Random News and Notes 7 December

Today is a Date that will live in Infamy. It is the 84th anniversary of the perfidious Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The attack began at 7:48 a.m. Hawaiian time (6:18 p.m. GMT) when the first of Admiral Chūichi Nagumo’s Kido Butai strike aircraft released their weapons. By the time the attack was over there were : 

• 4 battleships sunk,
• 4 battleships damaged
• 1 ex-battleship sunk
• 1 harbor tug sunk
• 3 light cruisers damaged
• 3 destroyers damaged
• 3 other ships damaged
• 188 aircraft destroyed
• 159 aircraft damaged
• 2,008 sailors killed
• 109 Marines killed
• 218 soldiers killed
• 68 civilians killed
• 1,178 total wounded

All for the loss of 5 midget subs, 29 aircraft destroyed and another 74 damaged, and 124 deaths. Too bad it would be the beginning of the end for the Japs. As Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto told the Japanese high command “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve,”. Yamamoto believed Japan could not win a war against the US. He was right. He would be killed by that sleeping giant less than two years after Pearl. A flight of USAF P-38s jumped the transport he was flying in and sent it to the bottom of the ocean near Bougainville.

Your editor could have sworn that he wrote an in-depth piece on the attack, but it is not to be found in the site archives. It must have been at the other place. I did write this piece that discusses the industrial effects of the attack.

On to the News.

The EU is attempting to fine X and Elon Musk $140 million for violations of the Digital Services Act, a garbage piece of EU legislation that allows the boffins in Brussels to censor the internet. To say it hasn’t gone over well in the US is an understatement. Several high level Admin officials have weighed in including VP Vance and SecState Rubio.

There is a slightly amusing part. One of the reasons behind the fine are so-called deceptive practices. Well, the EU pulled a doozy of a deceptive practice.

. . .have an equal voice on our platform. However, it seems you believe that the rules should not apply to your account.
Your ad account has been terminated.

The ad account in question had not been used since 2021 according to Bier, the head of product for X/Twitter. The video is not a video but a link, and according to X that can only be posted as an ad. Bier says that this is the first time they have seen this kind of behavior from their ad platform users and the exploit has been patched.

There were high hopes when the new Pope was installed. Bergoglio was a dumpster fire, so there was no way Leo XIV could be worse right? Well, it seems that Leo could be worse. He was recently asked about the fear of islam in european countries.

“I think one of the great lessons that Lebanon can teach to the world is precisely showing a land where Islam, Christianity are both present and are respected and that there is a possibility to live together, to be friends, “ the Pontiff said.

What? In 1975 Lebanon was a Christian country. Ok, so they were a majority Maronite and not Catholic but they were Christian. Since then – and 15 years of vicious civil war – Lebanon is a Muslim country. Like just about everywhere else, Islam spread in Lebanon via fire and sword. So much for Papal infallibility.

A 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit Yakutat Alaska yesterday.

Yakutat is a small – ~650 residents – village on the coast of Alaska in the northern end of the Panhandle, roughly between Valdez and Juneau.

Today we wish a Baseball Hall of Famer. Johnny Bench is 78 today.