Endpoint and starting point of the circular route.

Stark gefährdete Spezies: Ungarische Wiesenotter

Unterordnung: Schlangen (Serpentes)

Familie: Vipern (Viperidae)

Gattung: Echte Ottern (Vipera)

Art: Wiesenotter (Vipera ursinii)

Unterart: Ungarische Wiesenotter

Wissenschaftlicher Name: Vipera ursinii rakosiensis

Part of My Memory-Photograph-Album.

DMC-G2 - P1330913 9.4.2012

Fayetteville, the seat of Cumberland County North Carolina is most widely known as the home of the US Army’s Fort Bragg. The city itself is larger than expected with a population of around 210,000 but has a reputation as kind of a tough town. It is so rough that soldiers stationed on post are advised to avoid downtown “Fayette-nam” as it’s derisively referenced. But to the visiting railfan willing to take a look around the city has a surprisingly lot to offer. And while I wouldn’t call it a particularly inviting place, I in no way felt ill at ease or unsafe photographing in town.

 

By far the dominant railroad in town is CSXT with their south end subdivision, the former Atlantic Coast Line main, seeing the passage of dozens of daily freight trains and four daily Amtrak trains on an 11 mile stretch of double track through the city.

The city is also served by the Norfolk Southern that arrives tri-weekly on a 43 mile branch from Fuquay-Varina that was an ORIGINAL pre-1974 Norfolk Southern.

 

And those roads both interchange with the famous and always independent shortline Aberdeen and Rockfish that calls Fayetteville the eastern endpoint of its 47 mile route.

 

CSXT also operates two branchlines out of the city, both of which are remaining stubs of the one time Cape Fear & Yadkin Valley Railroad dating from the 1880s. That Atlantic Coast Line came to own the Sanford to Wilmington Route by 1900 and it would remain as a thru route into the 1970s.

 

Here is an A&R local switching some gons on the back alleys of town down Worth Street. #400 is a GP38 built new in 1968 for the road where it has worked for it’s entire life. This is the same unit seen on the string of four in the earlier image of them working the interchange yard with NS.

 

Fayetteville, North Carolina

Friday May 29, 2015.

 

You might be surprised, and a little disheartened, as I am, to look around the world in the early 21st century, and see it, well, giving up on freedom. There is America, lapsing into comic-book authoritarianism. There, China has a newly forged lifelong leader. Over there, Britain is leaving the world’s largest political union — in which neo-Nazis are again sitting in the Bundestag. There is Turkey, now a dictatorship, there is Eastern Europe, pulsing with nationalism and extremism. So. Why is the world giving up on freedom?

It’s an interesting question.

Every age has an order, and ours is a neoliberal one. Now, it’s true that nations “got richer” under neoliberalism — but that is a very broad and almost meaningless term (after all, I can break your arm, and the economy will “grow” when you go to the doctor). Don’t you think it’s interesting that neoliberals never much examine its costs? I do, so let us.

The first great cost of neoliberalism was stagnation. America is of course the bellwether example — incomes began to flatline began in the 1970s, and now they are shrinking in real terms. But in Germany and Britain, too, by about 2000, incomes had flattened. Even in oft idealized Scandinavia, wages are largely being kept afloat by reducing work hours, so there are more jobs to go around. The reason was straightforward: neoliberalism traded political rights for financial ones, so work flowed to the lowest, most inhumane bidder.

But it’s one thing for everyone’s incomes to flatline — and quite another for the rich to grow super-rich, while the average stagnates. The second great cost of neoliberalism was inequality. It wasn’t just that incomes got stuck — it was that rich grew fantastically, absurdly, grotesquely richer. That meant that a predatory economy had emerged. Growth was being siphoned off by the rich from the average — unless you believe that teacher, engineer, or doctor contributes nothing to a society’s prosperity. The rich were getting richer by doing things which made the average person poorer, not richer, too — things like financial engineering, stock market bubbles, property investment, all glorified ponzi schemes, which create less than no real lasting well being or value for anyone at all.

Now people whose incomes are not growing can hardly save very much. So apart from the German middle class — which is notoriously frugal — savings declined, too. America is the prime example — people are so unable to save that no one is able to retire very much at all anymore. The elderly are beginning to have to work at Walmart until the day they drop dead — and that will be the norm for the young. People, as a result, began to be laden down with debt — and engineering more and more cheap credit, whether through scores, bonds, cards, or loans, instead of growing incomes so people could save, became key to the survival of these troubled economies. This was the third great cost of neoliberalism — declining savings, a growing reliance on credit, which makes economies, societies, and democracies more fragile, vulnerable, and unhealthy.

What happens when societies are unable to save? Well — and this may strike you as foolish, but it is nonetheless true — they demand less social spending, so as to have more money in their pockets today. And so across rich nations, savage austerity arose. In Britain, its great institutions, like the NHS and BBC began to shrink. The EU’s levels of social investments fell. And in America, people simply stopped having affordable healthcare and education at all — they were forced to make barbaric choices, like feeding their kids versus basic medicine like insulin.

This was the third great cost of neoliberalism — social deconstruction. The great social contracts of the post-war, though many did not quite know it yet, were being ripped up by now — and their key innovations, like universal healthcare, retirement, pensions, education, began to be tossed upon the rubbish heap of history: the very lessons of the last great World War were now being forgotten, ignored, denied. And, of course, a result, social stability, safety, security, opportunity, and mobility all began to wither, dwindle, and fall.

Ironically, slashing social programs couldn’t make up for a lack of income and savings — after all, you might save 10–20% on taxes this way, but since your income is flat, the effect is temporary, giving you at most a year or two’s illusion of a “raise”. But the price endures — social contracts once ripped up thus often take generations to repair. In this way, people had made a fools’ bargain — but economists certainly did not tell them so, because in the terms of neoliberalism, social investment is something better done by private hands anyways. ”Why, this is all working out perfectly well!” thought the neoliberals — and most still do.

What happens when people realized that they were beginning to grow poorer? After all, that is what being unable to save is. Well, they begin to distrust one another. So soon enough, social bonds began to fray. In America, they imploded spectacularly — right down to the point where young people began massacring one another at school, numbing themselves with opioids. Whole regions lay in ruins, their towns and cities reduced to wrecks, as industries crumbled. People’s sense of belonging imploded — not just in those destroyed places, but fanning out across the land, as a nation’s sense of identity began to collapse. Who are we now? Is there anything that unites us? What is it that we can call our own?

Though it happened in America sooner, this implosion of social bonds soon enough hit elsewhere as well. Brexit set region against region, neighbour against neighbour, demanding isolationism. The underdeveloped part of Germany set itself against the richer part, turning hard to the right. And so on. This was the fourth great cost of neoliberalism — shattered bonds and mounting distrust, whether in the form of anger, suspicion, xenophobia, rage, or despair.

This brings us to fifth great cost of neoliberalism — authoritarianism and extremism. By now, the average person was in a truly desperate position: flat income, few savings, a broken social contract, little faith for a better future, imploded social bonds, eroded trust. His sense of dignity, fairness, belonging and safety had all been shattered like glass under a boot. To different degrees, to be sure, across classes and countries. And yet neoliberalism seemed to converge here — this was its endpoint. It didn’t seem capable of making life any better, really, for the regular person — only making it worse, endlessly, in a vicious circle of taking everything that mattered to him, whether it was the chance to have a family, or do work that mattered, or enjoy a sense of ease, stability, and peace, in the place where he had spent those long summer days as a child.

What would a person feeling all that do? What would you do — if you didn’t have your better angels to stop you? You too might turn to the nearest Trump, Farage, Le Pen, AfD. People are fragile, easily hurt things. And when they are as damaged as neoliberalism has left them, it is no great surprise that they seek precisely and exactly all they have lost — prosperity, trust, safety, and strength — in the soothing, warm arms of strongmen. Unless, of course, you think all this is a set of three mere coincidences — strongmen arising across the globe at the same time, people turning to them for the same reasons, looking for exactly what they have lost, which is what neoliberalism cannot offer them.

Let me put that another way — the way that critics of neoliberalism often put it, but I think it misses the point. There is no provision made for the “losers” under this global order. It elides the point that the “winners” are not often the best “players” — but the most cunning, ruthless, connected, or clever ones. Still, there is a point there: neoliberalism causes losses. Very real ones, very life-changing ones, and very lasting ones.

Here is the irony. The problem is deeper still. You see, neoliberalism is a strangely mechanical thing. It cannot see emotional, social, human, environmental, or cultural costs — like some kind of killer robot, it cannot see human suffering. So it simply pretends such costs do not exist. Yet all those costs are exactly what people must pay — the costs of broken societies, relationships, careers, possibilities, stress, anger, rage, depression, and so on. But because it cannot even see human suffering, neoliberals still proclaim, dumbfounded: “What is the problem? The world is getting better!!”, even as freedom goes into turbocharged reverse.

The calculus of neoliberalism’s “loser” — scratch that — let us call him neoliberalism’s victim, instead, because he is usually a pretty good and decent person, is simple. It is probably best of all to have safety, security, stability, income, wealth, trust, happiness, and freedom. But if freedom costs you safety, security, stability, income, wealth, trust, and happiness —if it is only suffering, pure, sharp, and somehow never-ending, day after day, one day the loss of a job, the next the loss of a career, the next the loss of your self-respect— then what good is it anyways? After all, freedom is a means, not an end in itself. Better to have all the things that freedom is there to help one live, than to have freedom, without any of those things.

In that, neoliberalism’s victim is a far more rational creature than the neoliberals suppose. They do not understand why he is giving up on freedom. “Damn you!”, they cry, “don’t you want to be free? Don’t you want to be a part of this world that is getting better?” The victim laughs, and salutes the strongman.

His choice is the most sensible one of all, seen through his own eyes. Neoliberalism has cost him a good life. He has paid the costs too long, of a failed global order, which has not benefitted him much at all — because it cannot see his suffering. But there is someone who can: the strongman, the fascist, singing him soothing lullabies of greatness and strength. He will be great again! Ah, at last: an end to suffering.

Some ideologies end with a scream, others with barely a whisper. Neoliberalism is ending in authoritarianism and fascism, despair and loss, anxiety and rage. Which one would you call that?

Just as America has turned away from freedom, having had to pay the soul-destroying costs of neoliberalism for too long, so too the rest of the world is following. And still, because neoliberalism is like a robot who cannot see human beings, who cannot see those costs, it wonders, baffled: “why is freedom failing?”

Umair

March 2018

 

eand.co/why-is-the-world-giving-up-on-freedom-e50a9bec5303

That's one big step for fusion energy — one giant leap for humankind.

 

Step 1: Manufacture and test record-setting 20 Tesla high-temperature superconducting magnet... ✅

 

Step 2: Assemble 18 magnets in a Tokamak ring to build the SPARC reactor with record-setting 10x energy generation.

 

Step 3 Build 10,000 ARC reactors to replace coal plants in place with the carbon-free future.

 

Step 4 Accelerate humanity's relinquishment of fossil fuels, the inevitable endpoint we'd like to engineer.

 

As investors, Maryanna and I have been cheering Commonwealth Fusion on as they achieved this major milestone over the weekend, removing the last major engineering risk factor — an insanely powerful magnet. Prior published work by the scientific community of fusion experts agrees, if they can build it, fusion will come.

 

Today's news and overview from MIT and Commonwealth Fusion.

 

“Fusion in a lot of ways is the ultimate clean energy source,” says Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research and E. A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics. “The amount of power that is available is really game-changing.” The fuel used to create fusion energy comes from water, and “the Earth is full of water — it’s an inexhaustible, carbon-free source of energy that you can deploy anywhere and at any time.”

 

And compared to their prior copper magnet: "The difference in terms of energy consumption is rather stunning. This magnet was 30 watts, so a factor of 10 million decrease in the amount of energy that was needed to provide the confining magnetic field." — Ars Technica.

 

“Its a big deal,” Andrew Holland, Chief Executive Officer of the Fusion Industry Association, told CNBC. “This is not hype, this is reality.”

 

“This magnet will change the trajectory of both fusion science and energy, and we think eventually the world’s energy landscape.”

Portra 400 & Bessa III 667.

Davaoeños Viet-Sweden Deluxe Arriving at the Endpoint!

 

Davao Metro Shuttle Corp. | 65006 | Volvo B8R | Thaco Bluesky 120S fleet by Truong Hai Auto Corporation (THACO) (Vietnam)

 

🚏Authorized Franchise Route: PITX - Davao City

 

🕚 Date Taken on July 2022

📍 Photo Shot Location @ Diosdado Macapagal Blvd. cor Panay St., Tambo, Parañaque City

️ Landmark: Near Parañaque Integrated Terminal Exchange (PITX)

photos of this series flic.kr/s/aHsjGT9m9x

all photos are from April 19, 2014 - made between 15:30 to 18:45 o´clock

  

Hamburg ( Hambourg / Hamburgo / Гамбург )

  

Hamburg - in Vorbereitung ein Kurztrip mit den älteren Ju-Jutsuka

des TuS Bloherfelde als Freizeitprogramm ( per Zug und Rad ).

 

Alles schon einmal per Rad abgefahren ( Hafencity / Speicherstadt / Landungsbrücken / Museumshafen ).

I'd say you can't get a consist like this anymore but CSX has reactivated several C40-8ws.

 

But what you can't get anymore is this shot. After years of dormancy the counterweight drawspan on this bridge in Ashepoo, SC has been removed. I noticed cranes around it a few months ago when driving on US 17 to Charleston and then in a more recent pass saw it was completely gone. The bascule lift span in Rantowles, SC received the same treatment a couple of years ago.

 

Slowly but surely these relics of bygone railroads are also disappearing.

 

This is stalwart A-line Waycross-Hamlet, NC manifest Q492, long before someone got a big bonus for adopting a CN-like train symbol scheme. The train still exists as M492 but its endpoint seems to change every few months. I believe it's Florence, SC at present.

The little lake below is Eiffel Lake and Wenkchemna Pass is beyond on the horizon.

Dam 31/03/2020 14h13

Never made a photo from this point of view of Dam. No Royal Palace of National Monument in the picture but the stately office building of the ABN AMRO on the corner of the Damrak almost in the center of the pciture.

It's not busy due to the intelligent lock down in the Netherlands to prevent spreading the corona virus.

 

Dam

Dam is a town square in Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands. Its notable buildings and frequent events make it one of the most well-known and important locations in the city and the country.

 

Dam Square lies in the historical center of Amsterdam, approximately 750 metres south of the main transportation hub, Centraal Station, at the original location of the dam in the river Amstel. It is roughly rectangular in shape, stretching about 200 metres from west to east and about 100 metres from north to south. It links the streets Damrak and Rokin, which run along the original course of the Amstel River from Centraal Station to Muntplein (Mint Square) and the Munttoren (Mint Tower). The Dam also marks the endpoint of the other well-traveled streets Nieuwendijk, Kalverstraat and Damstraat. A short distance beyond the northeast corner lies the main Red-light district: De Wallen.

 

On the west end of the square is the neoclassical Royal Palace, which served as the city hall from 1655 until its conversion to a royal residence in 1808. Beside it are the 15th-century Gothic Nieuwe Kerk (New Church) and the Madame Tussauds Amsterdam Wax Museum. The National Monument, a white stone pillar designed by J.J.P. Oud and erected in 1956 to memorialize the victims of World War II, dominates the opposite side of the square. Also overlooking the plaza are the NH Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky and the upscale department store De Bijenkorf. These various attractions have turned the Dam into a tourist zone.

 

The Dam derives its name from its original function: a dam on the Amstel River, hence also the name of the city.[1] Built in approximately 1270, the dam formed the first connection between the settlements on the sides of the river.

[ Source & More: Wikipedia - Dam (Square) ]

iss051e036140 (May 3, 2017) --- A view inside the Microgravity Sciences Glovebox where Commander Peggy Whitson works to change the media in a BioCell for the OsteoOmics experiment. Image was taken in the U.S. Destiny Laboratory. Gravitational Regulation of Osteoblast Genomics and Metabolism (OsteoOmics) aims to validate if magnetic levitation is a reasonable simulation of orbital free fall by measuring biological endpoints, such as signaling pathways and gene expression in osteoblast and osteoclast cells. Cells are exposed to a microgravity environment and ground based cells are exposed to magnetic levitation. If the validation is successful, then ground-based magnetic levitation will be an important ground-based tool to investigate the effect of gravitational force on biological systems.

New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal, the endpoint of Amtrak's City of New Orleans.

The endpoint of the short trek, Sidi Chamharouch, at 2350m. This is an old Berbers shrine that marks the saint/djinn who reportedly help cure the mentally ill to those that slaughtered an animal here.

 

Aside to this is that due to this shrine being so far away from the wave of Islam that swept the country, it has survived as a temple to this day. Not that it appears that Islam really recognises mental illness today and continues to stigmatise it.

  

ISO100 f5.6 1/180 48mm x7 LR

CAL FIRE Sikorsky S-70i Fire Hawk N483DF, 611,

c/n 704030.

 

When I photographed this helicopter in April 2021 it was numbered 903:

 

www.flickr.com/photos/ian_e_abbott/51173791872/in/photoli...

 

Sacramento McClellan Airport (MCC / KMCC), California

 

CAL FIRE S-70i Information Sheet (CAL FIRE):

34c031f8-c9fd-4018-8c5a-4159cdff6b0d-cdn-endpoint.azureed...

 

Sikorsky / Lockheed Martin FIREHAWK web site

(Manufacturer's web site):

www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/sikorsky-firehawk.html

The Retina II is equipped with a mechanical base rangefinder and an eye viewfinder that work together seamlessly. Light from the subject passes through the endpoints of the mechanical base to create two separate images. These two images, one directly viewed and the other reflected, are combined with a 45° inclined semi-transparent mirror, and the images can be read through the circular viewing window. By rotating the ring next to the lens to couple with the distance, the two image wedges overlap and coincide ¹(D. R. P.), so that the lens can focus on the subject. The picture passing through the circular viewfinder also shows the outline of the images, ideal for quickly linking the viewfinder to the distance setting. A correction lens can also be screwed into the opening of the viewing window, so that those who need to correct their vision without wearing glasses can clearly see the images of the viewfinder and rangefinder.

Optical part: yellow

Ray Path: Red

Moving parts: blue

¹(D. R. P. Deutsches Reichs Patent(German Empire Patent)

I'm really not a big fan of the seasonal Garden Lights extravaganza at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, at least not in the way that it's intended to be viewed which is at night. But I find myself nonetheless fascinated by some of the installations in daylight, in particular by the large number of slim ellipsoidal and squat spheroidal forms seen here arrayed here on the Garden's Grand Oval.

 

At night these husks serve as the housings for the colorful lights that are elements in a light show syncopated to holiday music. During the day they look more like an invading force of aliens whose faceless members are only distinguished in rank by their various heights and shapes. They strike me as something like the endpoint of the arc of Conehead evolution, calling back to that old Saturday Night Live staple.

 

Here, with no manipulation on my part I might add, you see that geometrical alien force reflected in one of the windows of the Garden's Fuqua Conservatory. The entrance of the conservatory is filled with flowering plants, mostly poinsettias. In this reflection the foreground and the background merge, creating what I think is a marvelous effect.

Dam 07/05/2020 07h46

Dam (I refuse to call it Dam Square) early in the morning.

 

Dam

Dam is a town square in Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands. Its notable buildings and frequent events make it one of the most well-known and important locations in the city and the country.

 

Dam Square lies in the historical center of Amsterdam, approximately 750 metres south of the main transportation hub, Centraal Station, at the original location of the dam in the river Amstel. It is roughly rectangular in shape, stretching about 200 metres from west to east and about 100 metres from north to south. It links the streets Damrak and Rokin, which run along the original course of the Amstel River from Centraal Station to Muntplein (Mint Square) and the Munttoren (Mint Tower). The Dam also marks the endpoint of the other well-traveled streets Nieuwendijk, Kalverstraat and Damstraat. A short distance beyond the northeast corner lies the main Red-light district: De Wallen.

 

On the west end of the square is the neoclassical Royal Palace, which served as the city hall from 1655 until its conversion to a royal residence in 1808. Beside it are the 15th-century Gothic Nieuwe Kerk (New Church) and the Madame Tussauds Amsterdam Wax Museum. The National Monument, a white stone pillar designed by J.J.P. Oud and erected in 1956 to memorialize the victims of World War II, dominates the opposite side of the square. Also overlooking the plaza are the NH Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky and the upscale department store De Bijenkorf. These various attractions have turned the Dam into a tourist zone.

 

The Dam derives its name from its original function: a dam on the Amstel River, hence also the name of the city.[1] Built in approximately 1270, the dam formed the first connection between the settlements on the sides of the river.

[ Source & More: Wikipedia - Dam (Square) ]

These are normally double-walled and buried beneath ground to conserve real estate for retail purposes, however these are above ground in an industrial setting showing what goes on beneath your feet at a service station.

 

The large white pipes extending laterally to the right are for filling by a tanker truck, normally presenting themselves at pavement level as color-coded mini manhole covers. Fuel is pressurized to 45 PSI for delivery by the red submerged turbine pumps and distributed by the orange lateral lines running left. Liquid and vapor return lines from dispensers are yellow and blue.

 

The vertical white pipes go to a vent to compensate for changes in barometric pressure. Attached are pressure-vacuum valves that prevent arbitrary breathing yet sill allow compensation if substantial pressure differences occur to preserve tank integrity. You can usually find these at the perimeter of a service station, the so-called vent stack, everything else nicely hidden.

 

In the rear are the gray electricals. The small cylindrical couplings beneath the horizontal junction box are "seal-offs", these filled with a concrete-like substance that prevents ingress of both liquid and vapor into the electricals. The entire region 18' in diameter and 3' high if proximate to exposed fuel requires this practice at endpoints.

 

To the left are dispensers robotically actuated by pneumatics to simulate and test wear and tear. Unseen is a separate building housing more whose roof is designed to blow straight up into the air, however in 60 years ongoing has maintained a perfect safety record. Such are the engineering expectations upon the industry.

Our endpoint today is just ahead along the treeline above. We are met here by some falling snow.

 

"Life begins on the other side of despair."

 

- Jean-Paul Sartre

Southern Pacific's Lakeview Local is crossing the California/Oregon state line near New Pine Creek, California in 1985. This was the only grade crossing on the line between the endpoints of Alturas, California and Lakeview, Oregon to rate a crossing gate.

Congratulations to Intel on their acquisition of Nervana. This photo is from the last board meeting at our offices; the Nervana founders — from right to left: Naveen Rao, Amir Khosrowshahi and Arjun Bansal — pondered where on the wall they may fall during M&A negotiations.

 

We are now free to share some of our perspectives on the company and its mission to accelerate the future with custom chips for deep learning.

 

I’ll share a recap of the Nervana story, from an investor’s perspective, and try to explain why machine learning is of fundamental importance to every business over time. In short, I think the application of iterative algorithms (e.g., machine learning, directed evolution, generative design) to build complex systems is the most powerful advance in engineering since the Scientific Method. Machine learning allows us to build software solutions that exceed human understanding, and shows us how AI can innervate every industry.

 

By crude analogy, Nervana is recapitulating the evolutionary history of the human brain within computing — moving from the logical constructs of the reptilian brain to the cortical constructs of the human brain, with massive arrays of distributed memory and iterative learning algorithms.

 

Not surprisingly, the founders integrated experiences in neuroscience, distributed computing, and networking — a delightful mélange for tackling cognitive computing. Ali Partovi, an advisor to Nervana, introduced us to the company.

 

We were impressed with the founding team and we had a prepared mind to share their enthusiasm for the future of deep learning. Part of that prepared mind dates back to 1989, when I started a PhD in EE focusing on how to accelerate neural networks by mapping them to parallel processing computers. Fast forward 25 years, and the nomenclature has shifted to machine learning and the deep learning subset, and I chose it as the top tech trend of 2013 at the Churchill Club VC debate (video). We were also seeing the powerful application of deep learning and directed evolution across our portfolio, from molecular design to image recognition to cancer research to autonomous driving.

 

All of these companies were deploying these simulated neural networks on traditional compute clusters. Some were realizing huge advantages by porting their code to GPUs; these specialized processors originally designed for rapid rendering of computer graphics have many more computational cores than a traditional CPU, a baby step toward a cortical architecture. I first saw them being used for cortical simulations in 2007. But by the time of Nervana’s founding in 2014, some (e.g., Microsoft’s and Google’s search teams) were exploring FPGA chips for their even finer-grained arrays of customizable logic blocks. Custom silicon that could scale beyond any of these approaches seemed like the natural next step. Here is a page from Nervana’s original business plan (Fig. 1 in comments below).

 

The march to specialized silicon, from CPU to GPU to FPGA to ASIC, had played out similarly for Bitcoin miners, with each step toward specialized silicon obsoleting the predecessors. When we spoke to Amazon, Google, Baidu, and Microsoft in our due diligence, we found a much broader application of deep learning within these companies than we could have imagined prior, from product positioning to supply chain management.

 

Machine learning is central to almost everything that Google does. And through that lens, their acquisition, and new product strategies make sense; they are not traditional product line extensions, but a process expansion of machine leaning (more on that later). They are not just playing games of Go for the fun of it. Recently, Google switched their core search algorithms to deep learning, and they used Deep Mind to cut data center cooling costs by a whopping 40%.

 

The advances in deep learning are domain independent. Google can hire and acquire talent and delight in their passionate pursuit of game playing or robotics. These efforts help Google build a better brain. The brain can learn many things. It is like a newborn human; it has the capacity to learn any of the languages of the world, but based on training exposure, it will only learn a few. Similarly, a synthetic neural network can learn many things.

 

Google can let the Brain team find cats on the Internet and play a great game of Go. The process advances they make in building a better brain (or in this case, a better learning machine) can then be turned to ad matching, a task that does not inspire the best and the brightest to come work for Google.

 

The domain independence of deep learning has profound implications on labor markets and business strategy. The locus of learning shifts from end products to the process of their creation. Artifact engineering becomes more like parenting than programming. But more on that later; back to the Nervana story.

 

Our investment thesis for the Series A revolved around some universal tenets: a great group of people pursuing a product vision unlike anything we had seen before. The semiconductor sector was not crowded with investor interest. AI was not yet on many venture firms’ sectors of interest. We also shared with the team that we could envision secondary benefits from discovering the customers. Learning about the cutting edge of deep learning applications and the startups exploring the frontiers of the unknown held a certain appeal for me. And sure enough, there were patterns in customer interest, from an early flurry in medical imaging of all kinds to a recent explosion of interest in the automotive sector after Tesla’s Autopilot feature went live. The auto industry collectively rushed to catch up.

 

Soon after we led the Series A on August 8, 2014, I found myself moderating a deep learning panel at Stanford with Nervana CEO Naveen Rao.

 

I opened with an introduction to deep learning and why it has exploded in the past four years (video primer). I ended with some common patterns in the power and inscrutability of artifacts built with iterative algorithms. We see this in biology, cellular automata, genetic programming, machine learning and neural networks.

 

There is no mathematical shortcut for the decomposition of a neural network or genetic program, no way to “reverse evolve” with the ease that we can reverse engineer the artifacts of purposeful design.

 

The beauty of compounding iterative algorithms — evolution, fractals, organic growth, art — derives from their irreducibility. (More from my Google Tech Talk and MIT Tech Review)

 

Year 1. 2015

Nervana adds remarkable engineering talent, a key strategy of the first mover. One of the engineers figures out how to rework the undocumented firmware of NVIDIA GPUs so that they run deep learning algorithms faster than off-the-shelf GPUs or anything else Facebook could find. Matt Ocko preempted the second venture round of the company, and he brought the collective learning of the Data Collective to the board.

 

Year 2. 2016 Happy 2nd Birthday Nervana!

The company is heads down on chip development. They share some technical details (flexpoint arithmetic optimized for matrix multiplies and 32GB of stacked 3D memory on chip) that gives them 55 trillion operations per second on their forthcoming chip, and multiple high-speed interconnects (as typically seen in the networking industry) for ganging a matrix of chips together into unprecedented compute fabrics. 10x made manifest. See Fig. 2 below.

 

And then Intel came knocking.

With the most advanced production fab in the world and a healthy desire to regain the mantle of leading the future of Moore’s Law, the combination was hard to resist. Intel vice president Jason Waxman told Recode that the shift to artificial intelligence could dwarf the move to cloud computing. “I firmly believe this is not only the next wave but something that will dwarf the last wave.” But we had to put on our wizard hats to negotiate with giants.

 

The deep learning and AI sector have heated up in labor markets to relatively unprecedented levels. Large companies are recently paying $6–10 million per engineer for talent acquisitions, and $4–5M per head for pre-product startups still in academia. For the Masters students in a certain Stanford lab, they averaged $500K/yr for their first job offer at graduation. We witnessed an academic turn down a million dollar signing bonus because they got a better offer.

 

Why so hot?

The deep learning techniques, while relatively easy to learn, are quite foreign to traditional engineering modalities. It takes a different mindset and a relaxation of the presumption of control. The practitioners are like magi, sequestered from the rest of a typical engineering process. The artifacts of their creation are isolated blocks of functionality defined by their interfaces. They are like blocks of magic handed to other parts of a traditional organization. (This carries over to the customers too; just about any product that you experience in the next five years that seems like magic will almost certainly be built by these algorithms).

 

And remember that these “brain builders” could join any industry. They can ply their trade in any domain. When we were building the deep learning team at Human Longevity Inc. (HLI), we hired the engineering lead from the Google’s Translate team. Franz Och pioneered Google’s better-than-human translation service not by studying linguistics, grammar, or even speaking the languages being translated. He focused on building the brain that could learn the job from countless documents already translated by humans (UN transcripts in particular). When he came to HLI, he cared about the mission, but knew nothing about cancer and the genome. The learning machines can find the complex patterns across the genome. In short, the deep learning expertise is fungible, and there are a burgeoning number of companies hiring and competing across industry lines.

 

And it is an ever-widening set of industries undergoing transformation, from automotive to agriculture, healthcare to financial services. We saw this explosion in the Nervana customer pipeline. And we see it across the DFJ portfolio, especially in our newer investments. Here are some examples:

 

• Learning chemistry and drug discovery: Here is a visualization of the search space of candidates for a treatment for Ebola; it generated the lead molecule for animal trials. Atomwise summarizes: “When we examine different neurons on the network we see something new: AtomNet has learned to recognize essential chemical groups like hydrogen bonding, aromaticity, and single-bonded carbons. Critically, no human ever taught AtomNet the building blocks of organic chemistry. AtomNet discovered them itself by studying vast quantities of target and ligand data. The patterns it independently observed are so foundational that medicinal chemists often think about them, and they are studied in academic courses. Put simply, AtomNet is teaching itself college chemistry.”

 

• Designing new microbial life for better materials: Zymergen uses machine learning to predict the combination of genetic modifications that will optimize product yield for their customers. They are amassing one of the largest data sets about microbial design and performance, which enables them to train machine learning algorithms that make search predictions with increasing precision. Genomatica had great success in pathway optimization using directed evolution, a physical variant of an iterative optimization algorithm.

 

• Discovery and change detection in satellite imagery: Planet and Mapbox. Planet is now producing so much imagery that humans can’t actually look at each picture it takes. Soon, they will image every meter of the Earth every day. From a few training examples, a convolutional neural net can find similar examples globally — like all new housing starts, all depleted reservoirs, all current deforestation, or car counts for all retail parking lots.

 

• Automated driving & robotics: Tesla, Zoox, SpaceX, Rethink Robotics, etc.

 

• Visual classification: From e-commerce to drones to security cameras and more. Imagen is using deep learning to radically improve medical image analysis, starting with radiology.

 

• Cybersecurity: When protecting endpoint computing & IOT devices from the most advanced cyberthreats, AI-powered Cylance is proving to be a far superior and adaptive approach versus older signature-based antivirus solutions.

 

• Financial risk assessment: Avant and Prosper use machine learning to improve credit verification and merge traditional and non-traditional data sources during the underwriting process.

 

• And now for something completely different: quantum computing. For a wormhole peek into the near future, our quantum computing company, D-Wave Systems, powered a 100,000,000x speedup in a demonstration benchmark for Google, a company that has used D-Wave quantum computers for over a decade now on machine learning applications.

 

So where will this take us?

Neural networks had their early success in speech recognition in the 90’s. In 2012, the deep learning variant dominated the ImageNet competitions, and visual processing can now be better done by machine than human in many domains (like pathology, radiology and other medical image classification tasks). DARPA has research programs to do better than a dog’s nose in olfaction.

 

We are starting the development of our artificial brains in the sensory cortex, much like an infant coming into the world. Even within these systems, like vision, the deep learning network starts with similar low level constructs (like edge-detection) as foundations for higher level constructs like facial forms, and ultimately, finding cats on the internet with self-taught learning.

 

But the artificial brains need not limit themselves to the human senses. With the internet of things, we are creating a sensory nervous system on the planet, with countless sensors and data collecting proliferating across the planet. All of this “big data” would be a big headache but for machine learning to find patterns in it all and make it actionable. So, not only are we transcending human intelligence with multitudes of dedicated intelligences, we are transcending our sensory perception.

 

And it need not stop there. It is precisely by these iterative algorithms that human intelligence arose from primitive antecedents. While biological evolution was slow, it provides an existence proof of the process, now vastly accelerated in the artificial domain. It shifts the debate from the realm of the possible to the likely timeline ahead.

 

Let me end with the closing chapter in Danny Hillis’ CS book The Pattern on the Stone: “We will not engineer an artificial intelligence; rather we will set up the right conditions under which an intelligence can emerge. The greatest achievement of our technology may well be creation of tools that allow us to go beyond engineering — that allow us to create more than we can understand.”

 

-----

Here is some early press:

Xconomy(most in-depth), MIT Tech Review, Re/Code, Forbes, WSJ, Fortune.

Base raw sa kuha ko, parang retro ang peg dahil sa effects, and I agreed na mukhang retro ang peg.

 

These are 230 kV towers for Benguet–Isabela line. Nakaharap pa-Benguet itong dalawang tower na ito... Noon, curious ako if saan ang endpoint nito pa-southwest, at nalaman ko na patungo pala ito sa Ambuklao Dam. Then sa north, nalaman ko na hanggang sa Magat Dam pala ang linya nito.

 

Category: Dead-end

Shape design: L6(?)

Voltage: 230 kV

Circuits: 2

Line route: Bayombong–Santiago

 

Shot Location: N1 (Maharlika Highway), Barangay Baretbet, Bagabag, Nueva Vizcaya

Date and Time Taken: May 17, 2018 (15:38H)

 

Notices:

* Please DON'T GRAB A PHOTO WITHOUT A PERMISSION. If you're going to GRAB IT, please give A CREDIT TO THE OWNER. Also, don't PRINT SCREEN my photos.

•• This photo is for tower / pylon enthusiast, and has no connection on electric company / energy agency.

Sagrada Família, Gaudi, Barcelona

 

This is a 'composite' of 100 pictures :)

 

The Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família (English: Basilica and Expiatory Church of the Holy Family; Spanish: Basílica y Templo Expiatorio de la Sagrada Familia), commonly known as the Sagrada Família (Catalan pronunciation: [səˈɣɾaðə fəˈmiɫiə]), is a large Roman Catholic church in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, designed by Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí (1852–1926). Although incomplete, the church is a UNESCO World Heritage Site,[5] and in November 2010 Pope Benedict XVI consecrated and proclaimed it a minor basilica,[6][7][8] as distinct from a cathedral which must be the seat of a bishop.

 

Though construction of Sagrada Família had commenced in 1882, Gaudí became involved in 1883,[5] taking over the project and transforming it with his architectural and engineering style—combining Gothic and curvilinear Art Nouveau forms. Gaudí devoted his last years to the project, and at the time of his death at age 73 in 1926, less than a quarter of the project was complete.[9] Sagrada Família's construction progressed slowly, as it relied on private donations and was interrupted by the Spanish Civil War—only to resume intermittent progress in the 1950s. Construction passed the midpoint in 2010 with some of the project's greatest challenges remaining[9] and an anticipated completion date of 2026—the centennial of Gaudí's death.

 

The basílica has a long history of dividing the citizens of Barcelona—over the initial possibility it might compete with Barcelona's cathedral, over Gaudí's design itself,[10] over the possibility that work after Gaudí's death disregarded his design,[10] and the recent possibility that an underground tunnel of Spain's high-speed rail link to France could disturb its stability.[11]

 

Describing Sagrada Família, art critic Rainer Zerbst said "it is probably impossible to find a church building anything like it in the entire history of art"[12] and Paul Goldberger called it "the most extraordinary personal interpretation of Gothic architecture since the Middle Ages."[13]

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Fam%C3%ADlia

 

Background[edit source]

 

The Basilica of the Sagrada Família was the inspiration of a Catalan bookseller, Josep Maria Bocabella, founder of Asociación Espiritual de Devotos de San José (Spiritual Association of Devotees of St. Joseph).[14] After a visit to the Vatican in 1872, Bocabella returned from Italy with the intention of building a church inspired by that at Loreto.[14] The crypt of the church, funded by donations, was begun 19 March 1882, on the festival of St. Joseph, to the design of the architect Francisco de Paula del Villar, whose plan was for a Gothic revival church of a standard form.[14] Antoni Gaudí began work on the project in 1883. On 18 March 1883 Villar retired from the project, and Gaudí assumed responsibility for its design, which he changed radically.[14]

 

Construction[edit source]

     

Newly constructed stonework at the Sagrada Família is clearly visible against the stained and weathered older sections.

On the subject of the extremely long construction period, Gaudí is said to have remarked: "My client is not in a hurry."[15] When Gaudí died in 1926, the basilica was between 15 and 25 percent complete.[9][16] After Gaudí's death, work continued under the direction of Domènec Sugrañes i Gras until interrupted by the Spanish Civil War in 1936. Parts of the unfinished basilica and Gaudí's models and workshop were destroyed during the war by Catalan anarchists. The present design is based on reconstructed versions of the plans that were burned in a fire as well as on modern adaptations. Since 1940 the architects Francesc Quintana, Isidre Puig Boada, Lluís Bonet i Gari and Francesc Cardoner have carried on the work. The illumination was designed by Carles Buigas. The current director and son of Lluís Bonet, Jordi Bonet i Armengol, has been introducing computers into the design and construction process since the 1980s. Mark Burry of New Zealand serves as Executive Architect and Researcher. Sculptures by J. Busquets, Etsuro Sotoo and the controversial Josep Subirachs decorate the fantastical façades.

 

The central nave vaulting was completed in 2000 and the main tasks since then have been the construction of the transept vaults and apse. As of 2006, work concentrated on the crossing and supporting structure for the main tower of Jesus Christ as well as the southern enclosure of the central nave, which will become the Glory façade.

 

Construction status[edit source]

     

Sagrada Família's roof under construction (2009)

One projection anticipates construction completion around 2026, the centennial of Gaudí's death—while the project's information leaflet estimates a completion date in 2028, accelerated by additional funding from visitors to Barcelona following the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.

 

Computer-aided design technology has been used to accelerate construction of the building, which had previously been expected to last for several hundred years, based on building techniques available in the early 20th century.[citation needed] Current technology allows stone to be shaped off-site by a CNC milling machine, whereas in the 20th century, the stone was carved by hand.[17]

 

In 2008, some renowned Catalan architects advocated a halt to construction,[18] to respect Gaudí's original designs, which, although they were not exhaustive and were partially destroyed, have been partially reconstructed in recent years.[19]

 

A 2010 exhibition, Gaudí Unseen, Completing La Sagrada Família at the German Architecture Museum, Frankfurt am Main, describes the current construction methods and future plans for the Sagrada Família.[19]

 

AVE tunnel[edit source]

 

On 26 March 2010, the Ministry of Public Works of Spain (Ministerio de Fomento) began constructing an AVE (high-speed train) tunnel beneath the centre of Barcelona, saying the project poses no risk to the church.[20][21] Project engineers and architects disagreed, saying there was no guarantee that the tunnel would not affect the stability of the building. The Board of the Sagrada Família (Patronat de la Sagrada Família) and the neighborhood association AVE pel Litoral (AVE by the Coast) had led a campaign against this route of the Tunnel Sants - La Sagrera for the AVE, without success.

 

In October 2010, the tunnel boring machine reached the church underground under the location of the building's principal façade.[20] A few months later, the tunneling machine reached its endpoint. No damage to the Sagrada Família has been reported to date.

 

Trains were scheduled to start running in December 2012, when the installation of railway tracks, overhead wires and signalling is completed. ADIF intends to embed the rails into an elastic material to dampen vibrations, according to the system Edilon.[22]

In the Middle Ages, Lübeck was endpoint of the " Old Salt Road" along which the salt was transported from the salt works at Lüneburg to the port of Lübeck and from there distributed all over the Baltic region. The importance of this Old Salt Road was at its peak from the 12th to the 16th centuries.

Hayden talked about how he and Hap had made the trail to this overlook just the year before. The trail endpoint provides an excellent view of the deep river canyon below. As I adjusted my camera for a second shot of this pair of scenic humans, Sanna, still holding the lopper that she had been using to clear the trail, gently laid her head on Hayden's shoulder.

Near endpoint

 

Bataan Transit 336

 

Company/Owner: Bataan Transit Co., Inc.

Route: Mariveles-Avenida via San Fernando, Pampanga

Area of Service: Bataan, Central Luzon (R3)

Type of Service: PUB Provincial Operation Bus

Classification: Regular Airconditioned bus

Coachbuilder: (Suzhou) Higer Bus Co., Ltd.

Model: KLQ6128LQ "U-Tour"

Chassis: LKLRFS

Engine: YC6L330-42

Transmission: M/T

Speed: 6 Forward, 1 Reverse

Suspension Type: Airsuspension

Seat Configuration: 2x2

Maximum Capacity: 53+2

Shot Location: Blumentritt Rd., Sta. Cruz, City of Manila

Date Taken: July 4, 2023

Budapest is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population of 1,752,286 over a land area of about 525 square kilometres (203 square miles). Budapest, which is both a city and county, forms the centre of the Budapest metropolitan area, which has an area of 7,626 square kilometres (2,944 square miles) and a population of 3,303,786. It is a primate city, constituting 33% of the population of Hungary.

 

The history of Budapest began when an early Celtic settlement transformed into the Roman town of Aquincum, the capital of Lower Pannonia. The Hungarians arrived in the territory in the late 9th century, but the area was pillaged by the Mongols in 1241–42. Re-established Buda became one of the centres of Renaissance humanist culture by the 15th century. The Battle of Mohács, in 1526, was followed by nearly 150 years of Ottoman rule. After the reconquest of Buda in 1686, the region entered a new age of prosperity, with Pest-Buda becoming a global city after the unification of Buda, Óbuda and Pest on 17 November 1873, with the name 'Budapest' given to the new capital. Budapest also became the co-capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a great power that dissolved in 1918, following World War I. The city was the focal point of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 and the Battle of Budapest in 1945, as well as the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

 

Budapest is a global city with strengths in commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and entertainment. Hungary's financial centre, Budapest is also the headquarters of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, the European Police College and the first foreign office of the China Investment Promotion Agency. Over 40 colleges and universities are located in Budapest, including Eötvös Loránd University, Corvinus University, Semmelweis University, University of Veterinary Medicine Budapest and the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. Opened in 1896, the city's subway system, the Budapest Metro, serves 1.27 million, while the Budapest Tram Network serves 1.08 million passengers daily.

 

The central area of Budapest along the Danube River is classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and has several notable monuments of classical architecture, including the Hungarian Parliament and the Buda Castle. The city also has around 80 geothermal springs, the largest thermal water cave system, second largest synagogue, and third largest Parliament building in the world. Budapest attracts around 12 million international tourists per year, making it a highly popular destination in Europe.

 

The previously separate towns of Buda, Óbuda, and Pest were officially unified in 1873 and given the new name Budapest. Before this, the towns together had sometimes been referred to colloquially as "Pest-Buda". Pest is used pars pro toto for the entire city in contemporary colloquial Hungarian.

 

All varieties of English pronounce the -s- as in the English word pest. The -u in Buda- is pronounced either /u/ like food (as in US: /ˈbuːdəpɛst/[50]) or /ju/ like cue (as in UK: /ˌb(j)uːdəˈpɛst, ˌbʊd-, ˈb(j)uːdəpɛst, ˈbʊd-/). In Hungarian, the -s- is pronounced /ʃ/ as in wash; in IPA: Hungarian: [ˈbudɒpɛʃt] ⓘ.

 

The origins of the names "Buda" and "Pest" are obscure. Buda was probably the name of the first constable of the fortress built on the Castle Hill in the 11th century

or a derivative of Bod or Bud, a personal name of Turkic origin, meaning 'twig'.

or a Slavic personal name, Buda, the short form of Budimír, Budivoj.

Linguistically, however, a German origin through the Slavic derivative вода (voda, water) is not possible, and there is no certainty that a Turkic word really comes from the word buta ~ buda 'branch, twig'.

 

According to a legend recorded in chronicles from the Middle Ages, "Buda" comes from the name of its founder, Bleda, brother of Hunnic ruler Attila.

 

Attila went in the city of Sicambria in Pannonia, where he killed Buda, his brother, and he threw his corpse into the Danube. For while Attila was in the west, his brother crossed the boundaries in his reign, because he named Sicambria after his own name Buda's Castle. And though King Attila forbade the Huns and the other peoples to call that city Buda's Castle, but he called it Attila's Capital, the Germans who were terrified by the prohibition named the city as Eccylburg, which means Attila Castle, however, the Hungarians did not care about the ban and call it Óbuda [Old Buda] and call it to this day.

 

— Mark of Kalt: Chronicon Pictum

The Scythians are certainly an ancient people and the strength of Scythia lies in the east, as we said above. And the first king of Scythia was Magog, son of Japhet, and his people were called Magyars [Hungarians] after their King Magog, from whose royal line the most renowned and mighty King Attila descended, who, in the 451st year of Our Lord's birth, coming down from Scythia, entered Pannonia with a mighty force and, putting the Romans to flight, took the realm and made a royal residence for himself beside the Danube above the hot springs, and he ordered all the old buildings that he found there to be restored and he built them in a circular and very strong wall that in the Hungarian language is now called Budavár [Buda Castle] and by the Germans Etzelburg [Attila Castle]

 

— Anonymus: Gesta Hungarorum

There are several theories about Pest. One states that the name derives from Roman times, since there was a local fortress (Contra-Aquincum) called by Ptolemy "Pession" ("Πέσσιον", iii.7.§ 2). Another has it that Pest originates in the Slavic word for cave, пещера, or peštera. A third cites пещ, or pešt, referencing a cave where fires burned or a limekiln.

 

The first settlement on the territory of Budapest was built by Celts before 1 AD. It was later occupied by the Romans. The Roman settlement – Aquincum – became the main city of Pannonia Inferior in 106 AD. At first it was a military settlement, and gradually the city rose around it, making it the focal point of the city's commercial life. Today this area corresponds to the Óbuda district within Budapest. The Romans constructed roads, amphitheaters, baths and houses with heated floors in this fortified military camp. The Roman city of Aquincum is the best-conserved of the Roman sites in Hungary. The archaeological site was turned into a museum with indoor and open-air sections.

 

The Magyar tribes led by Árpád, forced out of their original homeland north of Bulgaria by Tsar Simeon after the Battle of Southern Buh, settled in the territory at the end of the 9th century displacing the founding Bulgarian settlers of the towns of Buda and Pest, and a century later officially founded the Kingdom of Hungary. Research places the probable residence of the Árpáds as an early place of central power near what became Budapest. The Tatar invasion in the 13th century quickly proved it is difficult to defend a plain. King Béla IV of Hungary, therefore, ordered the construction of reinforced stone walls around the town and set his own royal palace on the top of the protecting hills of Buda. In 1361 it became the capital of Hungary.

 

The cultural role of Buda was particularly significant during the reign of King Matthias Corvinus. The Italian Renaissance had a great influence on the city. His library, the Bibliotheca Corviniana, was Europe's greatest collection of historical chronicles and philosophic and scientific works in the 15th century, and second in size only to the Vatican Library. After the foundation of the first Hungarian university in Pécs in 1367 (University of Pécs), the second one was established in Óbuda in 1395 (University of Óbuda). The first Hungarian book was printed in Buda in 1473. Buda had about 5,000 inhabitants around the year 1500.

 

The Ottomans conquered Buda in 1526, as well as in 1529, and finally occupied it in 1541.[68] The Ottoman Rule lasted for more than 150 years. The Ottoman Turks constructed many prominent bathing facilities within the city. Some of the baths that the Turks erected during their rule are still in use 500 years later, including Rudas Baths and Király Baths. By 1547 the number of Christians was down to about a thousand, and by 1647 it had fallen to only about seventy. The unoccupied western part of the country became part of the Habsburg monarchy as Royal Hungary.

 

In 1686, two years after the unsuccessful siege of Buda, a renewed campaign was started to enter Buda. This time, the Holy League's army was twice as large, containing over 74,000 men, including German, Croat, Dutch, Hungarian, English, Spanish, Czech, Italian, French, Burgundian, Danish and Swedish soldiers, along with other Europeans as volunteers, artillerymen, and officers. The Christian forces seized Buda, and in the next few years, all of the former Hungarian lands, except areas near Temesvár (Timișoara), were taken from the Turks. In the 1699 Treaty of Karlowitz, these territorial changes were officially recognized as the end of the rule of the Turks, and in 1718 the entire Kingdom of Hungary was removed from Ottoman rule.

 

The 19th century was dominated by the Hungarian struggle for independence and modernisation. The national insurrection against the Habsburgs began in the Hungarian capital in 1848 and was defeated one and a half years later, with the help of the Russian Empire. 1867 was the year of Reconciliation that brought about the birth of Austria-Hungary. This made Budapest the twin capital of a dual monarchy. It was this compromise which opened the second great phase of development in the history of Budapest, lasting until World War I. In 1849 the Chain Bridge linking Buda with Pest was opened as the first permanent bridge across the Danube and in 1873 Buda and Pest were officially merged with the third part, Óbuda (Old Buda), thus creating the new metropolis of Budapest. The dynamic Pest grew into the country's administrative, political, economic, trade and cultural hub. Ethnic Hungarians overtook Germans in the second half of the 19th century due to mass migration from the overpopulated rural Transdanubia and Great Hungarian Plain. Between 1851 and 1910 the proportion of Hungarians increased from 35.6% to 85.9%, Hungarian became the dominant language, and German was crowded out. The proportion of Jews peaked in 1900 with 23.6%. Due to the prosperity and the large Jewish community of the city at the start of the 20th century, Budapest was often called the "Jewish Mecca" or "Judapest". Budapest also became an important center for the Aromanian diaspora during the 19th century. In 1918, Austria-Hungary lost the war and collapsed; Hungary declared itself an independent republic (Republic of Hungary). In 1920 the Treaty of Trianon partitioned the country, and as a result, Hungary lost over two-thirds of its territory, and about two-thirds of its inhabitants, including 3.3 million out of 15 million ethnic Hungarians.

 

In 1944, a year before the end of World War II, Budapest was partly destroyed by British and American air raids (first attack 4 April 1944). From 24 December 1944 to 13 February 1945, the city was besieged during the Battle of Budapest. Budapest sustained major damage caused by the attacking Soviet and Romanian troops and the defending German and Hungarian troops. More than 38,000 civilians died during the conflict. All bridges were destroyed by the Germans. The stone lions that have decorated the Chain Bridge since 1852 survived the devastation of the war.

 

Between 20% and 40% of Greater Budapest's 250,000 Jewish inhabitants died through Nazi and Arrow Cross Party, during the German occupation of Hungary, from 1944 to early 1945.

 

Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz rescued tens of thousands of Jews by issuing Swiss protection papers and designating numerous buildings, including the now famous Glass House (Üvegház) at Vadász Street 29, to be Swiss protected territory. About 3,000 Hungarian Jews found refuge at the Glass House and in a neighboring building. Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg saved the lives of tens of thousands of Jews in Budapest by giving them Swedish protection papers and taking them under his consular protection. Wallenberg was abducted by the Russians on 17 January 1945 and never regained freedom. Giorgio Perlasca, an Italian citizen, saved thousands of Hungarian Jews posing as a Spanish diplomat. Some other diplomats also abandoned diplomatic protocol and rescued Jews. There are two monuments for Wallenberg, one for Carl Lutz and one for Giorgio Perlasca in Budapest.

 

Following the capture of Hungary from Nazi Germany by the Red Army, Soviet military occupation ensued, which ended only in 1991. The Soviets exerted significant influence on Hungarian political affairs. In 1949, Hungary was declared a communist People's Republic (People's Republic of Hungary). The new Communist government considered the buildings like the Buda Castle symbols of the former regime, and during the 1950s the palace was gutted and all the interiors were destroyed (also see Stalin era). On 23 October 1956 citizens held a large peaceful demonstration in Budapest demanding democratic reform. The demonstrators went to the Budapest radio station and demanded to publish their demands. The regime ordered troops to shoot into the crowd. Hungarian soldiers gave rifles to the demonstrators who were now able to capture the building. This initiated the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. The demonstrators demanded to appoint Imre Nagy to be Prime Minister of Hungary. To their surprise, the central committee of the "Hungarian Working People's Party" did so that same evening. This uprising was an anti-Soviet revolt that lasted from 23 October until 11 November. After Nagy had declared that Hungary was to leave the Warsaw Pact and become neutral, Soviet tanks and troops entered the country to crush the revolt. Fighting continued until mid November, leaving more than 3000 dead. A monument was erected at the fiftieth anniversary of the revolt in 2006, at the edge of the City Park. Its shape is a wedge with a 56 angle degree made in rusted iron that gradually becomes shiny, ending in an intersection to symbolize Hungarian forces that temporarily eradicated the Communist leadership.

 

From the 1960s to the late 1980s Hungary was often satirically referred to as "the happiest barrack" within the Eastern bloc, and much of the wartime damage to the city was finally repaired. Work on Erzsébet Bridge, the last to be rebuilt, was finished in 1964. In the early 1970s, Budapest Metro's east–west M2 line was first opened, followed by the M3 line in 1976. In 1987, Buda Castle and the banks of the Danube were included in the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. Andrássy Avenue (including the Millennium Underground Railway, Hősök tere, and Városliget) was added to the UNESCO list in 2002. In the 1980s, the city's population reached 2.1 million. In recent times a significant decrease in population occurred mainly due to a massive movement to the neighbouring agglomeration in Pest county, i.e., suburbanisation.

 

In the last decades of the 20th century the political changes of 1989–90 (Fall of the Iron Curtain) concealed changes in civil society and along the streets of Budapest. The monuments of the dictatorship were removed from public places, into Memento Park. In the first 20 years of the new democracy, the development of the city was managed by its mayor, Gábor Demszky.

 

In October 2019, opposition candidate Gergely Karácsony won the Budapest mayoral election, meaning the first electoral blow for Hungary's nationalist prime minister Viktor Orbán since coming to power in 2010.

 

Budapest, strategically placed at the centre of the Carpathian Basin, lies on an ancient route linking the hills of Transdanubia with the Great Plain. By road it is 216 kilometres (134 mi) south-east of Vienna, 545 kilometres (339 mi) south of Warsaw, 1,565 kilometres (972 mi) south-west of Moscow, 1,122 kilometres (697 mi) north of Athens, 788 kilometres (490 mi) north-east of Milan, and 443 kilometres (275 mi) south-east of Prague.

 

The 525 square kilometres (203 sq mi) area of Budapest lies in Central Hungary, surrounded by settlements of the agglomeration in Pest county. The capital extends 25 and 29 km (16 and 18 mi) in the north–south, east–west direction respectively. The Danube enters the city from the north; later it encircles two islands, Óbuda Island and Margaret Island.[18] The third island Csepel Island is the largest of the Budapest Danube islands, however only its northernmost tip is within city limits. The river that separates the two parts of the city is 230 m (755 ft) wide at its narrowest point in Budapest. Pest lies on the flat terrain of the Great Plain while Buda is rather hilly.

 

The wide Danube was always fordable at this point because of a small number of islands in the middle of the river. The city has marked topographical contrasts: Buda is built on the higher river terraces and hills of the western side, while the considerably larger Pest spreads out on a flat and featureless sand plain on the river's opposite bank. Pest's terrain rises with a slight eastward gradient, so the easternmost parts of the city lie at the same altitude as Buda's smallest hills, notably Gellért Hill and Castle Hill.

 

The Buda hills consist mainly of limestone and dolomite, the water created speleothems, the most famous ones being the Pálvölgyi cave (total length 7,200 m or 23,600 ft) and the Szemlőhegyi cave (total length 2,200 m or 7,200 ft). The hills were formed in the Triassic Period. The highest point of the hills and of Budapest is János Hill, at 527 metres (1,729 feet) above sea level. The lowest point is the line of the Danube which is 96 metres (315 feet) above sea level. Budapest is also rich in green areas. Of the 525 square kilometres (203 square miles) occupied by the city, 83 square kilometres (32 square miles) is green area, park and forest. The forests of Buda hills are environmentally protected.

 

The city's importance in terms of traffic is very central, because many major European roads and European railway lines lead to Budapest. The Danube was and is still an important water-way and this region in the centre of the Carpathian Basin lies at the cross-roads of trade routes. Budapest is one of only three capital cities in the world which has thermal springs (the others being Reykjavík in Iceland and Sofia in Bulgaria). Some 125 springs produce 70 million litres (15,000,000 imperial gallons; 18,000,000 US gallons) of thermal water a day, with temperatures ranging up to 58 Celsius. Some of these waters have been claimed to have medicinal effects due to their high mineral contents.

 

Budapest has architecturally noteworthy buildings in a wide range of styles and from distinct time periods, from the ancient times as Roman City of Aquincum in Óbuda (District III), which dates to around 89 AD, to the most modern Palace of Arts, the contemporary arts museum and concert hall.

 

Most buildings in Budapest are relatively low: in the early 2010s there were around 100 buildings higher than 45 metres (148 ft). The number of high-rise buildings is kept low by building legislation, which is aimed at preserving the historic cityscape and to meet the requirements of the World Heritage Site. Strong rules apply to the planning, authorisation and construction of high-rise buildings and consequently much of the inner city does not have any. Some planners would like see an easing of the rules for the construction of skyscrapers, and the possibility of building skyscrapers outside the city's historic core has been raised.

 

In the chronological order of architectural styles Budapest is represented on the entire timeline, starting with the Roman City of Aquincum representing ancient architecture.

 

The next determinative style is the Gothic architecture in Budapest. The few remaining Gothic buildings can be found in the Castle District. Buildings of note are no. 18, 20 and 22 on Országház Street, which date back to the 14th century and No. 31 Úri Street, which has a Gothic façade that dates back to the 15th century. Other buildings with Gothic features are the Inner City Parish Church, built in the 12th century, and the Mary Magdalene Church, completed in the 15th century. The most characteristic Gothic-style buildings are actually Neo-Gothic, like the most well-known Budapest landmarks, the Hungarian Parliament Building and the Matthias Church, where much of the original material was used (originally built in Romanesque style in 1015).

 

The next chapter in the history of human architecture is Renaissance architecture. One of the earliest places to be influenced by the Renaissance style of architecture was Hungary, and Budapest in particular. The style appeared following the marriage of King Matthias Corvinus and Beatrice of Naples in 1476. Many Italian artists, craftsmen and masons came to Buda with the new queen. Today, many of the original renaissance buildings disappeared during the varied history of Buda, but Budapest is still rich in renaissance and neo-renaissance buildings, like the famous Hungarian State Opera House, St. Stephen's Basilica and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

 

During the Turkish occupation (1541–1686), Islamic culture flourished in Budapest; multiple mosques and baths were built in the city. These were great examples of Ottoman architecture, which was influenced by Muslims from around the world including Turkish, Iranian, Arabian and to a larger extent, Byzantine architecture as well as Islamic traditions. After the Holy League conquered Budapest, they replaced most of the mosques with churches and minarets were turned into bell towers and cathedral spires. At one point the distinct sloping central square in Budapest became a bustling Oriental bazaar, which was filled with "the chatter of camel caravans on their way to Yemen and India". Budapest is in fact one of the few places in the world with functioning original Turkish bathhouses dating back to the 16th century, like Rudas Baths or Király Baths. Budapest is home to the northernmost place where the tomb of influential Islamic Turkish Sufi Dervish, Gül Baba is found. Various cultures converged in Hungary seemed to coalesce well with each other, as if all these different cultures and architecture styles are digested into Hungary's own way of cultural blend. A precedent to show the city's self-conscious is the top section of the city's main square, named as Szechenyi. When Turks came to the city, they built mosques here which was aggressively replaced with Gothic church of St. Bertalan. The rationale of reusing the base of the former Islamic building mosque and reconstruction into Gothic Church but Islamic style architecture over it is typically Islamic are still visible. An official term for the rationale is spolia. The mosque was called the djami of Pasha Gazi Kassim, and djami means mosque in Arabic. After Turks and Muslims were expelled and massacred from Budapest, the site was reoccupied by Christians and reformed into a church, the Inner City Parish Church (Budapest). The minaret and Turkish entranceway were removed. The shape of the architecture is its only hint of exotic past—"two surviving prayer niches facing Mecca and an ecumenical symbol atop its cupola: a cross rising above the Turkish crescent moon".

 

After 1686, the Baroque architecture designated the dominant style of art in catholic countries from the 17th century to the 18th century. There are many Baroque-style buildings in Budapest and one of the finest examples of preserved Baroque-style architecture is the Church of St. Anna in Batthyhány square. An interesting part of Budapest is the less touristy Óbuda, the main square of which also has some beautiful preserved historic buildings with Baroque façades. The Castle District is another place to visit where the best-known landmark Buda Royal Palace and many other buildings were built in the Baroque style.

 

The Classical architecture and Neoclassical architecture are the next in the timeline. Budapest had not one but two architects that were masters of the Classicist style. Mihály Pollack (1773–1855) and József Hild (1789–1867), built many beautiful Classicist-style buildings in the city. Some of the best examples are the Hungarian National Museum, the Lutheran Church of Budavár (both designed by Pollack) and the seat of the Hungarian president, the Sándor Palace. The most iconic and widely known Classicist-style attraction in Budapest is the Széchenyi Chain Bridge. Budapest's two most beautiful Romantic architecture buildings are the Great Synagogue in Dohány Street and the Vigadó Concert Hall on the Danube Promenade, both designed by architect Frigyes Feszl (1821–1884). Another noteworthy structure is the Budapest Western Railway Station, which was designed by August de Serres and built by the Eiffel Company of Paris in 1877.

 

Art Nouveau came into fashion in Budapest by the exhibitions which were held in and around 1896 and organised in connection with the Hungarian Millennium celebrations. Art Nouveau in Hungary (Szecesszió in Hungarian) is a blend of several architectural styles, with a focus on Hungary's specialities. One of the leading Art Nouveau architects, Ödön Lechner (1845–1914), was inspired by Indian and Syrian architecture as well as traditional Hungarian decorative designs. One of his most beautiful buildings in Budapest is the Museum of Applied Arts. Another examples for Art Nouveau in Budapest is the Gresham Palace in front of the Chain Bridge, the Hotel Gellért, the Franz Liszt Academy of Music or Budapest Zoo and Botanical Garden.

 

The second half of the 20th century also saw, under the communist regime, the construction of blocks of flats (panelház), as in other Eastern European countries. In the 21st century, Budapest faces new challenges in its architecture. The pressure towards the high-rise buildings is unequivocal among today's world cities, but preserving Budapest's unique cityscape and its very diverse architecture, along with green areas, forces Budapest to balance between them. The Contemporary architecture has wide margin in the city. Public spaces attract heavy investment by business and government also, so that the city has gained entirely new (or renovated and redesigned) squares, parks and monuments, for example the city central Kossuth Lajos square, Deák Ferenc square and Liberty Square. Numerous landmarks are created in the last decade in Budapest, like the National Theatre, Palace of Arts, Rákóczi Bridge, Megyeri Bridge, Budapest Airport Sky Court among others, and millions of square meters of new office buildings and apartments. But there are still large opportunities in real estate development in the city.

 

Most of today's Budapest is the result of a late-nineteenth-century renovation, but the wide boulevards laid out then only bordered and bisected much older quarters of activity created by centuries of Budapest's evolution as a city. Budapest's vast urban area is often described using a set of district names. These are either informal designations, reflecting the names of villages that have been absorbed by sprawl, or are superseded administrative units of former boroughs. Such names have remained in use through tradition, each referring to a local area with its own distinctive character, but without official boundaries. Originally Budapest had 10 districts after coming into existence upon the unification of the three cities in 1873. Since 1950, Greater Budapest has been divided into 22 boroughs (and 23 since 1994). At that time there were changes both in the order of districts and in their sizes. The city now consists of 23 districts, 6 in Buda, 16 in Pest and 1 on Csepel Island between them. The city centre itself, in its broadest sense, comprises Districts V, VI, VII, VIII, IX and XIII on the Pest side, and I, II, XI and XII on the Buda side of the city.

 

District I is a small area in central Buda, including the historic Buda Castle. District II is also in Buda, in the northwest, and District III stretches along the northernmost part of Buda. To reach District IV, one must cross the Danube to Pest (the eastern side), where it occupies the northernmost point. With District V, another circle begins, located right in the absolute centre of Pest. Districts VI, VII, VIII and IX are the neighbouring areas to the east, going southwards, one after the other. District X is another, more external circle, also in Pest, while one must jump to the Buda side again to find Districts XI and XII, going northwards. No other districts in this circle remain in Buda. We must retrace our steps to Pest again to find Districts XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX and XX (mostly external parts of the city ), lying almost regularly in a semicircle, going southwards again. District XXI is the extension of the above circle between two branches of the Danube, the northern tip of a long island south of Budapest. District XXII is still on the same circle in southwest Buda, and finally District XXIII is again in southernmost Pest, irregular only because it was part of District XX until 1994.

 

Budapest is the most populous city in Hungary and one of the largest cities in the European Union, with a growing number of inhabitants, estimated at 1,763,913 in 2019, whereby inward migration exceeds outward migration. These trends are also seen throughout the Budapest metropolitan area, which is home to 3.3 million people. This amounts to about 34% of Hungary's population. In 2014, the city had a population density of 3,314 people per square kilometre (8,580/sq mi), rendering it the most densely populated of all municipalities in Hungary. The population density of Elisabethtown-District VII is 30,989/km2 (80,260/sq mi), which has the highest population density figure in Hungary and one of the highest in the world. For comparison, the density in Manhattan is 25,846/km2.

 

Budapest is the fourth most "dynamically growing city" by population in Europe, and the Euromonitor predicts a population increase of almost 10% between 2005 and 2030. The European Observation Network for Territorial Development and Cohesion says Budapest's population will increase by 10% to 30% only due to migration by 2050. A constant inflow of migrants in recent years has fuelled population growth in Budapest. Productivity gains and the relatively large economically active share of the population explain why household incomes have increased in Budapest to a greater extent than in other parts of Hungary. Higher incomes in Budapest are reflected in the lower share of expenditure the city's inhabitants allocate to necessary spending such as on food and non-alcoholic drinks.

 

According to the 2016 microcensus, there were 1,764,263 people living in Budapest in 907,944 dwellings. Some 1.6 million persons from the metropolitan area may be within Budapest's boundaries during working hours, and during special events. This fluctuation in the population is caused by hundreds of thousands of suburban residents who travel to the city for work, education, health care, and special events.

 

By ethnicity there were 1,697,039 (96.2%) Hungarians, 34,909 (2%) Germans, 16,592 (0.9%) Romani, 9,117 (0.5%) Romanians and 5,488 (0.3%) Slovaks. In Hungary people can declare multiple ethnic identities, hence the sum may exceed 100%.[150] The share of ethnic Hungarians in Budapest (96.2%) is slightly lower than the national average (98.3%) due to the international migration.

 

According to the 2011 census, 1,712,153 people (99.0%) speak Hungarian, of whom 1,692,815 people (97.9%) speak it as a first language, while 19,338 people (1.1%) speak it as a second language. Other spoken (foreign) languages were: English (536,855 speakers, 31.0%), German (266,249 speakers, 15.4%), French (56,208 speakers, 3.3%) and Russian (54,613 speakers, 3.2%).

 

According to the same census, 1,600,585 people (92.6%) were born in Hungary, 126,036 people (7.3%) outside Hungary while the birthplace of 2,419 people (0.1%) was unknown. Although only 1.7% of the population of Hungary in 2009 were foreigners, 43% of them lived in Budapest, making them 4.4% of the city's population (up from 2% in 2001). Nearly two-thirds of foreigners living in Hungary were under 40 years old. The primary motivation for this age group living in Hungary was employment.

 

Budapest is home to one of the most populous Christian communities in Central Europe, numbering 698,521 people (40.4%) in 2011.[136] According to the 2011 census, there were 501,117 (29.0%) Roman Catholics, 146,756 (8.5%) Calvinists, 30,293 (1.8%) Lutherans, 16,192 (0.9%) Greek Catholics, 7,925 (0.5%) Jews and 3,710 (0.2%) Orthodox in Budapest. 395,964 people (22.9%) were irreligious while 585,475 people (33.9%) did not declare their religion. The city is also home to one of the largest Jewish communities in Europe.

 

Budapest is a significant economic hub, classified as a Beta + world city in the study by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network and it is the second fastest-developing urban economy in Europe as GDP per capita in the city increased by 2.4 per cent and employment by 4.7 per cent compared to the previous year in 2014. On national level, Budapest is the primate city of Hungary regarding business and the economy, accounting for 39% of the national income. The city had a gross metropolitan product of more than $100 billion in 2015, making it one of the largest regional economies in the European Union. According to Eurostat GDP, per capita in purchasing power parity is 147% of the EU average in Budapest, which means €37,632 ($42,770) per capita. Budapest is also among the Top 100 GDP performing cities in the world, measured by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The city was named as the 52nd most important business centre in the world in the Worldwide Centres of Commerce Index, ahead of Beijing, São Paulo and Shenzhen and ranking 3rd (out of 65 cities) on the MasterCard Emerging Markets Index. The city is 48th on the UBS The most expensive and richest cities in the world list, standing before cities such as Prague, Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur and Buenos Aires. In a global city competitiveness ranking by the EIU, Budapest stands before Tel Aviv, Lisbon, Moscow and Johannesburg among others.

 

The city is a major centre for banking and finance, real estate, retailing, trade, transportation, tourism, new media as well as traditional media, advertising, legal services, accountancy, insurance, fashion and the arts in Hungary and regionally. Budapest is home not only to almost all national institutions and government agencies, but also to many domestic and international companies. In 2014 there were 395.804 companies registered in the city. Most of these entities are headquartered in Budapest's Central Business District, in the District V and District XIII. The retail market of the city (and the country) is also concentrated in the downtown area, among others, in the two largest shopping centres in Central and Eastern Europe, the 186,000 sqm WestEnd City Center and the 180,000 sqm Arena Plaza.

 

Budapest has notable innovation capabilities as a technology and start-up hub. Many start-ups are headquartered and begin their business in the city. Some of the best known examples are Prezi, LogMeIn and NNG. Budapest is the highest ranked Central and Eastern European city in the Innovation Cities' Top 100 index. A good indicator of the city's potential for innovation and research, is that the European Institute of Innovation and Technology chose Budapest for its headquarters, along with the UN, whose Regional Representation for Central Europe office is in the city, responsible for UN operations in seven countries. Moreover, the global aspect of the city's research activity is shown through the establishment of the European Chinese Research Institute in the city. Other important sectors also include, natural science research, information technology and medical research, non-profit institutions, and universities. The leading business schools and universities in Budapest, the Budapest Business School, the CEU Business School and Corvinus University of Budapest offer a whole range of courses in economics, finance and management in English, French, German and Hungarian. The unemployment rate in Budapest is by far the lowest within Hungary. It was 2.7%, with many thousands of employed foreign citizens.

 

Budapest is among the 25 most visited cities in the world, welcoming more than 4.4 million international visitors each year,[166] therefore the traditional and the congress tourism industry also deserve a mention, as they contribute greatly to the city's economy. The capital is home to many convention centres and there are thousands of restaurants, bars, coffee houses and party places, besides a full range of hotels. As regards restaurants, examples can be found of the highest quality Michelin-starred restaurants, such as Onyx, Costes, Tanti and Borkonyha. The city ranked as the most liveable city in Central and Eastern Europe on EIU's quality of life index in 2010.

 

The Budapest Stock Exchange, a key institution of publicly offered securities in Hungary and Central and Eastern Europe, is situated in Budapest's CBD at Liberty Square. BSE also trades other securities such as government bonds and derivatives as well as stock options. Large Hungarian multinational corporations headquartered in Budapest are listed on the BSE, for instance the Fortune Global 500 firms MOL Group, the OTP Bank, FHB Bank, Gedeon Richter, Magyar Telekom, CIG Pannonia, Zwack Unicum and more. Nowadays nearly all branches of industry can be found in Budapest. Although there is no particularly special industry in the city's economy, the financial centre role of the city is strong, with nearly 40 major banks being represented in the city including as well as those like Bank of China, KDB Bank and Hanwha Bank, which are unique in the region.

 

Many international banks and financial service providers also support the financial industry of Budapest, firms such as Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, GE Capital, Deutsche Bank, Sberbank, ING Group, Allianz, KBC Group, UniCredit and MSCI among others. Another particularly strong industry in the capital city is the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry. There are also traditionally strong domestic companies in Budapest such as Egis, Gedeon Richter, Chinoin as well as international biotechnology corporations such as Pfizer, Teva, Novartis, Sanofi, which also have R&D and production divisions here. Further high-tech industries, involved in software development and engineering are notable as well. Nokia, Ericsson, Bosch, Microsoft and IBM employ thousands of engineers in research and development in the city. Game design is also strongly represented with headquarters of domestic companies Digital Reality, Black Hole and the studios of Crytek and Gameloft. Apart from the above, there are regional headquarters of global firms such as Alcoa, General Motors, General Electric, ExxonMobil, BP, BT, Flextronics, Panasonic, Huawei, Knorr-Bremse, Liberty Global, Tata Consultancy, Aegon, WizzAir, TriGránit, MVM Group and Graphisoft. There is a base for major international companies including, but not limited to, Nissan CEE, Volvo, Saab and Ford.

 

As the capital of Hungary, Budapest is the seat of the country's national government. The President of Hungary resides at the Sándor Palace in the District I (Buda Castle District), while the office of the Hungarian Prime Minister is in the Carmelite Monastery in the Castle District. Government ministries are all located in various parts of the city, most of them are in the District V, Leopoldtown. The National Assembly is seated in the Hungarian Parliament, which also located in the District V. The President of the National Assembly, the third-highest public official in Hungary, is also seated in the largest building in the country, in the Hungarian Parliament.

 

Hungary's highest courts are located in Budapest. The Curia (supreme court of Hungary), the highest court in the judicial order, which reviews criminal and civil cases, is located in the District V, Leopoldtown. Under the authority of its president it has three departments: criminal, civil and administrative-labour law departments. Each department has various chambers. The Curia guarantees the uniform application of law. The decisions of the Curia on uniform jurisdiction are binding for other courts.[172] The second most important judicial authority, the National Judicial Council, is also housed in the District V, with the tasks of controlling the financial management of the judicial administration and the courts and giving an opinion on the practice of the president of the National Office for the Judiciary and the Curia deciding about the applications of judges and court leaders, among others. The Constitutional Court of Hungary is one of the highest level actors independent of the politics in the country. The Constitutional Court serves as the main body for the protection of the Constitution, its tasks being the review of the constitutionality of statutes. The Constitutional Court performs its tasks independently. With its own budget and its judges being elected by Parliament it does not constitute a part of the ordinary judicial system. The constitutional court passes on the constitutionality of laws, and there is no right of appeal on these decisions.

 

Budapest hosts the main and regional headquarters of many international organizations as well, including United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, European Institute of Innovation and Technology, European Police Academy, International Centre for Democratic Transition, Institute of International Education, International Labour Organization, International Organization for Migration, International Red Cross, Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe, Danube Commission and even others. The city is also home to more than 100 embassies and representative bodies as an international political actor.

 

Environmental issues have a high priority among Budapest's politics. Institutions such as the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe, located in Budapest, are very important assets. To decrease the use of cars and greenhouse gas emissions, the city has worked to improve public transportation, and nowadays the city has one of the highest mass transit usage in Europe. Budapest has one of the best public transport systems in Europe with an efficient network of buses, trolleys, trams and subway. Budapest has an above-average proportion of people commuting on public transport or walking and cycling for European cities. Riding on bike paths is one of the best ways to see Budapest – there are about 180 kilometres (110 miles) of bicycle paths in the city, fitting into the EuroVelo system.

 

Crime in Budapest is investigated by different bodies. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime notes in their 2011 Global Study on Homicide that, according to criminal justice sources, the homicide rate in Hungary, calculated based on UN population estimates, was 1.4 in 2009, compared to Canada's rate of 1.8 that same year. The homicide rate in Budapest is below the EU capital cities' average according to WHO also. However, organised crime is associated with the city, the Institute of Defence in a UN study named Budapest as one of the "global epicentres" of illegal pornography, money laundering and contraband tobacco, and also a negotiation center for international crime group leaders.

 

Budapest has been a metropolitan municipality with a mayor-council form of government since its consolidation in 1873, but Budapest also holds a special status as a county-level government, and also special within that, as holds a capital-city territory status. In Budapest, the central government is responsible for the urban planning, statutory planning, public transport, housing, waste management, municipal taxes, correctional institutions, libraries, public safety, recreational facilities, among others. The Mayor is responsible for all city services, police and fire protection, enforcement of all city and state laws within the city, and administration of public property and most public agencies. Besides, each of Budapest' twenty-three districts has its own town hall and a directly elected council and the directly elected mayor of district.

 

The Mayor of Budapest is Gergely Karácsony who was elected on 13 October 2019. The mayor and members of General Assembly are elected to five-year terms. The Budapest General Assembly is a unicameral body consisting of 33 members, which consist of the 23 mayors of the districts, 9 from the electoral lists of political parties, plus Mayor of Budapest (the Mayor is elected directly). Each term for the mayor and assembly members lasts five years. Submitting the budget of Budapest is the responsibility of the Mayor and the deputy-mayor in charge of finance. The latest, 2014 budget was approved with 18 supporting votes from ruling Fidesz and 14 votes against by the opposition lawmakers.

 

Main sights and tourism

Budapest is widely known for its well-kept pre-war cityscape, with a great variety of streets and landmarks in classical architecture.

 

The most well-known sight of the capital is the neo-Gothic Parliament, the biggest building in Hungary with its 268 metres (879 ft) length, also holding (since 2001) the Hungarian Crown Jewels.

 

Saint Stephen's Basilica is the most important religious building of the city, where the Holy Right Hand of Hungary's first king, Saint Stephen is on display as well.

 

The Hungarian cuisine and café culture can be seen and tasted in a lot of places, like Gerbeaud Café, the Százéves, Biarritz, Fortuna, Alabárdos, Arany Szarvas, Kárpátia and the world-famous Mátyás-pince restaurants and beer bars.

 

There are Roman remains at the Aquincum Museum, and historic furniture at the Nagytétény Castle Museum, just 2 out of 223 museums in Budapest. Another historical museum is the House of Terror, hosted in the building that was the venue of the Nazi Headquarters. The Castle Hill, the River Danube embankments and the whole of Andrássy út have been officially recognized as UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

 

Castle Hill and the Castle District; there are three churches here, six museums, and a host of interesting buildings, streets and squares. The former Royal Palace is one of the symbols of Hungary – and has been the scene of battles and wars ever since the 13th century. Nowadays it houses two museums and the National Széchenyi Library. The nearby Sándor Palace contains the offices and official residence of the President of Hungary. The seven-hundred-year-old Matthias Church is one of the jewels of Budapest, it is in neo-Gothic style, decorated with coloured shingles and elegant pinnacles. Next to it is an equestrian statue of the first king of Hungary, King Saint Stephen, and behind that is the Fisherman's Bastion, built in 1905 by the architect Frigyes Schulek, the Fishermen's Bastions owes its name to the namesake corporation that during the Middle Ages was responsible of the defence of this part of ramparts, from where opens out a panoramic view of the whole city. Statues of the Turul, the mythical guardian bird of Hungary, can be found in both the Castle District and the Twelfth District.

 

In Pest, arguably the most important sight is Andrássy út. This Avenue is an elegant 2.5 kilometres (2 miles) long tree-lined street that covers the distance from Deák Ferenc tér to the Heroes Square. This Avenue overlooks many important sites. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. As far as Kodály körönd and Oktogon both sides are lined with large shops and flats built close together. Between there and Heroes' Square the houses are detached and altogether grander. Under the whole runs continental Europe's oldest Underground railway, most of whose stations retain their original appearance. Heroes' Square is dominated by the Millenary Monument, with the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in front. To the sides are the Museum of Fine Arts and the Kunsthalle Budapest, and behind City Park opens out, with Vajdahunyad Castle. One of the jewels of Andrássy út is the Hungarian State Opera House. Statue Park, a theme park with striking statues of the Communist era, is located just outside the main city and is accessible by public transport.

 

The Dohány Street Synagogue is the largest synagogue in Europe, and the second largest active synagogue in the world. The synagogue is located in the Jewish district taking up several blocks in central Budapest bordered by Király utca, Wesselényi utca, Grand Boulevard and Bajcsy Zsilinszky road. It was built in moorish revival style in 1859 and has a seating capacity of 3,000. Adjacent to it is a sculpture reproducing a weeping willow tree in steel to commemorate the Hungarian victims of the Holocaust.

 

The city is also home to the largest medicinal bath in Europe (Széchenyi Medicinal Bath) and the third largest Parliament building in the world, once the largest in the world. Other attractions are the bridges of the capital. Seven bridges provide crossings over the Danube, and from north to south are: the Árpád Bridge (built in 1950 at the north of Margaret Island); the Margaret Bridge (built in 1901, destroyed during the war by an explosion and then rebuilt in 1948); the Chain Bridge (built in 1849, destroyed during World War II and then rebuilt in 1949); the Elisabeth Bridge (completed in 1903 and dedicated to the murdered Queen Elisabeth, it was destroyed by the Germans during the war and replaced with a new bridge in 1964); the Liberty Bridge (opened in 1896 and rebuilt in 1989 in Art Nouveau style); the Petőfi Bridge (completed in 1937, destroyed during the war and rebuilt in 1952); the Rákóczi Bridge (completed in 1995). Most remarkable for their beauty are the Margaret Bridge, the Chain Bridge and the Liberty Bridge. The world's largest panorama photograph was created in (and of) Budapest in 2010.

 

Tourists visiting Budapest can receive free maps and information from the nonprofit Budapest Festival and Tourism Center at its info-points. The info centers also offer the Budapest Card which allows free public transit and discounts for several museums, restaurants and other places of interest. Cards are available for 24-, 48- or 72-hour durations. The city is also well known for its ruin bars both day and night.

 

In Budapest there are many smaller and larger squares, the most significant of which are Heroes' Square, Kossuth Square, Liberty Square, St. Stephen's Square, Ferenc Deák Square, Vörösmarty Square, Erzsébet Square, St. George's Square and Széchenyi István Square. The Heroes' Square at the end of Andrássy Avenue is the largest and most influential square in the capital, with the Millennium Monument in the center, and the Museum of Fine Arts and The Hall of Art. Kossuth Square is a symbolic place of the Hungarian statehood, the Hungarian Parliament Building, the Palace of Justice and the Ministry of Agriculture. The Liberty Square is located in the Belváros-Lipótváros District (Inner City District), as one of Budapest's most beautiful squares. There are buildings such as the Hungarian National Bank, the embassy of the United States, the Stock Exchange Palace, as well as numerous statues and monuments such as the Soviet War Memorial, the Statue of Ronald Reagan or the controversial Monument to the victims of the German occupation. In the St. Stephen's Square is the St. Stephen's Basilica, the square is connected by a walking street, the Zrínyi Street, to the Széchenyi István Square at the foot of The Chain Bridge. The Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Gresham Palace and the Ministry of Interior are also located here. Deák Ferenc Square is a central square of the capital, a major transport hub, where three Budapest subways meet. Here is the oldest and best known Evangelical Church of Budapest, the Deák Ferenc Square Lutheran Church. Vörösmarty Square is located in Belváros-Lipótváros District (Inner City District) behind the Vigadó of Pest as one of the endpoints of Váci Street. The Confectionery Gerbeaud is here, and the annual Christmas Fair is held in the Square, as well as is the centre of the Holiday Book Week.

 

Budapest has many municipal parks and most have playgrounds for children and seasonal activities like skating in the winter and boating in the summer. Access from the city center is quick and easy with the Millennium Underground. Budapest has a complex park system, with various lands operated by the Budapest City Gardening Ltd. The wealth of greenspace afforded by Budapest's parks is further augmented by a network of open spaces containing forest, streams, and lakes that are set aside as natural areas which lie not far from the inner city, including the Budapest Zoo and Botanical Garden (established in 1866) in the City Park. The most notable and popular parks in Budapest are the City Park which was established in 1751 (302 acres) along with Andrássy Avenue, the Margaret Island in the Danube (238 acres or 96 hectares), the People's Park, the Római Part, and the Kopaszi Dam.

 

The Buda Hills also offer a variety of outdoor activities and views. A place frequented by locals is Normafa, offering activities for all seasons. With a modest ski run, it is also used by skiers and snowboarders – if there is enough snowfall in winter.

 

A number of islands can be found on the Danube in Budapest:

 

Margaret Island (Hungarian: Margit-sziget [ˈmɒrɡit.siɡɛt]) is a 2.5 km (1.6 mi) long island and 0.965 square kilometres (238 acres) in area. The island mostly consists of a park and is a popular recreational area for tourists and locals alike. The island lies between Margaret Bridge (south) and Árpád Bridge (north). Dance clubs, swimming pools, an aqua park, athletic and fitness centres, bicycle and running tracks can be found around the Island. During the day the island is occupied by people doing sports, or just resting. In the summer (generally on the weekends) mostly young people go to the island at night to party on its terraces, or to recreate with a bottle of alcohol on a bench or on the grass (this form of entertainment is sometimes referred to as bench-partying).

Csepel Island (Hungarian: Csepel-sziget [ˈt͡ʃɛpɛlsiɡɛt]) is the largest island of the River Danube in Hungary. It is 48 km (30 mi) long; its width is 6 to 8 km (4 to 5 mi) and its area comprises 257 km2 (99 sq mi). However, only the northern tip of the island is inside the city limits.

Hajógyári Island (Hungarian: Hajógyári-sziget [ˈhɒjoːɟaːrisiɡɛt]), also known as Óbuda Island (Hungarian: Óbudai-sziget), is a human-made island located in the third district. This island hosts many activities such as: wake-boarding, jet-skiing during the day, and dance clubs during the night. This is the island where the famous Sziget Festival takes place, hosting hundreds of performances per year. Around 400,000 visitors attended the last festival. Many building projects are taking place to make this island into one of the biggest entertainment centres of Europe. The plan is to build apartment buildings, hotels, casinos and a marina.

Molnár Island [hu] (Hungarian: Molnár-sziget) is an island in the channel of the Danube that separates Csepel Island from the east bank of the river.

The islands of Palotai Island [hu], Nép Island [hu], and Háros Island [hu] also formerly existed within the city, but have been joined to the mainland.

 

The Ínség Rock [hu] (Hungarian: Ínség-szikla) is a reef in the Danube close to the shore under the Gellért Hill. It is only exposed during drought periods when the river level is very low.

 

Just outside the city boundary to the north lies the large Szentendre Island (Hungarian: Szentendrei-sziget) and the much smaller Lupa Island (Hungarian: Lupa-sziget).

 

One of the reasons the Romans first colonised the area immediately to the west of the River Danube and established their regional capital at Aquincum (now part of Óbuda, in northern Budapest) is so that they could use and enjoy the thermal springs. There are still ruins visible today of the enormous baths that were built during that period. The new baths that were constructed during the Turkish period (1541–1686) served both bathing and medicinal purposes, and some of these are still in use to this day.

 

Budapest gained its reputation as a city of spas in the 1920s, following the first realisation of the economic potential of the thermal waters in drawing in visitors. Indeed, in 1934 Budapest was officially ranked as a "City of Spas". Today, the baths are mostly frequented by the older generation, as, with the exception of the "Magic Bath" and "Cinetrip" water discos, young people tend to prefer the lidos which are open in the summer.

 

Construction of the Király Baths started in 1565, and most of the present-day building dates from the Turkish period, including most notably the fine cupola-topped pool.

 

The Rudas Baths are centrally placed – in the narrow strip of land between Gellért Hill and the River Danube – and also an outstanding example of architecture dating from the Turkish period. The central feature is an octagonal pool over which light shines from a 10 metres (33 ft) diameter cupola, supported by eight pillars.

 

The Gellért Baths and Hotel were built in 1918, although there had once been Turkish baths on the site, and in the Middle Ages a hospital. In 1927, the Baths were extended to include the wave pool, and the effervescent bath was added in 1934. The well-preserved Art Nouveau interior includes colourful mosaics, marble columns, stained glass windows and statues.

 

The Lukács Baths are also in Buda and are also Turkish in origin, although they were only revived at the end of the 19th century. This was also when the spa and treatment centre were founded. There is still something of an atmosphere of fin-de-siècle about the place, and all around the inner courtyard there are marble tablets recalling the thanks of patrons who were cured there. Since the 1950s it has been regarded as a centre for intellectuals and artists.

 

The Széchenyi Baths are one of the largest bathing complexes in all Europe, and the only "old" medicinal baths to be found in the Pest side of the city. The indoor medicinal baths date from 1913 and the outdoor pools from 1927. There is an atmosphere of grandeur about the whole place with the bright, largest pools resembling aspects associated with Roman baths, the smaller bath tubs reminding one of the bathing culture of the Greeks, and the saunas and diving pools borrowed from traditions emanating in northern Europe. The three outdoor pools (one of which is a fun pool) are open all year, including winter. Indoors there are over ten separate pools, and a whole host of medical treatments is also available. The Szécheny Baths are built in modern Renaissance style.

 

The culture of Budapest is reflected by Budapest's size and variety. Most Hungarian cultural movements first emerged in the city. Budapest is an important center for music, film, theatre, dance and visual art. Artists have been drawn into the city by opportunity, as the city government funds the arts with adequate financial resources. Budapest is the headquarters of the Hungarian LGBT community.

 

Budapest was named "City of Design" in December 2015 and has been a member of UNESCO Creative Cities Network since then.

 

Budapest is packed with museums and galleries. The city glories in 223 museums and galleries, which presents several memories, next to the Hungarian ones as well those of universal and European culture and science. Here are the greatest examples among them: the Hungarian National Museum, the Hungarian National Gallery, the Museum of Fine Arts (where can see the pictures of Hungarian painters, like Victor Vasarely, Mihály Munkácsy and a great collection about Italian art, Dutch art, Spanish art and British art from before the 19th century and French art, British art, German art, Austrian art after the 19th century), the House of Terror, the Budapest Historical Museum, the Aquincum Museum, the Semmelweis Museum of Medical History, the Memento Park, Museum of Applied Arts and the contemporary arts exhibition Palace of Arts Budapest. In Budapest there are 837 monuments, which represent the most of the European artistic style. The classical and unique Hungarian Art Nouveau buildings are prominent.

 

A lot of libraries have unique collections in Budapest, such as the National Széchényi Library, which keeps historical relics from the age before the printing of books. The Metropolitan Szabó Ervin Library plays an important role in the general education of the capital's population. Other libraries: The Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Eötvös University Library, the Parliamentary Library, Library of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office and the National Library of Foreign Literature.

 

In Budapest there are forty theatres, seven concert halls and an opera house Outdoor festivals, concerts and lectures enrich the cultural offer of summer, which are often held in historical buildings. The largest theatre facilities are the Budapest Operetta and Musical Theatre, the József Attila Theatre, the Katona József Theatre, the Madách Theatre, the Hungarian State Opera House, the National Theatre, the Vigadó Concert Hall, Radnóti Miklós Theatre, the Comedy Theatre and the Palace of Arts, known as MUPA. The Budapest Opera Ball is an annual Hungarian society event taking place in the building of the Budapest Opera (Operaház) on the last Saturday of the carnival season, usually late February.

 

There are 11 casinos in Hungary (11 is the maximum number of casinos allowed by law), and five of them are located in the capital. All five of these casinos are owned by LVC Diamond Játékkaszinó Üzemeltető Kft, the gambling company of late Vajna András (better known as Andy Vajna). The biggest casino in Budapest and in all of Hungary is the Las Vegas Casino Corvin sétány.

 

Several annual festivals take place in Budapest. The Sziget Festival is one of the largest outdoor music festival in Europe. The Budapest Spring Festival includes concerts at several venues across the city. The Café Budapest Contemporary Arts Festival (formerly the Budapest Autumn Festival) brings free music, dance, art, and other cultural events to the streets of the city. The Budapest Wine Festival and Budapest Pálinka Festival, occurring each May, are gastronomy festivals focusing on culinary pleasures. The Budapest Pride (or Budapest Pride Film and Cultural Festival) occurs annually across the city, and usually involves a parade on the Andrássy Avenue. Other festivals include the Budapest Fringe Festival, which brings more than 500 artists in about 50 shows to produce a wide range of works in alternative theatre, dance, music and comedy outside the mainstream. The LOW Festival is a multidisciplinary contemporary cultural festival held in Hungary in the cities Budapest and Pécs from February until March; the name of the festival alludes to the Low Countries, the region encompassing the Netherlands and Flanders. The Budapest Jewish Summer Festival, in late August, is one of the largest in Europe.

The round table at Cecilienhof Palace, Potsdam

 

"The Potsdam Conference (German: Potsdamer Konferenz) was held in Potsdam, Germany, from July 17th to August 2nd, 1945. (In some older documents, it is also referred to as the "Berlin Conference of the Three Heads of Government of the USSR, the USA, and the UK".) The participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States, represented respectively by Premier Joseph Stalin, Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee, and President Harry S. Truman.

They gathered to decide how to administer Germany, which had agreed to unconditional surrender nine weeks earlier on the 8th of May (Victory in Europe Day). The goals of the conference also included the establishment of the postwar order, peace treaty issues, and countering the effects of the war." (Wikipedia)

 

"The Potsdam Conference marks one of the most important historical events of the 20th century. World-wide, it stands as a symbol of the endpoint of World War II in Europe and the outbreak of the Cold War. The “Potsdam Agreement” that was adopted at Cecilienhof Palace laid the foundation for the reshaping of the world after 1945." (www.spsg.de/en/news/exhibition/potsdam-conference-1945-sh...)

 

By the way, Truman is said to have been a non-smoker. He sure was a passive smoker on that conference.

A double-decker S-Bahn consist in a rather rural area: a speciality of the Zürich S-Bahn. Apart from the S6 that goes to Rapperswil, the canton of Glarus also profits off a direct connection to Zürich HB. In previous years this connection was offered once every two hours by the Glarner Sprinter, but that service has been replaced in June 2014 by the new S25 line. It runs every hour and employs first-generation double-decker consists of the DPZ type, pushed and pulled by Re 450 class locos. The S25 stops at more stations than the Glarner Sprinter used to do, and takes 14 minutes longer between its two endpoints. Näfels, 20-04-2015.

Gare de Fes 27/06/2022 18h53

A quick visit to the railway station of Fès Ville. I hope to take the train from here one day to discover this beautiful country of Morocco.

 

Gare de Fès

The Fes Railway station is the main station in the Moroccan city of Fes. There are secondary stations for local connections, but this is the station used for the long-distance main-line trains.

 

Fes lies on the East-West mainline in Northern Morocco and offers direct connections with Oujda and Nador in the East, Tangier in the North and via transfer at Meknes, the main North-West line to Rabat, Casablanca and Marrakech.

A part of the Moroccan mainline network is electrified. On the West to East mainline Fes is the endpoint of the electrified tracks. The trains going to and from Taourirt, Oujda and Nador are powered with diesel-locomotives while trains from the west terminating in Fes or going to Tanger use electric locomotives.

 

From Nador there are 4 trains per day calling at Fes and the same applies to Oujda. One of the daily trains to/from Oujda is a so-called hoteltrain that offers only couchette places, and with couchette tickets available on all night-trains. Traveltimes from Fes to Nador is approximately 6 hours, and to Oujda approximately 5.5 hours.

 

The section Fes-Meknes-Rabat and further to Casablanca is by far the busiest long-distance Het traject, with 18 daily trains, of which 8 continue from Casablanca to Marrakech. The journey to Marrakech railway station takes 8.5 hours.

 

The Office National des Chemins de Fer or ONCF, the state-company operating the railways invests a lot of money and effort to modernize the network. The stations of Marrakech and Fes have been (re)built in the past years, the branch-line Taourirt-Nador was built between 2006 and 2009. And around the city of Meknes a bypass is constructed so that a part of the trains can bypass Meknes

 

There are plans to construct a highspeed connection between Fès and Rabat.

 

[ Wikipedia ]

U.S. Route 66, (also known as Route 66 or The Will Rogers Highway) was a highway in the U.S. Highway system. One of the original federal routes, US 66 was established on November 11, 1926, though signs did not go up until the following year. It originally ran from Chicago, Illinois through St. Louis, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California before ending at Los Angeles for a total of 2,448 miles (3,939 km).

 

Route 66 underwent many improvements and realignments. Most of those affected the total mileage somewhat. One of those resulted in the movement of the endpoint from Los Angeles to Santa Monica. Contrary to common belief, Route 66 never ran to the ocean; it terminated onto what was then US-101, at the intersection of what is today Lincoln Boulevard and Olympic Boulevard.

 

Route 66 was a major migratory path west, especially during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, and supported the economies of the communities through which the road passed. People became prosperous due to the growing popularity of the highway, and those same people later fought to keep the highway alive even with the growing threat of the new Interstate Highway System.

 

US 66 was officially decommissioned (that is, officially removed from the United States Highway System) on June 27, 1985[2] after it was decided the route was no longer relevant and had been replaced by the Interstate Highway System. Portions of the road that passed through Illinois, New Mexico, and Arizona have been designated a National Scenic Byway of the name "Historic Route 66". It has begun to return to maps in this form.

 

History of the highway

Location of U.S. Route 66 in the late 1930s in relation to the modern interstate highway system.Championed by Oklahoman Cyrus Avery in 1923 when the first talks about a national highway system began, US 66 was first signed in 1927 as one of the original U.S. Highways, although it was not completely paved until 1938. Avery was adamant that the highway have a round number and had proposed number 60 to identify it. A controversy erupted over the number 60, largely from delegates from Kentucky which wanted a Virginia Beach–Los Angeles highway to be US 60 and US 62 between Chicago and Springfield, Missouri. Arguments and counter-arguments continued and the final conclusion was to have US 60 run between Virginia Beach, Virginia and Springfield, Missouri, and the Chicago–Los Angeles, California route be US 62. Avery settled on "66" (which was unassigned) because he thought the double-digit number would be easy to remember as well as pleasant to say and hear.

 

After the new federal highway system was officially created, Avery called for the establishment of the U.S. Highway 66 Association to promote the complete paving of the highway from end to end and to promote travel down the highway. In 1927, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the association was officially established with John T. Woodruff of Springfield, Missouri elected the first president. In 1928, the association made its first attempt at publicity, the "Bunion Derby", a footrace from Los Angeles to New York City, of which the path from Los Angeles to Chicago would be on Route 66. The publicity worked: several dignitaries, including Will Rogers, greeted the runners at certain points on the route. The association went on to serve as a voice for businesses along the highway until it disbanded in 1976.

 

The route sign until the 1940s.

Remnants of an original "STATE" right-of-way marker serve as a "ghost" of the early days of the road's construction. This was part of the 1927 construction of Route 66.Traffic grew on the highway due to the geography through which it passed. Much of the highway was essentially flat and this made the highway a popular truck route. The Dust Bowl of the 1930s saw many farming families (mainly from Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas) head west for agricultural jobs in California. Route 66 became the main road of travel for these people, often derogatorily called "Okies". And during the Depression, it gave some relief to communities located on the highway. The route passed through numerous small towns, and with the growing traffic on the highway, helped create the rise of mom-and-pop businesses (mainly as service stations, restaurants, and motor courts) up and down the highway

 

Much of the early highway, like all the other early highways, was gravel or graded dirt. Due to the efforts of the US Highway 66 Association, Route 66 became the first highway completely paved in 1938. Several places were dangerous, more than one part of the highway was nicknamed "Bloody 66" and gradually work was done to realign these segments to remove dangerous curves. However, one section (through the Black Mountains of Arizona) was fraught with sharp hairpin turns and was the steepest along the entire route—so much so that some early travelers, too frightened at the prospect of driving such a potentially dangerous road, hired locals to navigate the winding grade. The section remained until 1953—despite this, Route 66 continued to be a popular route.

 

During World War II, more migration west occurred because of war-related industries in California. Route 66, already popular and fully paved, became one of the main routes and also served for moving military equipment. Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri was located near the highway, which was locally upgraded quickly to a divided highway to help with military traffic.

 

The Chain of Rocks Bridge was built to carry the growing traffic of Route 66 around the city of St. Louis.In the 1950s, Route 66 became the main highway for vacationers heading to Los Angeles. The road passed through the Painted Desert and near the Grand Canyon. Meteor Crater in Arizona was another popular stop. This sharp rise in tourism in turn gave rise to a burgeoning trade in all manner of roadside attractions including teepee-shaped motels, frozen custard stands, Indian curio shops, and reptile farms. Meramec Caverns near St. Louis began advertising on barns, billing itself as the "Jesse James hideout". The Big Texan advertised a free 72 ounce steak dinner to anyone who could eat the whole thing in an hour. It also marked the birth of the fast-food industry: Red's Giant Hamburgs in Springfield, Missouri, site of the first drive-through restaurant, and the first McDonald's in San Bernardino, California. Changes like these to the landscape further cemented 66's reputation as a near-perfect microcosm of the culture of America, now linked by the automobile.

 

Decline

The beginning of the end for Route 66 came in 1956 with the signing of the Interstate Highway Act by President Dwight Eisenhower. As a general fighting in the European theater during World War II, Eisenhower was impressed by Germany's high-speed roadways, or "Autobahnen". Eisenhower envisioned a similar system of roads for the US in which one could conceivably drive at high speed from one end of the country to the other without stopping, as well as making it easier to mobilize troops in the event of a national emergency.

 

During its nearly 60-year existence, Route 66 was under constant change. As highway engineering became more sophisticated, engineers constantly sought more direct routes between cities and towns. Increased traffic led to a number of major and minor realignments of US 66 through the years, particularly in the years immediately following World War II when Illinois began widening US 66 to four lanes through virtually the entire state from Chicago to the Mississippi River just east of St. Louis, Missouri, and included bypasses around virtually all of the towns. By the early-to-mid 1950s, Missouri also upgraded its sections of US 66 to four lanes complete with bypasses. Most of the newer four-lane 66 paving in both states was upgraded into the interstate highway system in later years.

 

One of the remnants of Route 66 is the highway now known as Veterans Parkway, east and south of Normal, Illinois, and Bloomington, Illinois. The two sweeping curves on the southeast and southwest of the cities originally were intended to easily handle traffic at speeds up to 100 miles per hour, as part of an effort to make Illinois 66 an Autobahn equivalent for military transport.

 

In 1953, the first major bypassing of US 66 occurred in Oklahoma with the opening of the Turner Turnpike between Tulsa and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The new 88-mile toll road paralleled US 66 for its entire length and bypassed each of the towns along 66. The Turner Turnpike was joined in 1957 by the new Will Rogers Turnpike, which connected Tulsa with the Oklahoma-Missouri border west of Joplin, Missouri, again paralleling US 66 and bypassing the towns in northeastern Oklahoma in addition to the entire state of Kansas. Both Oklahoma turnpikes were soon designated as Interstate 44, along with the US 66 bypass at Tulsa that connected the city with both turnpikes.

 

In some cases, such as many areas in Illinois, the new Interstate not only paralleled the old Route 66, it actually incorporated much of it. A typical approach was to build one new set of lanes, then move one direction of traffic to it, then rebuild those old lanes as the new lanes for the other direction of traffic, and finally abandon the other old set of lanes or convert them into a frontage road.

 

The same scenario was used in western Oklahoma when US 66 was initially upgraded to a four-lane highway such as from Sayre through Erick to the Texas border at Texola in 1957 and 1958 where the old paving was retained for westbound traffic and a new parallel lane built for eastbound traffic (Much of this section was entirely bypassed I-40 in 1975), and on two other sections; from Canute to Elk City in 1959 and Hydro to Weatherford in 1960 - both of which were upgraded with the construction of a new westbound lane in 1966 to bring the highway up to full interstate standards and demoting the old US 66 paving to frontage road status. In the intial process of constructing I-40 across western Oklahoma, the state also included projects to upgrade the through routes in El Reno, Weatherford, Clinton, Canute, Elk City, Sayre, Erick and Texola to four-lane highways not only to provide seamless transitions from the rural sections of I-40 from both ends of town but also to provide easy access to those cities in later years after the I-40 bypasses were completed.

 

Some business and civic leaders in cities along US 66 were completely opposed to bypassing fearing loss of business and tax revenues. In 1963, the New Mexico Legislature enacted legislation that banned the construction of interstate bypasses around cities by local request. This legislation was short-lived, however, due to pressures from Washington and threat of loss of federal highway funds so it was rescinded by 1965. In 1964, Tucumcari and San Jon became the first cities in New Mexico to work out an agreement with state and federal officials in determining the locations of their I-40 bypasses as close to their business areas as possible in order to permit easy access for highway travelers to their localities. Other cities soon fell in line including Santa Rosa, Moriarty, Grants and Gallup although it wasn't until well into the 1970s that most of those cities would be bypassed by I-40.

 

By the late 1960s, most of the rural sections of US 66 had been replaced by I-40 across New Mexico with the most notable exception being the 40-mile strip from the Texas border at Glenrio west through San Jon to Tucumcari, which was becoming increasing treacherous due to heavier and heavier traffic on the narrow two-lane highway. During 1968 and 1969, this section of US 66 was often referred to by locals and travelers as "Slaughter Lane" due to numerous injury and fatal accidents on this stretch. Local and area business and civic leaders and news media called upon state and federal highway officials to get I-40 built through the area, however, disputes over proposed highway routing in the vicinty of San Jon held up construction plans for several years as federal officials propopsed that I-40 run some five to six miles north of that city while local and state officials insisted on following a proposed route that touched the northern city limits of San Jon. In November of 1969, a truce was reached when federal highway officials agreed to build the I-40 route just outside of the city, therefore providing local businesses dependent on highway traffic easy access to and from the expressway via the north-south highway that crossed old US 66 in San Jon. Interstate 40 was completed from Glenrio to the east side of San Jon in 1976 and extended west to Tucumcari in 1981, including the bypasses around both cities.

 

Originally, highway officials planned for the last section of US 66 to be bypassed by interstates in Texas, but as was the case in many places, lawsuits held up construction of the new interstates. The US Highway 66 Association had become a voice for the people who feared the loss of their businesses. Since the interstates only provided access via ramps at intersections, travelers could not pull directly off a highway into a business. At first, plans were laid out to allow (mainly national chains) to be placed in interstate medians. Such lawsuits effectively prevented this on all but toll roads. Some towns in Missouri threatened to sue the state if the US 66 designation was removed from the road, though lawsuits never materialized. Several businesses were well known to be on US 66, and fear of losing the number resulted in the state of Missouri officially requesting the designation "Interstate 66" for the St. Louis to Oklahoma City section of the route, but it was denied. In 1984, Arizona also saw its final stretch of highway decommissioned with the completion of Interstate 40 through Williams. Finally, with decertification of the highway by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials the following year, U.S. Route 66 officially ceased to exist.

 

With the decommissioning of US 66, no single interstate route was designated to replace it. Interstate 55 covered the section from Chicago to St. Louis; Interstate 44 carried the traffic on to Oklahoma City; Interstate 40 took the largest chunk, replacing 66 to Barstow, California; Interstate 15 took over for the route to San Bernardino; and Interstate 10 carried Route 66's traffic across the Los Angeles metro area to Santa Monica.

 

After decertification

Towns such as Kingman, Arizona promote their association with Route 66.When the highway was decommissioned, sections of the road were disposed of in various ways. Within many cities, the route became a "business loop" for the interstate. Some sections became state roads, local roads, private drives, or were abandoned completely. Although it is no longer possible to drive Route 66 uninterrupted all the way from Chicago to Los Angeles, more than eighty percent of the original route and alternate alignments are still drivable with careful planning. Some stretches are quite well-preserved, including one between Springfield, Missouri and Tulsa.

 

Some states have kept the 66 designation for parts of the highway, albeit as state roads. Missouri highways 366, 266, and 66 are all original sections of the highway. Oklahoma State Highway 66 remains as the alternate "free" route near its turnpikes. A long segment in Arizona signed as Arizona State Route 66 links Seligman to Kingman. A surface street stretch between San Bernardino and La Verne (known as Foothill Boulevard) to the east of Los Angeles retains its number as State Route 66. Several county roads and city streets have also retained the "66" name.

 

Revival

Route 66 associations were founded separately in both Arizona and Missouri. Other groups in the other Route 66 states soon followed. The same year, the state of Missouri declared Route 66 in that state a "State Historic Route". The first "Historic Route 66" marker was erected on Kearney Street at Glenstone Avenue in Springfield, Missouri (now replaced, the original sign has been placed at Route 66 State Park near Eureka). Other historic markers now line—at times sporadically—the entire 2,400 mile (3,860 km) length of road. A section of the road in Arizona was placed on the National Register of Historic Places; the Arroyo Seco Parkway in the Los Angeles Area and Route 66 in New Mexico have been made into National Scenic Byways; and in 2005, the State of Missouri made the road a state scenic byway from Illinois to Kansas. In the cities of Rancho Cucamonga, Rialto, and San Bernardino in California, there are US 66 signs erected along Foothill Boulevard and on Huntington Drive in the city of Arcadia.

 

Route 66 and American pop culture

Route 66 gave its name to a company and also was immortalized in literature, popular music, and television. Although several businesses became associated with Route 66 because of their being on or near the highway, Phillips 66 actually took part of their name directly from the highway.

 

Because the road through Oklahoma was relatively flat and straight, two chemical engineers decided to test a new gasoline from a Tulsa oil company in the late 1920s. The company car they were driving ran exceptionally well on the new blend, prompting the engineer in the passenger seat to exclaim that the car was "going like sixty". His companion looked at the speedometer and said that they were going more like 66 miles/hour (106 km/h). The combination of the highway number and the speed of the car led to the naming of Phillips 66 gasoline, a brand still marketed today.

 

Buckingham Fountain in Chicago, the official starting point for Route 66 In 1939, California writer John Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath, his novel about the westward migration of Oklahoma's Dust Bowl farmers to California's San Joaquin Valley. The book described the problems many of them faced, including prejudice and poverty, as they traveled to a hopefully better life. In this book, he spent a chapter describing the path west, which funnels to Oklahoma City and continues down Route 66. He referred to Route 66 as the "Mother Road", a nickname the highway still retains. The book won a Pulitzer Prize and made the road even more famous.

 

In 1946, jazz composer and pianist Bobby Troup wrote his best-known song, "(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66", after driving the highway himself to get to California. He presented it to Nat King Cole who in turn made it one of the biggest hit singles of his career. The title was suggested by Troup's first wife, Cynthia, who accompanied him on the trip. The song later became a hit for Chuck Berry, and has been recorded by many subsequent artists, including The Rolling Stones, Depeche Mode and John Mayer.

 

The highway also gave its name to a popular television show, Route 66, seen from 1960 through 1964 on CBS. The show featured Martin Milner and George Maharis as Tod and Buz, two young men in a Corvette looking for adventure along America's highways. Maharis was later replaced by Glenn Corbett, who played a returning Viet Nam vet named Linc. Strangely, though the entire program was filmed on location, it was rarely shot along Route 66. Since then, the Corvette has become the car most associated with Route 66. The theme song from the TV series, long a staple of General Motors advertising for the Corvette, was written and played by Nelson Riddle and his band.

 

Another famous GM product has a strong connection to Route 66: The Cadillac Ranch, located near Amarillo, Texas, features a row of ten vintage Cadillacs standing up at an angle, with their front ends buried into the ground.

 

An NBA Development League basketball team, the Tulsa 66ers, was named after the route. The road also lent its name to a minor league baseball team, the Inland Empire 66ers.

 

Currently, K-Mart's line of jeans also bears the name of the former highway, branded as "Route 66".

 

On the Disney's film A Goofy Movie. Goofy and Max are going on vacation using Route 66.

 

In the Stargate SG-1 episode "1969", the SG-1 team drives a Volkswagen van along much of the route traversed by the highway, with prop U.S. Route shield signs posted at the side of the road.

 

The highway was referred to as "the fabled Route 66" in Stacy Peralta's Dogtown and Z-Boys.

 

The Disney/Pixar movie Cars is set mainly in the fictional town of Radiator Springs, located on Route 66 and accessible to I-40. Radiator Springs was based largely on Amboy, California, an actual Route 66 town that saw a rapid decline when I-40 opened in the early 1970s. The film was originally titled Route 66, but had its name changed to avoid confusion with the 1960s-vintage TV show. It opened June 9, 2006. Several familiar sites associated with Route 66 appear in the film, including a visual homage to Cadillac Ranch, and to the U-Drop Inn in Shamrock, Texas.

 

In the manga Shaman King, after Yoh Asakura and his group land in America, they are unsure if they are actually there until Tao Ren points out they are after he spots the sign for Route 66.

 

Nicknames

Over the years, U.S. Route 66 received many nicknames:

 

The Great Diagonal Way—Right after Route 66 was commissioned, it received this nickname because a large section of the highway (Chicago to Oklahoma City) ran diagonally, unlike the other highways.

 

The Main Street of America—Advertised as such by the US Highway 66 Association to promote the highway. The title had also been claimed by supporters of U.S. Route 40, but the Route 66 group was more successful.

 

The Mother Road—Called this by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath, the title continued to be applied to the highway.

 

The Will Rogers Highway— "officially" named this by the US Highway 66 Association in 1952. A plaque dedicating the highway to the humorist is still located opposite the western terminus of Route 66 in Santa Monica, California. There were more plaques like this; one can be found in Galena, Kansas. It was originally located on the Kansas-Missouri state line, but moved to the Howard Litch Memorial Park in 2001.

  

Gare de Fès 03/07/2023 09h26

Boarding for our train ride of more than 6 hours from Fès to Marrakech via Meknes, Kénitra, Rabat, Casablanca and Settat. Around 520 kilometers.

The service was done by SNCF coaches used in France for the Corail service. En voiture Corail, comfort sur rail...

 

Gare de Fès

The Fes Railway station is the main station in the Moroccan city of Fes. There are secondary stations for local connections, but this is the station used for the long-distance main-line trains.

 

Fes lies on the East-West mainline in Northern Morocco and offers direct connections with Oujda and Nador in the East, Tangier in the North and via transfer at Meknes, the main North-West line to Rabat, Casablanca and Marrakech.

A part of the Moroccan mainline network is electrified. On the West to East mainline Fes is the endpoint of the electrified tracks. The trains going to and from Taourirt, Oujda and Nador are powered with diesel-locomotives while trains from the west terminating in Fes or going to Tanger use electric locomotives.

 

From Nador there are 4 trains per day calling at Fes and the same applies to Oujda. One of the daily trains to/from Oujda is a so-called hoteltrain that offers only couchette places, and with couchette tickets available on all night-trains. Traveltimes from Fes to Nador is approximately 6 hours, and to Oujda approximately 5.5 hours.

 

The section Fes-Meknes-Rabat and further to Casablanca is by far the busiest long-distance Het traject, with 18 daily trains, of which 8 continue from Casablanca to Marrakech. The journey to Marrakech railway station takes 8.5 hours.

 

The Office National des Chemins de Fer or ONCF, the state-company operating the railways invests a lot of money and effort to modernize the network. The stations of Marrakech and Fes have been (re)built in the past years, the branch-line Taourirt-Nador was built between 2006 and 2009. And around the city of Meknes a bypass is constructed so that a part of the trains can bypass Meknes

 

There are plans to construct a highspeed connection between Fès and Rabat.

 

[ Wikipedia ]

  

Færderseilasen, also called Færder'n, is a regatta that held on the second weekend in June by the Royal Norwegian Yacht Club.

The regatta starts in Oslo for ordinary sailboats and in Son for old yachts. The fastest of the sailboats reach Færder Lighthouse. The endpoint is in Horten.[1] Smaller boats turn around at Hollenderbåen or Medfjordbåen. The regatta is open for any member of the Royal Norwegian Yacht Club (KNS), and boats are placed in classes according to their sailing potential. The trip from Oslo to Færder to Horten is about 83 nm long. (Wikipedia)

  

Best viewed on black.

Dam 19/04/2020 15h20

April is the moment for tulips in Amsterdam. But the Tulip Festival which normally attracts many tourists is now almost for locals only. This all due to the corona crisis. Time for the people of Amsterdam to enjoy!

 

Dam

Dam is a town square in Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands. Its notable buildings and frequent events make it one of the most well-known and important locations in the city and the country.

 

Dam Square lies in the historical center of Amsterdam, approximately 750 metres south of the main transportation hub, Centraal Station, at the original location of the dam in the river Amstel. It is roughly rectangular in shape, stretching about 200 metres from west to east and about 100 metres from north to south. It links the streets Damrak and Rokin, which run along the original course of the Amstel River from Centraal Station to Muntplein (Mint Square) and the Munttoren (Mint Tower). The Dam also marks the endpoint of the other well-traveled streets Nieuwendijk, Kalverstraat and Damstraat. A short distance beyond the northeast corner lies the main Red-light district: De Wallen.

 

On the west end of the square is the neoclassical Royal Palace, which served as the city hall from 1655 until its conversion to a royal residence in 1808. Beside it are the 15th-century Gothic Nieuwe Kerk (New Church) and the Madame Tussauds Amsterdam Wax Museum. The National Monument, a white stone pillar designed by J.J.P. Oud and erected in 1956 to memorialize the victims of World War II, dominates the opposite side of the square. Also overlooking the plaza are the NH Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky and the upscale department store De Bijenkorf. These various attractions have turned the Dam into a tourist zone.

 

The Dam derives its name from its original function: a dam on the Amstel River, hence also the name of the city.[1] Built in approximately 1270, the dam formed the first connection between the settlements on the sides of the river.

[ Source & More: Wikipedia - Dam (Square) ]

For the first time in 20 years, intermodal plies the rails of CP's Chicago Subdivision!

 

This is CP 183, a stack train originating in Lazaro Cardenas in Mexico to Bensenville, IL, testing transit times between the two endpoints in anticipation of a new intermodal lane opening as a result of the CPKC merger. The containers ended up taking seven days to get to Chicago from start to finish.

 

The train is seen here passing through Leaf River, IL, led by two KCSM locomotives, ES44AC 4888 in charge.

The 750-mile long Empire State with endpoints at Rouses Point, NY in the north, Buffalo in the west and Manhattan in the south, was proposed by Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2017 and opened to the public in December 2020. The trail has three endpoints: Rouses Point in the north, Manhattan in the south, and Buffalo in the west. It is likely that the trail will continue to undergo improvements from time to time in the future.

Mill Creek Falls - Lassen Volcanic National Park. Most people, including myself until recently, visit the wonders of Lassen Volcanic National Park from within a vehicle traveling down the Main Park Road.

 

Last week I acted on one of my dreams and hiked through the park. It seemed straight forward - park one car at the endpoint and drive to the trail head. Make sure that you are starting from the high point and walking downhill. I made a couple of discoveries - it is nowhere as easy as it seems and it is worth every single step you take. The park is bigger and more beautiful when you are the ant crawling across the slopes.

 

Mill Creek falls is a 75 foot falls consisting of East Sulpher Creek and Bumpass Creek tumbling into a pool part way down before continuing on. We hiked in on the trail from the Kings Creek Picnic Area and hiked out to the Southwest Campground at the Visitors Center.

  

  

Gamecock Cottage is an historic building located at Stony Brook in Brookhaven Town, in Suffolk County, New York on Long Island. It was built in 1876 for storage of oars and sliding-seat rowboats and is the only remaining wooden beach cottage that was part of West Meadow Beach. It is located at the southernmost point of a peninsula within what is now part of the West Meadow Wetlands Reserve, as the official public beach is now restricted to the north. The Gamecock Cottage sits at the southern endpoint of West Meadow Lane, which was once called Trustees Road.

CAL FIRE Sikorsky S-70i Fire Hawk N483DF, 611,

c/n 704030.

 

When I photographed this helicopter in April 2021 it was numbered 903:

 

www.flickr.com/photos/ian_e_abbott/51173791872/in/photoli...

 

Sacramento McClellan Airport (MCC / KMCC), California

 

CAL FIRE S-70i Information Sheet (CAL FIRE):

34c031f8-c9fd-4018-8c5a-4159cdff6b0d-cdn-endpoint.azureed...

 

Sikorsky / Lockheed Martin FIREHAWK web site

(Manufacturer's web site):

www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/sikorsky-firehawk.html

Over the long march of biological and now technological evolution, we have finally reached a survival gate — we have enough computational power to model the trajectory all Near-Earth Objects (NEO's) that could threaten life on Earth. This was not possible in the year 2000, or any time over the prior millennia. We have made a million-fold improvement in computation in just the past 20 years. So, we can see the future and predict decades in advance of an impact event and then give the NEO a nudge such that it misses Earth entirely.

 

It’s not like the movies, where you have an asteroid on final approach and try to blow it up somehow (that just turns a rifle into a shotgun blast); instead, you launch a rocket to rear-end it and change its velocity ever so slightly. Integrated over years, that small delta-v makes all the difference. In short, asteroid defense does not end with a bang, but merely a nudge. That is, if you know what you are doing!

 

The non-profit B612 (with co-fiounding astronauts Ed Lu and Rusty Schweickart) did a webinar and demo of their ADAM simulation tool for calculating asteroid orbit propagation. They gave me permission to share the unpublished work of their Asteroid Institute tech team. Here's an unlisted video showing the sim seen here.

 

Rusty Schweickart, the first Lunar Module Pilot summarizes: “We live in a remarkable time in history. We can change the trajectory of the solar system, ever so slightly, and protect life on Earth"

 

Mapping the Final Frontier with ADAM (Asteroid Decision Analysis + Mapping):

 

The ADAM project runs on the Google Compute Engine to provide a cloud platform for large-scale orbital dynamics. Small errors in the initial velocity vector measurements can expand over decades to very different outcomes, especially when gravitational slingshots around the planets occur. So, they run thousands of Monte-Carlo simulations over an array of starting conditions, creating a distribution of points, as seen in the images here, some hitting Earth (red) or a near miss (green). The distribution of endpoints gives a probability of deep impact. As a heuristic patch to some insane computational complexity, we can calculate a probability for the long term, which narrows like a hurricane forecast cone to a certainly as time advances.

 

To reach an accuracy of a few kilometers over many decades, it’s not just the complexity of an n-body problem. They had to model effects such as the curvature of space-time due to General Relativity, the non-sphericity of the Sun, the gravitational asymmetry of the planets, moons and larger asteroids, as well as the non-isotropic thermal re-radiation from rotation of the asteroid.

 

So so the good news: we can do this today, and with each passing year of Moore's Law, we can look further into the future, moving from decades to a 100 years. The further you can see, and the more precisely, the easier the nudge becomes.

 

For input to the model you just need a series of at least three sample points (but more is better). And we are about to get a whole lot better at that. Starting in 2022, LSST will observe ~600,000 asteroids every night, and discover new asteroids at 10X today’s rate. This will accentuate the computation-bounded problem of using this torrent of data.

 

There is something poetic about the computational defense of humanity. And something that rhymes with history. The Space Race of the 60s was won computationally, not by brute force heavy-lift, which would have favored the Soviets.

 

Survival is computational. Intelligence allows us to see the future.

The endpoint of our hike today along the Bow River pathway out of Banff townsite. Beyond is Tunnel Mountain, (middle) Sulphur Mountain, and the end of Mount Rundle. (left) Our starting point in Banff townsite is over on the other side of Tunnel Mountain.

 

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Use without permission is illegal.

 

Attention please !

If you are interested in my photos, they are available for sale. Please contact me by email: aragaofrancisco@gmail.com. Do not use without permission.

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Portuguese

A Fontana di Trevi (Fonte dos trevos, em português) é a maior (cerca de 26 metros de altura e 20 metros de largura) e mais ambiciosa construção de fontes barrocas da Itália e está localizada na rione Trevi, em Roma.

Fontana di Trevi (Roma)

A fonte situava-se no cruzamento de três estradas (tre vie), marcando o ponto final do Acqua Vergine, um dos mais antigos aquedutos que abasteciam a cidade de Roma. No ano 19 a.C., supostamente ajudados por uma virgem, técnicos romanos localizaram uma fonte de água pura a pouco mais de 22 quilômetros da cidade (cena representada em escultura na própria fonte, atualmente). A água desta fonte foi levada pelo menor aqueduto de Roma, diretamente para os banheiros de Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa e serviu a cidade por mais de 400 anos.

O "golpe de misericórdia" desferido pelos invasores godos em Roma foi dado com a destruição dos aquedutos, durante as Guerras Góticas. Os romanos durante a Idade Média tinham de abastecer-se da água de poços poluídos, e da pouco límpida água do rio Tibre, que também recebia os esgotos da cidade.

O antigo costume romano de erguer uma bela fonte ao final de um aqueduto que conduzia a água para a cidade foi reavivado no século XV, com a Renascença. Em 1453, o Papa Nicolau V, determinou que fosse consertado o aqueduto de Acqua Vergine, construindo ao seu final um simples receptáculo para receber a água, num projeto feito pelo arquiteto humanista Leon Battista Alberti.

Em 1629, o Papa Urbano VIII achou que a velha fonte era insuficientemente dramática e encomendou a Bernini alguns desenhos, mas quando o Papa faleceu o projeto foi abandonado. A última contribuição de Bernini foi reposicionar a fonte para o outro lado da praça a fim de que esta ficasse defronte ao Palácio do Quirinal (assim o Papa poderia vê-la e admirá-la de sua janela). Ainda que o projeto de Bernini tenha sido abandonado, existem na fonte muitos detalhes de sua idéia original.

Reformas

Muitas competições entre artistas e arquitetos tiveram lugar durante o Renascimento e o período Barroco para se redesenhar os edifícios, as fontes, e até mesmo a Scalinata di Piazza di Spagna (as escadarias da Praça de Espanha). Em 1730, o Papa Clemente XII organizou uma nova competição na qual Nicola Salvi foi derrotado, mas efetivamente terminou por realizar seu projeto. Este começou em 1732 e foi concluído em 1762, logo depois da morte de Clemente, quando o Netuno de Pietro Bracci foi afixado no nicho central da fonte.

Salvi morrera alguns anos antes, em 1751, com seu trabalho ainda pela metade, que manteve oculto por um grande biombo. A fonte foi concluída por Giuseppe Pannini, que substituiu as alegorias insossas que eram planejadas, representando Agrippa e Trivia, as virgens romanas, pelas belas esculturas de Netuno e seu séquito.

Restauro

A fonte foi restaurada em 1998; as esculturas foram limpas e polidas, e a fonte foi provida de bombas para circulação da água e sua oxigenação.

A fontana de Trevi e o cinema

Em 1964, foi lançado o filme que leva seu nome Fontana di Trevi - filmado pelo diretor Carlo Campogalliani.

O monumento foi o cenário de uma das cenas mais famosas do cinema italiano: em La Dolce Vita de Federico Fellini, Anita Ekberg entra na água e convida Marcello Mastroianni a fazer o mesmo.

Precedentemente, a fonte foi o cenário do filme estadunidense Three coins in the fontain, onde a fonte do título é a própria Fontana dei Trevi.

Em Tototruffa 62, Totò tenta vender a fonte a um turista.

A fonte aparece como fundo principal no videoclip da canção Thank You for Loving Me do grupo Bon Jovi.

 

English

The Trevi Fountain (Italian: Fontana di Trevi) is a fountain in the Trevi rione in Rome, Italy. Standing 26 metres (85.3 feet) high and 20 metres (65.6 feet) wide, it is the largest Baroque fountain in the city and one of the most famous fountains in the world.

The fountain at the junction of three roads (tre vie) marks the terminal point of the "modern" Acqua Vergine, the revived Aqua Virgo, one of the ancient aqueducts that supplied water to ancient Rome. In 19 BC, supposedly with the help of a virgin, Roman technicians located a source of pure water some 13 km (8 miles) from the city. (This scene is presented on the present fountain's façade.) However, the eventual indirect route of the aqueduct made its length some 22 km (14 miles). This Aqua Virgo led the water into the Baths of Agrippa. It served Rome for more than four hundred years. The coup de grâce for the urban life of late classical Rome came when the Goth besiegers in 537/38 broke the aqueducts. Medieval Romans were reduced to drawing water from polluted wells and the Tiber River, which was also used as a sewer.

The Roman custom of building a handsome fountain at the endpoint of an aqueduct that brought water to Rome was revived in the 15th century, with the Renaissance. In 1453, Pope Nicholas V finished mending the Acqua Vergine aqueduct and built a simple basin, designed by the humanist architect Leon Battista Alberti, to herald the water's arrival.

Commission, construction and design

In 1629 Pope Urban VIII, finding the earlier fountain insufficiently dramatic, asked Gian Lorenzo Bernini to sketch possible renovations, but when the Pope died, the project was abandoned. Though Bernini's project was torn down for Salvi's fountain, there are many Bernini touches in the fountain as it was built. An early, striking and influential model by Pietro da Cortona, preserved in the Albertina, Vienna, also exists, as do various early 18th century sketches, most unsigned, as well as a project attributed to Nicola Michetti[6] one attributed to Ferdinando Fuga and a French design by Edme Bouchardon.

Competitions had become the rage during the Baroque era to design buildings, fountains, and even the Spanish Steps. In 1730 Pope Clement XII organized a contest in which Nicola Salvi initially lost to Alessandro Galilei – but due to the outcry in Rome over the fact that a Florentine won, Salvi was awarded the commission anyway.[9] Work began in 1732, and the fountain was completed in 1762, long after Clement's death, when Pietro Bracci's Oceanus (god of all water) was set in the central niche.

The asso di coppe

Salvi died in 1751, with his work half-finished, but before he went he made sure a stubborn barber's unsightly sign would not spoil the ensemble, hiding it behind a sculpted vase, called by Romans the asso di coppe, the "Ace of Cups".

The Trevi Fountain was finished in 1762 by Giuseppe Pannini, who substituted the present allegories for planned sculptures of Agrippa and "Trivia", the Roman virgin.

Restoration

The fountain was refurbished in 1998; the stonework was scrubbed and the fountain provided with recirculating pumps.

The backdrop for the fountain is the Palazzo Poli, given a new facade with a giant order of Corinthian pilasters that link the two main stories. Taming of the waters is the theme of the gigantic scheme that tumbles forward, mixing water and rockwork, and filling the small square. Tritons guide Oceanus' shell chariot, taming hippocamps.

In the centre a robustly-modelled triumphal arch is superimposed on the palazzo façade. The centre niche or exedra framing Oceanus has free-standing columns for maximal light and shade. In the niches flanking Oceanus, Abundance spills water from her urn and Salubrity holds a cup from which a snake drinks. Above, bas reliefs illustrate the Roman origin of the aqueducts.

The tritons and horses provide symmetrical balance, with the maximum contrast in their mood and poses (by 1730, rococo was already in full bloom in France and Germany).

Coin throwing

A traditional legend holds that if visitors throw a coin into the fountain, they are ensured a return to Rome. Among those who are unaware that the "three coins" of Three Coins in the Fountain were thrown by three different individuals, a reported current interpretation is that two coins will lead to a new romance and three will ensure either a marriage or divorce. Another reported version of this legend is that it is lucky to throw three coins with one's right hand over one's left shoulder into the Trevi Fountain.

An estimated 3,000 euros are thrown into the fountain each day. The money has been used to subsidize a supermarket for Rome's needy. However, there are regular attempts to steal coins from the fountain.

 

Wikipedia

Donetsk, Feb 28 — Donetsk News Agency.

Mariupol authorities plan to launch tram service in the beginning of May to time the event with the 90th anniversary of the city tram system. The tram service has not operated since February 2022 due to considerable damage to its infrastructure.

Donetsk News Agency correspondents visited the Mariupol Tram Depot to see the preparations to relaunch the rail transit system. As of early 2022, the city had 70 tram cars; of those 36 were fully destroyed during hostilities. Overhead wires and tramway tracks also took much damage.

Tram Depot engineers and specialists from St Petersburg have repaired 20 tram cars; another 14 are next in line. The rebuilding of tram service infrastructure is ongoing. Tram Depot chief Anatoly Strizhenko said that the first tram route would be launched on May 1.

“Its length is five kilometers from the Depot to the endpoint next to City Hospital No 2, ” Strizhenko told DAN.

The Depot will operate 13 cars at the initial stage.

Mariupol launched its tram system on Mary 1, 1933. Previously, the city had seven tram routes.