The Week That Was - February 19th
Another missed week here, but I’m back! Seriously I am this time! I have some stories here to share about interesting things I’ve come across, and stuff to look at.
That Time the Hell’s Angels Tried To Buy a Nuclear Bunker
You may think that I’m joking here, but after falling down a rabbit hole some of a new creator I found, his latest video caught my eye, and it was titled “Did a Biker Gang Try to Buy a Canadian Nuclear Bunker”. It was a fascinating watch and it followed up on an old story he was told about a biker gang trying to buy one of the numerous Diefenbunker’s that were built in Canada during the cold war.
In particular, this bunker was in Alberta, a bit south of Red Deer, and had been decommissioned a few years prior (in 1994) and sold to private owners (1995), who were now looking at selling it again, this time in 1997. The notorious biker gang at that time was looking at moving westwards, and it thought that a Diefenbunker would make the perfect place to set up shop.
The video by Bobby Broccoli is an interesting one, as he takes you through his journey to confirm the story — which indeed he did and managed to talk with the man who sold them back in the day. The Hell’s Angels interest led the Canadian Government to get involved, and buy the bunker back, and in 2001 they demolished that Diefenbunker.
Robot Patrol Dogs
It might sound like something out of the recently released Horizon Forbidden West but I have to tell you that it doesn’t appear to be. In the United States, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has announced that they have been working with Ghost Robotics to develop a robot dog to help patrol the US/Mexico border.
While still in development, these robodogs would have cameras to allow people to see what is going on and video tape it, as well as potentially special sensors to identify things like drugs. If people are lost in the desert around the border, the robopups could help get aide and alerting people of the problems.
Thanks to Axios for putting this on my radar.
When a House Needs Armour!
You may have heard that Scotland is wet, and while it’s not as wet as my hometown of Prince Rupert, it is pretty wet indeed, which can be hard on homes. Especially homes that were designed by cutting edge architects (Charles Rennie Mackintosh in this case) who may not have known everything we do now back in the late 19th century.
So what do you do if you have an architecturally famous house, held in trust, that is being damaged by the weather and needing significant renovations? Well you start the renovations, but you need to do something to stop all the rain waterlogging it. But, you can’t just build a concrete box — removing all weather would be just as damaging to the structure.
So we present The Box — a chainmail umbrella and armour set for the Hill House in Glasgow.
The top blocks the rain, while the finely handknit chainmail — yes all hand knit — blocks most of the rain coming in other directions. Getting it out of the weather should allow the teams time to work on a variety of issues within the house and restore it. Meanwhile though they aren’t blocking off access entirely. Instead, they used the erection of The Box, as a way to set up walkways, and and perches to see the house from other perspectives then you could previously.
Its really cool, and you can listen to Tom Scott speak a bit more about it below
What I’m Playing
More Pokemon Legends: Areceus for me mostly over the past week — I’ve been slowly making progress with it. While I have some quibbles wit hteh game, it is a pretty good game that is rich in what it does for the series as a whole. With some work and polish on this formula,, the next game could be a masterpiece.
What I’m Watching
I watched the finale of Peacemaker this morning, and overall I have to say that the series was absolutely great. They managed to nail the tone of the show perfectly, have some great arcs for characters and do some really smart writing — even being smart with how they did the dumb writing which can be challenging.
What I’m Reading
I’ve been continuing to re-reread Codex Alera and see them through a bit of a different light. One thing I’m seeing here on this re-read is the inspiration that Butcher took from Roman history, to help flavour and create resonance with the story with the Roman era. Having been looking into Roman History more of late, this definitely has stood out more and is quite interesting to see.
