Ray Maker

My first airplane fight was at an airshow aboard a Piper Cub and it cost 5 dollars. That was the day I was hooked on aircraft, best ride was on BA Concorde.

[Sarrah Bellus @sarrah_bellus]

BREAKING: Putin just lost another ally in Europe, and people are celebrating in the streets. Aleksandar Vucic, Serbia’s authoritarian leader and close ally of Trump and Putin, has officially conceded defeat in a historic snap parliamentary election. The student-led opposition movement has won, ending more than a decade of Vucic’s grip on power. Voter turnout reached nearly 70%, the highest since the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1992.

[Ray Maker @RayWMaker]

@JesusChryslerII He must have forgotten that Alaska has larger mountains than Montana. He failed with his name change in New Mexico and will fail like everything else here.

[Desiree @DesireeAmerica4]

Aaron Rodgers sat at that podium in Paris and said out loud what the corporate league office spends millions trying to sanitize.

​The NFL talks endlessly about “player safety” and “expanding the global game.” But behind closed doors, owners scrapped player-friendly bye weeks, forced a brutal 17th regular-season game, and shipped franchises across oceans simply because there was another dollar to squeeze out of foreign TV markets.

​While families and players navigate locked-down streets, civil tension, and grueling travel schedules, ownership sits in five-star suites counting international expansion checks.

​Rodgers doesn't care about league fines anymore. He’s telling you the truth: in the modern NFL, the brand and the balance sheet come first. The humans on the field come second.

[Mr. Beavv @MrBeavv]

USC blew up a 100 year old Pac 12 conference to fly 1,976 miles so they could lose to unranked Wisconsin.

Round of applause!

[WW3finalboss @WW3finalboss]

🇺🇦🇷🇺 RUSSIA IS OUTRAGED UKRAINE STRUCK A MILITARY FACTORY AT 6 PM, JUST AS WORKERS WERE GOING HOME

A Russian governor has accused Ukraine of “particular cynicism” for striking a military-industrial facility in Oryol at approximately 6 PM, when employees were finishing their shifts.

Apparently, Moscow believes its war industry should enjoy the protection of ordinary business hours.

The October 23 attack targeted JSC Proton, a facility reportedly involved in manufacturing electronic components for Russian military systems, including Iskander ballistic missiles and Pantsir air defence systems.

According to accounts of the operation, four British-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missiles arrived shortly after workers began leaving. A production workshop and an administrative building were struck, with subsequent footage showing extensive fires at the facility. The precise damage and number of missiles involved have not been independently established.

Ukrainian intelligence has also identified foreign industrial equipment allegedly used in Proton's production processes, including machinery associated with South Korea's Hanwha and Japan's Sodick. The reported presence of such equipment raises questions about how Russia continues obtaining advanced manufacturing capabilities despite international restrictions.

Russian military commentators were particularly frustrated by the performance of local air defences.

The pro-war commentator Kotenok suggested that the missiles had approached along routes already familiar from previous Ukrainian drone operations. Defenders had assumed their existing coverage would be sufficient.

That assumption appears to have been misplaced.

Meanwhile, the Russian aviation channel Fighterbomber praised local air defence personnel while reminding readers that publishing photographs of damaged military facilities could carry criminal consequences.

The contrast was difficult to miss: praise for the defenders, accompanied by warnings not to show what happened.

The Oryol strike formed part of a much broader series of reported Ukrainian operations against Russian infrastructure.

Accounts described hundreds of drones operating across 21 Russian regions, an attack on the Azot chemical facility in the Urals, and a strike against electrical infrastructure near Taman that reportedly disrupted power supplies to occupied Crimea.

Russian facilities increasingly distant from the Ukrainian border are being forced to confront a threat once largely associated with the immediate front line.

Even Russian administrative infrastructure is adapting. Reports described anti-drone netting being installed around a major Federal Tax Service data centre hundreds of kilometres from Ukraine.

The strategic problem for Moscow is cumulative. Protecting factories, refineries, substations, military installations and logistical infrastructure across such an enormous country requires air defence resources that cannot be concentrated everywhere simultaneously.

Each successful strike also creates additional costs through repairs, interrupted production and the need to strengthen protection around previously secure facilities.

There were other reminders of how far the war's consequences have spread. Separate accounts described diplomatic expulsions involving Russia in Austria and Moldova, while Russian military commentators continued questioning the effectiveness of their country's defensive preparations.

Yet amid the destruction, one development carried an entirely different emotional weight.

Ukraine reported the return of 270 prisoners, including five men who had previously been listed as dead.

Among those returning was Yevhenii, a Ukrainian marine musician who had spent four and a half years in captivity in Mordovia.

After finally returning home, he sang the words he had carried with him throughout his imprisonment:

“Mordovia, farewell! Ukraine, meet me!”

For all the arguments over missiles, factories and military infrastructure, that moment captured something the battlefield statistics cannot.

Behind every exchange of fire are people who have spent years waiting to see their families again.

And while Russian officials complain about the timing of attacks on facilities supporting their military, Ukrainian families are still living with the consequences of a war Moscow chose to launch.

[Ray Maker @RayWMaker]

@Barstoolhuskies That is because we hired a clown for a AD!

[Barstool Huskies @Barstoolhuskies]

UW and Wazzu Men’s Basketball play in exhibition today. This is the first time in 109 years they will not play in the regular season.

The people involved in that decision have no respect for college sports.

[Ray Maker @RayWMaker]

@Vinamralongani @IndiGo6E Flying skinny beer can.

[Dan | Dj’s Aviation @DjsAviation]

Boeing has run into a big problem with the 777F that has halted production
https://t.co/URL5WALcPM

[Brian Krassenstein @krassenstein]

Trump has meltdown about Obama at 12:42 AM.

Looks like Obama’s rally really got to him.

You can tell he’s BIGLY jealous of the man.

[Truthful🛰️ @Truthful_ast]

Blue Origin has stacked the final tower segment for LC-36A!

Nearly 5 months ago New Glenn exploded on the pad during testing damaging the original tower and destroying the lightning tower. Now the tower is fully stacked awaiting the umbilical extensions ahead of New Glenn's Return To Flight on December 28th.

This is record pace for a pad rebuild that many said wouldn't happen until 2028, major congrats to the BO team! 👏👏

[Ray Maker @RayWMaker]

@ErickHe369 @Truthful_ast Outstanding

[David Willis @ThePrimalDino]

I’m gonna be honest, “Centaur Exploration” sucks as a name.

We need to be calling this thing some variant of the “S-V” because that’s what it is. That’s what centaur was before it was centaur. The 5th Saturn stage.

[Seattle Seahawks @Seahawks]

Remembering film icon and 12 Flag raiser Tom Skerritt.

Our hearts are with his family and loved ones 💙

[Edwin @EngrUnlocked]

Everyone watches the rocket. Watch the four numbered boxes on the left.

Those are Artemis II's escape baskets. Artemis I didn't need them because nobody was aboard. If the countdown goes wrong, the crew climbs in about 375 ft up and rides a 1,335 ft cable down to the edge of the pad. In this clip they're already sliding off as the stack climbs.

No motor. No software. No power. Just gravity. The one system you need when everything else has failed shouldn't depend on anything else.

The part people miss is that getting down is easy, stopping is the problem. A frictionless 375 ft drop would hit roughly 100 mph. So NASA went with mechanical braking, a drag chain and a catch net, instead of magnetic.

8.8 million pounds of thrust is the poster number. About 100 mph is the one the brakes have to answer to.

[Aviation Week @AviationWeek]

AWIN Members Only: #American Airlines says it is nearing a major widebody aircraft decision after a months-long Boeing-Airbus contest, with the order expected to replace aging 777-200s and support future long-haul growth.

View the full story: https://t.co/WdIjn2rEU9

[Collin Rugg @CollinRugg]

JUST IN: Google forced to halt work in Finland after illegally clearing 250,000 trees for a new data center, according to the Guardian.

Every tree that occupied the 815-acre site just a few months ago is now gone.

The Finnish Licensing and Supervision Authority (LVV) has ordered Google to stop work on the Muhos and Otanmäki sites after it cut down the trees before the environmental impact assessment was completed.

Google’s Finland manager, Antti Järvinen, has apologized but says they were acting on "the best understanding we had of the legislation at the time."

Muhos and Otanmäki are a $17 billion Google AI project.

President Trump has criticized Google for taking the projects overseas instead of investing in the United States.

[Sports Business Journal @SBJ]

One bidder is out of the NBA’s Las Vegas expansion race.

The Lasry-Apostolopoulos group, which bid $9B to $9.5B, dropped out over the league’s reported $10B-plus price tag.

Sources say the NBA could want close to $11B, plus a $2B arena commitment.

MORE on this: https://t.co/zvvEtdnfdy

[Scott Robertson @sarobertson_]

Mark Carney on Elon Musk throttling Starlink: "I search for the right adjective to describe whoever took this decision or group of people took this decision against a country that is literally fighting for the lives of the citizens against naked aggression."