At the time of the American Revolution, American and British accents were nearly identical. What changed is that in the 1800s, the British--particularly the upper class and, later, the aspiring middle-class--deliberately chose to speak in a way that dropped pronouncing the "r" in order to sound more sophisticated.
VIDEO: "Why Americans Don't Sound British Anymore (Here's Exactly When That Changed)"
Airlearn Language Show (15 min.)
On June 15, 1960, temperatures in the town of Kopperl, Texas, spiked to near 140 °F (60 °C).
VIDEO: "The Night Texas Hit 140°F (60°C) During a Thunderstorm"
Swegle Studios (24 min.)
Back when most people walked or used small carts and most of Europe was but empty forest, travel was not as frequent or distant as today. And this impacted the type of people you might encounter on the road.
VIDEO: "STRANGE people you meet on a MEDIEVAL ROAD"
Modern History TV (46 min.)
The oldest version of Little Red Riding Hood, according to this video, was much darker than the tale we know today, having elements of a werewolf, murder, cannibalism, and human sacrifice. The video goes on to suggest that the tale may have its source in even older practices of a wolf cult and transformation brought on by eating certain types of meat.
VIDEO: "Is a Real Wolf Cult Hiding in Little Red Riding Hood?"
The Resurrectionists (14 min.)
Some longer or more involved reading:
In the case of our students who had to shoot in self-defense, the distances involved were:
Contact distance 4%
3-7 yards 91%
Beyond 7 yards 4%
The 3 shootings beyond 7 yards were at 15,17 and 22 yards, so some work at that sort of distance is needed, but not a lot.
... The Gun Control Act of 1968 still generally requires that handguns transferred between unlicensed individuals across state lines go through a Federal Firearms Licensee in the recipient’s state. What the USPS rule change does is remove the additional federal mailing prohibition that sat on top of that framework — a prohibition that applied even to fully lawful FFL-to-FFL shipments, FFL-to-customer shipments where permitted, and other transfers that were otherwise completely legal under the GCA but could not move through the Postal Service specifically.
In practical terms: an FFL shipping a handgun to another FFL for a customer transfer, a manufacturer shipping a pistol back to a customer after warranty service, or an individual shipping a handgun to a licensed dealer for consignment or sale — all of these transactions were legal under the GCA before April 2026, but could not use USPS. Now they can. The universe of handgun transactions that require an FFL has not changed. The shipping options available for those transactions have expanded significantly.
Criminals think in such selfish all or nothing terms because believing themselves omniscient and knowing everything, they sense no need to evaluate a situation at any length (unless casing out a place to commit a crime). For the criminal mind, just thinking something makes it so. If a person is certain of his omniscience and infallibility, he has no reason to engage in the rational mental processes that are necessary for making decisions, like defining the problem, establishing a realistic objective, suspending judgment, gathering facts, evaluating alternatives, and selecting a rational, thought-out solution. If criminals want something, they obtain it very quickly, one way or the other without rational decision-making and concern for their victims.
And then the switch from sympathy to guilt (Western societies are unique in being driven by guilt). This he does through these two sentences: "This incident, and countless other tragedies like it, is what inaction looks like. And for decades, both American political parties have been responsible for it." No, our country and our politicians were not the one's that told that woman to get into a trailer packed with dozens of other people, nor did we cause the accident. The woman did something stupid and suffered consequences.
Salazar continues: "As U.S. ambassador, I urgently and passionately made the argument to people in the White House and the halls of Congress that we needed to fix our border and find durable solutions. I warned Democrats that if we did not address this, it would contribute to defeat in the November 2024 elections. I’m sorry to say I was correct." Well, this seems reasonable. We need to fix the borders. But here is the reversal:
Trump was right that the border was broken and needed to be fixed. But his plan of enforcement, tearing families apart, terrorizing communities with mass ICE raids, and pitting nations against nations is not the solution.
In other words, he is saying that if you don't want illegals to remain here and believe they have to go back--because sending them back will require arrests--you are no better than a terrorist.
So at this point Salazar hopes the reader will be nodding his (or more likely, her) head in agreement, waiting with baited breath for Salazar to offer some reasonable solution. And that is?
I propose the creation of a New American Alliance, a North America where the borders, migration, and our nation's deep economic and cultural ties are fixed to create an untapped opportunity rather than a manufactured crisis. It is a truer expression of who we are as Americans—people who achieve greatness when we are united and when we work together toward common goals.
In other words, his idea of fixing the border is to simply do away with borders. Just let them all in and f*** all you lessor mortals that will actually have to live with the consequences.
And we have an example of this right now from the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on the North Africa coast, with the New York Post reporting:
An unprecedented wave of 60,000 illegal migrants from Africa has flooded the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, prompting Spain to deploy its military – as locals liken the invasion to an “apocalypse.”
Harrowing local media reports reveal residents and business owners in Ceuta – a Spanish territory located on the north African coast – are terrified to open their doors amid the rush of migrants, many of whom arrived wearing nothing but swimwear without a penny or possession to their name.
“Businesses closed. Shops shut because if you open a business, it gets overrun … We’re scared. The streets are packed. There are no measures in place. It’s every man for himself. They’re not giving us any help,” a terrified downtown restaurant owner who didn’t want to give their name told state-owned Spanish media outlet RTVE.
Visiting the Sacro Bosco (Italian for Sacred Grove), a 16th-century garden in Bomarzo, Italy, is no ordinary walk through the park. The seven-acre site’s sculpted monsters, open tombs and dramatic depictions of supernatural combatants make the experience more akin to braving a Renaissance version of a haunted house. Visitors can wander through a tilted building, run away from a giant gaping mouth and—if they manage to get past Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guards the gates of the underworld—descend into hell.
The Sacro Bosco’s colossal stone statues are frightening to behold. But what makes this garden extra eerie is that no one knows for sure why monsters haunt these woods. “No receipts, account books or commission documents survive to tell us about the Sacro Bosco’s creation,” says John Garton, an art historian at Clark University and the co-author of an upcoming book about the garden. Pier Francesco Orsini, the duke who commissioned the Sacro Bosco in the mid-1500s, left no explicit clues.
An interesting read and lots of photos.
It’s
always been one of those open secrets that Interarms, a famed
Virginia-based arms importer, worked for the CIA or with the CIA. The
owner, or who appeared to be the owner, Samuel Cummings, had a long
history of working with the government, including the CIA. The old joke
that no one ever really leaves the CIA seems quite true regarding Mr.
Cummings.
There
has been a massive release of documents from the CIA concerning the JFK
assassination, and part of those documents confirmed that the CIA didn’t
just work with Interarms; they owned the organization. Samuel Cummings
acted as their representative and eventually purchased the company, but
it seemed to be in the CIA space until it was taken over by High
Standard.
No one has been able to convincingly match up the locations Odysseus journeyed to during his 10-year voyage to actual locations in the Mediterranean. Some have looked beyond the Mediterranean to see if there are matches to locations in or around Atlantic Ocean, including the host of this video. He begins with a simple hypothesis: that the journey in The Odyssey is based, at least in part, from earlier stories and legends; and that some of the stories or legends might reflect actual locations or sailing journeys. He further notes that Homer used the Greek word for "ocean" to describe where Odysseus' journey took place.
To be clear, he does not believe that all of the events and locations described in The Odyssey were based on a single voyage of exploration, but were likely from several accounts. But he picks out several that seem to describe a voyage into the Atlantic and north to Iceland, wintering in Iceland, and then heading over to a couple locations in Newfoundland that seem a plausible match with Homer's description of the whirlpool Charybdis and the creature, Scylla.
VIDEO: "Did Odysseus Discover America?"
Lantern Jack (51 min.)
Some links that may be of interest:
Like the .45 Colt, the .44 Special launches large-caliber bullets at moderate velocities. This provides suitable levels of bullet energy at typical handgun distances. This round has been used successfully to harvest medium-sized game, including whitetail deer and hogs, along with smaller game at closer ranges of around 75 yards or less. Although it would not be correct to call the .44 Special a "soft-shooting" round, it can yield desirable results without the muzzle flash, noise and wrist-snapping levels of recoil associated with magnum cartridges.
These shooting characteristics have also led to the .44 Special finding its way into various snub-nosed carry guns. Over the years, the .44 Special has proven to be an effective defensive option. And because this round operates at slightly lower pressures (15,500 psi) than the .38 Special (17,000 psi), it has been paired with smaller, lighter models, like the Charter Arms Bulldog, along with medium-frame configurations including the Ruger GP100 and, of course, the Smith & Wesson Model 396.
Boasting a short stock, the blunderbuss was a hybrid of a pistol and a carbine, often hip-fired due to its short length and powerful recoil, comparable to a modern shotgun. The blunderbuss fired a cache of lead balls propelled by a large powder charge, though users, whether by necessity or imagination, could and often did fill the firearm with anything that would fit and cause damage when fired, including nails, rocks, glass, or “bundle shot,” a series of metal rods packed together that, when blasted from the bore, effectively became tiny spears. Needless to say, the more crudely fashioned projectiles were not good for the integrity of the barrel, but in the heat of battle, served as dangerous implements. Blunderbusses were also used for crowd control or clearing the decks, as the mere sight of the gun in hand served as a deterrent to potential challengers.
Blunderbusses could also be found affixed to ship’s railing or gunwales via a mounting swivel, becoming an improvised boat gun to clear decks when approaching alongside another vessel. The gun’s flared muzzle made it easier to load in the chaos of battle, particularly in some of the more precarious places aboard ships, such as rigging and water-slicked decks rocking port and starboard.
Blunderbusses appeared in the 17th century, seeing use up until about 1840. The height of the blunderbuss coincides with the “Golden Age of Piracy” in the mid-1700s, ....
Another factor that might require corrections is if the gun doesn't naturally point for you. Perhaps you can train your way out of it, perhaps not.
... I’ve shot both the Weaver and the isosceles, and I do not believe the isosceles is a good stance for real-life combat situations, any more than a trap stance is good training for driven grouse or that firing a .458 off a bench prepares you for buffalo in the long grass. Certainly, it is not as natural and flexible as the Weaver, no matter how many IPSC hot-shots have used it to win matches.
Before Jack Weaver came along, handgunners had tried various methods of two-handed shooting. Weaver ingeniously took the age-old human “prepare to fight” position and adapted it. The Weaver is, essentially, the stance used by boxers. It is also the stance used by top wingshooters on wild birds. A right-handed shooter stands with the left foot forward, feet about 18 inches apart, body angled, weight on the balls of the feet, but mostly on the forward foot. The shooter is leaning into it, eyes focused like a wolf on a caribou.
This boxing stance is the most natural human fighting position. Modern attempts to discredit it as being “outdated” have proven misguided, as witness an aging Floyd Mayweather’s almost laughable demolition of MMA Conor McGregor last August.
The isosceles is praised as a “rigid platform,” but in most tactical situations rigidity is not nearly as useful as flexibility. You never know what you’ll be faced with. You might be carrying a child on one arm and have to shoot one-handed. You could be on the ground, shooting under a car, or having to shoot around the corner of a building. Once you learn the Weaver stance, you can adapt its principles to almost any situation.
The primary advantage to the isosceles is when wearing body armor as it presents the strike face squarely at the target. Mass Ayoob has noted, however, that if you are in an isosceles stance and have to twist the torso, it will convert to a Weaver stance.
And speaking of Mass Ayoob, here is an article he wrote on "Basic Two-Handed Shooting Stances" covering the Weaver, isosceles, and Chapman (aka, modified Weaver) stances, including how to stand and hold the gun for each, and the pros and cons of each.
MOLLE (pronounced as Molly) stands for Modular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment. Introduced by the U.S. military in the late 1990s, it replaced the older ALICE system and fundamentally changed how soldiers and operators carry gear. MOLLE is not a single product. It is the entire load-bearing ecosystem, encompassing plate carriers, tactical vests, magazine pouches, dump pouches, utility pouches, backpacks, and every other modular accessory that attaches to a PALS-equipped surface.
And:
PALS, or the Pouch Attachment Ladder System, is a grid of webbing that allows MOLLE-compatible gear to be attached to any MOLLE-equipped surface. Often confused with MOLLE itself, PALS is the framework or infrastructure behind the modularity of MOLLE gear. The horizontal rows of stitched webbing you see on backpacks, plate carriers, chest rigs, and other tactical gear are the PALS system.
The SurviveX Large First Aid Kit is primarily focused on general wound care. It is stocked with medical supplies for treating cuts, scrapes, wounds, lacerations, burns, blisters, and fractures (bandages, gauze, splints, burn gel, antibiotic ointment among others) rather than ailments needing internal medication. It is a kit you can keep in your home, vehicle, as well bring with you on camping or hiking trips. It contains 200+ items (in the Large version) enough for general care for around 3–6 people.
The kit sells for $120 on Amazon. So why get this instead of a commercial kit intended for businesses or schools? There are seems to be three things that stood out in the review: (i) the bag into which it fits has Molle attachments allowing it to be secured to a pack or the attaching devices you can purchase for vehicles; (ii) it's wound treatment goes beyond the basic gauze and adhesive bandages found in most kits to include actual medical shears and zip stitch wound closures; (iii) it included additional items needed for outdoors such as a splint, survival whistle, and glow sticks. The downsides, mentioned in the article, is that "it does not include pain relief medications, allergy medicines, or stomach aids, or tourniquet" or any clotting agents. In other words, you will still need to add items or carry a separate trauma kit; as well as any medications you want to carry.
Is it the best deal? That is something you will have to answer yourself. For instance, you can get almost everything in the SurviveX kit in another kit that costs only $53, then add a SAM splint for $15. The bag isn't as good as the SurviveX, but if you are going to be carrying it in another bag, it probably won't make a difference.
The reviewer's conclusions, however, is that "[t]he SurviveX Large First Aid Kit is an excellent investment for anyone serious about upgrading their first aid supplies. For an apartment dweller, it’s like a 'mini-ER' in a small footprint that won’t clutter your living space. If you’re tired of digging through a chaotic mess of loose gauze and adhesive bandages that no longer stick, this kit is a worthwhile purchase."
From Slate: "The Forgotten Bombing of LaGuardia Airport." 6:30 p.m. on Dec. 29, 1975, a bomb left in a rented locker at New York's LaGuardia Airport detonated with the power of 25 sticks of dynamite.
... A 12-foot-wide hole was torn in the 8-inch-thick concrete ceiling. A football field’s length of plateglass windows were blown out. Pieces of red lockers littered the parking lot. Water geysered from the busted pipes.
All told, an estimated 75 people were injured, and 11—including Stamey, Patterson, Bull, and Musicaro—died as a result of the blast. The violence was such that, within minutes, 175 pints of blood were immediately shipped to city hospitals from the bank on Amsterdam Avenue. Corpses sat on-site in pine boxes before transport to the medical examiner’s office. There was an account of a human head resting on a window ledge, and puddles of blood soaking the island next to the parking lot. “The explosion ripped upwards and outwards,” reported CBS News’ Ike Pappas the next evening, with the deceased “caught in the crossfire of glass and metal that sheared off limbs and tore through bodies.”
It was, recalled the EMS dispatcher on duty that night in Queens, “a horror.”
The investigation that followed was the largest investigation run by the NYPD at that time, augmented by hundreds of agents from the FBI's New York field office and agents from the ATF. Although there was some suspicion cast on a Croat named Zvonko Bušić, his wife, Julienne, who were involved in a hijacking and bomb incident in 1976, investigators concluded that they were not involved in the 1975 bombing. The case is still unsolved today.
Oddly, however, the incident has largely been forgotten. According to the author of the article:
Now, more than half a century later, it’s as if the bombing never happened. After extensive research, I could not find so much as a marker, on-site or elsewhere, commemorating the lives lost. When I tell people about it—even those old enough to have lived through the event—I’m greeted with shock that such violence could escape their memory. New Yorkers have a shared consciousness; talk to someone who’s lived here long enough, and they’ll tell you stories about Etan Patz’s disappearance or David Berkowitz’s murder spree. The LaGuardia bombing isn’t part of our collective memory.
But it ought to be. In an effort to reconstruct the story of what happened that winter night, I’ve spoken to people close to the event, including survivors, family members of victims, and investigators. No one had contacted them about the bombing for decades, including the investigating agencies. When I began leaving messages for them, one survivor wondered if the phone call was a prank.
It hasn't been completely forgotten. CBS posted original new footage of the story to YouTube about 6 months ago. And in December 2025, A&E published an article entitled, "What It Would Take to Figure Out Who Committed the LaGuardia Airport Bombing After 50 Years."
Shooting Times provides us with "The History of Smith & Wesson's Famous Model 10 Revolver." This revolver was known under different names, including S&W's original Military & Police, before taking being designated as the Model 10. The author begins:
With more than six million of them made, Smith & Wesson’s Model 10 revolver holds the distinction of being the most-produced handgun of the 20th century. From its use by the armed forces and law enforcement to its popularity with civilian shooters, there’s no denying the huge impact that the Model 10 revolver has had on the gun community as a whole. One could write an entire book on this handgun’s history, but a comprehensive-yet-not-exhaustive article is arguably going to be more popular and is undoubtedly more readable.
He continues:
Introduced in 1899 as the “.38 Hand Ejector Military & Police,” this new revolver was built on the company’s K-size medium frame, and was a departure from all previous revolver designs in that it featured a swing-out cylinder instead of a top-break design. This new swing-out cylinder is behind the “Hand Ejector” part of the name because it required the user to push on the ejector rod to remove spent or live rounds instead of having them eject automatically like they do on top-break designs.
While there was an earlier Smith & Wesson revolver that also featured a swing-out cylinder, it did not have the now-familiar push latch on the left side of the frame and it was not available in .38 caliber.
The equally new .38 Special cartridge, for which the revolver was chambered, was a marked improvement over the .38 Long Colt. This new gun and ammo would go on to be one of the most widely used combinations in law enforcement for the better part of a century. The United States Military embraced the gun immediately, placing the first order for 1,000 revolvers in June 1900. Another 1,000-gun order followed in February 1901.
Although typically manufactured to shoot .38 Special, the author relates that "[i]n March 1940, they began producing what is known as the .38/200 British Service revolver, which is the exact same Military & Police gun except that it is chambered for the .38 S&W cartridge. By war’s end, 568,204 of these .38/200 revolvers had been made for England."
(As a side note, the .38/200 uses the same case as .38 S&W and the same diameter bullet, but a much heavier and longer bullet--originally a 200 grain lead bullet. Most .38 S&W revolvers cannot safely fire the .38/200 load; so only shoot .38/200 out of revolvers marked for that loading. On the other hand, any revolver built for .38/200 will also shoot .38 S&W).
The article goes on to discuss the Model 10 in U.S. service during WWII and its long life after the war as one of the most widely used police revolvers. Smith & Wesson still offers the Model 10 in its catalogue as part of its classic series.
Some longer and more involved reading for the weekend:
Autonomic Nervous System responses are not just to recoil and report, they are also in anticipation of recoil and report. That's why we, disciples of Jeff Cooper, teach the surprise trigger break. The surprise break defeats all autonomic nervous system responses (jerk, flinch, freeze, push, etc.) by not allowing the brain to know exactly when the recoil and report will occur.
Any ANS responses occur after the bullet has exited the muzzle.
If you intentionally, consciously, make your pistol fire, you will induce ANS responses. The trick / secret / technique is to:
1. Take the slack out of the trigger.
2. Smoothly increase pressure on the trigger. Do not fire the pistol. Just increase pressure by repeating your mantra, "Keep pressing, keep pressing, keep pressing, . . . " [Thanks to Kaery Dudenhofer. A lot of research and experimentation went into developing this mantra.]
3. Eventually, the pistol will fire. But, because you did not intentionally fire the pistol, there will be no ANS responses to disturb your shot. The responses will occur after the bullet has exited the muzzle.
So, the bullets will go where you aimed them (if your pistol is zeroed).
"This sounds like magic to me."
Yes, any sufficiently advanced technology will appear to be magic to the ignorant. The human is God's masterpiece of creation, extremely advanced technology, far beyond the comprehension of man.
When students achieve the surprise break, they shoot one hole groups at 3 yards (some as far as 5 yards). This direct feedback causes an epiphany. It's not like riding a bicycle. Once learned, it can be forgotten. But it's easier to achieve the next time, because you know what you're searching for.
"This is a long complex process. I won't have time to recite a mantra in combat."
With dedicated practice, the process will compress in time and become very fast.
Of course, the surprise break is only a small part of the shot process, which is only a small part of the tactical exercise, which is only a small part of the scenario. Real scenarios are surprising. No command to "Load and make ready". No checking to see if you're "Ready?" No authority ordering you to use lethal force. You must take responsibility.
At dinner, after Farnam's Rifle class, a gentleman said that he had taken a lot of firearms training classes and that he had found most of the stuff that was taught in the U.S. by competent instructors is the same. Only about 10% is different. And that the differences were not significant. So I asked him who he had taken classes from. And his list included a lot of names and schools that I'm sure you would be familiar with.
I suggested to him that all of the instructors he had mentioned were disciples of Jeff Cooper (1st, 2nd, and 3rd generation), and if he would take classes from others, he would find more diversity of philosophy and techniques. I know it is inconvenient to travel to foreign countries for training, but even within the U.S. there are Israeli schools (e.g. Pacific West Academy or if you ask around at any Jewish Community Center you can get referrals, often incorporating Krav Maga), South African / Rhodesian schools (I am not listing examples, because I have not received permission yet.), and European (German, often in association with a weaponized version of Schutzhund dog training, using the dog as a self-defense weapon) schools that I have found to be very different from the American schools. [Louis Awerbuck was South African, but he was a disciple of Jeff Cooper. So, I do not include him in the South African school.]
Senator Hendrickson. Well now, I am interested to know whether if a situation did arise where you had to make a decision which was extremely adverse to the interests of your stock and General Motors Corp. or any of these other companies, or extremely adverse to the company, in the interests of the United States Government, could you make that decision?
Mr. Wilson. Yes, sir; I could. I cannot conceive of one because for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa. The difference did not exist. Our company is too big. It goes with the welfare of the country. Our contribution to the Nation is quite considerable.”
Wilson's comments were quickly altered (by the New York Times, of course) to “what is good for General Motors is good for the country, and what is good for the country is good for General Motors.” Which then became the more commonly known version today: "What’s good for General Motors is good for America."
The Confederate spy chief finally reached Southampton, England on August 30, 1865, more than four months after Richmond’s fall. He would immediately tap into the Confederate networks in England and France that he was so central in creating and deploying. He had allies across the sea.
A video that first discusses how the military arrived at a 14.5 inch barrel for the M4 before moving on to whether there is any significant difference between the performance of the 14.5 and 16 inch barrels, as well as some of the history of why the minimum legal barrel length for a rifle is 16 inches.
As far as the choice of 14.5 inches, the narrator explains that it came down to two factors: (a) Colt using the gas system from the CAR-15 (i.e., the carbine length system) to save money, which established where the gas block (and, hence, bayonet lug) would sit; and (b) then using a barrel long enough to fit a bayonet at the front end. With a carbine length gas system, a 16-inch barrel is too long (you need the mid-length gas system for the 16 inch barrel if you want to use a bayonet).
VIDEO: "That DUMB 1.5" Every AR15 nerd goes nuts over"
Mil Gear Explainer (14 min.)
Some longer and more involved reading for the weekend:
A mapping expedition in the Tlayócoc cave in Mexico led a professional cave explorer to a hidden chamber containing shocking evidence of an extinct civilization.
Yekaterina Katiya Pavlova ventured to a community in the Sierra de Guerrero to further map the Tlayócoc cave. When Pavlova and local guide Adrián Beltrán Dimas reached the bottom of the cave, having already explored all that was mapped, they opted to head into an unknown passage through a submerged entrance. The effort paid off.
The passage led to a previously unseen room in which two engraved shell bracelets sat atop stalagmites, likely as an offering, according to a translated statement from the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).
The explorers also found another bracelet, a giant snail shell, and pieces of black stone discs similar to pyrite mirrors—all of it dated to more than 500 years ago.
Archaeologists then descended on the cave, uncovering 14 total objects—three shell bracelets, a bracelet fragment, the giant snail shell, a piece of burnt wood, and pieces of eight stone discs (two of which were complete). Each of the bracelets were made from snail shells—likely a marine species—and were engraved with anthropomorphic symbols and figures.
The bracelets feature S-shaped symbols known as xonecuilli, zigzagging lines,a and circles to create human faces in profile. These designs could be meant to signify deities.
The archaeologista estimate that the items were left in the cave during the Postclassic period between 950 and 1521 A.D.—a time when the area was known to be populated by the now-extinct Tlacotepehaus ethnic group.
A biotech company that aims to resurrect lost creatures said Tuesday it has hatched live chicks in an artificial environment — a development that was met with mixed reviews from scientists and critics of its de-extinction mission.
Twenty-six baby chickens — ranging from a few days to several months old — were born from a 3D printed lattice structure that mimics an eggshell, according to Colossal Biosciences.
Colossal previously announced it had genetically engineered living animals to resemble extinct species, including mice with long hair like the woolly mammoth and wolf pups that take after dire wolves.
Colossal’s CEO Ben Lamm said the artificial egg technology could one day be scaled up to genetically tweak living birds to resemble New Zealand’s extinct South Island giant moa, whose eggs are 80 times the size of a chicken’s and would be difficult for any modern bird to lay.
Had Santa Anna taken New Orleans, he would have reversed Jefferson’s achievement in securing the Louisiana Purchase and accomplished what the British in 1815 could not: the reduction of the United States to a servile position. And with all commerce in the Ohio, Missouri and Mississippi river basins bottled up at Santa Anna’s mercy, not only might America never have generated the capital, industrial strength and military might needed to become a great power, but an authoritarian Mexico might well have supplanted it, expanding throughout the West and the Caribbean Basin as well.
But for Houston’s victory at San Jacinto — but for Davy Crockett’s martyr's death at the Alamo, enabling Houston’s triumph — the American experiment might well have come to nothing. America might well have been recolonized in that era of global European expansion which saw India and China subjugated (as indeed Mexico was by France for a time, during the 1860s). And with the coming of the 20th Century, freedom might well have perished from the Earth.
Take note of his comments about how it was clear that Israel's intention was to kill everyone on board the ship. We should have destroyed their entire navy and air force over this. We had a carrier battle group in the area, so we could have quickly carried out reprisal strikes.
VIDEO: "JUST IN: Thomas Massie Slams Israel For 1967 Strike On USS Liberty That Claimed 34 Lives" - Forbes Breaking News (6 min.)
Some longer and more involved reading for the weekend:
Pay attention to crowds forming and immediately leave.
If you don't, you may end up as I did in Printer's Alley in Nashville, TN refilling an ATM with cash while 50 youths started throwing tables and chairs around. Not willing to turn my back on them, to close and lock the ATM, I stood facing them with my pistol out. Not pointing at anyone, just watching. You bet they were watching me. Tens of thousands of dollars in 20's, an armed guard in uniform with a pistol in a two handed low ready. I was surprised no one was taking pictures of me. Maybe they were.
In a few minutes they all left. But I know I came very close to a lethal force incident.
If I had been paying attention, I would have locked up and left when they started congregating. Should have had two guards on such jobs, but company policy was one man.
... You learn to drive a car, you practice by driving everyday, eventually you are able to drive with automaticity. Pushing yourself to do things more quickly than automaticity (not speeding on the highway), as starting the car and pulling out of the parking space, does not serve you well. Because you will naturally go as fast as you can safely go, as fast as you can comfortably go, as fast as you can competently go, as fast as you can confidently go.
To push yourself to go faster, risks going faster than you can see (faster than you can process visual information), faster than you can think. [Out running your head lights. (Running past the target in a match and not shooting it because you didn't see it. Hitting the deer at night because you didn't see it in time.) Out running your GPS. (The GPS tells you to take exit 26, but you've already passed exit 26.)]
Operating faster than you can think is not safe. And the older you get, the slower you go. A person has got to know their limitations. If you shoot faster than you can think, you could easily shoot the wrong person.
Or as Jon comments later in his newsletter: "Never shoot faster than you can see. Never shoot faster than you can think."
The reality is that our reflexes and ability to process information is not instantaneous--there is a lag. It shows up sometimes when a defensive shooter shoots a criminal in the back. The general situation is that the criminal turns to flee, but because of the lag time in seeing, processing, and stopping from pulling the trigger, the criminal will have turned before the defensive shooter is able to perceive the changed circumstances and not fire the weapon; with the result being the criminal is shot in the back.
Jon has a lot more, so be sure to check it out--I can assure you that you will find many useful links, tips, and advice.
Some thoughts on an after-action scan. I actually favor the technique taught by Craig Douglas. Instead of merely looking by turning the head or turning your back on your attacker, MOVE. Imagine the battlefield as a clock. You are in the center of the clock. The down bad guy is at 12 o’clock. You need to see behind you (six o’clock). By aggressively moving to either nine o’clock, or three o’clock you will be able to see both the bad guy and the area previously behind you.
We should teach shooting in four distinct parts: what is important(safety and manual of arms), how to hit the target (accuracy and precision), how much time it takes (speed and efficiency), and what is meaningful (novel or complex context). Unfortunately, many shooters only receive the first two lessons—or choose to ignore the last two—focusing on safety and accuracy while avoiding the tension between time and information.
It saddens me that the gun community has developed its own form of “cancel culture” where a person can no longer express an opinion without being shouted down. It seems social media has brought out the “ugly” in people. These attacks go beyond the opinion itself and attack the person, in some cases trying to ruin their reputation. At a minimum, if you are in my age bracket, you are called a “Fudd” regardless of your training, experience and background. Name calling is easy when you don’t have to face the person, and it’s a tactic often used by folks who lack real experience or who can’t articulate intelligent counterpoints. Let’s just say, I won’t be surprised if it happens to me after this article.
Unfortunately, we humans would be powerless against a rare giant projectile many miles in diameter. Unlike the dinosaurs, we might well see the approach of a six-mile-wide killer asteroid, like the one that collided with Earth 66 million years ago. However, stopping it or deflecting its course is out of the question: It would be like trying to stop an oncoming truck by throwing ping-pong balls at it. And although we’ve discovered the vast majority of near-Earth objects (NEOs) larger than about two-thirds of a mile across, finding that none are on a collision course with Earth, astronomers could very well discover an enormous comet next week that will crash into the planet in a few years’ time. And again, there’s nothing we could do to stop it.
If we do want to protect ourselves from cosmic impacts, we need to focus on medium-sized objects, ranging from about 100 yards to about a half a mile. These are relatively numerous, and they can easily cause many tens of millions of casualties. Earth is hit by a 400-yard asteroid on average once every 100,000 years. If the collision occurs in Europe, a country like France will disappear completely from the map, and the entire continent will become an unimaginable disaster area. Such an impact is, in theory, preventable, so we would be crazy not to explore the possibilities of doing just that.
[snip]
When it comes to protecting Earth from a fatal collision, there are a number of ideas currently under consideration, ranging from good to bad to very bad.
For example, blowing an asteroid up with an atomic bomb, as happened in “Armageddon,” is not a smart idea. It is an option that Edward Teller, known as “the father of the hydrogen bomb,” proposed long ago, but it simply wouldn’t help. The numerous fragments created in such an explosion would still be moving through the solar system in more or less the same direction and at the original high speed. As a result, Earth would then have to endure not one big impact but a whole series of smaller ones, with all the attendant consequences.
A more practical solution would be to slightly deflect the approaching celestial body so that it passes close to Earth rather than colliding with it. Particularly if you can see the impact coming many years in advance, a small nudge can be enough to avert disaster. When astronomers discovered the 1,100-foot-wide near-Earth object Apophis, which for a while looked as if it would wreak havoc on Earth in 2029, they were already calculating that a minimal change in speed of just a few micrometers per second would be enough to prevent that anticipated catastrophe. Luckily, in the case of Apophis, there’s no need to intervene: The asteroid will safely fly by the Earth on April 13, 2029, at a distance of some 20,000 miles.
In the annals of Deep State WTF-ery, is there a stranger case than CIA officer David Rush turning up with $40-million in 303 one-kilogram gold bars, plus $2-million in cash, plus a stash of 30 mostly Rolex watches? Well, yeah, the stranger story is how the guy got hired by the CIA in the first place.
Rush was arrested on Monday, May 18, by an FBI SWAT team at his home in Loudoun County, VA. Agents searched the house all day long and found the stash. Rush is currently charged with theft of public money and allegedly falsifying his military and academic credentials to obtain federal employment benefits, including roughly $77,000 in improper military leave pay. He’s scheduled to make a federal court appearance in Alexandria today.
Rush first applied for a job at the CIA in March 2006. He claimed to have a bachelor’s degree in math from Clemson University and a master’s from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). He was rejected. He reapplied later that same year. Bumped again. He reapplied again in 2009, adding a new credential: that he’d been a US Navy test pilot and flight trainer. This time, he was hired.
But as Kunstler goes on to relate, Rush's background was a fabrication: his college credentials were fake; he had never been a pilot for the Navy. So how did he pass the rigorous vetting process needed to be hired and given a security clearance? Rush was hired at the start of the Obama Administration when Leon Panetta was the newly appointed director of the CIA. Panetta, if you remember, was one of the 51 former intelligence officials who signed an October 2020 Public Statement on the Hunter Biden laptop falsely claiming it was Russian disinformation in order to interfere with the outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election. So is this evidence of more Deep State shenanigans?
Beginning with the stimulus of a cup or two of strong coffee, fifteen-year-old Columbia College sophomore George Templeton Strong started a diary in 1835. He continued to make entries until his death in 1875, toting up to around four million words, an extraordinary document of life in mid-century America as seen from the commercial and cultural capital of New York. Especially for the terrible years of the Civil War, Strong’s job as Treasurer of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, a charity dedicated to fighting the “third army” of disease, gave him a wide perspective on the war, making his diary one of the most visceral portals into understanding the destruction of American slavery.
Before the outbreak of the War of 1812, the U.S. considered invading Canada. General Hull was sent from Ohio to attack a British fort in Detroit. Hull's supplies were captured by the British, however, so he sent word to Cincinnati for more supplies and men to guard the supplies. A man from Chilikothy, Ohio named Samuel Williams raised a force of 100 men to head to Detroit. They were outfitted with a unifor, tomahawks, knives and guns, but no cooking gear. So they had to improvise. Their food was basic: flour, salt, and bacon. To make the bread they mixed the flour with some salt and water to make dough which they rolled out and wrapped around sticks to cook over an open fire. Townsend follows the details in the letters Williams wrote to his wife, including details on how they prepared and cooked their bread, and gives it a try. An interesting video both for the improvised means of cooking and the overall history.
VIDEO: "Bread On A Stick - Campfire Soldier Bread"
Townsends (10 min.)
The aftermath of the Japanese surrender in World War II saw insurgencies pop up in South East Asia to throw off European colonial rule, including in French Indochina. As Mark Felton describes in this video, faced with a shortage of experienced troops, the French turned to using captured and imprisoned French men that had served for the Vichy French government and other collaborators, including a unit apparently made up from French that had been in the Schutzstaffel (SS).
VIDEO: "Battalion of the Damned - Waffen-SS Unit Vietnam War"
Mark Felton Productions (12 min.)
This video goes over some historical accounts of man-eaters, mostly in India and Africa, but also touching on accounts from the Americas. Unless you have read the books by Jim Corbett, who professionally hunted man-eaters in India, or read about the lions of Tsavo (or watched the film, The Ghost and the Darkness) you will probably have not heard of most of these incidents.
The most amazing thing about many of these incidents is how prolific of killers were many of these animals. We're talking about animals (or sometimes a pair working together) that would kill dozens or even hundreds over periods of years. We have nothing comparable in North America from bears or mountain lions.
Moreover, unless written about by the hunters, we generally have no records of these occurrences, so the actual occurrences was probably much higher.
VIDEO: "The Leopard of Rudraprayag and Other Man-Eaters"
The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered (18 min.)
An article on Air America, an airline and air transport company operated in Southeast Asia by the CIA. The article opens:
Air America was designed with deniability in mind.
So don’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of the CIA-administered airline that employed more than 5,000 people, including hundreds of ex-military and bush pilots, to service America’s logistical needs throughout Southeast Asia campaigns from 1950 to the mid-1970s.
The CIA remained so tight-lipped about its biggest proprietary that for decades, many Americans only knew of Air America through press reports of daring pilots and alleged opium-running in Laos or via the eponymous 1990 action-comedy flick starring Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr.
However, a more comprehensive accounting of Air America, told eventually through declassified documents and carefully reported books such as William Leary’s Perilous Missions and Christopher Robbins’ Air America, shows how integral the CIA’s covert airline was to American servicemen and civilians in the region.
The Quotulatiousness blog risks the gnashing and wailing of leftists as he answers the question: "Were the Nazis socialists?" Short answer is "yes". The longer answer:
Many people assume Nazis could not have been socialists, despite all the time and energy they devoted to jumping up and down screaming “We are socialists!”, because they were “right-wing” and socialism is supposed to be “left-wing”.
Except “right-wing” and “left-wing” don’t have rigid definitions outside the context of the French revolution. In any other context, they’re just a metaphor.
So why did the NATIONAL Socialist German Workers’ Party and the INTERNATIONAL Marxist-Leninist Socialist Workers’ Movement hate each other so much?
It’s pretty obvious when you look at the names.
National.
International.
To Nazis, the race and culture of a people are everything. They are what the state is supposed to represent. Ein Volk, as they would say. The purpose of Nazi socialism is to control capital assets, subordinating them to the will and welfare of the ethnostate.
But Marxist-Leninists seek to abolish all ethnostates. They are a globalist movement, seeking to place all capital assets under the control of a universal proletariat in theory, which is in practice represented by one world government.
Thus, Nazis sought to use socialist policies for the welfare of the German people and Marxist-Leninists seek to abolish “German” as a meaningful distinction, along with all other cultures.
The antipathy between Nazis and communists was a sectarian struggle within socialism. Same methods, but different sacred groups.
Since the defeat of National Socialism by International Socialism in WW2, all modern socialism is pretty much of the international variety.
