JOHN CANTRELL: Please consult a quality atlas.
#Cryptonomicon

If China wasn't in the middle of getting systematically drawn & quartered by the Empire of Nippon, it would send bean counters to keep tabs on how much silver was actually present in these banks' vaults. But as it stands, the only thing keeping these banks honest is the other banks.
#Cryptonomicon

two men in suits and ties are standing next to each other and one of them is saying i love loop Alt: two men in suits and ties are standing next to each other and one of them is saying i love loop

Galvanize
Lucifer!

#Cryptonomicon

youtu.be/oqC5FZj-Avo?...

#artmoon

Mong the Merciful

...a bright, thick river of gold.
---
THE END
...

except for 40 pages about solitaire encryption algorithm.
#Cryptonomicon

Divers' discovery of U2506 off the coast of Ireland. When WW2 ended, the Allies kept a few U-boats for technical evaluation. However, the rump of the U-boat fleet was to be put out of reach of all the winning powers by disposing of them at sea. This task was handed to the Royal Navy and the U-boats allocated for disposal were gathered together at Loch Ryan and Lisahally. Skeleton teams made up of the original German crews were keeping the submarines in running order. Once the allies rooted out the Nazi party members from the rest, the U-boat men, not only became an integral part of the disposal operation, but many lifelong friendships were formed, with several German sailors later living in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Divers' discovery of U2506 off the coast of Ireland. When WW2 ended, the Allies kept a few U-boats for technical evaluation. However, the rump of the U-boat fleet was to be put out of reach of all the winning powers by disposing of them at sea. This task was handed to the Royal Navy and the U-boats allocated for disposal were gathered together at Loch Ryan and Lisahally. Skeleton teams made up of the original German crews were keeping the submarines in running order. Once the allies rooted out the Nazi party members from the rest, the U-boat men, not only became an integral part of the disposal operation, but many lifelong friendships were formed, with several German sailors later living in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Divers' discovery of U2506 off the coast of Ireland. When WW2 ended, the Allies kept a few U-boats for technical evaluation. However, the rump of the U-boat fleet was to be put out of reach of all the winning powers by disposing of them at sea. This task was handed to the Royal Navy and the U-boats allocated for disposal were gathered together at Loch Ryan and Lisahally. Skeleton teams made up of the original German crews were keeping the submarines in running order. Once the allies rooted out the Nazi party members from the rest, the U-boat men, not only became an integral part of the disposal operation, but many lifelong friendships were formed, with several German sailors later living in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

RANDY WATERHOUSE: It looks like the nose of a bomber.
DOUG SHAFTOE: Bombers had to have a circular cross section. This is eliptical.
RW: But I don't see all of the railings & guns-
DS: Crap that a classic German Uboat would have. This is a more modern streamlined shape.
#cryptonomicon

CDs will be good for when cars are the only speakers working 🫵😮😶‍🌫️🪩🎆🤘❤️‍🔥💞

youtu.be/a-aSv9UIOEU?...

#hap

#Cryptonomicon
#alphabetchallenge
#booksky
@root2702.bsky.social
@nealstephenson.bsky.social

😶‍🌫️🫵🕉️🎆🤘🪩

a screen capture from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Three UFOs with incredibly bright lights hover above the tarmac on the Devil's Tower facility. A group of men are watching them.

Good ideas are just there all of a sudden, like angels in the Bible. You cannot ignore them just because they are ridiculous.
#cryptonomicon

In '27 he got shipped off to Shanghai on very short notice & no doubt had to display some adaptability. Fine. & now he's on this miserable pre-Great War cruiser & it's a little hard on him. Fine. But he does not take all of this with the dignity that is demanded of Marines by Marines.
#Cryptonomicon

This social media stuff is all smoke and mirrors really

#root

#cryptonomicon

youtu.be/RotnWFisfmg

Jeepney in the Philippines

Bong Bong gripped a chain flailing from the ceiling & jerked downwards, energizing the secondary, tertiary & quaternary honking systems: tuba-sized horns on the roof of THE GRACE OF GOD. A demi-hyperbolic swath of agricultural crops 20 miles long was flattened by the blast. >
#Cryptonomicon

Being neutral is no less strange than being a belligerent. They can rest assured that the Germans are not here to invade. On the other hand, the vessel's presence is a violation of their sovereign territory. On the third hand, this boat was probably made out of Swedish iron.
#Cryptonomicon

The Swedes stand with arms folded for a minute or so, regarding this apparition [German sub]. Then they make some kind of collective decision that it does not exist, that nothing has happened here. They turn their backs, pad grumpily into their houses, begin to boil coffee.
#Cryptonomicon

View of the Midway Atoll taken during ISS Expedition 2 Midway was formed roughly 28 million years ago when the seabed underneath it was over the same hotspot from which the Island of Hawaii is now being formed. Midway was once a shield volcano, perhaps as large as the island of Lanai. As the volcano piled up, lava flows built the island, its weight depressed the crust, and the island slowly subsided for millions of years, a process known as isostatic adjustment. As the island subsided, a coral reef around the former volcanic island could maintain itself near sea level by growing upwards. That reef is now over 516 ft (157 m) thick[13] (in the lagoon, 1,261 ft (384 m), composed mostly of post-Miocene limestones with a layer of upper Miocene (Tertiary g) sediments and lower Miocene (Tertiary e) limestones at the bottom overlying the basalts). What remains today is a shallow water atoll about 6 mi (9.7 km) across. Following Kure Atoll, Midway is the 2nd most northerly atoll in the world.

> in productivity during which Waterhouse (some might argue) personally won the Battle of #Midway.
But [sigma sub self] > [sigma sub other] implies that he is, in the long run, dependent on other human beings for his mental clarity & therefore, his happiness. What a pain in the ass!
#Cryptonomicon

How can he walk across a field salted, by the retreat of the last glacier, with countless stones, and pick out the arrowheads? Why can the human eye detect a tiny artificial form lost in nature's torn and turbulent cosmos, a needle of data in a haystack of noise? >
#Cryptonomicon

#Cryptonomicon @root2702.bsky.social

1915: Emily Post (backseat) driven by her son at what looks like the end of their coast-to-coast drive. She was on assignment from Colliers magazine.

ENOCH ROOT: Could it be you're feeling a little anxious about the unusual nature of Detachment 2702's first mission?
BOBBY SHAFTOE: Anxious? Listen, Rev, I done some things on Guadalcanal that make this look like #Emily Fucking #Post.
#Cryptonomicon

a man in an orange shirt is standing on a stage with his hands on his hips and says who 's awesome amy . ALT: a man in an orange shirt is standing on a stage with his hands on his hips and says who 's awesome amy .

A helicopter circles against a sugar white sky. It is a Vietnam vintage Huey. A boat materializes from the steam rising off the bay, cuts its engines & coasts into the cove, shoving a bow wave in front of it. A tall, slender woman is poised on the prow like a living figurehead.
#Cryptonomicon

Root drifts off into a coma, mumbling something about cigars…
Rudy is nowhere to be found, and Shaftoe suspects he has blown town. But then suddenly he shows up at Root's bedside holding an ancient Cuban cigar box, Spanish words all over it.
#Cryptonomicon

>exposing them to the direct light of the sun. But Ghnxh has simply turned on the galvanick lucipher, which soon becomes 10x brighter, as Ghnxh adjusts a bronze thumbscrew. Crushed with shame, Waterhouse puts his Navy flashlight back into its prissy little belt holster.
#Cryptonomicon

Qwghlm:
The internal connecting passages of the castle have been mortared shut to stanch the seasonal migrations of skrrghs, the frisky, bright eyed, long tailed mammals that are the mascot of the islands. This compartmentalization, while inconvenient, will be good for security.
#Cryptonomicon

Bischoff goes to the chart room…the only civilized place on the boat…Speaking tubes converge here & even though no one is speaking into them directly, he can hear snatches of conversation, distant clamor of the diesels, fresh eggs hitting the griddle.
#Cryptonomicon

There were bars & dances to go to. Waterhouse did some penis work of his own, got the clap, had it cured,¹ bought condoms. All of the sailors did this. They were like 3-year-olds who shove pencils in their ears, discover that it hurts & stop doing it.
#Cryptonomicon

Lawrence received 2 freshly printed copies of the journal in San Diego during mail call on board a large ship called the USS Nevada. Lawrence played the glockenspiel in the ship's band, because the Navy's testing had proven that he was not intelligent enough to do anything else.
#Cryptonomicon

Lawrence decided that he was probably one of those people. Alan seemed vastly impressed that Lawrence had paused to think about it at all & apologized for putting him out.
They went directly back to a discussion of computing machines & their friendship continued unchanged.
#Cryptonomicon

a black and white photo of a group of men sitting in a room . ALT: a black and white photo of a group of men sitting in a room .

RUDY: Göring knew a surprising amount about cryptology. He wanted me to come up w/the very best cryptosystem, to communicate w/Uboats & w/installations in Manila & Tokyo.
BISCHOFF: And you handed it over.
R: It’s a reasonably good system, despite the fact that I crippled it.
#Cryptonomicon

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Enoch Root, showing an appetite for physical labor that is noted by the men, hauls in another pig carcass, stiff as a Radio Flyer, and dumps it onto the scale, bringing the total up to 70 kilos. All the meat goes into the coffin.
#Cryptonomicon

a man with a beard is saying that would make us on netflix ALT: a man with a beard is saying that would make us on netflix

Enoch claims he's also been gadding about trying to bring Internet stuff to China, but to Randy this just sounds like a cover story for something else. It is hard not to get the idea that Enoch Root and General Wing may have other reasons to be pissed off at each other.
#Cryptonomicon

AVI: Randy, get this through your head:
The Dentist doesn't give a shit about the submarine.
The Dentist doesn't give a shit about the submarine.
RANDY: The Dentist doesn't give a shit about the submarine.
#Cryptonomicon

Fuld Hall, centerpiece of the Institute for Advance Study campus in the early 1940s.

He comes across a picture of a very young Grandpa, a turkey-necked adolescent in grownup clothes, standing in front of a gothic building w/2 other men: a grinning dark haired chap who looks vaguely familiar & an aquiline blond fellow in rimless glasses. All 3 men have bicycles.
#Cryptonomicon

A painting of John Vincent Atanasoff, American physicist and inventor credited with inventing the first electronic digital computer. He was a professor of mathematics and physics at Iowa State College/University. In 1941 Atanasoff left Iowa State for a wartime assignment as Chief of the Acoustic Division with the Naval Ordnance Laboratory (NOL) in Washington, D.C.

Randy can look straight out his windshield & through the dorm's front windows & straight at a large portrait of his grandfather, 1 of a dozen or so figures, mostly departed now, who compete for the essentially bogus title of "inventor of the digital computer."
#Cryptonomicon