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Those tulips are red for a reason. Photo by Earl Wilcox on Unsplash
Tastes Like Chicken. The Dutch, to the extent I think of them at all, I usually associate with tulips, windmills, bicycles, dikes, canals, getting overrun by Germany, and conquering Britain on the sly in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
But cannibalism?
Apparently the Dutch have an underappreciated taste for human flesh when their tempers flare.
That time the Dutch ate their prime minister
I’ll warn you up front — this is a gruesome story. Skip the gory details if you’ve got a weak stomach. And maybe don’t read this right after lunch.
In 1672, the Netherlands (back then known as the Dutch Republic) was caught up in a war with England, France and the two German cities Cologne and Münster. This year would enter the Dutch history books as the Rampjaar (Disaster Year), which marked the end of the glorious Dutch Golden Age.
The Rampjaar even has its own slogan: “het volk was redeloos, de regering radeloos, en het land reddeloos.” In English: the people were irrational, the government helpless and the country beyond salvation.
Boy, I sure wouldn’t want to be the guy in charge when everything was going to hell in a handbasket. I wonder what poor sap got stuck with that mess?
The unlucky Johan de Witt was the Prime Minister at the time.
Spoiler alert: this does not end well for him. The article title probably gave that away.
Read the article for the political background and the various machinations, but I’ll skip ahead here to the main event.
Poor Johan represented one faction, but most of the Dutch people apparently wanted William of Orange to be in charge. There were a couple of assassination attempts and Johan de Witt resigned. His brother Cornelis de Witt, “a highly ranked marine officer and governor of Dordrecht”, was thrown in prison and tortured, then sentenced to exile.
That’s when things went completely off the rails.
Johan went to the prison to help his brother to prepare for the trip. As they both departed, they got captured by a militant mob, which shot both of them, and then left them to the crowds.
The crowds did what crowds do best: lose all sense or sanity. According to some reports, the two brothers were stripped naked, mutilated, and had their livers removed and eaten. “C’est la vie, c’est la guerre,” as the French say.
This article gives an even more detailed and grisly description of the violent dismemberments and devourings if you’re interested: That One Time the Dutch People Ate Their Prime Minister.
Again, proceed at your own risk.
Note to self: Don’t make the Dutch mad.
Shine a light. Almost all of the world’s population will (technically) experience daylight at the same time tomorrow. 99% of Humans Will Experience Daylight at the Same Time on Friday, but There's a Catch
Every year around now, reports start to circulate that 99 percent of Earthlings will experience daylight at the same time, specifically at 4:15 a.m. PT.
This year Timeanddate.com decided to fact check this claim and found it to be "technically true" with the caveat that at least three percent of the world's population might not be able to really perceive the limited amount of late-night or early-morning photons crashing into their eyeballs.
…We call it daylight when the sun is above the horizon, but there are three phases of twilight (civil, nautical and astronomical) where the sun isn't directly shining on the surface but we can still make out its light illuminating the atmosphere. The dimmest twilight phase is astronomical twilight, when the sun is between 12 and 18 degrees below the horizon (more than 18 degrees is considered nighttime.)
So at 4:15 a.m. PDT on Friday, it's true that pretty much all populated land masses except for Pacific islands (sorry, Hawaii) and the Australia/Oceania region will experience some form of daylight or twilight.
The catch with the claim of near-universal simultaneous daylight for all humans is that millions of people will be under astronomical twilight, so named because the remaining sunlight is so faint that really only astronomers are likely to notice. Unless you're in a location with virtually no light pollution, you're likely to think it's already as dark as it's going to get.
"So, 256.8 million people, about 3% of the world's population, are so far behind the curve that no sunlight is visible," writes Timeanddate.com editor Konstantin Bikos. "Moreover, many people in the slightly brighter nautical twilight zone will fail to notice any daylight. Especially in urban areas."
I’m sure this is a metaphor for something.
Laser Jets! Even though I am still not allowed to have a laser of my own after the Unfortunate Laser Pointer Incident1 my lifelong fascination with lasers is unabated. And having grown up on Star Wars2 and Battlestar Galactica3 I am thrilled to see we are finally putting lasers on jet fighters. We’re one step closer to X-Wings, people!
First Laser Weapon For A Fighter Delivered To The Air Force
The U.S. Air Force has received a high-energy laser weapon that can be carried by aircraft in podded form. The news came today when Lockheed Martin disclosed that at least one of the weapons, which it developed, has been delivered to the Air Force for test work. This effort falls within the wider framework of still-evolving plans to have laser-armed fighter jets that can engage enemy missiles, and possibly other targets too.
I just hope the laser weapon has a cool name.
A report today from Breaking Defense confirmed that Lockheed Martin delivered its LANCE high-energy laser weapon to the Air Force in February this year. In this context, LANCE stands for “Laser Advancements for Next-generation Compact Environments.”
That will do.
If successful in its defensive mission, it’s feasible that LANCE could go on to inform the development of more offensive-oriented laser weapons, including ones that could engage enemy aircraft and drones at longer ranges than would be the case when targeting a fast-approaching anti-aircraft missile, whether launched from the ground or from an enemy aircraft.
We’ll see your hypersonic missiles and raise you Lasers On Jets! Read all the details at the linked article.
Laser jet in action! I’m pretty sure they Photoshopped the laser beam in. But close enough. Source: Lockheed Martin
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Never point your laser pointer at a mirror.
The original trilogy. Nothing else counts.
The original 1978 show. The one where the Vipers had laser weapons. Not that overwrought laserless dreck on SyFy.