Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

THE CRUEL SEA (1953) is the film adaptation of Nicholas Monsarrat's 1951 novel about Royal Navy sailors fighting in the Battle of the Atlantic.



A runaway success, the novel had already sold over 4 million copies in just 2 years when Ealing Studios decided to make the film version. Filmed aboard an actual Royal Navy corvette, THE CRUEL SEA tells the story of the sailors aboard the HMS Compass Rose: the bonds that form between them, the daily pressures they face and their epic struggle to overcome the enemy. Nominated for a BAFTA for Best British Film, stars Jack Hawkins, Sir Donald Sinden and Stanley Clarke, and is a gripping insight into the lives of unsung heroes at sea during the war, and the agonizing decisions and incredible peril they faced on a daily basis.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joUDAD3GB3g


March 4, 1969: General Minoru Genda (16 August 1904 – 15 August 1989) made a controversial appearance at a U.S. Naval Institute event. Genda, who had played a major role in planning the attack on Pearl Harbor, stated that the Japanese would have dropped the atomic bomb on the U.S. if they had it in 1945. In 1961, while visiting London for five days as Chief of Staff of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force, he commented he had no regrets about the attack on Pearl Harbor except that "We should not have attacked just once--we should have attacked again and again." (NYT 4 September 1961)


In case you are wondering: the rank of General was his post-war rank as Chief of Staff of the Japanese Air Self Defence Force. Simply put: During the war he was Navy, and after the war he was Air Force.

The Service’s White Elephant
By J. M. Caiella
March 2024

Perhaps the least known of the U.S. Navy’s Civil War–era ironclads was a highly innovative, technologically advanced, high-freeboard seagoing ship built solely to battle the Royal Navy. But she was never accepted into the U.S. Navy. Excitement over her construction lasted about one year, after which the supposed British threat evaporated and focus could be maintained on producing relatively inexpensive, quickly built riverine and light-draft monitors to combat the genuine (Confederate) threat. Through it all, the Dunderberg—Swedish for “thunder mountain”—suffered an extended gestation that resulted in her being obsolete at birth.

In early 1862, just a year into the Civil War, the United States feared two external threats: European—specifically, British—recognition of Confederate independence, and military intervention in support of that recognition. The Union blockade of Southern ports that shut off England’s supply of cotton for its textile industry, along with incidents such as the Trent Affair, brought the issues to the fore. War with England had to be avoided because, as Attorney General Edward Bates stated, “for the plain reason that now we are unable to meet it.”

At the time, the U.S. Navy was ill-prepared to fight the Royal Navy. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles believed that seagoing ironclads were necessary for protection; the Navy had but one, and she, the New Ironsides, was still under construction. The press, particularly The New York Times, strongly advocated large seagoing ironclads. New York shipbuilder William Henry Webb answered the call, sending the Navy Department a model of a “Steam Battery” in April 1862. The design was for a wooden-hull, casemate ironclad of 7,000 tons.

After discussions, primarily with Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus V. Fox, Webb signed a contract on 3 July to build the warship for $1.25 million. The contract was extremely general with virtually no specifications. She was to be 350 feet long, with a beam of “at least” 68 feet, and a draft of no more than 20 feet, 6 inches. She was to carry two turrets atop her casemate, each armed with two XV-inch Dahlgren guns behind 11 inches of armor. Additional armament included eight XI-inch Dahlgrens within the casemate. She was to make 15 knots “in smooth water.” Completion was due within 15 months. Webb named her the Dunderberg.


....

[Lots of design changes, problems, delays]

On 1 May, the ship was sold to France along with the veteran Civil War monitor Onondaga. Webb received $2.5 million from France for his ship and reimbursed the federal government $1.1 million. His profit, however, was significantly less once his added expenditures were deducted.

On 19 July, the Dunderberg set steam and sail for France; renamed the Rochambeau, her service life was brief. After nearly three years of trials and modifications, she was commissioned in the late summer of 1870, decommissioned and stricken on 15 April 1872, and scrapped in 1874. Reportedly, the French had “endless trouble” with the ship.

At the time of her construction, the Dunderberg was innovative. Elements of her construction, unusual and considered unimportant in her time, are today regarded as essential to any seagoing ship. Included among them are double bottoms, collision bulkheads, watertight transverse and longitudinal bulkheads extending from keel to spar deck, fully enclosed water-tight engine and boiler rooms, and air and water pumps independent of the main engines. Nevertheless, she remained the Navy’s great white elephant.

The Service’s White Elephant

The biggest bubble in history! Nvidia is now worth more than all of these companies combined:

1. AT&T
2. Boeing
3. Coca-Cola
4. Disney
5. FedEx
6. General Motors
7. IBM
8. McDonald’s
9. Nike
10. Starbucks
11. UPS
12. Walmart

Nvidia valuation as of March 2024: $2.053 Trillion!

Nvidia was founded in 1993 during a breakfast meeting at Denny’s. Jensen Huang, the lead founder used to work the graveyard shift as a waiter at Denny’s.



Half of Nvidia employees earned over $228,000 salary in 2023.
Today, Nvidia makes more money in four hours than Denny’s makes in a year.


It's always nice to see the NYPD is using its $5.4 billion budget to focus on important things, like arresting Final Fantasy cosplayers, And Community Notes is innovating new techniques in bootlicking, sigh...




"If you want to tell the truth, you write a novel, if you really want to lie, you write a biography..." - Kirk Douglas

Kirk Douglas & Michael Parkinson - BBC 1978 (quote @1:35)




The one and only...







UFO Twitter Disclosure Vortex...




Artifact from Sci-Fi 80s movies...


Plenty of Youtube videos showing you how these mysterious comm devices operated.


A short story about phones with cameras in 2001: