How Many .50 BMG To Penetrate A Concrete Highway Barrier?

The concrete barrier shrugged off the pistol velocity rounds (i.e., handguns and a subsonic .300 BLK), while rifle rounds made divots. But using what was described as .50 BMG silver tip bullets (presumably the armor-piercing incendiary rounds) it only took 3 rounds placed fairly close together to pierce through the barrier. Because these are steel reinforced, the concrete did not completely break apart as we see with tests against concrete blocks,albeit there was also significant cracking and loss of material on the front face. 

 

 VIDEO: "Can a Concrete Highway Barrier Stop a 50 Cal Sniper Rifle?"
Yee Yee Life (18 min.)

Matt Bracken On A Second Civil War

•  "The CW2 Cube: Mapping the Meta-Terrain of Civil War Two"--Matthew's Substack. This is a model that Bracken had developed to get an idea of the overall characteristics of opposing groups in any coming civil war. He explains:

 Before we move on to the cube, let’s begin with the CW2 Square. The cube is best tackled in another step. Draw the square and label one axis Poorer to Richer. Label the other axis Darker to Lighter. Darker, for brevity, includes African-Americans, Hispanics and so on. Lighter refers to those of European ancestry. The two opposed meta-groups are the poorer and darker versus the richer and lighter, or whiter if you wish to be blunt. The richer/whiter have the power of their wealth, but counterbalancing that advantage is the fact that the poorer/darker have succeeded in wresting control of much of government power. This is so, even if most of their elected leaders are anything but poor or dark.

Thus, "[f]illing one corner of the CW2 Square will be the poorer and darker, who primarily are liberal and progressive Democrats who believe in a malleable 'living Constitution.' And in the other corner will be the richer and whiter, who mainly are conservative or libertarian Republicans who believe in the original intent of the written Constitution." Of course there will be exceptions to these general classifications, but Bracken warns against being pedantic and focusing on the exceptions: we are looking for the general groupings.

Now, let’s add the third dimension and shoot another axis out from the square to form the CW2 Cube. Label the third axis Urban versus Rural, or City versus Country if you prefer. This axis gives a geographical dimension to the meta-terrain, but there will be no convenient dividing line between the opposed sides as there was during the first civil war. It has frequently been observed that today’s red-blue political map is better understood at the county than at the state level. Even blue states like Illinois, California and New York are rural-red outside of their blue urban cores. Obviously, these urban cores are heavily populated but geographically small, with all that means to the electoral process today and to a possible civil war later.

Reviewing the model, then, "[m]ost of us live in the mushy, mongrel middle, far from the tips of the two opposite corners. But the centers of gravity of Civil War Two shall be as I have described: the relatively richer, whiter and more rural against the poorer, darker and more urban."

    Applying Turchin's theories, more correctly we would see two groups of elites, no matter their skin color, drawing their support--their troops, if you will--from the two opposite corners.  

    In any event, Bracken includes diagrams and more discussion about using the conceptual framework the CW2 Cube offers, so be sure to check out the full article. 

    However, Bracken makes a point that we should pay attention to:  

The second aggravating factor is the unstable triangle of the three-sided civil war. The Bosnian Serbs, Croats and Muslims pro-vide a classic example. Each side of the unstable triangle will backstab yesterday’s ally at the moment they perceive themselves to be at a local disadvantage, or when they see an opportunity to wipe out an historic enemy with a new Final Solution. The unstable ethnic triangle in the United States will in many places be composed of black, white and Hispanic sides. By comparison, the old black and white social dichotomy was inherently stable, even when it might have been rife with injustice. 

But this can also depend on where you live. Other groups may make up the third (or fourth or fifth) sides in such an ethnic conflict.

• "Matt Bracken on the Coming 'Dirty Civil War'"--Prepping 2.0. This is a podcast from February 2020. I have not yet had an opportunity to listen to it, but came across it when looking for the CW2 Cube article, and it seemed that it would be interesting.   

Venezula Earthquake

As you probably already know, Venezula was struck by two devastating earthquakes yesterday: "A magnitude-7.2 quake struck roughly 100 miles west of Caracas, followed just 39 seconds later by an even bigger 7.5-magnitude temblor, according to the US Geological Survey." The USGS has a model to give rough ranges of the number of fatalities, and that model gives the highest percentage to the death toll being between 10,000 and 100,000. Grimly, though, the model gives higher odds to the fatalities exceeding 100,000 than to their being below 10,000. Photographs and video I have seen show many heavily damaged multi-story structures as well as some buildings that completely collapsed. 

    The video below has some of the more dramatic video and an overview of how events rolled out. Stefan Burns, who I believe is geophysicist, had a 1.5 hour live stream last night immediately after news of the quake came out that you might find interesting as well. 

    President Trump has already promised assistance and I'm sure that other countries will also be offering help. And I'm sure that many churches and faith-based NGOs will also be providing assistance. And even if we cannot provide physical assistance, we can pray for the survivors and the souls of those that lost their lives.  

VIDEO: "HORROR in Venezuela ! Double M7.5 Earthquake causes STATE OF EMERGENCY - Caracas in RUINS" - On the Pulse with Silki (18 min.)

Was Israel Plotting To Assassinate Pakistan Peace Delegation?

Anonymous Conservative's daily news brief included a post from X on this topic, but I found an article which has a bit more detail: "'Wipe You Off The Map': Pakistan Thwarted Israel's Plot To Kill Asim Munir In Switzerland, Analyst Claims"--NDTV. The claim came from Pepe Escobar in an interview with Mario Nawfal, a Lebanese-Australian podcaster. 

    Pepe, while taking about the friction between Israel and Pakistan and the former claiming to wipe Pakistan off the map, claimed it was the other way around.

    "No, it was the opposite Mario. Basically the short story is Pakistani military intel intercepted ultra-credible information that the Mossad was preparing, under orders by Netanyahu, an assasination [sic] attempt against Asim Munir and maybe the rest of the Pakistani delegation going to Switzerland. So the Pakistanis sent a direct message via their usual intermediaries—I would bet it would be Oman in this case—directly to Israelis saying that 'if you touch our delegation, we're going to wipe you off the map', period. I am quoting, this is what our source informed," Pepe said.   

And on a related note: "Israel furious with Trump for being left out of the US-Iran peace talks: ‘It’s a huge mess’"--New York Post. 

VIDEO: Warning Signs Of Civil War

A couple points raised in the video. First, civil wars are not solely the result of extreme inequality, poverty, or ethnic diversity. And they are less likely to arise in either a functioning free society or in a functioning dictatorship, but--and this is the second point--in the ground in-between: "Researchers call this condition anocracy, a state where the old rules are losing legitimacy, but no new rules have fully replaced them. And again and again, it appeared before societies descended into violence." That is: "A place where there are elections but the rules no longer feel fair. Where there is a government, but fewer and fewer people believe it is legitimate." Thus: 

The hatred [between groups] is rarely the trigger. The trigger is usually a breakdown in the systems that allow people with differences to live together peacefully. Once those systems weaken, old divisions can suddenly become dangerous.  

He later expands on this:

And in a place like that, disagreement stops being normal politics and becomes a question of survival. If you no longer believe the system will deliver a fair result, then losing an election isn't a setback. It's a threat. Every contest becomes existential. But this almost never arrives as a dramatic collapse. It arrives as the slow erosion of one quiet, invisible thing: the belief that the system, whatever its flaws, is basically legitimate. 

In other words, once people in a country cease to believe that disagreements can be settled peacefully, the next step is to settle differences violently. 

    But in reviewing the Wikipedia article, it notes that it is not necessarily being an anocracy that creates the political instability and violence, but the transition from democracy or dictatorship to an anocracy where the danger arises; particularly the transition from democracies to anocracies and the magnitude of the change. In other words, the water in which the frog sits being slowly brought to a boil is less likely to result in civil war than where the water is quickly brought to a boil. 

VIDEO: "Scientists Found A Warning Sign Before Civil Wars"
Michael Button | Patterns of History (15 min.)

This Is What The Wealth Pump Looks Like In Action

 

The wealth pump is that difference between real median earnings and real GDP per capita. You will see that the real wages tracked the growth of real GDP--meaning that workers and employees shared in that increased GDP--until about 1970. Part of the reason that employers were able to break earnings loose from GDP was because of what is shown in the chart below:

 You will notice that the inflection point in this graph was also about 1970. This is why a man could support his family on a single income in the 1950s and '60s, but two income households struggle today. 

VIDEO: 3 Basic Elbow Shields

Some basic methods of protecting your face and head. 

 VIDEO: "3 Basic Elbow Shields"
Kevin Secours (2 min.)

Another Major Veterinary Breakthrough Allowing Mice To Regrow Limbs

While lab mice are cute, I would like to see more advances for humans. The article: "Scientists Say They’ve Invented a Serum That Activates a Dormant Ability to Regrow Lost Limbs in Mammals"--Futurism. An excerpt:

    Basically, the researchers used a two-step process that mimics the way regenerative animals such as salamanders regrow lost tissue after amputation. They pull it off via a process known as epimorphic regeneration, in which lost limbs are first covered by a layer of skin cells. Local cells then rearrange themselves into a blastema, a temporary structure that forms the base-layer for the rest of the limb.

    By controlling this limb-loss process with a specially-engineered serum that sends signals to cells, researchers found they can encourage the growth of a blastema in mammals: lab mice, in this case.

    “This is really a two-step process,” Ken Muneoka, one of the authors of the study, said in a press release. “You first shift the cells away from scarring, and then you provide the signals that tell them what to build.”

    Unlike typical regenerative approaches which use external stem cells, this newly-uncovered process uses the cells that are locally available. As Muneoka put it: “they’re already there — you just need to learn how to get them to behave the way you want.” 

Leftists Being Leftist

"Cartoon Art Museum Curator Andrew Farago Arrested for Secretly Recording Party Guests, Including Children, in Bathroom"--Fandom Pulse.  This guy acted as a gatekeeper, preventing conservative Christians from achieving success in comics (bold added):

    He spent a lot of time on social media, especially Twitter pre-Elon Musk takeover, harassing artists and professionals such as Cyberfrog creator Ethan Van Sciver who put up with his relentless attacks for years. Van Sciver reacted to the news, “It doesn’t surprise me that someone who mercilessly worked to ruin my life and career, and the careers of so many others who loved to make comic books, but were political conservatives or followers of our Savior Jesus Christ, trespassed on the sacred privacy of the friends and guests he invited into his home. Andrew Farago represented so many pillars of the mainstream comic book industry, like The Comics Journal, San Diego Comic Con, DC Comics, Hachette Group Distribution, and the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco. He even wrote a book about Snoopy. His behavior, which involved hiding his cell phone under a towel in his guest bathroom in order to film the genitals of his party guests, is emblematic of the sickness that lurks in mainstream comics, where evil is welcomed and feted, and traditional American values are hunted and despised. I hope he finds Jesus Christ through diligent prayer and bible study should he be sent to prison, where he belongs.”

    He used his institutional position and platform to position himself as a guardian of progressive values within the comics community. He curated museum programming and public appearances through that lens. He spoke with the authority of someone who ran a respected cultural institution and was regarded as a credible voice on what comics should and should not be.    

In other words, he is one of those responsible for the decline in the comic book industry.  

The Left Supports Free Speech And Other Lies Your Teacher Told You

• "Startling study finds public libraries, publishers leaving Christianity out of US’ history"--New York Post.
• "Left-leaning Wikipedia blocked founder from editing site — after he campaigned to make it more balanced"--New York Post.