Your Bag of Nothing for Tuesday, January 28, 2025

  • Surprisingly, the dealership is still working on my Chevy Bolt, and I’m still driving that excellent Alpha Romero sports cart they loaned me. I’m getting attached to it, which scares me, but I certainly don’t like paying for premium gas.
  • I’m really into AI, so news that the Chinese created a version called Deepseek for cheaper and was the number one downloaded app interested me. I’m surprised so many Americans are willing to download it and enter their private information in it. Granted, I’m not thrilled knowing OpenAI has a record of everything I’ve used it for, but I’d rather they have my data than a communist country.
  • I think Philly’s strategy against Kansas City is to keep their offense off the field as much as possible. That means establishing a strong run game, and they have the running back to do it.
  • I was surprised to learn that not only is Henry Kissinger buried at Arlington National Cemetary, but he requested a “monument” in his memory be erected to mark the site where he is buried. Geeze, talk about audacious. His will directed his executors to “pay all amounts necessary” to erect the tribute per “then-applicable regulations.” His estate was worth over $80 million at the time of his death.
  • Amanda Knox liked one of my comments on Bluesky yesterday.
  • Big thumbs up for the updated CBS Evening News. It’s not as scripted as a traditional broadcast and emphasizes the anchors engaging with the reporters.
  • Here are a few more interesting tidbits about Japan’s formal surrender on the deck of the USS Missouri:
    • See that flag hanging on the left? It has 31 stars. Why was it there? It flew over Commodore Perry’s ship in that exact location in 1853–54 when he led the U.S. Navy’s Far East Squadron into Tokyo Bay to force the opening of Japan’s ports to foreign trade. He was also a distant MacArthur relative, which was why MacArthur requested it to be there. A replica of this historic flag can be seen today on the Surrender Deck of the Battleship Missouri Memorial in Pearl Harbor.
    • The U.S. flag flown was just a regular flag, nothing special about it, though there are rumors it was the same flag that flew over the White  House the day Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. However, MacArthur took it to Tokyo and flew it over his headquarters there.
    • Since Five-Star Admiral Chester W. Nimitz was on the ship, a blue flag with five white-pointed stars in a circle flew. Five Star General MacArthur also wanted his flag flown, basically the same, but red, also flying but demanded it be flown at the same height, not below. Sailors had to weld an additional flagpole to make this happen.
    • Japan’s foreign minister, the guy in front with the top hat, had a wooden leg. When sailors had a rehearsal the day before, the stand-in for him used a wooden mop handle.
    • The British sent a table for the signing, but the Americans didn’t want to use it, and it wasn’t big enough anyway. So they got a table from the officers’ mess and overlaid it with a green felt cloth the ship’s officers used for playing cards.
  • I had no idea they looked like this underwater with their body in a vertical position.

    So this is what they look underwater…

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    — Nature’s masterpiece (@nature-view.bsky.social) January 24, 2025 at 11:07 PM

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