Latest Blog Posts

• Sergey Galanter: Artist & Scam Artist

  The other day I came across this — as far as I know untitled — painting by Russian artist Sergey Galanter on social media:

  Untitled painting by Sergey Vladimirovich Galanter, 2020

  Immediately intrigued by this work, I decided to look into the artist. He’s produced some other, similarly striking art. Sadly, I also discovered that he was recently sentenced to seven years in a penal colony by a court in the Tverskoy Disctrict of Moscow for, of all things, NFT fraud. According to the reporting on the court case in Izvestia, he ran a pyramid scheme, trying to sell his own NFT art. He is said to have raised $6 million from over 200 investors, reinvesting most of the money into the scheme, but allegedly also paying large sums to his wife, lifestyle blogger and finance influencer Maria Afonina, who is said to have used her online reputation to advertise his art and the NFT scheme.

  Apparently, in a very Hunter Biden move, Galanter left his laptop with his landlord as collateral, who then sold it to a second-hand store. Eventually, the laptop made its way to an Izvestia journalist and also, somehow, ended up with one of the victims of the NFT scam. Its contents were apparently used as evidence in the case. Galanter, who is originally from Krasnodar, was first arrested in December 2023.

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• Replacing AI Images

  As I’ve mentioned when I went live with the new version of this site in June, I am in the process of adding older content back to the site. This is a continual process and you should see more and more older stuff popping up every once in a while.

  As part of this, I am also replacing AI-generated images on the site. Either by substituting them for photos that show similar scenes or, if I like them a lot, by redrawing the artwork manually by hand, as I’ve done with this piece that was originally generated by Midjourney:

  

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• The Watchmaker’s Four

  Did you ever notice that most wristwatches that use Roman numerals use IIII instead of the more common IV as the number four hour indicator? Did you ever, like myself, wonder why this is? This way of writing the number four is called “the watchmaker’s four”, apparently. And nobody knows where exactly this tradition originated.

  What I found is that there are many stories about where the “IIII” on watch dials comes from. None of them, however, have been confirmed by anyone. It’s probably a combination of all those stories together.

  I found that to be an interesting read. Now me, personally, I prefer cleaner and more functional designs like classic dive watch baton markers or the most stylish combination, the dot-and-baton design of the Seamaster Professional:

  

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• Ryanair Flight 1879: Passenger Stuck in Window

  Wow, this one is true nightmare fuel: On Friday, 10 July, a window on the right-hand side of a Boeing 737 NG shattered at 15,000 feet (about 4.5 kilometres) up, while the plane was climbing away from Thessaloniki Airport (LGTS) in Greece. The passenger sitting in the seat next to the window was partly sucked out, ending up with his head outside the airplane. His wife, who was sitting next to him, reportedly grabbed him and pulled him back inside the cabin.

  This was Ryanair flight FR1879, from Thessaloniki to Memmingen in Germany, performed on behalf of Ryanair by a Malta Air plane (9H-QEU). Since the crew reported issues with the right-hand (No. 2) engine and pictures have been circulated that show this engine with a fan blade missing and a hole in the engine cowling, it seems likely that this plane suffered a blade-out event (FBO). That is: The fan blade ripped loose, exited the engine enclosure and hit the plane’s window. The aircraft diverted back to Thessaloniki and landed safely.

  So far, there are no clues why the engine blade decided to quit the engine. The plane was in climb-out, where the engines are under a lot less strain than the preceeding max take-off thrust. Maybe a bird strike?

  I guess that passenger was lucky he wasn’t decapitated by that fan blade. Exiting out the engine, that thing must have had quite a lot of kinetic energy. And here’s another good reason to always strap in aboard on airplane at all times, BTW.

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• Attention All Aircraft: England Have Won 2-1

  When England won the World Cup quarter-finals against Norway on Saturday, British Airways Operations allegedly sent the following ACARS message to its fleet:

  FROM ADDRESS: LHRWWBA
  
  AC CTROLLER 320
  ATTENTION ALL AIRCRAFT
  ENGLAND HAVE WON 2-1
  ITS COMING HOME
  BA OPS CONTROL
  SENT 2358Z/11
  

  ACARS, the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, is a means to sent short text messages to and from aircraft in flight via radio or satellite using a Telex format. It is used as an alternative to voice radio for communication between airline operational staff and pilots on the flight deck. It is usually used to inform flight crew of weather or airport conditions, connecting flight changes or similar operational matters that aren’t immediately safety-critical.

  Photo of the ACARS message from the flight deck of a Boeing Triple Seven (Photo: @a_swift_half on Twitter)

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