Movie review: The Big Short (2015)

I have been meaning to watch this movie ever since it came out. It did not disappoint. I was so good I watched it twice over the weekend. It is an amazing movie, Well acted and well directed, Making a movie a bout massive financial fraud, with a ton of numbers is really hard, and they did it well. My real impression from the movie is to increase my doubt about everything we are being told today. I am not a Steve Carell fan, but his performance in this movie is nothing short of amazing. Big props to the writers who made this numbers story understandable. My biggest take away from the movie is a massive doubt about everything we think we currently know about what is going on in 2021. Watch this movie.

Operation Archery

This commando operation in Norway is one of my areas of particular interest.  This is a good YouTube on it.

Fascinating

Thanks to Twitter, I learned a piece of history today.  I had never heard of this unit or their fight against the Fugo balloons. Amazing.

Led Zeppelin Boeing 720

A cool article on a piece of both aviation and rock history.

Operation Mutton

WWII is endlessly fascinating.  I learn something I didn’t know all the time.  The latest was Operation Mutton. HP Harrows in combat as anti-bomber aircraft.  Wild.

Another “story like this”

I linked previously to an interesting story of Polish air combat in WWII.  Here is another one of those endlessly fascinating WWII stories.  A submarine that killed an airplane with a torpedo. 

I love WWII history

I find WWII history endlessly fascinating.  The video regarding the Japanese attack on Madagascar is just one small example.

Civilian pilots at Pearl Harbor

Anyone who has seen Tora! Tora! Tora! knows that there was a civilian aircraft flying at the time of the Peral Harbor attack. What I didn’t know, at least until I talked to Jim Bates recently, was that there were a number of civilian aircraft aloft, and not all survived.  A really good article here.

A new King of the Britons

I think this little girl is now the new king of the Britons.

The 1942 raid on Oslo

Listeners to the podcast know that I am engaged in a group build of the Tamiya Mosquito.  Because I have a great interest in the invasion of Norway in 1940, and the subsequent occupation, I decided to build one of the aircraft that participated in the 1942 raid on the gestapo headquarters in Oslo.  These four aircraft were from 105 Squadron and were the first use of the new Mosquito that were acknowledged in the British press.

The raid was not exactly a success.  However it was the first of many of these precision strikes including the Arhaus raid and the Shellhaus raid.  In fact, the Oslo raid was repeated in late 1944.

I am a fan of Stan Stokes prints, and here is a print of the raid.

More on the raid here.

This is the building today.

More here.