Maxine

airsLLide No. 23431: UR-88219, Yakovlev 40K, Motor Sich Airlines, Simferopol, July 6, 2004

Long before the current conflict in the Crimea region was sparked by Russia, Simferopol was a popular holiday destinations both among citizens of Russia and Ukraine. Simferopol International Airport served as a truely international gateway to Crimea back in these days, with regular links to destinations within the CIS and beyond.

Since 2014 and the Russian occupation of Crimea, domestic flights to other Russian destinations became the only remaining traffic out of Simferopol, and with the current state of the war, the airport has remained closed since February 2022.

View of men surrounding a Copper Range Railroad Company locomotive in a snowdrift in Calumet, Michigan. Printed on front: “Snow scene on Copper Range R.R. near Calumet, Mich.” Foreign language message handwritten on back. Card is postmarked March 4, 1910.

it is dramatically more complicated and will make transit harder

many more fatalities will occur

offering the required training will cost us unfathomably

everywhere would be insanely loud 24/7

500% increase in fossil fuel emissions

airsLLide No. 20611: RA-46619, Antonov 24RV, Cheboksarskoye Aviapredpriatyie, Irkutsk, June 7, 2001

Please don't ask me to try to properly pronounce this operator's name, and let's just agree to refer to it by its English transcription as Cheboksary Air Enterprise, a small airline flying five Antonov 24 and an equal number of Tupolev 134s from the town of same name, located between Moscow and Kazan in the European part of Russia. The airline's Antonov 24 above is far from home, just having completed a maintenance visit to the 403rd Aircraft Repair Factory «Angara» in the Siberian metropole of Irkutsk, near scenic Lake Baikal.

While Seattle and Chicago might be known for their city-spanning basements after colossal city-raising projects, San Francisco has buried underneath it something entirely unique. Probably. Sailing ships!

San Francisco was almost nothing until the mid-1800s. In 1847, its population was 459, being a miniscule settlement with inconvenient terrain other than the bay. What's the point of a bay if there's nothing for the ships to stop for?

And then suddenly, 1849 happened. There's gold in them thar hills! Within a few short years, San Francisco rocketed to a population of tens of thousands, with basically no infrastructure or land to support it.

The city had a dual problem. There was nowhere for the incoming 49ers to live, and there was nowhere for the flotilla of ships to moor. Ships would simply be abandoned in place as they arrived, either because their owners, in a rush to get to San Francisco, had bought something hardly even seaworthy, or because the crew abandoned their job in favor of gold fever.

The shoreline was described as a "forest of masts" with over a thousand ships crammed into as little space as possible. Even the ships that wanted to set sail again couldn't, as they got blocked in by the abandoned hulks.

What's a burgeoning city to do? Simply build over the ships.

The land around the coast was practically useless, being muddy bogs, but still incredibly valuable due to its future use as gold rush housing. The city sold it as lots, requiring new owners to fill them in with excavated land.

Even then, these lots sold out fast. How about another loophole? If your ship sank, you could claim it and the immediate area as salvage. Unseaworthy ships would mysteriously spring holes in the night, and their owners would claim the section of shore as legitimate salvage.

Some of the ships were nice enough that the shore was extended to them and their upper decks became proper buildings. Others simply got buried, supporting the new land above them. Gradually, what is now San Francisco's Financial District became regular land, with the ships forgotten artifacts well below the surface.

August 2018

Air Mauritius MK 851, Port Louis to Johannesburg.

Two normal ass planes right there. Shaped much like a normal plane.

Meanwhile there's Mriya

And like obviously there are elements of her design that are intentionally different because of her specialization in large cargo vs being a generalist like her smaller Western cousins but like. It also feels like Mriya has gotten to a size where the proportions necessary for flight have just gotten ridiculous.

Look at her shoulders. Look at her centipede ass landing gear.