to go into reverse means completely stopping the main engine, and re-starting it in the opposite direction - no gearbox is typically fitted on such large engines. This can (potentially) take in the order of minutes to accomplish, so wouldn't have helped in this case, even if they DID have control.

Try this too:

Plenty more at a site called NOWP.

Holding Companies To Ransom…

Staff at the UK’s national institute for artificial intelligence and data science have expressed “serious concerns” about the organisation’s approach to diversity after it appointed four men to senior roles. A letter addressed to the leadership of the Alan Turing Institute (ATI) said the appointments showed a “‘continuing trend of limited diversity within the institute’s senior scientific leadership”.

“Our intention is not to undermine the professional achievements of these esteemed colleagues and that we’re looking forward to working together with them. Rather, our aim is to highlight a broader issue within our institute’s approach to diversity and inclusivity, particularly in scientific leadership roles, with a specific eye towards gender diversity and inclusivity,” said the letter.

So, just how 'unrepresentative (as if that mattered) is the technology industry? 

One in four senior tech employees in the UK are women, according to the annual diversity in tech report by the Tech Talent Charter, a government-backed industry group, while 14% of senior tech role holders are ethnic minorities.

According to the 2021 census, the ethnic minority population of the UK is 18% so they aren't really doing too bad.

ATI’s chief executive said the part government-funded organisation was “committed” to increasing the presence of people from under-represented groups in AI and data science.

I have only one question: why? 

Dat ole 8817 black magic

Here’s a curious one:

There were two others as well (no screenshots on X with details).  I did a bit of cursory checking:

https://www.ukpol.co.uk/2019-general-election-results-smallest-to-largest-majorities-by-constituency/

Hmmmmm.

We Didn't See You As 'Trusted Messengers' Before Your Virtue Signalling Nonsense...

...so we aren't likely to do it after this:

Dr Sarah Benn has long been concerned about the climate crisis, diligently recycling until she was “blue in the face”. But the rise of the climate activist group Extinction Rebellion in 2019 inspired her and her husband to go further. “We thought: well, if we don’t do it then who else is going to?” While working as a GP near Birmingham, Benn became increasingly involved in direct action over the next few years, and once glued her hand to the door of the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy in protest at the government’s inaction on the climate.

*sighs* If only they spent as much time seeing patients as they do virtue signalling, we'd respect them more... 

Benn now faces a professional tribunal by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS), the disciplinary arm of the General Medical Council (GMC), to determine whether she can keep her licence to practise. She is one of three GPs who face being struck off for climate activism this year, and her case in April is the first that will be heard.

After her first four criminal convictions – two for obstructing a highway, one for stopping people engaged in a lawful activity and one for flying a drone in a restricted place – the GMC opened an investigation.

Yes, Reader, you read that right - it takes FOUR convictions to get them to come in off the golf course and take a good hard look... 

It was not until Benn was found guilty of contempt of court for breaching a civil injunction at Kingsbury oil terminal in Warwickshire as part of a Just Stop Oil campaign that she was referred for a full tribunal. Benn spent a total of 31 days in prison for this action.

And she's far from the only one: 

Dr Patrick Hart, a GP from Bristol, also has a string of convictions for climate activism, one of which resulted in a suspended prison sentence. After he rejected a formal warning from the GMC, he was told he would face a tribunal in November.

“The lawyer I spoke to said it was unusually lenient but I didn’t take it. Partly because it would have been dishonest and partly because I’m angry with them for … failing to make any meaningful statement about any of this and enthusiastically investigating people for matters of conscience and patient care,” Hart said.

Where's the 'patient care' in all this grandstanding? 

Benn has now retired and is no longer practising as a GP. But she wants the GMC to recognise the importance of her actions, and said doctors should be seen as “trusted messengers”.

Not happening.  

It's never too late

https://crimeresearch.org/2024/03/gunmen-fire-on-crowds-at-a-moscow-concert-hall/

Let's start with us, ourselves, and try to make this calm and to the point, without any panic, as panic, rabbits in headlights, trembling, is the psych reaction we must at all costs reject in ourselves ... if we want to live.

Let's look at overall numbers within any given western nation. Yes, the "westerner" still makes up the vast majority, moreso in the countryside and small towns, far fewer in the cities, e.g. Bradford, London, Chicago, NYC, SF ... leftwing places, leftwing or "world" culture.  Overall numbers.

Consider the western girl, head bashed by black girl, brain damage, now breathing. Let's consider the physical strength, the stock we're looking at respectively. Kumbaya candle vigilists, the greatest crime getting someone's pronouns wrong, the viciousness of the weak person ... en masse ... the "refugees welcome" generations.

Now consider the physical and mental stock of the invaders ... their hardness, callousness, their capacity for enduring hardship, on very little food. As was seen in the Moscovsky oblast or outer area in the NW ... it was like a knife through butter, it was lambs to the slaughter.

Part of it has been the loss of the psych war ... the MSM, "entertainment", interpersonal behaviour ... all satanised, me me me, hormonal teenage girl reaction to almost everything, from vicious attacks, lashing out,  to gluing hands to roads to total inner collapse, the entire, coordinated wellness industry.

What was it Robert Zimmerman sang? Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command. What were we like? Clambering up climbing frames, falling off, grazing our knees, riding our bikes or walking, house chores ... we were the generation during which true toughness faded, died.

The generation before ... toughened by necessity, rationing, austerity ... the war generation. Gen X? Bits of metal over the body, tatts, yet brittle as crisps inside ... feminised. Millennials? Zoomers? Teachers and evil clinics all over ... there's a Tavistock centre up the road from here for body mutilation for youth ... shhhhh, don't tell mum and the current man who services her.

Fathers? Free of any responsibility, not in the home, more generally alone, jaundiced view of female meat as receptacles. Why not? Look at female behaviour at the death knell end of feminazism ... who'd go near it?

Now look again at the invaders ... the very worst elements from those lands, hardly the brightest and best. Somalia for goodness sake! Ten mindless Orc gunmen, ten thousand sensitive human souls at a concert? Tajikistan? Whateverstan?

Now add religion to those ten Orcs, to justify their behaviour ... fanatical hatred, mission to slaughter, unless you are suddenly converting ... you heard the imam ... door to door they're going, asking are you already a deathculter ... if not, think of Oct 7 in Israel. Think of subsequently in Gaza.

Oh but that's over there, we're here, different other thing. 

Is it? River to the sea lightshow on Big Ben tower? Hamas marches every weekend?

How do we westerners react? In America ... MAGA. In Britain ... we're on X, posting pics of a Better Britain from the past ... very pretty pics to be sure, very nice people. Deep rejection of how it's all fallen away. Fear deep inside, that which cannot be expressed or you'll be arrested for far right hate crime.

No actual action ... yet.

The Church ... the God of your childhood ... it's all been in songs on the airwaves, in the music ... all gone away, not fit for purpose, cathedrals becoming mosques or leisure centres ... in a modern idiom of course ... graceless ... brutal. Govt ... the less said the better. The media? Hidden govt portal into your home, your car during its final years, the Message in every waiting room.

Rainbow pride time ... pride in perverted pleasures ... taught to children in schools and libraries ... woof woof. Sodom and Gomorrah.

How far are you just now from a Godfearing, family husband or beloved wife? The happy patter of tiny feet? Is the man the breadwinner, the wife taking care of the home economy ... at home? Why not in each case?

Why in this time of war, were there not at least armed guards, a dozen minimum, at any venue with more than a thousand people there?  A shopping centre for example? Not arresting the piano player at the airport piano but eyes on the deathculters? Any guards are trained to look away from real threats now, aren't they ... only look at the harmless as hate crims. Do you see how twisted all this is?

If the last tough generation capable of fighting these Orcs was the war generation, possibly the first half of the boomers ... now far too old to stand up to savages on slaughtering rampages or mass praying in the streets ... what hope subsequent whiny generations? They'll just sit there like the Eloi, won't they? Bewildered to the slaughter. Will Plod or the Milley army defend them? The army's over in the Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, innit?

Time to get real? What chance people will? Before it's too late?

Is it too late?1969 this song came out:

It needs roundtables, watchful eyes ...

... and reasonably open minds to possibilities, plus archiving what has already been fairly well established.

Political jigsaws are best completed by the collaborative effort of a few, each with his/her own angle, his/her own pet theory ... using a roundtable approach or brainstorming, with a genuine desire to know that which they currently do not.

It's essential that certain groundrules apply in that room ... egos be left at the door upon entering, the contributions perhaps forthright but nevertheless civil. At the end of the session, all can just gaze at what's on the table and the truth is probably somewhere in amongst all that.

What you do not need is diametrically adversarial voices in there ... for example, a Woke devotee or two in the same room as the antiWoke is not going to work. A proHamas Candace in the same room as a Jewish Shapiro is not going to produce anything but a clash.

Those at OoL certainly have diverse ideas on whom the ultimate bete noire is but short of "final proof", there's much else which does become apparent if it's allowed to.

The truth can come out of anywhere ... look at this one for example:

That was at Roobee's place and I added:

If a person such as an old Witanagemot colleague posts a "whoever could it be" tweet, listing all sorts of possibilities, it's obvious he's not been watching, which Roobee was. When his whole focus is independence for England ... fine, ok, no argument beyond saying it just increases the sum total of politicians paid from the public purse and all the wrong ones preselected again ... it does mean though he's not watching the bigger picture.

I can't get the whole picture myself either, because of my own set of betes noires ... but a roundtable with respected, not mocked contributions might just uncover some interesting connections ... and that's what it needs.

And always, some have gone into it in far greater detail than others. That's just the nature of things.

Another mind or two at work:

https://therealslog.com/2024/03/23/coming-crime-against-crimea-or-what-constrains-the-unprincipled/

Then The Civil Service Should Pay

The science secretary, Michelle Donelan, received government advice before she tweeted a letter in which she accused an academic of supporting Hamas, Downing Street has said. No 10 refused to say what advice officials had given her and whether she actually followed it, but insisted she had “acted in line with established precedent”.

Lame response - find out! Signed, a bill payer. 

Kate Sang, a professor at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, sued Donelan for libel after the minister published a letter to UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) in October urging it to cut links with her and another academic, Dr Kamna Patel of University College London. Donelan expressed her “disgust and outrage” at their appointment to an expert advisory group to Research England on equality, diversity and inclusion. However, in a statement posted to X on Tuesday, Donelan admitted she was wrong and had misunderstood the social media posts. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) later said it had paid £15,000 to settle the case without admitting liability, out of public funds.

Take it out of the civil service budget. She cleared it with them.  

On Thursday evening it was reported that Donelan’s letter was cleared by her department’s legal team. Politico said civil servants had flagged concerns during the drafting of the letter – to which numerous people, including top officials, contributed – but that the legal team had decided the position was solid.

Not that that stops Labour idiots grandstanding: 

The shadow leader of the Commons, Lucy Powell, asked whether Donelan had followed “appropriate advice” that was given to her, or had gone against it. “Because if [she went against it], then surely she should personally pay the costs,” Powell told MPs.

The person responsible for clearing it should pay. Not me and you, eh, Reader? 

Just who are the traitors causing this to happen?

This 👇🏻

Goodbye the west we once knew.

Not So Much A ‘Radical Flank’, Chris…

...as urban terrorists who are unhinged about global warning nonsense. Just the sort of people you want knowing your address.

Packham, 62, defended the right of environmental activists to target the homes of MPs, as long as their action was “peaceful and non-violent”.

Because that always happens, right, Chris? 

“I think that we need a portfolio of protests, basically, because we need a radical flank and Just Stop Oil are seen by many as that radical flank,” he told Times Radio on Monday.“They are the people who in some people’s minds go a step too far. And that might be, you know, standing outside an MP’s house. But the fact is that they are motivated, as I am, by a manifest fear for the health of our future.

“The science tells us we have to act. These people are frightened for my future, for your future, for the future of any children they might have. They need to draw attention to this issue.”

By destroying public art and preventing the emergency services reaching people in need? Well, I suppose it makes as much sense as urging people to buy their eggs from Cambodia rather than Britain... 

Packham added that Just Stop Oil “want a rapid just energy transition away from fossil fuels to a healthy, renewable energy system and they need to get that message across, and they’re desperate to do so. So I would support a breadth of protest.”

Which is something they don't appear to have. So, can we see you forgoing your cosy BBC sinecure and glueing your hand to the pavement in future? 

“That doesn’t mean that you and I need to go and stand outside MPs houses. I’m taking a legal approach, a perfectly democratic one, which is available to me as a citizen of the UK. But yes, we’re on the same sheet.”

Let's hope you end up in the same cell too then. 

Football, Dylan, and other lunacies

 

As a young man, I did consider pushing on and going to achieve a University education, but sometimes circumstances overrule plans; so instead went into an Apprenticeship (in the days when that term really meant something) in a mixed factory complex; attended Technical College on a day-release programme to bolster and gain both experience and knowledge. I sometimes wondered what my life would have been like if I had pushed on to a University Degree, but looking back is never going to change things. I chose a British Merchant Navy  life, and then I realised exactly how much more I had to learn; because on a ship, all problems electrical come straight to the Electrical Engineer: and you fixed them, because there is no-one else. I don’t regret my choice of life, because otherwise I would not have met the love of my life, we married after I had laid siege to her: we had three kids, a good life, marred only by a mental illness which gripped my love. I lost her after 53 years of marriage; lost her to an NHS hospital which simply did not care; and she was left to die, alone and un-comforted.

But the bitterness eases with time, and life does go on regardless; along with all the foolishness which has come to stand as ‘Just another Lunacy’ to those of us who shake their heads in silent disbelief at the sheer stupidity of many if not most of the ‘Woke’ biblical philosophies which are thrown at us almost every day. I was listening to the BBC Today programme this morning, and a slot came where Bob Dylan’s life and early years was being discussed, and I literally stopped in my tracks at hearing that there was a American University Degree Course in Studying Bob Dylan’s works, music and lyrics: now I always thought that, at my ripe old age, I had heard everything: but hearing lectures about Bob Dylan? 

But worse was to follow, because further along in the Today Sports schedule, was a piece about how Nottingham Forest F.C. had been deducted some League points because of financial irregular actions deemed to be outside the norm. The club was said to be appealing against the deduction because it would place them in the Relegation area. Now this must be fascinating to those unfortunates whose religion is Football; but the rest of us? The true lunacy was to follow, as the man asked to comment upon Nottingham’s travails was announced as a Senior Lecturer in Football Finance at Liverpool University. 

I rest my case