physicsguy’s mention of “Mr. Knowitall” got Rocky and Bullwinkle in me reawoken.

The Russian drone war on Ukraine has brought Ukrainian expertise in defensive tactics against Iranian, Russian, and Chinese drones to worldwide attention. Ukraine has been using small caliber anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) from machine guns to radar guided autocannons (30 mm Gephard system from Rhinemetal). As well as guys with small arms in helicopters and prop planes. And then they also use spendy modern Patriot and other SAMs, but those are >>>$$$$ and reserved for defending against ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles, and such that target really important things.

…the practice of modifying a diesel engine to deliberately emit large amounts of black or gray diesel exhaust […] Rolling coal is used as a form of anti-environmentalism protest. […] Some drivers intentionally trigger coal rolling in the presence of electric and hybrid vehicles (a practice nicknamed “Prius repellent”) […] Coal rolling may also be directed at foreign vehicles, bicyclists, protesters, and pedestrians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal

We have been to the monument twice, and it really is stupendous.

You could have been writing for “Rocky and Bulwinkle.” 🙂

Not surprisingly, the climactic chase scene at Mount Rushmore in “North by Northwest” was not filmed at Mount Rushmore. Hitchcock used a full-scale mockup in Culver City.

However, Hitchcock intercut shots of the real Mount Rushmore for verisimilitude. The whole effect is stunning.

–“North by Northwest (1959) – Mount Rushmore Scene”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPeH0w6ZXZM

Hitchcock began work on “North by Northwest” with only this image:
__________________________________________

I want to have one scene of a man hanging onto Lincoln’s eyebrows. That’s all the picture I have so far.

–Alfred Hitchcock
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/rushmore-north-northwest/
__________________________________________

Sadly, the eyebrows didn’t happen. Still one of my favorite films.

Short Guide to IRAN’S NAVAL MINES in the Strait of Hormuz – H I Sutton

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMXSDUj-dms

And that’s how we got the Georges…

But poor Queen Anne, for lots of reasons. Anne loved her husband very much. There doesn’t seem to be a wifely equivalent for “uxorious”. Not everyone thought as much of Anne’s husband as she did. Her uncle’s (Charles II) comment is too good not to quote, even if unfair:

I have tried him drunk and I have tried him sober and there is nothing in him.

When he died at age 55

His death has flung the Queen into an unspeakable grief. She never left him till he was dead, but continued kissing him the very moment his breath went out of his body, and ’twas with a great deal of difficulty my Lady Marlborough prevailed upon her to leave him.

And she wrote,

…the loss of such a husband, who loved me so dearly and so devotedly, is too crushing for me to be able to bear it as I ought.

That’s one reason the “lesbian” drama was so silly, the other being that her supposed lover Sarah Churchill was equally in love with her own husband, John Churchill (ancestor of Sir Winston). After his death, she rejected an offer of marriage from the Duke of Somerset:

If I were young and handsome as I was, instead of old and faded as I am, and you could lay the empire of the world at my feet, you should never share the heart and hand that once belonged to John, Duke of Marlborough.

Though not lesbians, Anne and Sarah Churchill were very attached to each other for many years, and their husbands were friends and colleagues who commanded armies together. It didn’t end well. I think Sarah Churchill got too used to making use of the Queen to further her various schemes, and forgot about the friendship. Anne made other friends who were enemies of the Churchills, and it worked out badly for everyone.