Rain Gryphon

Okay, I just saw something I'm unable to account for. I was outside getting something from the trunk of the grey car. I stopped to look out over the south field towards the neighbor's place, about a half mile down the road (they're lit up for Easter), and in my field I saw four, possibly five, extremely faint parallel lines of blue light, each one a different length, but none of them over two feet long, or under one. They were maybe eight inches apart, maybe a bit more, and seemed to be lying on or just above the ground. I had to look for a bit to be sure that I was really seeing them. I walked closer to see what it was, and they faded away. I went back to my original position, thinking that maybe I was seeing some sort of reflection, but didn't see them anymore from there either. So...

Some sort of chemical reaction? Something related to the fertilizers used? The orientation was the same as the corn rows from '22 (it was fallow this past year).

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Ollie Bearman's six points from Saudi Arabia means that Ferrari are only four points behind Red Bull! I'd forgotten that.

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BBC is already busy "Debunking the False Moscow Attack Claims". That was quick. There needs to be a great deal less knee-jerk "debunking", and a great deal more information gathering, IMHO. News services aren't what they used to be.

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I've taken to sleeping in my collar. It's a blue nylon one with a horse and cowboy pattern on it, so old it's way, way soft. I've got a chrome-plated heart-shaped tag that says "Hen" (one of Christopher's nicknames for me). I find wearing it very comforting. I've been way nervous of late, and I don't know why. I've been taking hydroxyzine (generic Atarax). I'm assured that it's neither addictive nor habit-forming (it's been on the market since 1956, established as very safe), so it's not an reaction to taking that every day.

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Forza!

Everything seemed to happen all at once, at the end of the week:

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They apparently caught the scoundrel (and his girlfriend) that lit all of those barns on fire. Barn fires were an ongoing plague here, all spring and summer. There were cows and goats in some of those barns as well.

There seems to be no real motive to this apart from sheer psychopathy. He even made a kind of family outing of it, encouraging his little kid to light one of the fires. So far, they're only talking about Elkhart County (neighboring county to the north), but it was spread out over several adjoining counties. I suspect the rest of us will get him when Elkhart Co. finishes running him through the mill.

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Jussie Smollet's trial is concluded. Next: the tribulations!

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Assange too seems to finally be well and truly caught in the Toils of Justice!

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Al Unser Sr. has died. He was one of the Presences in automobile racing my entire life. He deserves his own post, but I did want to note it here as well.

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What a horrible disaster in Kentucky! They're using the term 'ground zero' for Mayfield, which, for once, seems to be no hyperbole. Brandenburg, KY, had pretty much that 'swept' look in 1974.

The candle factory is nightmarish. Instead of the debris being sprayed across the countryside, it's all in one big heap, with cars on top, and huge gobbets of congealed wax all through it. Hot wax won't be a festive holiday smell for these people in future.

My default mental image for 'candle factory' had been a couple mouldy old hippies in a shed. That will be different in future as well.

While Jeff Bezos isn't one of my favourite people, it is utterly unfair, I think, to blame the man for carrying on with his party while his warehouse got destroyed. He's not omniscient.

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Verstappen ruined a set of mediums by locking up whilst making an utterly pointless (so far as I can tell) hot lap in P2. He still wins the pole, but will be starting on softs.

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The little blue house a few miles up the road caught fire. Saturday morning, just after I was done watching qualifying, the pumper, the tanker, and the support truck went blasting up the road, followed by the sundry firemen in their cars. Unlike the barns, this seems to be an accident.

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Blackburn beat Bournemouth, and pretty convincingly. They're still only fourth in the standings, but looking promising.

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And so, Verstappen is Champion! I'm glad to see him win. It has been an absolute chaotic mess of a season, and the final race fit right in. Hamilton's supporters are upset that the rules weren't followed, and of course they're correct. But, the rules have been applied with great inconsistency all season, including in the first lap of this race, and I think Hamilton has benefitted as much or more than Verstappen. All things taken together, I'm unimpressed by F1's new management.

It's disappointing that the lapped cars weren't cleared for Sainz, as I think he'd have had a chance too. Still, Forza! Third is acceptable, considering the season.

I really, really love the ADNOC logo (a Falcon!). Also, the trophies look like birds. BBC reports that Bottas got a basket of Moomin-themed stuff for one of his perks as well.

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It may not be fully deserved, but it is what it is. Forza!

UK seems to be bringing the garment industry home.

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The UAE launched a Mars orbiter earlier today. To their credit, they hired American consultants to supervise building it, and stipulated that it had to do useful science, and not just be a prestige project. It's going to collect long-term weather data in an equatorial orbit.

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Our new Mars rover will be following in a few weeks. It's got a wide-field colour camera, and a helicopter sub-probe! AND... It has a laser that can vapourize rocks! We can finally invade Mars in proper style, with the raygun disintegrating stuff as we roll slowly along. I feel deeply satisfied.

Oddly, they're using a piece of a Martian meteorite as an optical calibration target. I think that's more for coolness than for any actual advantage.

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Hong Kong seems to be a writeoff. That's sad. It seemed such a good bet that Chinese desire for an expanding economy would lead them to preserve Hong Kong's freedoms, and that those would spread throughout China. That's obviously failed. What's left, I suppose, is to evacuate as many people as possible, and continue isolating China economically, although that's as much retribution for coronavirus as anything.

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Excellent F1 race from the Hungaroring this morning. Hamilton just drove away, and lapped most of the field. Ferrari shot themselves in the foot, repeatedly, with a series of bad guesses as to the weather and tires. It was like the 1980s. Verstappen put in the standout performance of the day, though. Wrecked his car on the outlap, and his team rebuilt the front end in 25 minutes before the race. He passed a slew of people on the first lap, pitted early for hard tires, and just rode along to finish second. Whatever else may be said of him, he's undoubtedly brave to push that hard on a car that'd just had an emergency rebuild of the suspension.

Hamilton did the end of race pit stop for soft tires, and made it work. He got the extra point for fast lap.

I regret not having watched Trump's stirring speech at Mount Rushmore. It was one for the ages.

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WHO changes its story yet again.

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Amazing amounts of fireworks visible this Fourth of July, and much of it mortars. I was using one and three-quarter inch bore, but many of the farms around were obviously using much larger mortars, judging by the height and the sheer amounts of fire and sparkly stuff in the bursts. I can see where a lot of the $1200 TrumpBux went:)

I could see most of the Mentone display to my south, of course, and bits of what I think were Etna Green's display far off in the north. Additionally, to the Southeast, pretty close by and plainly visible, was what appeared to be a professional display that rivalled the town's. I have no idea who that might have been.

There's something deeply satisfying about the solid *BOOM* that a mortar gives, and then standing below, watching the fuse of the spinning shell as it rises, and finally bursts with a report that you can actually feel, before smouldering bits of cardboard come raining down.

I had a box of these little things called "flashers", that were new to me. They came packed into an assortment of fountains, or I'd have never bought 'em. They looked pretty unpromising - little cardboard tubs, almost like bottlecaps, filled with some mixture, and a fuse sticking out the top. Well... The thing just about blinded me. It was some sort of pyro mixture with chunks of magnesium in it, and like a dumbass, I stared directly at it from a few feet away. I had a huge afterimage in my vision for the longest time, bit it's okay now.

The firework I miss is an old-fashioned type of fountain called a "Vesuvius Cone". It basically just shoots out big clouds of orange sparks. It's nothing too dramatic by modern standards, but I always enjoyed them. I don't think they even make them anymore.

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Ferrari put in a pretty dismal showing at the Austrian GP, despite LeClerc's second place. Mercedes, McLaren, and even Racing Point had the advantage over them. LeClerc got his second more through the failures of his rivals than anything, although he kept pressing as hard as he was able, and kept himself in a position to profit. The trophies were in the shape of the Österreichring. Bottas had to study his for a bit before he figured out how to set it down :) They're at the same track next weekend, it appears.

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Lots of blown tires at Indianapolis. A pretty good race overall, but the lack of testing and practice showed. That's a hard track on tires to begin with. Kevin Harvick won, after Hamlin popped his right front tire and went into the wall with seven laps to go. I very much doubt that Harvick was going to catch him otherwise.

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Suddenly, I'm getting an extremely unwelcome "trending searches" popup on the Google website, with no apparent way to turn it off.

Cubs're at .632. Best in the National League, and they're on their way to play the Reds and then the lowly Nationals. I'm enjoying it while it lasts :)

Cubs were up 2-1 tonight, and the announcer was talking about how in their last 16 visits to Wrigley the Brewers had allowed more than three runs only one time, and right that instant - BOOM! Bryant knocked one out of the park to make it 4-1.

They surprised me by having a five minute or so presentation where they recognized all of the Venezuelan players, and then talked about how awful conditions are there, and how in the clubhouse before the game everyone was on their phone, trying to get any news at all of their families (phone and internet service is as ruined as the rest of the country), and how people are hearing news of their families digging through garbage for something to eat, despite the money that the players have in the bank. This was done with prepared graphics to show how awful the situation was as well, so was obviously planned. My MAGA hat is off to ESPN for behaving responsibly. That's very rare in the media anymore.

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Spanish GP. The disappointment was upon me. First off, Mercedes have an excellent team, and Hamilton was absolutely dominant today. I don't think Ferrari could have taken him, even if they hadn't screwed up their race management. And screw it up they did. That was absolutely awful. It looked like the 1980s all over again. Twice they delayed, for several laps, waving the faster teammate around the slower. They inexplicably made Vettel stay out on bad tires, losing 1.5 seconds a lap, while he was begging to come in and change. They had something wrong with either the left rear jack or gun when they finally let Vettel stop, and then, they still didn't have it fixed when LeClerc came in. They looked like a gang of clowns.

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Finally the best sport of all! Politics! I saw my first electioneering stand Friday. A guy had a stand set up by the road selling Trump stuff. I had almost no cash at the time, but I'm sure he'll be there again. I think it's the same guy that was there most weekends in 2016.