We meet most days. No idea what took that chunk of hair off her back, possibly overconfidence jumping through fences, but seems none the worse for it :-)

“A mighty storm is inconsequential when facing a mighty ship.”

― Matshona Dhliwayo

 

I think Matshona is showing a little overconfidence/arrogance. :-))

If you look at the mountain from far away it does not seem so big, but once you get closer it reveals itself as this lonely giant that sit upon a plain, observing and controlling everything around. It seems as if it has been there since the beginning and will stay till the end, unchanged.

 

Mountain can be unforgivable for those who approach it unprepared and careless. Mountain knows how to deal with overconfidence... It doesn't care who you are or what you do, it treats everyone equally.

 

One needs to approach it with humility and respect to manage to conquer it. It should be conquered with patience embracing every step, as all the experience and all the growth happens while you are climbing it, not directly on the top.

  

More travel photos on IG:

www.instagram.com/we_wander_everywhere/

Titled "How long had I been gone? How long had I been back? Did it matter?", this series is made up of ten sets of image and text. Each set expresses the 'moment' in which I explore a place in a photograph and then two written descriptions: one by me, considering my mental health, thoughts and feelings, and one by (best friend and accompanying adventurer) Michael with his version of events. The series tracks how photography has changed my interactions with the world, from being isolated to being able to get out and explore.

 

You can see a few examples of how it was presented here:

Tim van Zundert - How long had I been gone?

 

Maybe freedom from anxiety can lead to overconfidence though. If people aren't anywhere to be seen, why not do whatever you want and go wherever you want? I stepped out into the A27 and wondered if that gave me some sort of innate strength.

Once Upon a Time There Was an Ocean - Paul Simon

 

Érase una vez un océano, pero ahora es una cordillera. Algo imparable se puso en marcha. Nada es diferente, pero todo ha cambiado. Es un trabajo sin futuro y te cansas de estar sentado. Es como el hábito de la nicotina, siempre estás pensando en dejarlo y yo pienso en dejarlo... todos los días de la semana.

 

.....

One of the great mysteries of science and for scientists has been the behavior of migratory animals when they navigate the open sea, where there are no visual reference points. And the greatest mystery has always been the ability of turtles to travel thousands of kilometers and mysteriously return to the beach where they were born. Turtles have feeding grounds and breeding grounds separated by great distances of several thousand kilometers. Sea turtles are possibly one of the living beings with the greatest capacity for navigation and orientation. A few years ago, science rendered its verdict on this astonishing ability. Turtles are able to detect the lines of the Earth's magnetic field and use it as a "map" to navigate and travel within it, covering enormous distances. This allows them to return, many years later when they reach maturity, to the same beaches where they were born to lay their eggs and give birth to a new generation of baby turtles (on average, it usually takes 20 years to reach this level of development). When they are born, the young turtles memorize the data (or pattern) of the magnetic field of their home beach and store it in their brain, in their memorie. This data they will later use to return across the open ocean. They detect the intensity, inclination, magnetic declination, and other parameters of the magnetic field of the place where they were born, and as they grow, the young turtles learn to distinguish the magnetic field and the different parameters and variations this magnetic field has in the places they encounter along their journey. This allows them to compile a "magnetic map" in their brains that allows them to navigate between specific feeding and nesting areas by reading and using the detected magnetic field lines. This way, they always know their position, longitude, and latitude. To put it more simply, they have and use a map, just like you and I, except it's a magnetic map, through which they travel, or if you prefer, they have built into their brains, something like a compass or GPS to navigate thousands of kilometers. At the end of the last century, a colony of turtles that departed from the beaches of Japan began to be monitored. Approximately two decades later, when they had reached sexual maturity, they returned to the beach where they were born, traveling a great distance, almost 15,000 kilometers. However, migratory movements and the distance traveled are currently being studied in a population of turtles that departed Papua New Guinea heading for North America. (I imagine monitored by satellite.) These turtles have reached sexual maturity and are returning to their native beaches. It is believed that these sea turtles, once they reach their place of origin, will have made a journey of almost 20,000 kilometers. While scientists worked for centuries to invent instruments for maritime navigation, sea turtles moved away from the coasts and into the mysterious oceans unknown to humans, deciding at every moment where they wanted to go. While navigators and sailors clung to the coast, never straying far from land so as not to get lost and be able to return home, sea turtles, thousands of miles away, decided when to change course and return with extreme ease... to the place where they were born.

 

.....

¿De nuevo en casa?

Noooooo... nunca volveré a casa.

¿Piensas en casa de nuevo?

¡Nunca pienso en casa!

 

Pero entonces llega una carta de casa. La letra es frágil y extraña. Algo imparable se pone en movimiento. Nada es diferente, pero todo ha cambiado. La luz a través del vitral era cobalto y roja y los puños y cuellos deshilachados fueron remendados por halos de hilo dorado. El coro cantó: ""Érase una vez un océano"" y todos los viejos himnos y apellidos bajaron revoloteando como hojas de emoción...

 

Nada es diferente... pero todo ha cambiado...

 

.....

Legend has it that when the dinosaurs exercised their tyranny on Earth, the turtles decided to return to the oceans. But Nature made them pay a price. The eggs from which the next generations of turtles would hatch had to be buried on the beaches for incubation. The turtles had to return to land, even if only for a brief moment, to deposit the eggs as an offering to Nature so that the next generations of turtles would hatch on land, on the beaches, and then return to the ocean. The life of turtles is an odyssey. Throughout their lives, they must overcome many difficulties. When they are born on the beaches, many predators wait to feed on tiny turtles that measure only four centimeters and weigh 20 grams. Only 10% make it to the sea. But their odyssey continues for years, overcoming dangers. They also encounter many predators on their journeys across the sea. Only when they reach maturity and have a strong shell do they live safer and longer. But only one in every thousand turtles reaches maturity. Even with strong shells, they are attacked by sharks and orcas. The life of turtles is a constant struggle. There is no animal species that has such calmness, perseverance, constant, determination, and resilience. In nature, it is not the strong who survive, but those with the ability to adapt to circumstances, to ecosystem changes and fight. It is not the strongest who survive, but the most intelligent, constant and adaptable. The true masters of the oceans aren't the aggressive sharks and orcas. The true masters of the oceans are the intelligent octopus... and the persevering, sage and tenacious turtle.

 

Surviving Sea Turtles - National Geographic Wild

 

.....

The "Caretta caretta" is a large sea turtle and is the most common and widespread species of sea turtle on the coasts of Catalonia and the Mediterranean. It spends most of its time at or near the surface, making it very easy for fishermen to catch. This is why it is commonly known as the "loggerhead" (silly, foolish) turtle. I hope that one day someone will change the vulgar and stupid name used to describe one of the most intelligent species in the oceans and give it a more respectful name. One of the greatest dangers to turtles is precisely the fishing nets that fishermen carelessly abandon on the seabed, just like trawling nets. These nets become a death trap for the turtles.

 

www.worldanimalprotection.es/siteassets/images/hero/tortu...

 

.....

Ocean Bloom - Hans Zimmer ＆ Radiohead / (Blue Planet II, produced the BBC Natural History Unit, 2017)

 

Open your mouth wide. The universal sigh. And while the ocean blooms it's what keeps me alive.

 

.....

Life's An Ocean - The Verve

 

.....

Turtle - Thomas Newman

 

"Turtle" is a song written by Thomas Newman for the soundtrack of the film "Cinderella Man." I don't know the meaning of the song or what it has to do with a film based on the life of a boxer. Only Newman knows that. But the explanation could be the following, although I'm not sure about it. "Cinderella Man" is a film based on the true story of a boxer, James J. Braddock, who received the nickname "Cinderella Man" for having the ability to win fights, even though he was never the favorite and was infinitely inferior to his rivals technically. Braddock was American but his roots were Irish (perhaps this is why the song "Turtle" has a musical base of Irish Celtic music). He retired from boxing due to frequent injuries to his right hand. Furthermore, when the Great Depression hit in 1929, he had to work for years as a stevedore in the port to earn money and support his family. Given his precarious financial situation, he decided to return to boxing, trying to use his left hand to box. Eventually, he was presented with the opportunity to challenge Max Baer, a very strong and technically gifted boxer, for the world title. Baer was a boastful, arrogant, and brutal boxer who boasted of having killed two boxers in the ring. Baer was infinitely superior to Braddock, both in strength and technique, as the betting odds indicated. In fact, Baer didn't even train or prepare for the fight. During the fight, Baer was all about foolishness and clowning around in the ring. He mocked his opponent, belittled him, and underestimated him, knowing he was better than Braddock and would beat him sooner or later. Braddock took heavy blows from Baer. He endured them with consistency and patience. He withstood all of Baer's heavy right hands as best he could. He never let his opponent knock him down. As the fight progressed, Baer grew exhausted and lost strength, ultimately losing the fight against Braddock "Cinderella Man.". Max Baer underestimated his opponent. He failed to realize that "no one is better than anyone else" and that overconfidence can lead to failure. He failed to see that arrogance, vanity, haughtiness, or feeling superior to others are bad traveling companions that are useless in learning to overcome oneself every day. They distance you from sacrifice and effort, from dignity and honesty, something that Braddock did possess. But having come this far, what does this story have to do with the song "Turtle" on the soundtrack? Perhaps the explanation lies in the fable of the tortoise and the hare, where the two challenge each other to a race. The cunning and confident hare, aware of its speed and the tortoise's slowness, feels far superior to it. The hare mocks the tortoise, belittles and undervalues it. Meanwhile, the tortoise walks at its slow but steady pace, aware of its limitations, never giving up even when everything is against it, and continuing to strive to the maximum and with perseverance. In contrast, the confident and swift hare decides to rest next to a tree and falls asleep. But when it wakes up, it's too late. The slow but steady tortoise, who hasn't given up, reaches the finish line and wins the race. The fable invites us to reflect on the fact that it's not good to belittle or mock anyone. That "no one, absolutely no one, is better than anyone else." That overconfidence, vanity, arrogance, and hubris are bad traveling companions. Fables, nature, our own lives, always find a way and a time to show us that we're not the best, that we're not as strong or as smart as we thought. Life, sooner or later, eventually finds a way to teach us a lesson, learning from that lesson depends solely and exclusively... on you.

 

PS: I know. I don't like boxing either. I don't approve of it, and I don't find it exemplary. But even in a boxing movie, you can find something that will help you in your life. Even if it's just a song. Anyway in English, the word "turtle" is used for sea turtles and "tortoise" for land turtles. Conclusion... I don't know why Newman composed a song called "Turtle" for the Cinderella Man soundtrack. But it's a song I really like, and I was looking for an excuse to include it in this photo. And I also wanted to remember the other turtles... the land turtles. And I couldn't find a land turtle song I liked.Only Newman knows why he titled it... "Turtle."

 

PS: In Celtic culture, turtles have a multifaceted symbolism: they symbolize longevity, endurance, protection, security, stability, perseverance, experience, and wisdom. Braddock had Irish roots. An Irish person is considered a person of Celtic descent. And perhaps this is why Newman titled his song "Turtle." But only Thomas Newman knows that.

 

PS: "No one is better than anyone else". But you believed... that you would win...

 

.....

¿Y cuándo cobraré mi billete de lotería y enterraré mi pasado con mis cargas y mis conflictos? Quiero sacudir cada rama del Jardín del Edén y convertir a cada amante... en el amor de mi vida.

 

.....

Le grand bleu (Pat)

 

2nd Movement of the Odyssey... (of the Turtles) - Incubus

 

4th Movement of the Odyssey... (of the Turtles) - Incubus

 

PS: Supongo que una vez... fui un océano...

Heute wird das Wetter wunderschön , da darf man wohl auch einmal aus der Reihe tanzen ... Ein " Swirly " Mittwochsmacro -- 😊 Schönen Mittwoch für euch .

///

Today the weather is going to be wonderful, you can probably step out of line ... A "Swirly" Wednesday macro - 😊 Have a nice Wednesday for everyone

Here again we find Teilhard plunging into the unknown, risking the security of his childhood faith, allowing himself to doubt all that had supported his spiritual life up to this point, so that he would be free enough to experience his depths. As he reversed his direction from overconfidence in dogmas, he found that instead of losing his faith, he was reading the scripture through a new lens. Many passages became more profound. He had again, like Jacob, wrestled with an angel and found himself in a holy place. With each plunge into the depths of his reality, his call deepened and he became more and more impatient to implement the task that was so critically needed for the life of the World and the life of the Church: to preach the good news of Christ-Omega.

-Teilhard's Struggle, Embracing the Work of Evolution, Kathleen Duffy, SSJ

The staircase is relatively moderate in terms of the height of the steps and the distance between them.

I wanted to show a little boy that you can ride down there at a leisurely pace.

So I got on my bike at the top and had a firm grip on the brakes so that I didn't go too fast.

However, I had misjudged things a little, as the wheels didn't have any contact with the ground as I was going downhill, so I ended up going faster than I initially thought.

I had already seen myself falling, but just as I reached the bottom I was able to come to a halt without crashing my bike.

I was lucky.

Overconfidence is rarely good and can end quite badly with broken bones in old age.

Some family commitments involving a trip upt’ North stopped me posting over the weekend, so to prevent another Flickr blockage I made sure I did photoshop editing on my return to keep things loose, so to speak. However, when I thought this LE seascape was going to be a gas, I was wrong. It turned out a bit lumpier than I expected and I had a lot of cleaning up to do. Overconfidence can lead to embarrassing mistakes. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

Life is funny, sometimes a man has the confidence, not overconfidence, to come up and talk respectfully to a woman and that is all you need. Thanks, Angel for letting me whisk you away and the hot, sexual afternoon afterwards!

 

5/28/2024 @ The Fuck Spot

Impostor syndrome is when someone continually doubts their own skills, expertise and achievements - usually despite evidence to suggest they're actually quite good at what they do.

 

On the opposite side of imposter syndrome sits overconfidence, otherwise known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect. While imposter syndrome develops when one underestimates their own values, skills, and accomplishments, the Dunning-Kruger effect is the polar opposite.

 

The mysteries of life:-

I have known a few people with the "Dunning-Krugger effect", I didn't know it was a "thing" at the time - but I am sure we have all known someone like that.

You know one mistake that really sucks to make when doing these ultra long exposures? Placing the sun at the wrong side of the frame and having it wander out of the frame instead of farther into it. You wouldn't think it would be that hard, and in a certain sense it isn't. The sun travels north as it sets for us. Except this becomes deceptively more complicated when you are framing through a waist level finder that doesn't reverse the image from left to right like a prism does. Weirdly enough, being used to the unreversed view through a WLF doesn't necessarily make this easier. If anything, sometimes it confuses me more. I have to ask myself if my automatic compensation for the reversed view is helping, or throwing me off. I think I reworked my mental calculations at least twice during this exposure. At about 15 minutes in I was suddenly struck by the concern that I had lined my camera up wrong. I hadn't but I only reached a tentative level of confidence after running it all through my brain again. I suppose it is ultimately not a bad thing. In cases like this I would prefer a shakier sort of confidence leading to double and triple checking rather than overconfidence leading to mistakes. It is the "trust but verify" approach as opposed to the "blindly trust" one. And in this case, it worked.

 

Unfortunately I only had an hour to sit here. I would have love to have run the sun all the way into the horizon, but these are logistically trickier exposures to work out when it is not just your schedule involved.

 

Hasselblad 500C

Lomography Potsdam 100

Please don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit permission. © All rights reserved FREEDOMSTREAMING PHOTOGRAPHY

 

Design by

© FREEDOMSTREAMING PHOTOGRAPHY

 

"Once, long ago", the ancient Lord of Darkness laments his isolation in the shadows before sensing the presence of two unicorns who safeguard the Power of light whereupon Darkness instructs Blix and his fellow goblins Pox and Blunder to kill the unicorns and bring him their horns to free himself. Meanwhile, Princess Lily , a mischievous and vibrant girl goes alone to the forest to meet her love interest Jack , an adventurous and some-what lustful forest dweller who teaches her the languages of animals before showing her the unicorns as he promised he would someday do. Against Jack's pleas, Lily approaches the stallion to stroke him, making him distracted and the perfect target for a poisoned dart from Blix's blowpipe. Once hit, the unicorns bolt, and Lily makes light of Jack's fears and sets him a challenge by throwing her ring into a pond, declaring that she will marry whoever finds it.

 

Jack, proving his love to Lily, dives into the pond to retrieve it. As the stallion dies from the poison and the goblins seize his horn, the forest and the pond freeze, setting the mortal realm into an apocalyptic winter. Lily runs off in terror before Jack can break the surface of the frozen pond. Taking refuge in a frozen cottage, Lily overhears the goblins talking about their slaying of the unicorn and testing the alicorn's magical powers. She follows them to a rendezvous with Darkness, who orders them to hunt down the mare. In a fit of overconfidence, Blunder challenges Darkness with the stallion's horn in hand, but is instead restrained and taken away.

 

Es beginnt zu Schneien

 

Hochtaunuskreis-Gebiet /Kleiner Feldberg

 

Der Zweckverband Naturpark Taunus unterhält ein Schneetelefon, über das Informationen – neben den Angaben auf der Internetseite – zu Loipen und Skiliften in der Umgebung des Großen Feldbergs erhältlich sind.

taunus.info/webcams/

Son of Zeus and...technically, brother of Olympia (although she denies it when asked). Another product of Zeus' 'adventures', Hercules fights crime alongside Olympia. Occasionally. Although handsome and strong, he lacks a certain something. Full invulnerability mainly, but his character could do with some work.

 

Powers: Super-strength, near invulnerability, Luscious locks

 

Weaknesses: His overconfidence, Olympias wrath

 

Catchphrase: *While flexing* "Getta load of these Greek guns"

Name: Shawn Mansfield (Human)

 

Z'chazak (Spirit)

 

Powers: Shawn: Above average agility, stamina, and knowledge of mystical artifacts

 

Z'chazak: Near-immortality, magic, extreme cunning, intellect, willpower and influence.

 

Weaknesses: Shawn: You name it. He is human, after all XD

 

Z'chazak: Overconfidence, powerless without a human form, bound to the mask bearing his name. Destroying it will destroy his spirit.

 

Origin: Shawn Mansfield was a well-respected archeologist. One day, while exploring an ancient South American temple, he stumbled upon a room containing strange paintings on the walls and an ornate mask resting on a pedestal. As he picked the mask up, he was filled with an uncontrollable desire to put it on. Doing so, Shawn was overwhelmed with power and blacked out. Upon waking, Mansfield discovered he was no longer in control of his actions. The mask had granted him immense magical power, but it also took away his free will. From what Shawn could gather, he had inadvertently freed the jungle spirit Z'chazak, an ancient evil imprisoned for the last 500 years. Now that Z'chazak is free, it is only a matter of time before he takes revenge on the human race for imprisoning him.

 

Well, that's all! I hope you guys and gals enjoyed it! And remember to "suit up, sign up": www.flickr.com./groups/llh

Skaftá, Iceland, July 2024

 

What I find particularly fascinating and challenging about composition in photography is how deceptively simple it seems on location, and how often I realize later that I got it quite wrong.

 

Having worked as a designer for decades, and spent much of my life designing, drawing, and painting. Thoughts about composition, contrast, and colors are second nature to me. My eyes and brain are fairly well trained, and many aspects of visual balance come intuitively.

 

When I set up a camera, four questions immediately come to mind:

1. What can and should be left out?

2. Are the proportions between the elements in the frame balanced?

3. How are the tonal values, and how do they relate to one another?

4. Is the composition visually pleasing?

 

I take several shots, keeping these questions in mind. During this process, I often shift the camera’s position looking for the optimal composition. With a digital camera, this allows me to see the actual tonal values as the camera "sees" them. So far, these are all trivial things.

 

Things get quite “dramatic” at home when I compare the shots, searching for the interesting ones. It often surprises and frustrates me to realise how overconfident I was on location. The slightest shifts in the camera’s alignment can dramatically affect the quality of the photo. Moving just slightly down or to the right can throw off the balance or flatten the scene. I’m frequently baffled by how such minor changes in position, angle, and focal length can have such a large impact.

 

It frustrates me that I didn’t catch these nuances or even think to check for them while shooting. I feel ashamed that I once again didn't notice my overconfidence, even though I should have known better by now. Of course, I am aware that the photos are not necessarily unusable because of this. But I'm still annoyed about missed opportunities where I could have learned something and I have to hope that I don't make the same mistake again next time.

 

Please don’t get me wrong—I’m not trying to make my work look bad or fish for compliments. I just want to learn. As I share these thoughts with you, I hope to hear your experience on this topic. How do you approach things on site, and how do you avoid your own pitfalls?

Port Arthur, the deep-water port and Russian naval base at the tip of the Liaodong Peninsula in Manchuria, had been widely regarded as one of the most strongly fortified positions in the world. However, during the First Sino-Japanese War, General Nogi Maresuke had taken the city from the forces of Qing China in only a few days. The ease of his victory during the previous conflict, and overconfidence by the Japanese General Staff in its ability to overcome improved Russian fortifications, led to a much longer campaign and far greater losses than expected.

The siege of Port Arthur saw the introduction of much technology used in subsequent wars of the 20th century (particularly in World War I) including massive 28 cm howitzers that fired 217-kilogram (478-pound) shells with a range of 8 kilometers (5.0 miles), rapid-firing light howitzers, Maxim machine guns, bolt-action magazine rifles, barbed wire entanglements, electric fences, arc lamp, searchlights, tactical radio signalling (and, in response, the first military use of radio jamming), hand grenades, extensive trench warfare, and the use of modified naval mines as land weapons.

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Huge thanks to @brickfabric for sponsoring the build with there amazing capes

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Close up pictures will be coming soon including some bfva2024 photos

Please don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit permission. © All rights reserved MJMourik.

 

The Biesbosch was created when 300 square kilometres of polder lands were submerged in the St. Elizabeth flood in the year 1421. Before this, the area was called Grote Hollandse Waard, containing cultivated land and a number of villages. The more than a century old dikes collapsed because of lack of maintenance, due to the difficult economic situation in the area, and the difficulties between the political entities within (especially the Hook and Cod (civil) wars).

  

The Grote Waard in 1421, just before the St. Elizabeth flood.One of the key factors in the flooding of the Grote Waard was the creation of a new dike in the southwest of the polder. The ground beneath this dike was unstable, which was a known fact in this period of time. However, political rivalry and financial issues (combined with the general opinion that "nothing will happen anyway", a sort of overconfidence) resulted in the creation of an unstable dike, located at one of the key corners of the Grote Waard. It was the only place where high tides coming directly from the sea could penetrate the land deeply and could reach a primary "keystone" dike of the Grote Waard (most of the primary dikes were used as protection against rivers instead).

  

Biesbosch wetlands.Very high river levels combined with a severe storm surge coming in from the sea caused the collapse of the southwest dike and several riverdikes, resulting in the flooding of most of the Grote Hollandse Waard. After the flood, three areas remained: the Island of Dordrecht to the west, the Land van Altena (with the city of Woudrichem) to the east, and the brackish swamps of the Biesbosch in between. Many villages (by tradition 72) were swallowed by the flood and were lost, causing (again by tradition) either 2,000 or 10,000 casualties. Some towns had more luck and submerged, only to rise above the water later on.

 

Many Rhine-Meuse delta branches that were closed off from the main rivers and served as drainage bodies of the Grote Waard, also disappeared. These include the Dubbel (the name of which survives in Dubbeldam), Eem, Werken (after which Werkendam is named), Graaf, Alm (which lent its name to Almkerk; the eastern part survived) and most of the main drainage stream: the Oude Maas (a small part survives in the form of the Oude Maasje, not to be confused with another branch called Oude Maas near Rotterdam). Most of the flooded area changed into a network of estuaries.

 

The most important of those were the Hollands Diep and the (shallow) Bergse Veld. Both were connected to the Haringvliet which existed before the disaster as a pure seawater inlet of the North Sea. After the disaster it became brackish and an important estuary of the rivers Rhine and Meuse. A persistent misunderstanding is that the Biesbosch arose by this storm flood in one night. It is true that this flood broke dikes of the then Grote Hollandse Waard or Zuid Hollandse Waard, but it needed dozens of years before the whole area was under water and had changed to the Biesbosch with its creeks and reeds.

Wikipedia

Just like an old photo, it surprised me. I no longer have my bicycle, she somehow died ...

It shouldn't be that way, ending in scrap metal is an undeserved end. I do not remember when the farewell was, which generates more guilt. She was part of dangerous adventures, I remember very clearly how much we risk. I should be about 11 years old, an old mansion, right on the street parallel to where I lived, had been torn down to make way for "progress." For some reason, they started digging, and for months they left a kind of abandoned area. Wonderful place, mountains of land, looked like a kind of mini mountain range. Woww, My bike and I, we climbed to the top and from there, we ventured to falls on slopes too steep, well I remember them, or rather our fear, is what makes me think that they were very steep. My bicycle was a kind of vehicle, all terrain, I trusted her to the point of feeling a kind of hero, in those jumps without containment network. Then the inevitable happened, possibly we both trust each other, I'm sure that was an overconfidence, because we were a team. We had overcome really dangerous obstacles, and we already felt too safe, but a large stone reminded us that our map of obstacles and curves was not too updated. The front wheel was stuck on that mineral, which stood out about 60 cm above the sloping race track. At 11 years old, it was my first time, what I flew, I fell on the ground about three meters forward, my bike did not want to leave me alone in that kind of new sensation and continued my flight, but, I am sure he did not do it on purpose, He didn't have time to dodge, although I try to deviate enough not to fall on my head. The right brake handle is embedded just above my knee. I was afraid, no doubt I had it. I looked around and nothing or nobody could help me, then I made the decision to pull with all my strength, to get the metal out of my body. Such a hole didn't look good, but I had to get out of that place if I wanted my mother to heal me. Then, as a mature man, I took a handkerchief out of my ruinous pants and wrapped the wound with very high precision and the knot was, a knot knot. There at that moment I could see my adventure partner, her condition was much worse than mine. I grabbed her and retaliated with what was left of her, we joined in our last 180 meters. Exact distance from that place of happy and magical moments to my house. I remember my mother's face, and the urgent exit to the hospital.

My recovery was quick, but it was not the same for my partner. She died that day, her wounds were much more serious than mine. I'm sure of something, stoically support the pain in my leg, but it wasn't the same, with the loss of my adventure partner. I didn't deserve that ending. Of that I'm sure.

  

Tal como una foto antigua, esta me sorprendió. Ya no tengo mi bicicleta, ella de alguna forma murió,…

No debería ser así, terminar en chatarra, es un inmerecido final. No recuerdo cuando fue la despedida, lo cual me genera mayor culpa. Ella fue parte de aventuras peligrosas, recuerdo muy nítidamente cuanto nos arriesgamos. Debería tener unos 11 años, una antigua mansión, justo en la calle paralela a donde yo vivía, había sido derribada para dar paso al “progreso”. Por alguna razón, comenzaron la excavación, y por meses dejaron una especie de zona abandonada. Maravilloso lugar, montañas de tierra, semejaban una especie de mini cordillera. Woww, Mi bicicleta y yo, subíamos hasta la cima y desde allí, nos aventuramos a caídas por pendientes demasiadas inclinadas, bueno así las recuerdo, o mejor dicho nuestro temor, es lo que me hace pensar en que eran muy empinadas. Mi bicicleta era una especie de vehículo, todo terreno, yo confiaba en ella al punto de sentirme una especie de héroe, en aquellos saltos sin red de contención. Entonces lo inevitable sucedió, posiblemente ambos nos confiamos, estoy seguro que fue eso, un exceso de confianza, pues éramos un equipo. Habíamos sorteados obstáculos verdaderamente peligrosos, y ya nos sentíamos demasiados seguros, pero una gran piedra nos recordó, que nuestro mapa de obstáculos y curvas, no estaba demasiado actualizado. La rueda delantera se clavó sobre aquel mineral, que sobresalía unos 60 cm sobre la inclinada pista de carrera. A mis 11 años fue mi primera vez, qué volé, caí sobre la tierra unos tres metros hacia delante, mi bicicleta no quiso dejarme solo en esa especie de nueva sensación y siguió mi vuelo, pero, estoy seguro que no lo hizo a propósito, no tuvo tiempo de esquivarme, aunque intento desviarse lo suficiente para no caer sobre mi cabeza. La manija del freno derecho se incrusto justo arriba de mi rodilla. Tuve miedo, sin duda que lo tuve. Mire alrededor y nada o nadie podía ayudarme, entonces tome la decisión de tirar con todas mis fuerzas, para sacarme el metal de mi cuerpo. No se veía bien semejante agujero, pero debía salir de ese lugar si quería que mi madre me curara. Entonces, como un hombre maduro, saque un pañuelo de mi ruinoso pantalón y envolví la herida con altísima precisión y el nudo era, un señor nudo. Allí en ese momento pude ver a mi compañera de aventuras, su estado era, mucho peor que el mío. La agarré y rengueando con lo que quedaba de ella, nos acompañamos en nuestro últimos 180 metros. Distancia exacta de aquel lugar de momentos felices y mágicos a mi casa. Recuerdo la cara de mi madre, y la salida urgente al hospital.

Mi recuperación fue rápida, pero no fue lo mismo para mi compañera. Ella murió ese día, sus heridas fueron mucho mas graves que las mías. Estoy seguro de algo, soporte estoicamente el dolor de mi pierna, pero no fue lo mismo, con la perdida de mi compañera de aventuras. No merecía ese final. De eso estoy seguro.

  

Almost Droney Baloney's last shot. It was too windy but feeling ever more confident, I sent it up anyway. Stupid error on my part. Beware of overconfidence.

Lost sight of it. The gimble got stuck at about 45 degrees down. I flew over to the R.R. tracks on the left and got down to around 30-40 feet and flew back into the wind towards me. Almost back to me I managed to hit some high branches in a tree and down it came.

Fortunately, it landed in snow and only suffered some chipped propeller blades. After drying it off and cleaning it up, I replaced the blades and sent it up, later, at home and without the wind. Everything works. A close one.

I knew my own strenght ......

 

'Initium omnis sui cognitio est sapientia'

 

Little people, big world

Bite of more of then you can chew

 

#Flickr Friday

#UseTheForce

 

7 Days of shooting

Week#6

If Only

Contrast Thursday

 

Whitney Houston - I didn't knew my own strenght

"Mountains have a way of dealing with overconfidence." ~Hermann Buhl

 

Taken on our hike to base camp, the day before our summit climb. That day the summit had 80-100mph winds! Fortunately for us, they had calmed to about 60mph the next day. It was a bit sobering to watch as we began our ascent...

Year: 20 BBY, Few days before the battle

Planet: Corellia

Location: Separatist Battle Station, Viewing Room

________________________________________________

 

Quiese: The Republic is coming here?

???: Yes. The Republic have already left Coruscant and are on their way to Corellia.

 

Quiese couldn’t believe what he had just heard. How did they find out about their secret space station?

 

Quiese: But how? How did they find out about this facility?

???: Undoubtedly, Darth Sidious revealed its whereabouts. However, this was to be expected from our master.

Quiese: Why, my master?! Why would he do such a thing?

???: No doubt that this is part of his “ultimate plan”. Although I do not fully understand why or how this all fits into it all, but we will listen and follow his command.

Quiese: For now…

 

A small smirk formed on his lips just as his acolyte let out those words. True, one day, they won’t need to listen to Sidious’ orders anymore. Just following them now has already cause problems for the man, such as now. However, he was patient enough to wait right now until the day where he will no longer need the Dark Lord, or his future Empire.

 

???: For now, yes. But until that time comes, my acolyte, we will use him and his connections to continue with my own plans for the future. When the time comes where we no longer need him or his resources, we will completely destroy him and his empire.

Quiese: As you say, Lord Nedoura. However, as for the Republic forces…what would you have me do?

 

Nedoura grinned and turned his hologram figure around, facing towards whatever he was facing to.

 

Nedoura: Lure them into the station. Let them think that there wasn’t much resistance inside the facility, and allow them to wipe out our personal droids…

Quiese: With all respect, my lord…but losing those droid, would it not create much a hinder in your plans?

Nedoura: I am aware of the details, my acolyte. However, we need to fool the Republic one way or another. But as for their generals…

 

He then turned back to face his acolyte, his expression turning to a serious one.

 

Nedoura: The Jedi will send some of their best to you, likely the two Siruhnians and Witronians to deal with you. I want you to capture the one with any means necessary.

Quiese: Capture?

 

His expression was that of confusion. What did Nedoura mean by that? He couldn’t possibly…?

 

Quiese: *Eyes widen* The Dark Mercenary…he's coming here?!

Nedoura: I have no doubt about it. Just to ensure that he does, I have already discussed this with Sidious. Curiously, he complied.

Quiese: Do you think he suspects anything?

Nedoura: Unsure…however, that will not matter. Once my plans begin, none of it won’t matter. I will have Kydan at my feet, and my enemies at their mercies.

Quiese: As you command…what of the others?

 

A small, psychotic looking grin formed on his lips. It was as if, whatever he was going to say, was going to be enjoyable.

 

Nedoura: ...Kill them…All the Jedi…and their clones…

________________________________________________

Year: 20 BBY, Present Time

Planet: Corellia

Location: Separatist Battle Station, Hallway

________________________________________________

 

Remembering everything that his master had commanded him days ago, he could not help but feel a bit of excitement running through him. It wasn’t every day that you were given permission to kill your foes with any means necessary, especially with Jedi around. To kill both the Jedi, their clones and their entire fleet…what dark side user wouldn’t want the chance at that!

 

But it still bothered him somewhat with his other mission; capturing the Dark Mercenary. He and other acolytes had all discussed this at length about why this Witronian was so important to their master. Once or twice, they had heard Nedoura argue with, not just Count Dooku or General Grievous, but with Darth Sidious too. Most of the time, a heated argument would ensue between them all, until Sidious would cease their hostilities with one another. Surely, this would cause much suspicions about Nedoura and his connection to Kydan Witress. As of how and why, no one knew, perhaps not even Sidious knew. But one thing was for sure…

 

Nedoura was insistent about the young man, maybe even obsessed over him.

 

But he couldn’t focus on such trivial things. Quiese had a mission to accomplish, and a goal to achieve. But he wasn’t going to get far until he deals with the chasing Siruhnian that was behind him, her double bladed lightsaber in her right hand. They had both halted in their tracks multiple times to cross blades, even if they were for just a few seconds. But, for what it was worth, his plans were coming along very smoothly. Not much longer, he would have, not just her, but the mercenary in his trap. The more he thought about it, the more he started to grin.

 

Everything was going according to plan…

 

She was slowly getting tired out.

 

After spending quite a bit chasing after the dark acolyte, her energy was slowly draining. Truthfully, she wasn’t to the point of exhaustion, far from it. She could feel the energy flowing through her, ready to be summoned at her will. Mostly, she was getting tired chasing after bad guys every single time. She sometimes wished that they would just stand still and fight for real rather than running all the time.

 

But something else plagued her mind; Kydan. She pondered on the things that have been happening as of late, such as “why these assassins, or Acolytes, were so keen on wanting Kydan so much?” She remembered hearing the name “Nedoura” a few times since the beginning of the Clone Wars. Many rumors were told about him, but what made her more curious about him was when Kydan mentioned him a couple times before. She could see every time, whenever that name was brought up, his expression looked so angry, a dark moment passing through him when pondering. Whatever his connection to this man is, it was unclear, but she could guess that it wasn’t anything good. Nonetheless, that had only made her curiosity peek even more.

 

But that wasn’t the only thing that she wondered about. She kept going back to what she and Kydan were talking about a couple days ago, before they were…professionally interrupted. Exactly what was Kydan going to say to her? Ever since then and up to when they were in the gunship, his worried expression still lingered on his face. There was so many possibilities that could make him concerned…especially if it had to do something with her.

 

Wait a minute, she immediately thought just when she dodged a few objects that were flying pass her, Quiese trying to hit her. Did I do something wrong? Is he mad at me for some reason? If so…what did I do? She couldn’t think of any reason that Kydan would be upset with her. Sure, every time they are always on an adventure or mission together, something always risks the danger of life or death. Especially when it always happens to Kyd--…

 

He’s…he’s not mad cause I put him in danger, is it?

 

Calena broke from her trance of thoughts as she saw Quiese enter one of the elevators that headed upwards. She halted in her tracks and immediately looked around for another way. Looking behind her, she saw a duplicate of another elevator that appeared to go up too. Using the Force to open the sliding door, she entered the elevator quickly as the doors closed behind her, shooting straight towards the next floor above them.

 

She was unsure what was set before her, a good possibility that it was all a trap. But whatever lied ahead, she was more than ready to face it head on. She would stop Quiese, one way or another.

________________________________________________

 

Kydan continued to run across the halls and sharp corners, trying to catch up to the both of them. Almost every turn he came to, right on the other side, he could always see debris and saber marks left and right. The more he saw, the more worried he was getting.

 

He could tell that Nedoura’s acolyte was just toying with Calena. If he really wanted to, he could have just taken her out that much sooner. But he didn’t, and his concern for her was growing more and more. Yes, he was concern for his own men, but he trusted them enough to hold out against those walking heaps of metal. It was the fact that she was up against another Force user who was trained under Nedoura, who could easily match against Dooku.

 

Nedoura…no matter where he was in the galaxy, he would always find where Kydan was. He hated knowing the fact that every time he was faced with anyone who has dealings or trained under him, there would always be some kind of trouble. That was another thing that made him worry even more about Calena. He would need to catch up to them fast enough, or else…

 

He didn’t want to think of such a thing! He was worried enough, he didn’t need to start thinking about that too. Not again.

 

Reaching to the point of a dead end hallway, he saw two elevators that presume to go upwards towards the high tower above him. That could only mean that both Calena and Quiese were up there, fighting each other to the death. If he wanted to get up there, he would have to move fast. He started pushing both control panels on both sides and waited for one of them to start coming back down. His patience was growing thin, and the elevators weren’t going fast enough.

 

Dark: Stay calm, Kydan. Worrying more and more isn’t going to help you.

Kydan: Easier said than done…

Dark: Do you trust her?

Kydan: Obviously!

Dark: Then trust that she can handle herself until we get up there.

 

He was about to shoot back another comment, but decided against it. Although he was getting more anxious and worried, it wasn’t doing him any good. He needed to stay calm and keep his focus in check. He really did trust her, even if he didn’t think he would be able to handle herself. But she was a Jedi Knight for a reason, a Jedi general of the Galactic Republic that the order entrusted her enough to receive such titles. So letting out a loud sigh, he forced himself to keep as calm as he could.

 

At that moment, the doors before him slid open as he rushed inside and rapidly pushed the buttons on the panel. The doors then closed back up and the elevator started to move up towards the battle above him. He gripped his lightsaber hilts in his hands a bit tighter than usual, feeling the adrenaline and anxiety rushing through him. He really hoped that he would make it in time.

 

Hang on Cale’, I’m coming…

________________________________________________

 

The duel between the two of them was equally matched. Each of them colliding with their sabers at precise timing, sparks flashing off from each other and onto the metal floor underneath them. Neither one of them were letting up against the other, their attentions focused on the other as each of them looked for a weakness.

 

Although they were evenly matched, the Siruhnian's quick reflexes and form was much more faster and quicker than that of the Acolyte himself. She, however, felt like she wasn't focused at all. Her mind kept wondering to Kydan, about if he was okay and what was so important that they needed to talk. She kept trying to push those things aside 'til after the fight, but it wasn't doing her any good. As for Quiese, he was starting to lose his footing against her. Although he was trained under his master, he still wasn't prepared enough to face someone like the Jedi Knight before him.

 

That was when he noticed something was off. As more time passed between the two of them, her speed and slashes at him were slowing down and becoming almost lazy. He wasn't entirely sure what was causing this outcome, he didn't really care. This was his chance to finally bring down the Siruhnian Knight.

 

When she went for one more hit, he side steps to the right, causing her to express her surprise as he used the force to push her back towards the window where the battle outside was still consistent. She smacks into the wall with force, pain ensuing her body as she struggles to pick herself up from the metal and glass detailed flooring. He slowly approaches her, chuckling wickedly due to the outcome before him.

 

Quiese: Poor, poor Jedi. To think that you could defeat someone in my caliber. You probably would had a chance, if only your Witronian friend was here with you. But...that doesn't seem to be the case...

Calena: *Groans* You won't win this battle...

Quiese: I doubt that, Siruhnian girl. Farewell, Jedi, it was fun while it lasted.

 

As she tried to fight the pain that she was feeling still, Quiese raised his blade as he prepared to strike her down with a single slash. Her mind raced, not understanding why this was happening. How could all this happen?! Every time something like this happens, it always ends with...

 

...it always ends up with Kydan saving the day...and suffering.

 

As her thoughts passed her, the red blade came right down towards her, just barely an inch away from her head before a purple blade collided between them. With her eyes clutched closed, she opens her left eye as she sees Quiese struggling to hold his hold against no one else but Kydan, who was staring down the Acolyte with anger. She could see his eyes turned from the once gentle brown eyes to the now crimson rose red. The last time she had seen something like that was back on Alzoc III.

 

Kydan: Stay. Away. From. Her!

Quiese: *Growls* You blasted dank farrek!

 

Putting all his effort into his hold, Quiese was unable to hold off for long before Kydan pulled the blades away from Calena before a quick block and hit duel commenced 'til he kicked and Force Pushed the Acolyte across the room, rolling and sliding across the floor. Still keep watch, Kydan rushes over to her as he reached his hand out to her, a concern look plastered on his expression.

 

Kydan: Are you okay? You're not hurt, are you?

Calena: Y-Yeah...I'm fine.

 

Taking hold of his hand, he pulls her up and onto her feet. Her expression was still stunned.

 

Calena: Kydan...I--

Kydan: Save the thought for later, princess...

 

Calena turned her head away in shame before turning it back to see him holding her saber towards her.

 

Kydan: *Smiles* Ready to do this together?

Calena: ......*Smirks* Yeah...I am.

 

With a single nod, the two reactivated both their blue, purple and pure black lightsabers and took their stances towards Quiese, who was just rising to his feet in disgust and annoyance.

 

Quiese: You fools...you have no idea who you are messing with.

Kydan: Actually, we do.

Calena: And it just gives us more reason to stop you.

Quiese: *Snarls* Your overconfidence will be you downfalls!

 

Reactivating his red blade, Quiese readied himself as Kydan and Calena came rushing towards him with their blades at the ready as well. As Calena gave herself a small but quick boost of speed to hopefully overcome their enemy, Kydan leaped into the air as he crossed both his blades together as he tried to pounce on him. Quiese had little time to react, but he was able to successfully dodge Calena's attack while, at that exact moment, block Kydan's air attack, just barely making it all in time.

 

Their duel against one another continued for what felt like hours, but in reality, was only minutes. Both sides were exhausting themselves out, and they were reaching their limit of physical strength. It was this point that Quiese just had enough of this conflict; he needed to complete his mission for Nedoura, or he would suffer the dreadful punishment of his master. With all the power he could muster up, he blocked both Kydan and Calena's attacks at the same time. Catching them off guard, he first use the force to choke Kydan, putting him in a spot where he was struggling to do much. Calena saw this and rushed to aid Kydan as fast as could. Quiese looked over to her before calling out loud to no one in particular.

 

Quiese: *Eyes narrowed* Enough of this foolishness!

 

Still holding Kydan in mid air, he force pushes Calena to the floor once again, causing her to roll across the metal. He then slams Kydan down to the middle of the room, smashing and cracking the glass under them and leaving a large dent on the floor. Without letting up on anything, he then starts to electrocute both of them, sending sheers amount of pain to course through their entire body as they both screamed out loud. Quiese, amused by the outcome of his actions, starts laughing wickedly as it grew louder and louder. At that moment of the battle, he felt assured that he had won the duel between them.

 

He halts his attack on both of them and stares at Kydan, who was still in pain from the attacks, for just a few moments before looking towards Calena who was also in a similar state. He then starts approaching the Jedi Knight as he reactivates his crimson blade.

 

Quiese: I told you both before...you could never win against me. Now, Dark Mercenary...you get to watch your Jedi friend...die.

 

Kydan, trying to get himself back up, looks over to where Calena and Queise were before realizing what was about to happen. Quiese slowly raised his arm up, the red energy sword pointed to the ceiling as the cruel acolyte took a moment to revel in his success. The mercenary's eyes widen in shock, knowing what was about to happen.

 

His heart raced...his mind immediately returning back to the first day of the Clone Wars...remembering everyone that had perished; both his clone troopers who followed him to battle, his old crush Relicia who died by the explosion and debris that had fallen on her, and now...now the image of Calena being slain by the hand of one of Nedoura's acolytes. He wasn't sure what was happening to him, but it was at that moment that something snapped. The red rose eyes became even more crimson than before, streaks of black lines crossing over each other across his pupil. How he did it, he wasn't entirely sure, but it was at that exact moment that he quickly got up and ran with all his might towards them.

 

It almost seemed like time had stopped completely, but he just barely made it in between the two of them, not entirely sure what he was going to do. His body reacted to the danger before him as he raised his left arm in front of him, shielding him from whatever outcome was to come. Quiese's saber came down and made a clean slice right through the Dark Mercenary's entire left arm, dismembering him completely. Quiese and Calena looked very stunned, not even sure how he got between them so fast. As the acolyte was still in shock, where once his left arm was started to form into a black substance, long armored-like lance, much like how he made one back during the Battle of Taris years ago. With one swift thrust and yell, Kydan pierced right into Quiese's chest, puncturing his stomach and his heart right through as he raised him into the air. He gasped for air, finding it much more harder to breath now as small droplets of blood ran out from both his chest and his lips.

 

How this happened, he still wasn't sure, but he knew that he had failed his matter at that moment of time. His last thoughts were that he would at least not be feeling the wrath of his master's punishment no longer. He looked down at Kydan, slowly fading to nothing as he murmured something to him that would cost him.

 

Quiese: *Soft tone* Heh...I knew...that you were...a...monster...

 

With a growl and another yell, Kydan plunged Quiese right down to the very spot that Kydan was just at, shattering the glass and ripping a hole through the metal with sheer force of Kydan's powers. He then began falling down towards the surface below as he disappeared through the clouds. Kydan, now exhausted from using so much of his strength and Forge power, made his left black arm lance disappear to nothing but the fresh cut as he collapsed to his knees, still staring down the hole of where the Acolyte had fallen.

 

Calena, who was now sitting up, saw the entire thing before her. She was glad that the fight was finally over, as well as Quiese being defeated even if it wasn't the greatest course of action. But she wasn't happy of the consequences that occured; Kydan having his left arm dismembered by the dead man. Although it wasn't her fault, she still blamed herself for what happened. All because I was being so foolish, she thought sadly to herself. If I had stayed calm and focus, I could have...and Kydan could have...

 

Slowly picking herself up, she started walking towards the injured mercenary, who still hadn't move from his spot nor tearing his attention away once. When she got close to him, she knelt to her knees as she stared at his other hand that was hanging loosely to his side. She started to reach for it, just centimeters away from grasping his hand, but then stopped for a moment and then pulled away. From behind, Kydan heard her speak but not in her normal and happy voice. Rather, it was more sad than anything.

 

Calena: ...I'm sorry...This was all...this was my fault, wasn't it?

 

Unable to hold it anymore, tears began to drop and onto the cold metal floor, her body shaking at the same time. Finally tearing his attention away from the hole before him, he turned his head to her as he saw her sad and crying expression. When he saw that, his heart began to sink. He hated seeing anyone, especially her, look sad.

 

Kydan: Calena...

Calena: I'm so sorry! I...I shouldn't...I shouldn't be near you anymore...

 

Kydan's eyes widen ever so much in response, not understanding what she meant.

 

Kydan: Calena, what are you talking about?

Calena: It's...it's my fault that you're like this...If...if I had just...

 

More tears ran down her cheeks as her voice cracked little by little, having a hard time trying to bring out the right words. Kydan's heart just sank even more, having the urge to wipe the tears away from her eyes and hug her to try and make her feel better. But he stood there, still surprised by her words.

 

Calena: ...I-I have to...stay way from you...before...before you get hurt...

Kydan: ...

Calena: Cause I...I can't stand...losing you because of me...So for now on...I'm...going to stay away--

 

At that singular moment, not able to hold back the urge anymore, Kydan calmly shushes her by placing his right hand on her cheek before closing the gap between them and catching his lips with hers. Calena slightly jumped in surprise by the sudden actions, not knowing exactly what to do. However, it only took a moment before she recuperated and let the feeling sink in, pushing her lips a bit more forcefully to his. After their moment lasted a few, the two broke away from the kiss as they both gasped for air, both of them carrying a small blush on their cheeks. With a small smile, he takes his hand and wipes the tears away from her eyes, unsure of what to really say or do in the moment.

 

Feeling a bit of confidence, from what happened and seeing Dark behind her urging him silently, he began to speak.

 

Kydan: I would never blame you, Calena. I know you could never hurt me. And don't ever think that you need to stay away. You means so much to me than you could ever know.

Calena: Kydan...

Kydan: I will always need you. Because I...I...I love you.

 

Her heart began to race after those three words left his mouth, much more faster than it has ever beaten. Even her cheeks grew just ever so red as well. Did she hear him right? Was this a dream? She had to be sure this wasn't any illusion, or something else.

 

Calena: You...you love me?

 

He nodded fervently, somewhat embarrassed as his own cheeks grew even more red from what he said. Although she was still shocked, she couldn't help feel happy and excited. She had always believed that she would have to be the one to tell him one day, just she didn't exactly know how. But to think that he would build up the boldness and courage to kiss her and confess to her. Realizing that she was thinking for too long, she smiled herself as she pulled Kydan's face to hers, capturing his lips this time. When she pulled away, the look on Kydan's face was priceless, making the Siruhnian girl giggle in response. She placed her hands on his and looked into his eyes.

 

Calena: I love you too, Kyie'.

 

Even though the outcome and consequences were fatal, it couldn't deter the way that these two felt for one another. It even came to the point that they didn't hear the clone soldiers marching into the room and rushing to them both. The smiles on both their faces never faded...

________________________________________________

 

So I just have to say this......HOLY CRAP THIS HAS BEEN A LONG TIME COMING!!! I am to blame though, considering that I procrastinated for nearly 3 years straight. But wow, am I glad that I finally finished this long and challenging chapter at last!

 

As for the build; this is a photo that is about a couple months old, during when I was experimenting with my skills. We promise that the next set of chapters will be much, much better. But either way, I am still happy with how it looks, especially adding the scenery of an air battle happening in the background there.

 

If you are new to our and wish to catch yourselves up with all that is happening, check out and click "The Jedi Mercenary" album to read more of the earlier chapters before this one!

 

We really do hope you all enjoyed this long awaited chapter, cause I sure am lol. We are looking forward to finally introducing you you a few brand new characters that will be added to the series starting next chapter. We have spent a long time working on them and are very excited to show you what we have to come. Also, if you can, leave your thoughts in the comments below and leave a like to show us how much you all enjoyed this. Thank you all as always, and as always, have a fan-building-tastic day/night! See ya' next time!

 

- Director KW & CGN Crew

 

is always overconfidence :-) Robert Byrne

 

i will be traveling all day today to return home, i will do my best to catch up beginning on tuesday. take care friends :-) HBM!! Happy Labor Day!!

 

blue dasher dragonfly, waterlily garden, sarah p duke gardens, duke university, durham, north carolina

“Mountains have a way of dealing with overconfidence.”

 

- Nemann Buhl

A dimensionally-displaced law enforcement agent. His overconfidence is what keeps getting him killed, but no one knows how he keeps coming back to life.

 

"Zonk Hero" originated in 2014. My friend Andrew Sargent created "Bob Hero", a Hau-headed 1.0 hero, as a size comparison and a perpetual punching bag. I didn't have the pieces to recreate that MOC, so I made my own as a 2.0 stylized MOC.

 

The current version is meant to be a size comparison for a more modern type of build as seen in BIONICLE G2 and Star Wars Ultrabuilds. For once, his trans-green armor plates are not photoshopped (they were originally light blue but badly lit.)

I made three images of this creek and woods, and all of them suffered from camera shake. I had a tripod in the car, but thought I could get away with making these hand-held. That didn't really work out. This was the best of the three. Camera shake (and overconfidence) is my curse.

 

Professor: The Knights of Hallow

Chapter 5: The Phantom

-----

Professor woke up in a dark room, chained to a chair. He could feel a sharp pain in his chest.

 

Professor (thinking): Feels like some of my ribs are broken. And my left arm…

 

???: Ah, Professor! I am so glad you are here. No, I am not. I wish you were not here! I have been looking forward to meeting you. Who would ever want to meet you?

 

Professor (thinking): Hmm, he must have some kind of personality disorder.

 

???: Welcome to the Manor! The home of the Knights of Hallow. You are not welcome here! Leave my home now! We need to have a chat about something.

 

The mysterious man turned on the light and walked up to Professor. The man was wearing normal looking clothes but had a metal mask covering half of his face. He was listening to music through some earbuds. The volume was very loud, and Professor could hear what was playing: opera.

 

Professor: The Phantom of the Opera. So, what part do you play in all of this?

 

Phantom: I am the leader of this organization. Isn’t that obvious you fool!

 

Professor: Forgive me, but I do not think of you as the leader of this.

 

Phantom: Well, I will admit that I have my issues. Especially with the other guy… But I am not really the leader. I am more of a temporary leader, as we wait for our true leader.

 

Professor: Really? And who would that be?

 

Phantom: Well, we can’t really tell you that. Yes, we can! No, we can’t! What is he gonna do? He’s chained to this chair, and the process has already begun. Hmm perhaps you are right. Very well. You do it then. Coward. Our true leader is known as Dracula

 

Professor: Dracula…

 

Phantom: Let us tell you a story, Professor. Many years ago, the Knights of Hallow ruled the world. They were led by the great Dracula, who, wasn’t actually a vampire… But he did have similar powers, in that he could live longer by draining the life from others, fly, and control minds. However, all those years ago, someone defeated Dracula. No one knows who, but it was done. I sure would like to know who… excuse me, I’m telling the story! Anyway, I reformed the Knights of Hallow recently, with the purpose of bringing him back. And we are almost successful! And there is nothing you can do to stop it! Why would you tell him that? We are doing this by finding one of his descendants with his blood and turning him to our side with genetic and mental manipulation. Dracula left for his followers’ instructions on how to bring him back. We had to wait for the proper candidate to show himself, and turns out, he was a rookie in the Flickr Fighters.

 

Professor: You… you are trying to change my rookie… into Dracula?!

 

Phantom: hahahaha… yes Professor. And we will be successful.

 

Professor suddenly leaped out of his chair and pinned the Phantom to the ground.

 

Phantom: How- how did you escape?!

 

Professor: You talk too much. And, you forget, I am an escape artist. Now, one of you tell me where my rookie is!

 

Phantom: You underestimate me Professor. You think you have already won, but your overconfidence will be your downfall.

 

A black vapor started emitting from the exposed part of Phantom’s face. Then, Phantom was able to knock Professor off of him and stand up. The vapor went down to his arms and wrapped around them, forming fists.

 

Phantom: We have never been beaten in hand-to-hand before. And we don’t plan on starting now!

 

Professor stood up and prepared for battle. He knew he had to finish this quickly, for his rookie’s sake.

-----

 

History: Simon Moore is a genius computer hacker. His early career was spent pioneering internet piracy and being a master cyber thief. He began to create viruses and hack into government terminals causing him to be branded a cyber terrorist. Always able to elude the authorities, Simon was one step ahead of the law. He hacked into the computers of New Blok City’s S.T.U.D.s facility and found a way to acquire some of their tech. He experimented with their computer chip implants and was able to connect to the internet via virtual reality. Using his extremely gifted computer IQ, he became more and more adapted to his cyber journeys. During one of his excursions into the cyber world, he entered the S.T.U.D. labs facility and discovered a particle converter. Simon altered the program and was able to use it on himself to transform his molecules into a pixilated form. With this ability, he is able to link to computers and enter the cyber world as a pure digital being. He can live in this capacity without need for food, air, water, or sleep. He uses this ability to escape the law and to wreak havoc upon all of New Blok City. Once he gained notoriety, he took the code name “S1m0n”. When in his human form, Simon dresses like a cyberpunk and occasionally speaks in a robot voice. He wears a visor that has the ability to scan people and detect electronic devices. He loves flaunting his intelligence and enjoys toying with opponents by giving them puzzles to solve. Calling himself ‘the original cyber bully”, he is prone to using the phrase “S1m0n says” before he terrorizes his victims. His overconfidence has made him reckless at times and he can become unhinged when outwitted. S1m0n is dangerous when focused. In the outside world, he is a menace at best, but in the cyber world, he is unearthly. S1m0n is always looking for ways to upgrade. If he ever reaches his potential, New Blok City could find itself facing a complete systems crash.

 

Built for the League of Lego Heroes

www.flickr.com/groups/llh/

I have forgotten the author and where I read this excellent article, with great photos. When I find it again, I will give proper credit.

 

At Midway, the Japanese carrier aircraft were switching from land weapons to naval weapons to attack the American fleet after they bombed Midway Island. This meant that the decks and hangars were all littered with ammunition, bombs, torpedoes, and whatnot. The Japanese carriers were nothing but “powder kegs,” ready to blow up at a single well-directed bomb hit. The result was the disaster at Midway, as we all know.

 

This question is asking— under a ridiculous assumption— why Japanese aircraft carriers were “sunk so easily” compared to American aircraft carriers. At Midway, this was because the Japanese carriers were reduced to mere powder kegs and were completely unprepared to defend against air attacks. But what if we take a look at some of the other cases— outside of Midway?

  

Aside from the Battle of Midway, Japanese aircraft carriers weren’t usually sunk easily. At the Battle of the Coral Sea, for example, the two Japanese fleet carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku sustained considerable damage without sinking. Shokaku was too heavily damaged to participate at Midway, and Zuikaku lost too much of its aircrew, but the two carriers managed to survive. See the picture below to get an idea of just how much damage Shokaku suffered.

  

Meanwhile, the US carrier Lexington sunk after the Battle of the Coral Sea— not from battle damage, but from human error. She sustained lots of damage, too, and managed to survive, only to be sunk by a fatal accident. Yorktown sustained a lot of damage as well but was miraculously repaired in 3 days— a repair that should have taken 3 months!

 

As for the fleet carrier Hiryu sunk at Midway, she was not sunk by American aircraft at all. Hiryu was scuttled by the Japanese to prevent her from being captured. Now, it is true that American aircraft turned Hiryu into a floating wreck, prompting the Japanese to scuttle her. It is also true that British naval gunfire and torpedoes turned Bismarck into a floating wreck, promoting her crew to scuttle her to prevent her from being towed back to Britain as a prize, which would have humiliated Germany in the highest regard. Yet we don’t consider Bismarck as being sunk easily. She took a lot of damage but was still floating— although reduced to a floating wreck. Same with Hiryu.

 

After Midway, Japan had significantly fewer aircraft carriers. The only fleet carriers that remained were Shokaku and Zuikaku (although several more were produced, including Unryu, Amagi, Katsuragi, Taiho, and Shinano). Zuikaku was sunk at the Battle of Cape Engano. Zuikaku was far from being “easily sunk,” taking a whopping 7 torpedoes and 9 bombs. Even after that, it took her a relatively long time to sink. The crew even had time to lower the flag and offer their salutations while they were being evacuated.

  

What about Shokaku? Shokaku was sunk in the Philippine Sea by a submarine— not by enemy aircraft. Japanese (and American) aircraft carriers of that time did not have much submarine protection aside from destroyer escorts and anti-submarine air patrols. The sinking of the USS Yorktown was an excellent example of this. A Japanese submarine somehow managed to slip closely enough to the American carrier to launch torpedoes, sinking her as well as one American destroyer. The US fleet carriers Hornet and Wasp were also sunk by Japanese submarines. (In WW2, destroyers were the ships designed to combat submarines, not aircraft carriers. It wouldn’t be surprising for an aircraft carrier to be sunk by a submarine, but that submarine would have to be able to slip through the carrier’s destroyer escorts and also not be spotted by patrolling aircraft).

 

Shokaku had just finished refueling and rearming aircraft (just like the fleet carriers at Midway) and was extremely vulnerable when she was torpedoed by the US submarine Cavalla. Even then, it took 4 torpedoes to sink her. Given the circumstances, this should not be an example of a Japanese carrier “sinking easily.”

  

In the later parts of the war (from 1944-ish onward), Japanese aircrews were very inexperienced and lacking in number. Some Japanese carriers didn’t even carry planes at that point. Let us now discuss the sinking of the fleet carrier Taiho, which had an armored flight deck capable of withstanding a lot of bomb damage. As some readers might know, Taiho was sunk by a single torpedo launched by a US submarine. Should Taiho’s sinking be considered an “easy” sinking, then? I’d say no. Here’s why:

 

Consider how the British battlecruiser Hood was sunk by a single lucky shot that hit home (the ammunition magazine) and snapped the ship in half. Also consider the sinking of Arizona at Pearl Harbor in just 9 minutes, which was caused by a Japanese bomb exploding in the ammunition magazine. These are both good examples of extremely lucky hits.

  

Now, the torpedo that the submarine fired at Taiho struck the starboard side of the carrier and penetrated the aviation fuel tanks, jamming the elevator in the same process. This turned out to be an extremely lucky hit, as seawater mixed with gasoline from the penetrated fuel tanks began vaporizing into the hangar decks. The crew was inexperienced and did not respond to this effectively. Still, Taiho remained intact for many hours, and no one expected her to sink.

 

In an effort to get rid of the fumes, the damage control officer ordered the ventilation systems switched to full capacity. This actually increased the chance of ignition. Six and a half hours after the torpedo hit, a massive explosion tore the ship’s sides from the inside out, and loads of seawater flooded in. Taiho sunk almost two hours later. In all, it took more than 8.5 hours for Taiho to be sunk by this lucky torpedo hit (compared to the 9 minutes of Arizona’s sinking). If the crew’s response to the fumes had been better, Taiho may not have sunk. Additionally, Taiho also had design flaws. So, her sinking was caused by:

 

A very lucky hit

An ineffective response by an inexperienced crew

An order that was not carefully thought over by the damage control officer

 

Was this an “easy” sinking? I certainly wouldn’t say so.

 

Now, for the sinking of the largest aircraft carrier of that time, the fleet carrier Shinano:

 

Shinano already had serious design flaws, just like Taiho. She was sunk by 4 torpedoes fired by the US submarine (not enemy aircraft) Archerfish. The first torpedo flooded storage compartments and an aviation fuel storage tank. The second torpedo flooded the outboard engine room. The third torpedo flooded the third engine boiler room, which, assisted by structural failures, managed to also flood two other boiler rooms. The fourth torpedo flooded the starboard compressor room and a damage control station. It also caused an oil tank to burst.

 

Due to the crew’s confidence in the armor of the ship, their efforts to save the ship were slow, unorganized, and slacking. The captain, Toshio Abe, ordered the ship to continue at full speed even after the torpedo hits, which allowed large amounts of water to flood into the torpedo holes. The ship listed more than 20 degrees and the engines hat to he shut down. By the time the captain finally gave the order to abandon ship, Shinano was listing at 30 degrees. She later capsized and sank.

 

Once again, ineffective efforts to save the ship, inexperienced crews and a bad decision led to a fleet carrier being sunk. Additionally, the 4 torpedoes that hit Shinanon also managed to hit some places that had structural flaws in them. I would partially agree that Shinano was sunk because of her structural flaws, but I would argue that it was more because of slacking initial efforts and the captain’s decision to continue at full speed. But above all, this sinking should not be counted as an “easy” sinking. It was not the American submarine that “easily” sunk Shinano, but rather the crew’s overconfidence, slacking efforts, and the captain’s decision to continue at full speed.

  

The escort carrier Un’yo was also sunk by a submarine, which fired two torpedoes. These were also relatively lucky hits, knocking out the engines. That night, a storm collapsed Un’yo’s bulkheads, causing her to list to starboard. Then, the order to abandon ship was issued.

  

Was this an “easy” sinking? Perhaps. The torpedo hits were pretty severe, but it was more likely the storm that sunk the ship. Were it not for the storm, Un’yo would have been able to limp back to port for repairs. The storm was assisted by the torpedo hits (or the other way around: the torpedo hits were assisted by the storm). Either way, without the torpedo hits or without the storm, Un’yo would have survived.

 

Most of the other Japanese carriers were either sunk by submarines (which they weren’t designed to defend themselves against) or sunk in port by American air attacks during the final stretches of World War II. At that time, they had virtually no carrier aircraft left and were basically reduced to floating anti-aircraft batteries.

  

There are several other sinkings I want to mention in this answer, but judging from the fact that this answer is already much longer than a typical answer on Quora and people wouldn’t read all of it if I include more examples. (By the way, if you made it up to this point, then great job!)

 

In conclusion, aside from the Battle of Midway, there were indeed been a few rare cases of a Japanese aircraft carrier being “easily” sunk in non-disadvantageous circumstances, but these were pretty rare. So, enough with the ridiculous assumption that Japanese carriers were actually sunk easily in the Pacific War. They were either sunk in disadvantageous circumstances, sunk by deliberately being “powder kegs,” sunk by very lucky hits, sunk by ineffective responses, sunk by wrong decisions, or sunk because of structural flaws— the latter being rather uncommon for Japanese carriers (except for Taiho and Shinano).

 

Edit: Of course, one could argue that Japanese carriers were indeed easily sunk and that they were easily sunk due to such reasons, to which I would agree. If it is possible to assume that Japanese aircraft carriers were easily sunk in the Pacific War, then it is because of the above-mentioned reasons.

www.flickr.com/photos/andrecarbon/6561388733/in/photostre...

 

OVERCONFIDENCE

this is gonna end in disaster

and you can blame no one but yourself

I am back from a five day visit at home and started uploading the pictures from last week again- I had a few full body shots of Agnes in this gown but unfortunately, they all turned out to look blurry :(

 

Within the group of "the three", Agnes stands for the Nemesis, a punishment for thoughtlessness and misbehavior as well as overconfidence. She appears dressed in black, but if you accept her, she will clean and renew you.

 

I also would like to use this chance to thank all my flickr friends for more than 40 000 visits on flickr.com/photos/nina-chan, as well as almost 200 000 overall clicks... I really can't believe it! I hope we will continue to have fun togther here! :)

This is my first time using the editor so the blur lines are a bit off.

Check out my second picture of this, a tiny bit more edited.

The Battle of the Bulge (16 December 1944 – 25 January 1945) was the last major German offensive campaign in its western theater during World War II. It was launched through the densely forested Ardennes region of Wallonia in Belgium, France, and Luxembourg, on the Western Front, towards the end of World War II, in the European theatre. The surprise attack caught the Allied forces completely off guard. American forces bore the brunt of the attack and incurred their highest casualties of any operation during the war. The battle also severely depleted Germany's armoured forces, and they were largely unable to replace them. German personnel and, later, Luftwaffe aircraft (in the concluding stages of the engagement) also sustained heavy losses.

The Germans officially referred to the offensive as Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein ("Operation Watch on the Rhine"), while the Allies designated it the Ardennes Counteroffensive. The phrase "Battle of the Bulge" was coined by contemporary press to describe the bulge in German front lines on wartime news maps,[15][c][16] and it became the most widely used name for the battle. The German offensive was intended to stop Allied use of the Belgian port of Antwerp and to split the Allied lines, allowing the Germans to encircle and destroy four Allied armies and force the Western Allies to negotiate a peace treaty in the Axis powers' favor. Once that was accomplished, the German dictator Adolf Hitler believed he could fully concentrate on the Soviets on the Eastern Front. The offensive was planned by the German forces with utmost secrecy, with minimal radio traffic and movements of troops and equipment under cover of darkness. Intercepted German communications indicating a substantial German offensive preparation were not acted upon by the Allies.[17][18]

The Germans achieved total surprise on the morning of 16 December 1944, due to a combination of Allied overconfidence, preoccupation with Allied offensive plans, and poor aerial reconnaissance. The Germans attacked a weakly defended section of the Allied line, taking advantage of heavily overcast weather conditions that grounded the Allies' overwhelmingly superior air forces. Fierce resistance on the northern shoulder of the offensive, around Elsenborn Ridge, and in the south, around Bastogne, blocked German access to key roads to the northwest and west that they counted on for success. Columns of armor and infantry that were supposed to advance along parallel routes found themselves on the same roads. This, and terrain that favored the defenders, threw the German advance behind schedule and allowed the Allies to reinforce the thinly placed troops. Improved weather conditions permitted air attacks on German forces and supply lines, which sealed the failure of the offensive. In the wake of the defeat, many experienced German units were left severely depleted of men and equipment, as survivors retreated to the defenses of the Siegfried Line.

The Germans' initial attack involved 406,000 men; 1,214 tanks, tank destroyers, and assault guns; and 4,224 artillery pieces. These were reinforced a couple of weeks later, bringing the offensive's total strength to around 450,000 troops, and 1,500 tanks and assault guns. Between 67,200 and 125,000 of their men were killed, missing, or wounded in action. For the Americans, out of 610,000 troops involved in the battle,[19] 89,000 were casualties.[20] While some sources report that up to 19,000 were killed,[20][21] Eisenhower's personnel chief put the number at about 8,600.[22] British historian Antony Beevor reports the number killed as 8,407.[23] It was the largest and bloodiest battle fought by the United States in World War II.[24][25][26]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge

The Facel Vega was a typical example of French overconfidence. After the Second World War, the French car industry was in a mess. Shortages of materials, high taxes and the after-effects of the German occupation meant that during the 1950s even brands like Peugeot and Renault found it hard to make luxury models that were worth the name. This, thought Jean Daninos, was his moment for fame and glory. His Facel metal pressing workshop – Facel stood for Forges et Ateliers de Construction d’Eure-et-Loire – was already providing coachwork for such respected names as Delahaye and Simca. In 1953, Daninos decided to design his own luxury car, to the name of which he added the suffix Vega, at the suggestion of his brother Pierre, the author. Daninos couldn’t find a suitable engine in France and so he did a deal with Chrysler for the engine used in their De Soto model. However, the sale of the first two-door version was only modest, not helped by the heavy tax on the imported engines, which made a Facel Vega more expensive than a Rolls-Royce. But Daninos was no quitter and pressed on with his plans for a four-door model, the HK 500 Excellence, launched in 1959. It was a beast of a car, but a magnificent beast. With 360 horsepower under the bonnet, it combined American brawn with Italian beauty.

 

Mahy was able to buy his silver-grey Facel Vega at a bargain price in 1972. By this time, the company had been out of business for some eight years. Daninos had built fewer than 3,000 cars in a decade, but had already run up massive debts. Not even a last loan running into millions from the Credit National could save him. In 1964, the receivers were called in. Four years earlier, the brand experienced the most famous (but not the happiest) moment in its history, when the author and Nobel Prize winner Albert Camus died in the passenger seat of a Facel Vega driven by his friend Michel Gallimard. At the time of the accident, the car was said to be doing 180 kilometres per hour. Another example of French overconfidence.

 

Engine : Chrysler

6.286 cc

V8

330 hp

 

Mahy - a Family of Cars

09/09/2021 - 31/10/2021

 

Vynckier Site

Nieuwevaart 51-53

Gent

België - Belgique - Belgium - Belgien

Power can significantly change a person's personality. Maybe even transform it. To fight hubris syndrome, we must begin by fighting our tendency to admire power.Power has always inspired writers. Hubris syndrome "- when power drives an individual mad - would also have transfigured a large number of historical personalities.

Hubris (/ˈhjuːbrɪs/, also hybris, from ancient Greek ὕβρις) describes a personality quality of extreme or foolish pride or dangerous overconfidence.[1] In its ancient Greek context, it typically describes behavior that defies the norms of behavior or challenges the gods, and which in turn brings about the downfall, or nemesis, of the perpetrator of hubris.

The adjectival form of the noun hubris is "hubristic". Hubris is usually perceived as a characteristic of an individual rather than a group, although the group the offender belongs to may suffer collateral consequences from the wrongful act. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence, accomplishments or capabilities. Contrary to common expectations,[by whom?] hubris is not necessarily associated with high self-esteem but with highly fluctuating or variable self-esteem, and a gap between inflated self perception and a more modest reality. In ancient Greek, hubris referred to actions that shamed and humiliated the victim for the pleasure or gratification of the abuser. The term had a strong sexual connotation, and the shame reflected upon the perpetrator as well. Violations of the law against hubris included what might today be termed assault and battery; sexual crimes; or the theft of public or sacred property. Two well-known cases are found in the speeches of Demosthenes, a prominent statesman and orator in ancient Greece. These two examples occurred when first Midias punched Demosthenes in the face in the theatre (Against Midias), and second when (in Against Conon) a defendant allegedly assaulted a man and crowed over the victim. Yet another example of hubris appears in Aeschines' Against Timarchus, where the defendant, Timarchus, is accused of breaking the law of hubris by submitting himself to prostitution and anal intercourse. Aeschines brought this suit against Timarchus to bar him from the rights of political office and his case succeeded. In ancient Athens, hubris was defined as the use of violence to shame the victim (this sense of hubris could also characterize rape. Aristotle defined hubris as shaming the victim, not because of anything that happened to the committer or might happen to the committer, but merely for that committer's own gratification: to cause shame to the victim, not in order that anything may happen to you, nor because anything has happened to you, but merely for your own gratification. Hubris is not the requital of past injuries; this is revenge. As for the pleasure in hubris, its cause is this: naive men think that by ill-treating others they make their own superiority the greater. Crucial to this definition are the ancient Greek concepts of honour (τιμή, timē) and shame (αἰδώς, aidōs). The concept of honour included not only the exaltation of the one receiving honour, but also the shaming of the one overcome by the act of hubris. This concept of honour is akin to a zero-sum game. Rush Rehm simplifies this definition of hubris to the contemporary concept of "insolence, contempt, and excessive violence".In Greek mythology, when a figure's hubris offends the pagan gods of ancient Greece, it is usually punished; examples of such hubristic, sinful humans include Icarus, Phaethon, Arachne, Salmoneus, Niobe, Cassiopeia, and Tereus. The concept of hubris is not only derived from Greek philosophy - as it is found in Plato and Aristotle - but also from the theatre, where it allows us to tell the story of great epics, where success goes up to the head of the hero, who claims to rise to the rank of gods; it is then ruthlessly put in its place by Nemesis, the goddess of vengeance. The Greek hybris refers to the excesses and their disastrous consequences.

 

In its modern usage, hubris denotes overconfident pride combined with arrogance.[10] Hubris is often associated with a lack of humility. Sometimes a person's hubris is also associated with ignorance. The accusation of hubris often implies that suffering or punishment will follow, similar to the occasional pairing of hubris and nemesis in Greek mythology. The proverb "pride goeth (goes) before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall" (from the biblical Book of Proverbs, 16:18) is thought to sum up the modern use of hubris. Hubris is also referred to as "pride that blinds" because it often causes a committer of hubris to act in foolish ways that belie common sense.[11] In other words, the modern definition may be thought of as, "that pride that goes just before the fall."

Examples of hubris are often found in literature, most famously in John Milton's Paradise Lost, in which Lucifer attempts to compel the other angels to worship him, is cast into hell by God and the innocent angels, and proclaims: "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." Victor in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein manifests hubris in his attempt to become a great scientist by creating life through technological means, but comes to regret his project. Marlowe's play Doctor Faustus portrays the eponymous character as a scholar whose arrogance and pride compel him to sign a deal with the Devil, and retain his haughtiness until his death and damnation, despite the fact that he could easily have repented had he chosen to do so.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubris

 

Charisma, charm, the ability to inspire, persuasiveness, breadth of vision, willingness to take risks, grandiose aspirations and bold self-confidence—these qualities are often associated with successful leadership. Yet there is another side to this profile, for these very same qualities can be marked by impetuosity, a refusal to listen to or take advice and a particular form of incompetence when impulsivity, recklessness and frequent inattention to detail predominate. This can result in disastrous leadership and cause damage on a large scale. The attendant loss of capacity to make rational decisions is perceived by the general public to be more than ‘just making a mistake’. While they may use discarded medical or colloquial terms, such as ‘madness’ or ‘he's lost it’, to describe such behaviour, they instinctively sense a change of behaviour although their words do not adequately capture its essence. A common thread tying these elements together is hubris, or exaggerated pride, overwhelming self-confidence and contempt for others (Owen, 2006). How may we usefully think about a leader who hubristically abuses power, damaging the lives of others? Some see it as nothing more than the extreme manifestation of normal behaviour along a spectrum of narcissism. Others simply dismiss hubris as an occupational hazard of powerful leaders, politicians or leaders in business, the military and academia; an unattractive but understandable aspect of those who crave power. But the matter can be formulated differently so that it becomes appropriate to think of hubris in medical terms. It then becomes necessary first to rule out conditions such as bipolar (manic-depressive) disorder, in which grandiosity may be a prominent feature. From the medical perspective, a number of questions other than the practicalities of treatment can be raised. For example can physicians and psychiatrists help in identifying features of hubris and contribute to designing legislation, codes of practice and democratic processes to constrain some of its features? Can neuroscientists go further and discover through brain imaging and other techniques more about the presentations of abnormal personality? (Goodman et al., 2007).

 

We see the relevance of hubris by virtue of it being a trait or a propensity towards certain attitudes and behaviours. A certain level of hubris can indicate a shift in the behavioural pattern of a leader who then becomes no longer fully functional in terms of the powerful office held. First, several characteristics of hubris are easily thought of as adaptive behaviours either in a modified context or when present with slightly less intensity. The most illustrative such example is impulsivity, which can be adaptive in certain contexts. More detailed study of powerful leaders is needed to see whether it is mere impulsivity that leads to haphazard decision making, or whether some become impulsive because they inhabit a more emotional grandiose and isolated culture of decision making.

 

We believe that extreme hubristic behaviour is a syndrome, constituting a cluster of features (‘symptoms’) evoked by a specific trigger (power), and usually remitting when power fades. ‘Hubris syndrome’ is seen as an acquired condition, and therefore different from most personality disorders which are traditionally seen as persistent throughout adulthood. The key concept is that hubris syndrome is a disorder of the possession of power, particularly power which has been associated with overwhelming success, held for a period of years and with minimal constraint on the leader.

 

The ability to make swift decisions, sometimes based on little evidence, is of particular importance—arguably necessary—in a leader. Similarly, a thin-skinned person will not be able to stand the process of public scrutiny, attacks by opponents and back-stabbings from within, without some form of self-exultation and grand belief about their own mission and importance. Powerful leaders are a highly selected sample and many criteria of any syndrome based on hubris are those behaviours by which they are probably selected—they make up the pores of the filter through which such individuals must pass to achieve high office.

 

Hubris is associated in Greek mythology with Nemesis. The syndrome, however, develops irrespective of whether the individual's leadership is judged a success or failure; and it is not dependent on bad outcomes. For the purpose of clarity, given that these are retrospective judgements, we have determined that the syndrome is best confined to those who have no history of a major depressive illness that could conceivably be a manifestation of bipolar disorder.

 

Hubris is acquired, therefore, over a period. The full blown hubris, associated with holding considerable power in high office, may or may not be transient. There is a moving scale of hubris and no absolute cut-off in definition or the distinction from fully functional leadership. External events can influence the variation both in intensity and time of onset.

 

Dictators are particularly prone to hubris because there are few, if any, constraints on their behaviour. Here, this complex area is not covered but one of us has considered the matter elsewhere (Owen, 2008). Hitler's biographer, Ian Kershaw (1998, 2000), entitled his first volume 1889–1936 Hubris and the second 1936–1945 Nemesis. Stalin's hubris was not as marked or as progressive as Hitler's. As for Mussolini and Mao both had hubris but probably each also had bipolar disorder. Khrushchev was diagnosed as having hypomania and there is some evidence that Saddam Hussein had bipolar disease (Owen, 2008).

 

Being elected to high office for a democratic leader is a significant event. Subsequent election victories appear to increase the likelihood of hubristic behaviour becoming hubris syndrome. Facing a crisis situation such as a looming or actual war or facing potential financial disaster may further increase hubris. But only the more developed cases of hubris deserve classification as a syndrome exposed as an occupational hazard in those made vulnerable by circumstance.

 

Hubris syndrome and its characteristics

 

Unlike most personality disorders, which appear by early adulthood, we view hubris syndrome as developing only after power has been held for a period of time, and therefore manifesting at any age. In this regard, it follows a tradition which acknowledges the existence of pathological personality change, such as the four types in ICD-10: enduring personality change after trauma, psychiatric illness, chronic pain or unspecified type (ICD-10, 1994)—although ICD-10 implies that these four diagnoses are unlikely to improve.

 

Initially 14 symptoms constituting the hubristic syndrome were proposed (Owen, 2006). Now, we have shortened and tabulated these descriptions and mapped their broad affinities with the DSM IV criteria for narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder and histrionic personality disorder. These three personality disorders also appear in ICD-10, although narcissistic personality disorder is presented in an appendix as a provisional condition, whose clinical or scientific status is regarded as uncertain. ICD-10 considers narcissistic personality disorder to be sufficiently important to warrant more study, but that it is not yet ready for international acceptance. In practice, the correlations are less precise than the table suggests and the syndrome better described by the broader patterns and descriptions that the individual criteria encapsulate.

 

Establishing the diagnostic features of hubris syndrome

 

The nosology of psychiatric illness depends on traditional criteria for placing diagnoses in a biomedical framework (Robins and Guze, 1970). There are, however, other underpinnings—psychological or sociological—that can be applied. Validity for a psychiatric illness involves assessing five phases: (i) clinical description; (ii) laboratory studies; (iii) defining boundaries vis-a-vis other disorders; (iv) follow-up study; and (v) family study. While these phases are worth analysing, it has to be recognized that there are severe limitations in rigidly applying such criteria to hubris syndrome given that so few people exercise real power in any society and the frequency amongst those ‘at-risk’ is low. The potential importance of the syndrome derives, however, from the extensive damage that can be done by the small number of people who are affected. As an investigative strategy, it may be that studies such as neuroimaging, family studies, or careful personality assessments in more accessible subjects with hubristic qualities or narcissistic personality disorder from other vulnerable groups might inform the validation process.

 

Proposed clinical features

 

Hubris syndrome was formulated as a pattern of behaviour in a person who: (i) sees the world as a place for self-glorification through the use of power; (ii) has a tendency to take action primarily to enhance personal image; (iii) shows disproportionate concern for image and presentation; (iv) exhibits messianic zeal and exaltation in speech; (v) conflates self with nation or organization; (vi) uses the royal ‘we’ in conversation; (vii) shows excessive self-confidence; (viii) manifestly has contempt for others; (ix) shows accountability only to a higher court (history or God); (x) displays unshakeable belief that they will be vindicated in that court; (xi) loses contact with reality; (xii) resorts to restlessness, recklessness and impulsive actions; (xiii) allows moral rectitude to obviate consideration of practicality, cost or outcome; and (xiv) displays incompetence with disregard for nuts and bolts of policy making.

 

In defining the clinical features of any disorder, more is required than simply listing the symptoms. In the case of hubris syndrome, a context of substantial power is necessary, as well as a certain period of time in power—although the length has not been specified, varying in the cases described from 1 to 9 years. The condition may have predisposing personality characteristics but it is acquired, that is its appearance post-dates the acquisition of power.

 

Establishment of the clinical features should include the demonstration of criterion reliability, exploration of a preferred threshold for the minimum number of features that must be present, and the measurement of symptoms (e.g. their presence or absence, and a severity scale). This endeavour may also include a decision as to whether the 14 criteria suggested might usefully be revised.

 

To determine whether hubris syndrome can be characterized biologically will be very difficult. It is the nature of leaders who have the syndrome that they are resistant to the very idea that they can be ill, for this is a sign of weakness. Rather, they tend to cover up illness and so would be most unlikely to submit voluntarily to any testing, e.g. the completion of scales measuring anxiety, neuroticism and impulsivity. Also the numbers of people with the syndrome is likely to be so small preventing the realistic application of statistical analyses. It also needs to be remembered that leaders are prone to using performance-enhancing drugs fashionable at the time. Two heads of government, Eden and Kennedy, were on amphetamines in the 1950s and 1960s. In the 21st century hubristic leaders are likely to be amongst the first to use the new category of so-called cognition enhancers. Many neuroscientists believe that such drugs properly used can be taken without harm. The problem is a leader who takes these without medical supervision and in combination with other substances or in dosages substantially above those that are recommended. In 2008, Nature carried out an informal survey of its mainly scientific readers and found that one in five of 1400 responders were taking stimulants and wake-promoting agents such as methylphenidate and modafinil, or β-blockers for non-medical reasons (Maher, 2008).

 

In defining the boundaries, one of the more important questions may be to understand whether hubris syndrome is essentially the same as narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), a subtype of NPD or a separate entity. As shown in Table 1, 7 of the 14 possible defining symptoms are also among the criteria for NPD in DSM-IV, and two correspond to those for antisocial personality and histrionic personality disorders (APD and HPD, respectively) (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). The five remaining symptoms are unique, in the sense they have not been classified elsewhere: (v) conflation of self with the nation or organization; (vi) use of the royal ‘we’; (x) an unshakable belief that a higher court (history or God) will provide vindication; (xii) restlessness, recklessness and impulsiveness; and (xiii) moral rectitude that overrides practicalities, cost and outcome.

 

academic.oup.com/brain/article/132/5/1396/354862/Hubris-s...

 

La Vie site cites the work of researcher Ian H. Robertson, who studied the effect of hubris on a fish species in Lake Tanganyka in Africa, on which the seizure of power triggers a hormonal reaction that changes their organism. The researcher explains that the situation is similar for humans, whose intelligence is multiplied tenfold by dopamine intake, but "too much dopamine will have harmful consequences. But absolute power floods the brain with dopamine. It also creates an addiction,"says the researcher. That is not all. Excessive self-confidence puts in place a mental mechanism that makes it impossible to assess oneself properly. The more you have a fair appreciation of your own qualities, the more modest you are. And you don't normally feel fit to become head of state,"explains Sebastian Dieguez, a neuroscience researcher at the University of Freiburg.

I have forgotten the author of this excellent article from Quora. When I find it again, I will give proper credit.

 

At Midway, the Japanese carrier aircraft were switching from land weapons to naval weapons to attack the American fleet after they bombed Midway Island. This meant that the decks and hangars were all littered with ammunition, bombs, torpedoes, and whatnot. The Japanese carriers were nothing but “powder kegs,” ready to blow up at a single well-directed bomb hit. The result was the disaster at Midway, as we all know.

 

This question is asking— under a ridiculous assumption— why Japanese aircraft carriers were “sunk so easily” compared to American aircraft carriers. At Midway, this was because the Japanese carriers were reduced to mere powder kegs and were completely unprepared to defend against air attacks. But what if we take a look at some of the other cases— outside of Midway?

  

Aside from the Battle of Midway, Japanese aircraft carriers weren’t usually sunk easily. At the Battle of the Coral Sea, for example, the two Japanese fleet carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku sustained considerable damage without sinking. Shokaku was too heavily damaged to participate at Midway, and Zuikaku lost too much of its aircrew, but the two carriers managed to survive. See the picture below to get an idea of just how much damage Shokaku suffered.

  

Meanwhile, the US carrier Lexington sunk after the Battle of the Coral Sea— not from battle damage, but from human error. She sustained lots of damage, too, and managed to survive, only to be sunk by a fatal accident. Yorktown sustained a lot of damage as well but was miraculously repaired in 3 days— a repair that should have taken 3 months!

 

As for the fleet carrier Hiryu sunk at Midway, she was not sunk by American aircraft at all. Hiryu was scuttled by the Japanese to prevent her from being captured. Now, it is true that American aircraft turned Hiryu into a floating wreck, prompting the Japanese to scuttle her. It is also true that British naval gunfire and torpedoes turned Bismarck into a floating wreck, promoting her crew to scuttle her to prevent her from being towed back to Britain as a prize, which would have humiliated Germany in the highest regard. Yet we don’t consider Bismarck as being sunk easily. She took a lot of damage but was still floating— although reduced to a floating wreck. Same with Hiryu.

 

After Midway, Japan had significantly fewer aircraft carriers. The only fleet carriers that remained were Shokaku and Zuikaku (although several more were produced, including Unryu, Amagi, Katsuragi, Taiho, and Shinano). Zuikaku was sunk at the Battle of Cape Engano. Zuikaku was far from being “easily sunk,” taking a whopping 7 torpedoes and 9 bombs. Even after that, it took her a relatively long time to sink. The crew even had time to lower the flag and offer their salutations while they were being evacuated.

  

What about Shokaku? Shokaku was sunk in the Philippine Sea by a submarine— not by enemy aircraft. Japanese (and American) aircraft carriers of that time did not have much submarine protection aside from destroyer escorts and anti-submarine air patrols. The sinking of the USS Yorktown was an excellent example of this. A Japanese submarine somehow managed to slip closely enough to the American carrier to launch torpedoes, sinking her as well as one American destroyer. The US fleet carriers Hornet and Wasp were also sunk by Japanese submarines. (In WW2, destroyers were the ships designed to combat submarines, not aircraft carriers. It wouldn’t be surprising for an aircraft carrier to be sunk by a submarine, but that submarine would have to be able to slip through the carrier’s destroyer escorts and also not be spotted by patrolling aircraft).

 

Shokaku had just finished refueling and rearming aircraft (just like the fleet carriers at Midway) and was extremely vulnerable when she was torpedoed by the US submarine Cavalla. Even then, it took 4 torpedoes to sink her. Given the circumstances, this should not be an example of a Japanese carrier “sinking easily.”

  

In the later parts of the war (from 1944-ish onward), Japanese aircrews were very inexperienced and lacking in number. Some Japanese carriers didn’t even carry planes at that point. Let us now discuss the sinking of the fleet carrier Taiho, which had an armored flight deck capable of withstanding a lot of bomb damage. As some readers might know, Taiho was sunk by a single torpedo launched by a US submarine. Should Taiho’s sinking be considered an “easy” sinking, then? I’d say no. Here’s why:

 

Consider how the British battlecruiser Hood was sunk by a single lucky shot that hit home (the ammunition magazine) and snapped the ship in half. Also consider the sinking of Arizona at Pearl Harbor in just 9 minutes, which was caused by a Japanese bomb exploding in the ammunition magazine. These are both good examples of extremely lucky hits.

  

Now, the torpedo that the submarine fired at Taiho struck the starboard side of the carrier and penetrated the aviation fuel tanks, jamming the elevator in the same process. This turned out to be an extremely lucky hit, as seawater mixed with gasoline from the penetrated fuel tanks began vaporizing into the hangar decks. The crew was inexperienced and did not respond to this effectively. Still, Taiho remained intact for many hours, and no one expected her to sink.

 

In an effort to get rid of the fumes, the damage control officer ordered the ventilation systems switched to full capacity. This actually increased the chance of ignition. Six and a half hours after the torpedo hit, a massive explosion tore the ship’s sides from the inside out, and loads of seawater flooded in. Taiho sunk almost two hours later. In all, it took more than 8.5 hours for Taiho to be sunk by this lucky torpedo hit (compared to the 9 minutes of Arizona’s sinking). If the crew’s response to the fumes had been better, Taiho may not have sunk. Additionally, Taiho also had design flaws. So, her sinking was caused by:

 

A very lucky hit

An ineffective response by an inexperienced crew

An order that was not carefully thought over by the damage control officer

 

Was this an “easy” sinking? I certainly wouldn’t say so.

 

Now, for the sinking of the largest aircraft carrier of that time, the fleet carrier Shinano:

 

Shinano already had serious design flaws, just like Taiho. She was sunk by 4 torpedoes fired by the US submarine (not enemy aircraft) Archerfish. The first torpedo flooded storage compartments and an aviation fuel storage tank. The second torpedo flooded the outboard engine room. The third torpedo flooded the third engine boiler room, which, assisted by structural failures, managed to also flood two other boiler rooms. The fourth torpedo flooded the starboard compressor room and a damage control station. It also caused an oil tank to burst.

 

Due to the crew’s confidence in the armor of the ship, their efforts to save the ship were slow, unorganized, and slacking. The captain, Toshio Abe, ordered the ship to continue at full speed even after the torpedo hits, which allowed large amounts of water to flood into the torpedo holes. The ship listed more than 20 degrees and the engines hat to he shut down. By the time the captain finally gave the order to abandon ship, Shinano was listing at 30 degrees. She later capsized and sank.

 

Once again, ineffective efforts to save the ship, inexperienced crews and a bad decision led to a fleet carrier being sunk. Additionally, the 4 torpedoes that hit Shinanon also managed to hit some places that had structural flaws in them. I would partially agree that Shinano was sunk because of her structural flaws, but I would argue that it was more because of slacking initial efforts and the captain’s decision to continue at full speed. But above all, this sinking should not be counted as an “easy” sinking. It was not the American submarine that “easily” sunk Shinano, but rather the crew’s overconfidence, slacking efforts, and the captain’s decision to continue at full speed.

  

The escort carrier Un’yo was also sunk by a submarine, which fired two torpedoes. These were also relatively lucky hits, knocking out the engines. That night, a storm collapsed Un’yo’s bulkheads, causing her to list to starboard. Then, the order to abandon ship was issued.

  

Was this an “easy” sinking? Perhaps. The torpedo hits were pretty severe, but it was more likely the storm that sunk the ship. Were it not for the storm, Un’yo would have been able to limp back to port for repairs. The storm was assisted by the torpedo hits (or the other way around: the torpedo hits were assisted by the storm). Either way, without the torpedo hits or without the storm, Un’yo would have survived.

 

Most of the other Japanese carriers were either sunk by submarines (which they weren’t designed to defend themselves against) or sunk in port by American air attacks during the final stretches of World War II. At that time, they had virtually no carrier aircraft left and were basically reduced to floating anti-aircraft batteries.

  

There are several other sinkings I want to mention in this answer, but judging from the fact that this answer is already much longer than a typical answer on Quora and people wouldn’t read all of it if I include more examples. (By the way, if you made it up to this point, then great job!)

 

In conclusion, aside from the Battle of Midway, there were indeed been a few rare cases of a Japanese aircraft carrier being “easily” sunk in non-disadvantageous circumstances, but these were pretty rare. So, enough with the ridiculous assumption that Japanese carriers were actually sunk easily in the Pacific War. They were either sunk in disadvantageous circumstances, sunk by deliberately being “powder kegs,” sunk by very lucky hits, sunk by ineffective responses, sunk by wrong decisions, or sunk because of structural flaws— the latter being rather uncommon for Japanese carriers (except for Taiho and Shinano).

 

Edit: Of course, one could argue that Japanese carriers were indeed easily sunk and that they were easily sunk due to such reasons, to which I would agree. If it is possible to assume that Japanese aircraft carriers were easily sunk in the Pacific War, then it is because of the above-mentioned reasons.

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Graduation Ceremony in Detroit last week.

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Reprocessed in B&W for Critique as part of Eric Kim Workshop in Detroit (May 2013)

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Take Your Street Photography to New Heights”: Donation-based 2-Day Detroit Introduction to Street Photography Workshop with Brian Day for Charity (5/10-5/11)

erickimphotography.com/blog/take-your-street-photography-...

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Detroit is 'clearly insolvent,' emergency manager says

www.nbcnews.com/business/detroit-clearly-insolvent-emerge...

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I went to Glacier Point in Yosemite for dawn two times in three days this June. That's no mean feat considering my campground was a two hour drive from the parking lot and if I remember right dawn was right after 6 am. The first day I was there I got up at 4:15 am and I missed sunrise but was able to see the sun break over Half Dome and shoot golden hour over Nevada Falls. So after getting up at 3:15 am my second try to make sure I got the beautiful pre-dawn colors I decided that rather than shooting that same things over again while the sun was breaking over Half Dome through golden hour that I'd try for a time lapse.

 

R5 | ISO 100 | EF 16-35 F/2.8 III | f/11 | 21 mm

1839 - 2 stop brackets centered at 1/60s, 1/80s, 1/100s, 1/125s, 1/160s, 1/200s (Big mistake on my part-explanation below)

60 fps

 

Total of 5517 images taken to make this video.

  

TL;DR:

From here on out the TL;DR is that an overconfident camera nerd tried something that shouldn't have worked but pretty much did. He shares his mistakes and how he'll set it up differently next time. Read on at your own risk.

  

The rest of this is more a nerdy story of how I winged the shot and still got a result that I'm pretty proud of. There are some things I'll do differently next time I attempt a time lapse of this magnitude and, for any who might be interested, I'll list those at the end, too.

 

Now I had put together a few simple time lapses before but always under pretty constant light and in fairly low dynamic range situations. The doctor once said that he was armed with "Overconfidence, this *pats bag*, and a small screwdriver. I'm absolutely sorted," and it was in this spirit that I plunged forward knowing that the worst that could happen was a bunch of wasted hard drive space and me standing around enjoying a magnificent sunrise in one of the most beautiful locations on the planet. Not much downside there.

 

I had my R5 with me and a 16-35 mm wide angle with me so I set my aspect ration in camera to 16:9, found a composition I liked, set up my auto exposure bracketing for 2 stop brackets, and went to my in camera intervalometer. Now, I had used my R5 enough to know that for some reason the good people at Canon think that no one will ever need an interval smaller than one second. Never mind that the camera can keep shooting 12 images per second until you fill your memory card and that in night photography 1 second gaps are way too long, but I digress. I also knew that Canon's current flagship body will only shoot all three frames of a set of bracketed images if a timer is used, with a 2 second timer being the shortest timer available. If you don't use a timer even with the built in intervalometer set at say 1 second intervals, you get a series of images all one second apart from each other that look like this, mid - 1 sec - dark - 1 sec - bright - 1 sec - mid - 1 sec - dark - 1 sec - bright - 1 sec - mid - 1 sec - dark - 1 sec - bright - 1 sec, etc. etc. I've accidently shot that time lapse before and I'm here to tell you it's a pretty worthless and frustrating series of images. Now, as my former students will attest, I do struggle with addition sometimes, but that seems to me that the shortest interval you can get with a Canon R5 when taking an HDR time lapse is 3 seconds between shots. So that's what I picked. By the way, I'd love to be proven wrong about these two things. If anyone has a way around either the min 1 second interval or the timer required to shoot brackets, please educate me!!

 

So far so good, and I'd do things that way again. Now begins the era of error. I left the camera in manual. I used pretty standard landscape settings. ISO 100, f/11, and let the shutter speed do what it will since there wasn't any wind to speak of and nothing was going to be moving in my composition anyway. Now, you're probably laughing at me by now because you're probably in possession of the secret knowledge that eluded me and my sleep deprived mind that morning. When the sun rises, things get brighter. If things get too bright the image blows out the highlights and you get a nasty image. So, when the sun rose I was frantically working to manually adjust my shutter speed to keep the histogram on the back of the camera looking decent without bumping the camera and ruining the time lapse. (Note that stopping and starting again wasn't an option because that would have created an uneven gap between images that would have looked horrible.) Standing there, I knew that smoothing these manual exposure changes out was going to be a headache down the road but in that kind of situation you just keep solving problems as best you can as they pop up and hope it all works out in the end. Oh, and the timing had to be pretty close to perfect to roll the shutter wheel between shots because the shot had to have ended, but the intervalometer couldn't have triggered the next shot yet or it ignored the change.

 

Anyway, after almost 2 hours had passed, I had my 5517 images (1839 sets of 3 shot brackets) and drove the two hours back to the campground.

 

Fast forward from June to August when I finally got down to trying to process this time lapse. Now first let me say I invested in Michael Shainblum's time lapse course and it's well work it! I look forward to finishing it and learning so many more techniques. He recommends a program called LRTimelapse for smoothing out transitions. Now it took me 8 different tries and more hours exporting jpegs and rendering video than I care to admit, to get the keyframes set the way I wanted, but I'm pretty happy with this result. I took a bunch more time lapse raw data on my recent 3 month road trip and I'm really looking forward to using what I learned processing this one to tackle them, too!

 

So what I plan to do differently next time is to use aperture preferred mode instead of manual. Set the exposure compensation where I want it, and limit the auto ISO and shutter speeds to reasonable levels. This will greatly reduce the need for key frames every time you change the exposure. Should take a time lapse like this one from the 14 I had to edit to something like 3-5. It will also allow me to use LRTimelapse's deflicker feature much more effectively. With the manual discontinuities in the exposure over time the deflicker algorithm actually introduced large problems around those manual changes.

 

If anyone actually read all this and is interested in creating these kinds of shots I hope it helps point you in the right direction and remember my biggest recommendation is to buy Michael Shainblum's time lapse course! (No affiliation and I paid full price. Just bragging on a tool I found useful.)

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the model, the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

The KV-1 was the unsuspecting winner of a Soviet contract for a new heavy tank to replace the obsolete T-35A Multi Turreted Heavy Tank. The KV tank beat the SMK and T-100 to make it to mass production. Immediately prior to the invasion of the USSR in June 1941, roughly 508 KV-1 tanks were in Red Army service.

The KV-1 was an unpleasant surprise to the advancing Germans in June 1941, due to its excellent armor protection. The KV-1 quickly gained a fearsome reputation on the battlefield, being able to withstand point-blank shots from the standard 37mm anti-tank guns fielded by Germany. Many KV-1s returned from combat peppered with dents and gouges from ricochets which had failed to penetrate its armor. However, the KV-1s made little impact on the actual fighting during the months of Operation Barbarossa, with the exception of a small number of engagements. Poor crew training, poor logistical support and inept command and control meant that the Soviet tanks, including the mighty KV-1, where deployed in small packets that were easily swallowed and terminated by the better organized German units.

The KV-1 tank weighed 45 tons and was powered by the 660hp V2K engine. The suspension was the first Soviet use of torsion bars, and it consisted of six road wheels, a rear drive wheel, a large front idler wheel and three return rollers. The tank had a crew of five. Soviet engineers constantly updated the tank and, between 1941 and 1942, the armor was thickened from 90mm to 200mm in places. The firepower was improved too, from the 30.2 caliber long F-32 76.2mm gun, to the 42.5 caliber long 76.2mm Zis-5 gun. The F-32 gun could penetrate 50mm of armor at 1,000m, whereas the Zis-5 gun could penetrate 60mm of armor at the same range. In 1942, this made the gun a significant threat to most German tanks. However, the gun was similar to the one on the T-34 medium tank, which was far more mobile and far cheaper to build.

 

When the Wehrmacht first encountered the KV-1, they were horrified and greatly impressed with its capability to take extreme punishment from the main German tank and anti-tank guns of the time. Contrary to popular belief, there were only a handful of KV-1 tanks that were ever pressed into German service. The captured tanks were known as ‘Beutepanzer’ or trophy tanks.

In 1941, the Germans had a categorizing system for those units captured from the enemy, this was an “Ebeuten” number. The number for KV tanks of all sub-types was “E I”. The overwhelming majority of these tanks were either dismantled at the roadside or returned to the Reich for museums or testing. However, there were some KV tanks pressed into Wehrmacht service.

 

The earliest known Beutepanzer KV-1s, which in the German numbering system were known as the Pz.KpfW KV-1a 753 (r) (r = Russia) were deployed in the Autumn of 1941. German changes were minimal, with most Beutepanzer KV-1s retaining the original Soviet radio and equipment, however, occasionally German radios and tool sets were issued. The most interesting German acquisitions were the two OKV-1 tanks pressed into service. The Kirov works in Leningrad had manufactured six prototype flame throwing KV tanks, with a flame unit in the hull. All were used in combat, and two were subsequently pressed into Wehrmacht service after their capture.

Between 1941 and 1943, the German army likely dealt with thousands of lost KV tanks, of which perhaps several hundred were captured in working condition. It is thought however that less than 50 KV-1 tanks were pressed into German service. A multitude of factors can explain this, from lack of spare parts, to German overconfidence in their own tanks, to ideological doctrine that viewed anything manufactured by a Slavic race to be inferior.

 

Nevertheless, a small number of selected KV-1 was converted for field tests at the front, and in order to develop a standardized pattern. This specific model was called the the Sd.Kfz 756(r) and based upon the 1942 KV-1B model, manufactured at Factory 100 Chelyabinsk (ChTZ). It was fitted with the applique armor on the nose and on the glacis plate which increased the armor up to 200mm (7.9 in) thick in places. It was equipped with the lightweight cast turret. Sometimes, this model also carried a heavyweight cast, or simplified welded turret. Standard armament remained the same, being the 76mm ZiS-5 gun. The construction work was carried out by the maintenance battalion of Panzer Regiment 204 of the 22nd Panzer Division.

The most drastic modification was the alteration made to the main armament. The original Soviet 76mm ZiS-5 gun was removed to make way for the German’s own 7.5cm KwK 40 L/43. This gun was derived from the 7.5cm PaK 40, a towed anti-tank gun that entered service in 1942. In 1942-43, the gun was also mounted on Germany’s main medium tank, the Panzerkampfwagen IV, replacing the short barreled 7.5cm KwK 37 howitzer. It was a deadly weapon, with a wide range of ammunition types that included Armor Piercing Capped Ballistic Cap (APCBC), Armor-Piercing Composite Rigid (APCR) and High-Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT). The APCBC was its most deadly round, with a 990 m/sec muzzle velocity, capable of piercing 80 mm (3.15 in) of armor at 2.000 m. At this time, the 7.5cm KwK L/43 was a rare gun, as only 135 Panzers were equipped with it, and probably the weapons used for the Sd.Kfz 756(r) conversion were salvaged from other tanks that had been irreparably damaged in action, but retained an operable gun. With this modification, the Sd.Kfz 756(r) was intended as somewhat of an ‘Anti-KV’ or ‘Anti-T-34’ vehicle. The Soviets’ own 76mm Gun could not penetrate the front of a standard KV-1 (without 200mm armor) or T-34 at 1000m, but the German 7.5cm could handle both. Putting this gun on a chassis the 76mm could not penetrate would prove deadly to any Soviet vehicle facing it.

 

Though the ZiS gun was removed, the mantlet was retained. The new gun was posted through the void breach first and mounted into position, complete with its coaxial MG 34 machine gun. It is unknown as to what internal modifications took place concerning the placement of the trunnions and elevation/depression gears, since neither vehicle nor any construction drawings survived.

Being the more powerful gun, the KwK 40 was larger in the breach than the ZiS. The 7.5cm shell was 100mm longer than the 76mm shell of the ZiS, meaning the breach was also 100mm longer, and considerably less rounds (78 vs. 114) could be stored. Recoil length would also have been longer, meaning there was even less room behind the gun, and the KV-1’s turret was – despite the tank’s huge bulk - not very spacious.

 

However, minor modifications were also made to the turret. Salvaged commander’s cupola from either a Panzer III or Panzer IV were added atop the turret, but this was not added over the original commander’s hatch at the rear of the turret. A new hole was cut in the roof towards the right front of the turret, and the cupola added above it. This cupola gave the commander far better visibility, allowing him to spot targets, navigate terrain and observe friendly units easier. On the left, a protected air filter was added, another German standard piece.

 

At least one Sd.Kfz 756(r)s was operated by German forces at the Eastern front and took actively part at Kursk, even though details of the deployment remain obscure. However, the tests must have been successful, because the Sd.Kfz 756(r) was standardized. It was not adopted by the German army, though, because German doctrine would not allow the KV-1 as a standard panzer within the own ranks. Instead, complete conversion kits were produced in a limited number for allied forces. The Germans already had a number of captured examples in their arsenal which they were more than willing to part with. With this background, Hungary became the biggest operator or the Sd.Kfz 756(r). About 25 conversion kits were delivered to the Institute of Military Technology of the Hungarian Army (HTI) and the DIMÁVAG factory, where KV-1s of various standards, both captured by Hungarian forces, but mostly delivered from Germany, were revamped in the course of late 1943 until summer 1944. The only local adaptation was the use of Hungarian 8 mm Gebauer 34/40.M machine guns instead of Soviet or German weapons.

 

Within the Royal Hungarian Army, the tank was known as 756M "Kalapács" (= Hammer) and served alongside weaker and obsolete vehicles like the indigenous 40M "Turán" medium tank, light Panzer 38(t)s delivered from Germany or the light 38M "Toldi" tank. The total number of conversions remains unclear, but less than twenty (probably only a dozen) modified tanks reached frontline units. The 756Ms primarily served in the defense of Budapest in late 1943 and, after its fall, in the defense of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

 

The supply of usable KV-1 hulls for conversions was unreliable, though, and resources for the modifications scarce, so that 756M production was rather erratic, even though the 756M's firepower and armor was direly needed. Hungary also worked on an indigenous heavy tank with promising potential, the 44M "Tas", but it did not proceed beyond the mock-up stage and only two were partially built until August 1944. With the advance of the Red Army into Hungary the project was eventually dropped.

Germany, in order to mend the situation, supplied the Hungarian Army in 1944 with the heavy tanks it needed to fight Soviet T-34s and heavier/new types, in the form of a small number of the famed Tiger tanks, even though this was rather a symbolic gesture. In German service, the Tiger had, despite its firepower and heavy armor, turned out to be technically complex, and therefore unreliable and expensive to build and maintain, so that the original Tiger was quickly replaced with the more sophisticated Tiger II and the medium and heavy tanks of the E-Series. The former German Tigers, which had served on the Eastern front beforehand, gradually replaced the leftover 756Ms and other captured KV-1s in Hungarian service. By early 1945, no Hungarian 756M remained operational.

  

Specifications:

Crew: Five (commander, gunner, loader, driver, radio-operator/hull machine gunner)

Weight: 45 tonnes

Length: 7.70 m (25 ft 2 ¾ in) incl. gun facing forward

6.75 m (22 ft 2 in) hull only

Width: 3.32 m (10 ft 11 in)

Height: 2.81 m (9 ft 2 1/2 in)

Suspension: Torsion bar

 

Armor:

30 – 90 mm (1.18 – 3.54 in)

 

Performance:

Maximum road speed: 38 km/h (26 mph)

Off-road speed: 24 km/h (15 mph)

Operational range: 200 km (140 mi) on road

Power/weight: 13 hp/tonne

 

Engine:

1× Model V2 V12 diesel engine, 600 bhp (400 kW)

 

Armament:

1× 7.5cm KwK 40 L/43 gun with 78 rounds

2-3× 8 mm Gebauer 34/40.M machine guns with a total of 3.000 rounds

 

The kit and its assembly:

The first entry for the “Captured!” group build at whatifmodellers.com in late 2020. I decided to start with something simple, and the topic actually did not ring too many bells. However, I came across Trumpeter’s 1:72 kit of the rather obscure SdKfz. 756(r), a vehicle that actually existed but probably only as a single specimen that was tested during the Battle of Kursk. But what if that conversion had persisted, or offered to allies…?

 

So I settled for Hungary as more or less logical operator, and the kit was – since it represents the final conversion package – built OOB. Fit is good, only on the turret some PSR was necessary. I also added some scratched tarpaulins and a headlight cover.

  

Painting and markings:

The paint scheme is quite colorful - inspired by Hungarian benchmark tanks and the Turan II exhibited at the Kubinka tank museum in Russia. Yes, such exhibits have to be taken with a grit of salt, but I wanted something unusual – and the museum tank sports this kind of spotty scheme and pretty bright colors. Normally, Hungarian tanks around 1943/44 were painted in an overall dark olive drab with streaks in red brown and sand added, but this more integral scheme was also used.

 

Basic colors are Humbrol 62, 105 and 10, the latter with a little 180 added for a more reddish hue (Sand, Marine Green and Service Brown Gloss with Red Leather, respectively). The model received a washing with highly thinned dark-brown acrylic paint plus post-shading with lighter hues of the basic tones.

 

Decals came next. The Hungarian white crosses were scratched from generic black and white decal sheet material (TL Modellbau), because I wanted oversized markings to avoid friendly fire incidents. The white line around the turret top is a marking I found on a picture of a captured Hungarian T-34. The tactical codes come from an IGB Turan II kit (the “license plates” and the unit symbols on front and back) and a Zvezda IS-2 sheet (the white “348” on the turret sides) – these are a bit untypical, because Hungarian tanks rather carried only a single individual tactical code at the back of the turret. But because of the rear-facing machine gun mount, this doesn’t work properly on the KV-1, so I went for a different solution.

 

After some dry-brushing with khaki drill and light grey the model was sealed with matt acrylic varnish, and after final assembly I also added mineral pigments to simulate dust, esp. around the lower areas.

  

A rather simple project, but the outcome looks good. The bright camouflage is unusual for a KV-1 (somehow looks a little Japan-esque?), and the Hungarian markings add to this exotic look. Not unbelievable, I think?

I have forgotten the author of this excellent article from Quora. When I find it again, I will give proper credit.

 

At Midway, the Japanese carrier aircraft were switching from land weapons to naval weapons to attack the American fleet after they bombed Midway Island. This meant that the decks and hangars were all littered with ammunition, bombs, torpedoes, and whatnot. The Japanese carriers were nothing but “powder kegs,” ready to blow up at a single well-directed bomb hit. The result was the disaster at Midway, as we all know.

 

This question is asking— under a ridiculous assumption— why Japanese aircraft carriers were “sunk so easily” compared to American aircraft carriers. At Midway, this was because the Japanese carriers were reduced to mere powder kegs and were completely unprepared to defend against air attacks. But what if we take a look at some of the other cases— outside of Midway?

  

Aside from the Battle of Midway, Japanese aircraft carriers weren’t usually sunk easily. At the Battle of the Coral Sea, for example, the two Japanese fleet carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku sustained considerable damage without sinking. Shokaku was too heavily damaged to participate at Midway, and Zuikaku lost too much of its aircrew, but the two carriers managed to survive. See the picture below to get an idea of just how much damage Shokaku suffered.

  

Meanwhile, the US carrier Lexington sunk after the Battle of the Coral Sea— not from battle damage, but from human error. She sustained lots of damage, too, and managed to survive, only to be sunk by a fatal accident. Yorktown sustained a lot of damage as well but was miraculously repaired in 3 days— a repair that should have taken 3 months!

 

As for the fleet carrier Hiryu sunk at Midway, she was not sunk by American aircraft at all. Hiryu was scuttled by the Japanese to prevent her from being captured. Now, it is true that American aircraft turned Hiryu into a floating wreck, prompting the Japanese to scuttle her. It is also true that British naval gunfire and torpedoes turned Bismarck into a floating wreck, promoting her crew to scuttle her to prevent her from being towed back to Britain as a prize, which would have humiliated Germany in the highest regard. Yet we don’t consider Bismarck as being sunk easily. She took a lot of damage but was still floating— although reduced to a floating wreck. Same with Hiryu.

 

After Midway, Japan had significantly fewer aircraft carriers. The only fleet carriers that remained were Shokaku and Zuikaku (although several more were produced, including Unryu, Amagi, Katsuragi, Taiho, and Shinano). Zuikaku was sunk at the Battle of Cape Engano. Zuikaku was far from being “easily sunk,” taking a whopping 7 torpedoes and 9 bombs. Even after that, it took her a relatively long time to sink. The crew even had time to lower the flag and offer their salutations while they were being evacuated.

  

What about Shokaku? Shokaku was sunk in the Philippine Sea by a submarine— not by enemy aircraft. Japanese (and American) aircraft carriers of that time did not have much submarine protection aside from destroyer escorts and anti-submarine air patrols. The sinking of the USS Yorktown was an excellent example of this. A Japanese submarine somehow managed to slip closely enough to the American carrier to launch torpedoes, sinking her as well as one American destroyer. The US fleet carriers Hornet and Wasp were also sunk by Japanese submarines. (In WW2, destroyers were the ships designed to combat submarines, not aircraft carriers. It wouldn’t be surprising for an aircraft carrier to be sunk by a submarine, but that submarine would have to be able to slip through the carrier’s destroyer escorts and also not be spotted by patrolling aircraft).

 

Shokaku had just finished refueling and rearming aircraft (just like the fleet carriers at Midway) and was extremely vulnerable when she was torpedoed by the US submarine Cavalla. Even then, it took 4 torpedoes to sink her. Given the circumstances, this should not be an example of a Japanese carrier “sinking easily.”

  

In the later parts of the war (from 1944-ish onward), Japanese aircrews were very inexperienced and lacking in number. Some Japanese carriers didn’t even carry planes at that point. Let us now discuss the sinking of the fleet carrier Taiho, which had an armored flight deck capable of withstanding a lot of bomb damage. As some readers might know, Taiho was sunk by a single torpedo launched by a US submarine. Should Taiho’s sinking be considered an “easy” sinking, then? I’d say no. Here’s why:

 

Consider how the British battlecruiser Hood was sunk by a single lucky shot that hit home (the ammunition magazine) and snapped the ship in half. Also consider the sinking of Arizona at Pearl Harbor in just 9 minutes, which was caused by a Japanese bomb exploding in the ammunition magazine. These are both good examples of extremely lucky hits.

  

Now, the torpedo that the submarine fired at Taiho struck the starboard side of the carrier and penetrated the aviation fuel tanks, jamming the elevator in the same process. This turned out to be an extremely lucky hit, as seawater mixed with gasoline from the penetrated fuel tanks began vaporizing into the hangar decks. The crew was inexperienced and did not respond to this effectively. Still, Taiho remained intact for many hours, and no one expected her to sink.

 

In an effort to get rid of the fumes, the damage control officer ordered the ventilation systems switched to full capacity. This actually increased the chance of ignition. Six and a half hours after the torpedo hit, a massive explosion tore the ship’s sides from the inside out, and loads of seawater flooded in. Taiho sunk almost two hours later. In all, it took more than 8.5 hours for Taiho to be sunk by this lucky torpedo hit (compared to the 9 minutes of Arizona’s sinking). If the crew’s response to the fumes had been better, Taiho may not have sunk. Additionally, Taiho also had design flaws. So, her sinking was caused by:

 

A very lucky hit

An ineffective response by an inexperienced crew

An order that was not carefully thought over by the damage control officer

 

Was this an “easy” sinking? I certainly wouldn’t say so.

 

Now, for the sinking of the largest aircraft carrier of that time, the fleet carrier Shinano:

 

Shinano already had serious design flaws, just like Taiho. She was sunk by 4 torpedoes fired by the US submarine (not enemy aircraft) Archerfish. The first torpedo flooded storage compartments and an aviation fuel storage tank. The second torpedo flooded the outboard engine room. The third torpedo flooded the third engine boiler room, which, assisted by structural failures, managed to also flood two other boiler rooms. The fourth torpedo flooded the starboard compressor room and a damage control station. It also caused an oil tank to burst.

 

Due to the crew’s confidence in the armor of the ship, their efforts to save the ship were slow, unorganized, and slacking. The captain, Toshio Abe, ordered the ship to continue at full speed even after the torpedo hits, which allowed large amounts of water to flood into the torpedo holes. The ship listed more than 20 degrees and the engines hat to he shut down. By the time the captain finally gave the order to abandon ship, Shinano was listing at 30 degrees. She later capsized and sank.

 

Once again, ineffective efforts to save the ship, inexperienced crews and a bad decision led to a fleet carrier being sunk. Additionally, the 4 torpedoes that hit Shinanon also managed to hit some places that had structural flaws in them. I would partially agree that Shinano was sunk because of her structural flaws, but I would argue that it was more because of slacking initial efforts and the captain’s decision to continue at full speed. But above all, this sinking should not be counted as an “easy” sinking. It was not the American submarine that “easily” sunk Shinano, but rather the crew’s overconfidence, slacking efforts, and the captain’s decision to continue at full speed.

  

The escort carrier Un’yo was also sunk by a submarine, which fired two torpedoes. These were also relatively lucky hits, knocking out the engines. That night, a storm collapsed Un’yo’s bulkheads, causing her to list to starboard. Then, the order to abandon ship was issued.

  

Was this an “easy” sinking? Perhaps. The torpedo hits were pretty severe, but it was more likely the storm that sunk the ship. Were it not for the storm, Un’yo would have been able to limp back to port for repairs. The storm was assisted by the torpedo hits (or the other way around: the torpedo hits were assisted by the storm). Either way, without the torpedo hits or without the storm, Un’yo would have survived.

 

Most of the other Japanese carriers were either sunk by submarines (which they weren’t designed to defend themselves against) or sunk in port by American air attacks during the final stretches of World War II. At that time, they had virtually no carrier aircraft left and were basically reduced to floating anti-aircraft batteries.

  

There are several other sinkings I want to mention in this answer, but judging from the fact that this answer is already much longer than a typical answer on Quora and people wouldn’t read all of it if I include more examples. (By the way, if you made it up to this point, then great job!)

 

In conclusion, aside from the Battle of Midway, there were indeed been a few rare cases of a Japanese aircraft carrier being “easily” sunk in non-disadvantageous circumstances, but these were pretty rare. So, enough with the ridiculous assumption that Japanese carriers were actually sunk easily in the Pacific War. They were either sunk in disadvantageous circumstances, sunk by deliberately being “powder kegs,” sunk by very lucky hits, sunk by ineffective responses, sunk by wrong decisions, or sunk because of structural flaws— the latter being rather uncommon for Japanese carriers (except for Taiho and Shinano).

 

Edit: Of course, one could argue that Japanese carriers were indeed easily sunk and that they were easily sunk due to such reasons, to which I would agree. If it is possible to assume that Japanese aircraft carriers were easily sunk in the Pacific War, then it is because of the above-mentioned reasons.

© / 37268 Beeldrecht

www.themysteriousdutchlight.nl

The Biesbosch was created when 300 square kilometres of polder lands were submerged in the St. Elizabeth flood in the year 1421. Before this, the area was called Grote Hollandse Waard, containing cultivated land and a number of villages. The more than a century old dikes collapsed because of lack of maintenance, due to the difficult economic situation in the area, and the difficulties between the political entities within (especially the Hook and Cod (civil) wars). One of the key factors in the flooding of the Grote Waard was the creation of a new dike in the southwest of the polder. The ground beneath this dike was unstable, which was a known fact in this period of time. However, political rivalry and financial issues (combined with the general opinion that "nothing will happen anyway", a sort of overconfidence) resulted in the creation of an unstable dike, located at one of the key corners of the Grote Waard. It was the only place where high tides coming directly from the sea could penetrate the land deeply and could reach a primary "keystone" dike of the Grote Waard (most of the primary dikes were used as protection against rivers instead).

 

Very high river levels combined with a severe storm surge coming in from the sea caused the collapse of the southwest dike and several riverdikes, resulting in the flooding of most of the Grote Hollandse Waard. After the flood, three areas remained: the Island of Dordrecht to the west, the Land van Altena (with the city of Woudrichem) to the east, and the brackish swamps of the Biesbosch in between. Many villages (by tradition 72) were swallowed by the flood and were lost, causing (again by tradition) either 2,000 or 10,000 casualties. Some towns had more luck and submerged, only to rise above the water later on. Many Rhine-Meuse delta branches that were closed off from the main rivers and served as drainage bodies of the Grote Waard, also disappeared. These include the Dubbel (the name of which survives in Dubbeldam), Eem, Werken (after which Werkendam is named), Graaf, Alm (which lent its name to Almkerk; the eastern part survived) and most of the main drainage stream: the Oude Maas (a small part survives in the form of the Oude Maasje, not to be confused with another branch called Oude Maas near Rotterdam). Most of the flooded area changed into a network of estuaries.

 

The most important of those where the Hollands Diep and the Bergse Diep. Both were connected to the Haringvliet which existed before the disaster as a pure sea-water inlet of the North Sea. After the disaster it became brackish and an important estuary of the rivers Rhine and Meuse. A persistent misunderstanding is that the Biesbosch arose by this storm flood in one night. It is true that this flood broke dikes of the then Grote Hollandse Waard or Zuid Hollandse Waard, but it needed dozens of years before the whole area was under water and had changed to the Biesbosch with its creeks and reeds.

(wikipedia)

(Original shot take with Canon Eos 5, on Ilford 400 Delta Professional)

View On Black

...and you find yourself longing for a certain drastic context

a dreadful circumstance that will tack great lengths onto your dictionary definition

 

to soothe your leaden understanding of bread, water, and money

now arriving by an alternate route at where the absence of such things might leave you

mind you, this is not more rich confession of a child actor

and as you would agree completely with a gift cyst as it appeared in your throat

and delight your tiny heart a moment with uncontested omnipresence will...

 

you've had the wind knocked out of you by something life size and you're afraid to say to your face

you stretch the pen and cheat the sleep

 

this sort of evening you want to say something you words cannot

 

note: which leaves your ghost blowing up globes

tying them off with an x axis c-clamp

and setting them down

 

for 7 days and 7 nights

you've sewn a cloth copy of your nervous system

to a turtle neck and pair tux pants

outside the city's dry all covered in primer

you have lost control of you hair

yesterday you were shot for a magazine cover

fatigue swapped your body build with all urge and by the door

you heard demo's creaking squeezing a squeal from your guilt against the clinging teeth of their cd-tray

all beneath the inner half of the door knob

hissing at its other head

hung in the sun

 

you're staring at a quill as the lump sum of its parts

and it's begun to look brutal

 

4 walls of day: and that alone

no empty hallway for you bearing the 100 bright light blocking doors of luck

and here in the favor of life i will

contrive no device against expectation, only announce

i have learned to respect the color yellow

for one reason or another

and in the insurmountable non strength of one's weight

 

and you're afraid to say to your face

you stretch the pen and cheat the sleep

since you all alone

has always been such the long audience

you spring forth, full with overconfidence

as if to say...superman

(Ghostwork - 13 & God)

Please don't use this image without my explicit permission.

© All rights reserved.

when something goes awry. Reacting to overconfidence, their thoughts include "Not quite..." Serratem and Combfront (is how they're identified; characters confronting awkwardness/on the fly)

The TVR Sagaris is a sports car designed and built by the former British manufacturer TVR in their factory in Lancashire.

Featuring an all-new design, the Sagaris made its debut at the MPH03 Auto Show in 2003. The pre-production model was then shown at the 2004 Birmingham Motorshow. In 2005 the production model was released for public sale at TVR dealerships around the world. Based on the TVR T350, the Sagaris was designed with endurance racing in mind. Several design features of the production model lend themselves to TVR's intentions to use the car for such racing. The multitude of air vents, intake openings and other features on the bodywork allow the car to be driven for extended periods of time on race tracks with no modifications required for cooling and ventilation. The final production model came with several variations from the pre-production show models eg the vents on the wings are filled in not open, different wing mirrors, location of the fuel filler and bonnet hinges. There are other subtle differences as well.

As with all modern TVRs the Sagaris ignores the European Union guideline that all new cars should be fitted with ABS and at least front airbags because Peter Wheeler believed that such devices promote overconfidence and risk the life of a driver in the event of a rollover, which TVRs are engineered to resist. It also eschews electronic driver's aids (such as traction control or electronic stability control).

The car's name comes from the sagaris, the Greek name of a lightweight battle-axe used by the Scythians which was feared for its ability to penetrate the armor of their enemies.

 

Engine: TVR Speed Six engine, Straight-6

Displacement: 4.0L (3996 cc)

Power Output: 380 bhp (283 kW; 385 PS) @ 7,000–7,500 rpm

Torque Output: 349 ft·lbf (473 N·m) @ 5,000 rpm

 

Production 2005-2006

 

Pic taken at the Cliveden House Supercar Event, 2013

The Facel Vega was a typical example of French overconfidence. After the Second World War, the French car industry was in a mess. Shortages of materials, high taxes and the after-effects of the German occupation meant that during the 1950s even brands like Peugeot and Renault found it hard to make luxury models that were worth the name. This, thought Jean Daninos, was his moment for fame and glory. His Facel metal pressing workshop – Facel stood for Forges et Ateliers de Construction d’Eure-et-Loire – was already providing coachwork for such respected names as Delahaye and Simca. In 1953, Daninos decided to design his own luxury car, to the name of which he added the suffix Vega, at the suggestion of his brother Pierre, the author. Daninos couldn’t find a suitable engine in France and so he did a deal with Chrysler for the engine used in their De Soto model. However, the sale of the first two-door version was only modest, not helped by the heavy tax on the imported engines, which made a Facel Vega more expensive than a Rolls-Royce. But Daninos was no quitter and pressed on with his plans for a four-door model, the HK 500 Excellence, launched in 1959. It was a beast of a car, but a magnificent beast. With 360 horsepower under the bonnet, it combined American brawn with Italian beauty.

 

Mahy was able to buy his silver-grey Facel Vega at a bargain price in 1972. By this time, the company had been out of business for some eight years. Daninos had built fewer than 3,000 cars in a decade, but had already run up massive debts. Not even a last loan running into millions from the Credit National could save him. In 1964, the receivers were called in. Four years earlier, the brand experienced the most famous (but not the happiest) moment in its history, when the author and Nobel Prize winner Albert Camus died in the passenger seat of a Facel Vega driven by his friend Michel Gallimard. At the time of the accident, the car was said to be doing 180 kilometres per hour. Another example of French overconfidence.

 

Engine : Chrysler

6.286 cc

V8

330 hp

 

Mahy - a Family of Cars

09/09/2021 - 31/10/2021

 

Vynckier Site

Nieuwevaart 51-53

Gent

België - Belgique - Belgium - Belgien

The narcissistic manager will have two main sources of narcissistic supply: inanimate (status symbols like cars, gadgets or office views); and animate (flattery and attention from colleagues and subordinates).,Teammates may find everyday offers of support swiftly turn them into enabling sources of permanent supply, unless they are very careful to maintain proper boundaries.[The narcissistic manager's need to protect such supply networks will prevent objective decision-making.. Such a manager will evaluate long-term strategies according to their potential for gaining personal attention. "the will," in echoism. In contrast to the feeling of perfection.This is the place for two remarks. First, how do we differentiate between the concepts of narcissism and egoism? Well, narcissism, I believe, is the libidinal complement to egoism. When we speak of egoism, we have in view only the individual's advantage; when we talk of narcissism we are also taking his libidinal satisfaction into account. As practical motives the two can be traced separately for quite a distance. It is possible to be absolutely egoistic and yet maintain powerful object-cathexes, in so far as libidinal satisfaction in relation to the object forms part of the ego's needs. In that case, egoism will see to it that striving for the object involves no damage to the ego. It is possible to be egoistic and at the same time to be excessively narcissistic—that is to say, to have very little need for an object, whether, once more, for the purpose of direct sexual satisfaction, or in connection with the higher aspirations, derived from sexual need, which we are occasionally in the habit of contrasting with ‘sensuality’ under the name of ‘love’. In all these connections egoism is what is self-evident and constant, while narcissism is the variable element. The opposite to egoism, altruism, does not, as a concept, coincide with libidinal object-cathexis, but is distinguished from it by the absence of longings for sexual satisfaction. When someone is completely in love, however, altruism converges with libidinal object-cathexis. As a rule the sexual object attracts a portion of the ego's narcissism to itself, and this becomes noticeable as what is known as the ‘sexual overvaluation’ of the object. If in addition there is an altruistic transposition of egoism on to the sexual object, the object becomes supremely powerful; it has, as it were, absorbed the ego." (Freud, Introductory Lectures (1919), pp. 417–18).Narcissism is the pursuit of gratification from vanity or egotistic admiration of one's own attributes. The term originated from Greek mythology, where the young Narcissus fell in love with his own image reflected in a pool of water. Narcissism is a concept in psychoanalytic theory, which was popularly introduced in Sigmund Freud's essay On Narcissism (1914). The American Psychiatric Association has had the classification narcissistic personality disorder in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) since 1968, drawing on the historical concept of megalomania.Narcissism is also considered a social or cultural problem. It is a factor in trait theory used in various self-report inventories of personality[ such as the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory. It is one of the three dark triadic personality traits (the others being psychopathy and Machiavellianism). Except in the sense of primary narcissism or healthy self-love, narcissism is usually considered a problem in a person's or group's relationships with self and others. Narcissism is not the same as egocentrism.Narcissistic personality disorder affects an estimated 1% of the general population. Although most individuals have some narcissistic traits, high levels of narcissism can manifest themselves in a pathological form as narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), whereby the patient overestimates his or her abilities and has an excessive need for admiration and affirmation. A revision of NPD took place in the DSM-5. In this revision, NPD saw dramatic changes to its definition. The general move towards a dimensional (personality trait-based) view of the Personality Disorders has been maintained. Some narcissists may have a limited or minimal capability to experience emotions.Healthy narcissism might exist in all individuals. Freud said that this is an original state from which the individual develops the love object.[qualify evidence] He argued that healthy narcissism is an essential part of normal development.According to Freud, the love of the parents for their child and their attitude toward their child could be seen as a revival and reproduction of their own narcissism. The child has an omnipotence of thought; the parents stimulate that feeling because in their child they see the things that they have never reached themselves. Compared to neutral observers, parents tend to overvalue the qualities of their child. When parents act in an extreme opposite style and the child is rejected or inconsistently reinforced depending on the mood of the parent, the self-needs of the child are not met.[citation needed] Freud contrasts the natural development of active-egoistic and passive-altruistic tendencies in the individual with narcissism, in the former, and what Trevor Pederson[ refers to as echoism, in the latter.Healthy narcissism has to do with a strong feeling of "own love" protecting the human being against illness. Eventually, however, the individual must love the other, "the object love to not become ill." The individual becomes ill as a result of the frustration created when he is unable to love the object. In pathological narcissism such as the narcissistic personality disorder, the person’s libido has been withdrawn from objects in the world and produces megalomania. The clinical theorists Kernberg, Kohut and Millon all see pathological narcissism as a possible outcome in response to unempathic and inconsistent early childhood interactions. They suggested that narcissists try to compensate in adult relationships.The pathological condition of narcissism is, as Freud suggested, a magnified, extreme manifestation of healthy narcissism.In developmental terms, two rather different trajectories can be distinguished with respect to egotism – the one individual, the other cultural.

With respect to the developing individual, a movement takes place from egocentricity to sociality during the process of growing up.[8] It is normal for an infant to have an inflated – almost a majestic – sense of egotism. The over-evaluation of one's own ego regularly appears in childish forms of love – in large part because the baby is to himself everything, omnipotent to the best of their own knowledge.[Optimal development allows a gradual reconciliation to a more realistic view of one's own place in the world – a lessening of the egotistical swollen head.[12] Less adequate adjustment may later lead to what has been called defensive egotism, serving to overcompensate for the fragility of the underlying concept of self..Robin Skynner however considered that in the main growing up leads to a state where "your ego is still there, but it's taking its proper limited place among all the other egos".However, alongside such a positive trajectory of diminishing individual egotism, a rather different arc of development can be noted in cultural terms, linked to what has been seen as the increasing infantilism of (post)modern society..Whereas in the nineteenth century egotism was still widely regarded as a traditional vice – for Nathaniel Hawthorne egotism was a sort of diseased self-contemplation – Romanticism had already set in motion a countervailing current, what Richard Eldridge described as a kind of "cultural egotism, substituting the individual imagination for vanishing social tradition". The romantic idea of the self-creating individual – of a self-authorizing, artistic egotism[18] – then took on broader social dimensions in the following century. Keats might still attack Wordsworth for the regressive nature of his retreat into the egotistical sublime;[19] but by the close of the twentieth century egotism had been naturalized much more widely by the Me generation into the Culture of Narcissism.In the 21st century, romantic egotism has been seen as feeding into techno-capitalism in two complementary ways: on the one hand, through the self-centred consumer, focused on their own self-fashioning through brand 'identity'; on the other through the equally egotistical voices of 'authentic' protest, as they rage against the machine, only to produce new commodity forms that serve to fuel the system for further consumption.With regard to the condition of healthy narcissism, it is suggested that this is correlated with good psychological health. Self-esteem works as a mediator between narcissism and psychological health. Therefore, because of their elevated self-esteem, deriving from self-perceptions of competence and likability, high narcissists are relatively free of worry and gloom.Other researchers suggested that healthy narcissism cannot be seen as ‘good’ or ‘bad’; however, it depends on the contexts and outcomes being measured. In certain social contexts such as initiating social relationships, and with certain outcome variables, such as feeling good about oneself, healthy narcissism can be helpful. In other contexts, such as maintaining long-term relationships and with other outcome variables, such as accurate self-knowledge, healthy narcissism can be unhelpful.People with narcissistic personality disorder are characterized by their persistent grandiosity, excessive need for admiration, and a disdain and lack of empathy for others. These individuals often display arrogance, a sense of superiority, and power-seeking behaviors.Narcissistic personality disorder is different from having a strong sense of self-confidence; people with NPD typically value themselves over others to the extent that they disregard the feelings and wishes of others and expect to be treated as superior regardless of their actual status or achievements.In addition, people with NPD may exhibit fragile egos, an inability to tolerate criticism, and a tendency to belittle others in an attempt to validate their own superiority.People with NPD tend to exaggerate their skills and accomplishments as well as their level of intimacy with people they consider to be high-status. Their sense of superiority may cause them to monopolize conversations and to become impatient or disdainful when others talk about themselves. In the course of a conversation, they may purposefully or unknowingly disparage or devalue the other person by overemphasizing their own success. When they are aware that their statements have hurt someone else, they tend to react with contempt and to view it as a sign of weakness.[7] When their own ego is wounded by a real or perceived criticism, their anger can be disproportionate to the situation,but typically, their actions and responses are deliberate and calculated.Despite occasional flare-ups of insecurity, their self-image is primarily stable (i.e., overinflated).To the extent that people are pathologically narcissistic, they can be controlling, blaming, self-absorbed, intolerant of others' views, unaware of others' needs, the effects of their behavior on others, and insist that others see them as they wish to be seen.Narcissistic individuals use various strategies to protect the self at the expense of others. They tend to devalue, derogate, insult, blame others and they often respond to threatening feedback with anger and hostility.Since the fragile ego of individuals with NPD is hypersensitive to perceived criticism or defeat, they are prone to feelings of shame, humiliation and worthlessness over minor or even imagined incidents. They usually mask these feelings from others with feigned humility, isolating socially or they may react with outbursts of rage, defiance, or by seeking revenge. The merging of the "inflated self-concept" and the "actual self" is seen in the inherent grandiosity of narcissistic personality disorder. Also inherent in this process are the defense mechanisms of denial, idealization and devaluation..According to the DSM-5, "Many highly successful individuals display personality traits that might be considered narcissistic. Only when these traits are inflexible, maladaptive, and persisting and cause significant functional impairment or subjective distress do they constitute narcissistic personality disorder."Although overconfidence tends to make individuals with NPD ambitious, it does not necessarily lead to success and high achievement professionally. These individuals may be unwilling to compete or may refuse to take any risks in order to avoid appearing like a failure. In addition, their inability to tolerate setbacks, disagreements or criticism, along with lack of empathy, make it difficult for such individuals to work cooperatively with others or to maintain long-term professional relationships with superiors and colleagues.There is evidence that narcissistic personality disorder is heritable, and individuals are much more likely to develop NPD if they have a family history of the disorder.[Studies on the occurrence of personality disorders in twins determined that there is a moderate to high heritability for narcissistic personality disorder. However the specific genes and gene interactions that contribute to its cause, and how they may influence the developmental and physiological processes underlying this condition, have yet to be determined.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism

 

Crème de la société, une pommade pour les malades de selfies, ça pique les yeux, ou bien c'est jeter la poudre aux yeux, pour si peu, un sois même qui s'auto-aime sans gène pour ceux qui n'ont rien d'autre que leurs yeux qui piquent de honte et de larmesC'est beau comme on s'aime devant,

c'est beaucoup qu'on sème derrière

Chanson de gestes pour l'amour physique de son apparence, c'est un tube de l'été🌞, il est serré, yeux ....contre Dieu. Le profane se passe de la pommade, jaillissante comme le génie de la lampe 💡d'Aladdin. C'est la crème 🙈de la société, elle est fabriquée 🙊avec de la poudre aux yeux 🙉pour rouler les mécaniques d'une pieuvre, elle nous enlace si bien avec ses petites ventouses, tout ce vent pour séduire sur la plage des apparences trompeuses! 🗿C'est le signe des Têtes inexistantes🎢 et du corps en évolution constante ⛱

Winter came to the North Carolina mountains in a big way this weekend. I attended the proceedings along with just about everybody within about a 150-mile radius who skis. Imagine that. The drive up near the top of Carver's Gap at Roan Mountain was a bit of the white-knuckled variety for me, as I've not experienced much of driving in snow, especially on steep, curvy mountain roads. In the rare instances when it snows at home, I usually stay home until conditions improve to avoid the inevitable crashes often caused by those who do have more experience... tinged with just a sprinkle of overconfidence to cause problems. Thankfully, I met no one of that description as I made my way up that treacherous road. The view from the top made it all worth it, despite having to wait a while before I could pry my fingers from the steering wheel.

 

I noticed a sign at the Roan Mountain Campground as I drove by that asked "What do snowmen eat for breakfast?" The obvious answer is frosted flakes. I had no idea how perceptive that answer would be until I reached the gap... everything above ground was "frosted" (including me before I left). Those snowmen who like breakfast as much as I do would be quite happy here. That entire area of Roan Mountain, Round Bald, Jane Bald, Grassy Knob, and beyond experienced not just snow(flakes), but also hoarfrost from low clouds in those high regions. It made for a great day with the camera... the snowman and I had a good time! More to come.

 

This image was taken just beyond the entrance to the Appalachian Trail across from Roan at Carver's Gap, literally on the North Carolina/Tennessee state line. I couldn't pass up this frosted tree against that brilliant sky on the hike up Round Bald. These bushes are standout Catawba rhododendron hunkered down against the harsh weather along with balsam firs, showing a quite different world than that of next June... stay tuned.

 

There comes a day when you will need more than one ringmaster.