July 23, 2019

There were 3 posts published on July 23, 2019 (this is page 1 of 1).

Jeffrey Epstein’s travel patterns revealed by public flight data – INSIDER

This kind of article includes so many of my interests: tracking bad guys by combing through crowdsourced, open data.

I maintain an ADS-B receiver, too, and track planes in the Triangle area on a real-time basis but I need to start stuffing this information into a database so I can keep it long-term.

As reporters and federal prosecutors turned the screws on Jeffrey Epstein over the past two years, the notorious money manager and sex felon appears to have enjoyed a globetrotting lifestyle that involved weekly flights between his properties in New York, New Mexico, Florida, the US Virgin Islands, and Paris, as well as occasional excursions to the United Kingdom, Slovakia, and Morocco.

This account of Epstein’s travels is based on two years of flight data associated with two of his Gulfstream airliners. Without detailed passenger manifests, it’s impossible to know whether Epstein was present on each individual flight. In the aggregate, however, the flight records illustrate an improbably lavish life, and raise further questions about how he earned and spent his fortune.

Source: Jeffrey Epstein’s travel patterns revealed by public flight data – INSIDER

Watch as the Ridgecrest earthquake shatters desert floor in stunning before-and-after images – Los Angeles Times

It’s pretty amazing to see an earthquake’s effects captured in one GIF.

Millions felt the shaking from the Ridgecrest earthquake.
But new satellite images offer a dramatic and instructive view of the immense power of the magnitude 7.1 quake, showing how California’s biggest earthquake in nearly two decades caused the ground to break.

Animated slides show how the quake permanently jolted a huge block of earth northwest while the other side of the fault moved southeast.

Some of the clearest images show long scars on the surface of the Mojave Desert, indicating precisely the 30 miles of earthquake fault — oriented in a northwest-southeast direction — that moved within moments on July 5.

“I’ve never seen this before,” said Brian Olson, engineering geologist with the California Geological Survey. “It’s really dramatic and a super-good illustrator, even for the advanced scientists, all the way down to the grade-school kids.”

Source: Watch as the Ridgecrest earthquake shatters desert floor in stunning before-and-after images – Los Angeles Times

Navy Answers How a 57-Year-Old Maverick Could Still Feel the Need for Speed – USNI News

Maverick flying 33 years later? File this under “unlikely.”

Late last week, as the official motion picture trailer for “Top Gun: Maverick” raced around social media, among the questions without easy answer was how was Pete “Maverick” Mitchell still feeling the need for speed as a 57-year-old captain with 30-plus years of service?

Paramount Pictures hasn’t released much about the plot of what will presumably be a summer 2020 blockbuster, and all fans have to go on are film industry site IMDB and what’s in the trailer released last week. However, the trailer addresses how odd it would be to have a captain in his late 50s when his peer group would have either made flag officer or hit the statutory retirement of 30 years of service.

In the trailer, Ed Harris’ character, an unidentified rear admiral, gives a brief overview of Maverick’s career.

“Thirty-plus years of service. Combat medals, citations, the only man to shoot down three enemy planes in the last 40 years. Yet you can’t get a promotion, you won’t retire, and despite your best efforts you refuse to die,” he said.

“You should be at least a two-star admiral by now. Yet here you are. Captain. Why is that?”

Could a real-world Capt. Mitchell still fly missions 33 years after audiences first saw the iconic naval aviator buzz control towers in the 1986 blockbuster “Top Gun”?

Source: Navy Answers How a 57-Year-Old Maverick Could Still Feel the Need for Speed – USNI News