Newsweek: The Pentagon's Latest UFO File Dump

From Newsweek: "UFO Files: 5 Key Revelations as Pentagon Drops Third Batch of Records." The article notes that "[t]he latest release contains 53 documents and 10 digital renderings from several agencies, including the CIA, FBI, NASA and the Pentagon, along with six videos and three NASA audio recordings," including "documents and sketches from nearly two decades ago, such as a July 2008 report on a UFO sighting at Harare International Airport in Zimbabwe, as well as more recent cases, such as the orb sightings in the Northeast." There is also a  January 31, 1949, letter to J. Edger Hoover from Reverend Charles Barnes reporting a strange sighting over the Cascade Mountains:

 "Last May, one afternoon I saw four beams in the sky passing from the northwest to the southeast and converging in the Cascade mountains. In those four narrow beams small clouds were forming. And where the beams met apparently against the mountains a great explosion effect was to be seen. I would say that they were visible for at least 10 minutes or longer." He later added that the "explosion effect seemed to rise to a height of about ten thousand feet."   

    Most of the accounts are of bright balls or blobs, which again seem to suggest some type of plasmoid or sprite. The 2008 UAP sighting at the Harare International Airport in Zimbabwe seems a bit more interesting:

    The report states that a UAP was "hovering" at high altitude over the airport and observed, "possibly by both radar and optical means." It notes that at one point during observations, "'beams' were observed emanating from the object."

    The object was described as "disc-like" with a hollow center, accompanied by a "series of rotating lights on the underside of the airframe."  

For My LDS Readers: Persecution of the Saints

It seems that the MIGA (Make Israel Great Again) movement has decided that the Church and its members are not Christian. Apparently it is not enough to believe that Christ is our Savior and the Son of God, that He died on the cross and was resurrected three days later. It is not enough, as the First Article of Faith states, that "We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost."

    But this article is not intended to be a theological debate, but a warning. We should be cognizant of the fact that it has been foretold that the followers of Christ, including the Church and its members, will suffer severe persecution in the Last Days. Christ, Himself, taught that "ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake." (Matt. 24:9). The Apostle Paul similarly warned that "all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution." (2 Timothy 3:12). Or in the modern vernacular, "the flak is always heaviest over the target." So is this just the normal ebb and flow we see of animosity toward the Church sometimes poking its head above the surface? Or something more? I don't know. But the Gospel Lessons YouTube channel has a video about the persecution that shall come upon the followers of Christ in the Last Days. 

VIDEO: "Persecution of the Saints in the Last Days (LDS Last Days)"
Gospel Lessons (14 min.)

This Should Make The Vegans Cry

From Popular Mechanics: "We May Be Surrounded by Trillions of Conscious Beings, Research Suggests—And They Aren’t Human." The article is talking about plants and fungi, of course. An excerpt:

    But what if consciousness isn’t a feature limited solely to humans—and what if we’re actually wildly outnumbered by a planet full of other conscious beings? As it turns out, a handful of studies suggest that might just be the case.

    For starters, plant neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso, PhD, notes that plants respond to anesthesia the same way humans do—they become nonresponsive. Humans tend to think of plants as nonresponsive anyway, because they don’t generally move in human timescales. But when scientists have administered anesthesia to plants that do operate “quickly” by human measures, such as the Venus Flytrap, the plant stops responding when flies land on it. And while you won’t see a plant fleeing danger the way we do, some have been found to be gradually migrating north as the planet warms, just as animals are changing their migratory patterns.

    To test the spatial awareness and intentionality of plants, Mancuso did an experiment, placing a potted bean plant in his lab about a meter from a metal rod. In a time-lapse video, he showed that the bean plant—having reached the top of its support pole—sent out a long, hooked shoot that repeatedly swung out and back, trying to hook the metal pole and eventually catching hold of it. In short: the bean plant “knew” where the pole was. Mancuso also conducted research demonstrating that, when two bean plants reach a support, one recognizes the other plant got there first and begins to look for a different support.

    “What is interesting is the behavior of the loser: it immediately sensed the other plant had reached the pole and started to find an alternative,” he wrote in the study. “This was astonishing and it demonstrates the plants were aware of their physical environment and the behavior of the other plant. In animals we call this consciousness.”

    His colleague, Monica Gagliano, PhD, did a series of experiments with mimosas—a genus often called the “sensitive plant” because its leaves fold up quickly when touched. She placed the mimosa in a basket and dropped it several inches, causing the mimosa to close its leaves. But after she had repeated this many times, the mimosa seemed to “get used to” the experience and stopped responding when the drop came. She tried the experiment again a few weeks later, and the mimosas still didn’t react to the drop, suggesting that plants can remember.

    In 2025, Mancuso worked on a paper led by Tomonori Kawano, PhD. In the article, researchers explored the idea that plants, like people, have Two Minds—or an unconscious mind that makes quick decisions and a conscious one that makes slower decisions, like humans have. In the case of Gagliano’s mimosas, for example, the more unconscious “thinking” would be to close its leaves when it’s jarred. But by remembering the experience and making a different choice, the mimosa demonstrates a more conscious and deliberate level of “thinking.”

For some reason, it reminded me of the following from Jack Handy: 

If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? 

We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.

    Anyway, be sure to share the article with all your vegan relatives (at least the ones you don't care for).  

Mysandry In The Class Room

Joanna Gray, writing at the Daily Skeptic, warns "It’s Not Misogyny But Misandry in the Classroom We Need to Worry About." She begins by pointing out:

    Imagine the uproar if it was the other way round: 65% of teachers in secondary school and 85% of primary school teachers were men. Schools would be labelled: institutionally misogynistic, it would be lamented that girls had insufficient female role models, and the single-sex dominance would be branded a ‘significant safeguarding concern’. And yet there is bovine blindness about the paucity of male teachers in education today. To repeat the actual fact today: only 35% of secondary and 15% of primary school teachers are men; the overwhelming majority of teachers are women.

    When Jess-let’s-ignore-the-rape-gangs-for-as-long-as-possible-Phillips announces that boys will receive anti-misogyny lessons I can’t help but wonder how different things might be if, rather than anti-misogyny lessons, boys were provided with an education system designed and delivered by 50% men, not one designed by women for girls. The misogynistic term Karen seems a perfectly apt response to this sort of misandrist initiative.    

She also notes:

It is not an original point, but it is worth repeating: the problem is not men, but insufficient men in the lives of boys. With 52% of children now born outside of marriage or civil partnership and with 45% of children not living with both biological parents, hundreds of thousands of boys are raised without fathers and, with scarce male teachers at school, limited male role models. Let’s not forget that by the end of primary school around 63% of girls meet the expected standard in reading, writing and maths, compared to 56% of boys; at GCSE, 71% of girls achieved grade 4 (C) or higher across subjects, compared to 64.2% of boys. 

Gray is writing about the situation in the UK, but it can't be too different in the U.S. 

NY Post: Beware Turkey's Ambitions

Writing at the New York Post, Jonathan Schanzer warns: "Beware Turkey’s ambitions in the post-Iran power vacuum." He points out:

    Tehran has for years projected power by proxy across the Middle East, sponsoring terrorist groups like Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, Shiite militias in Iraq, and other malign actors across the region.

    Should the regime collapse, other aspiring regional powers will seek to fill the void.

    And while many countries may think regional leadership is theirs to inherit, there is one powerful player to watch: the Republic of Turkey.

    The country has the second-largest army in NATO.

    It has a growing drone industry and a government-tied military contractor, SADAT, that is training and arming militias across the Muslim world.

    Concurrently, Ankara has been cultivating terrorist proxies in the Middle East for years.

    The Turks are key patrons of Hamas, dating back nearly two decades, and are now trying to ensure their participation in the Gaza peace effort — despite opposition from the Israelis, who are wary of Ankara’s intentions.

    But the Turks are deployed elsewhere, too.

    Ankara is now supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon.

    It’s the primary patron of the new Syrian regime, led by former al-Qaeda leader Ahmad al-Sharaa, making Syria a forward base with key military and intelligence platforms.

    That’s to say nothing of Turkey’s longstanding military deployments in Northern Iraq, Somalia, Qatar and more.

    In short, Ankara has blanketed the region, leaving it well positioned to fill the void left by the Islamic Republic.

And from an eschatological perspective, I would also note that Turkey is one of the leading candidates for the land of Gog and Magog. 

Weekend Reading #60

 Some longer and more involved reading for the weekend:

•  First up, Greg Ellifritz's Weekend Knowledge Dump at his Active Response Training blog. Some of the articles Greg included that I thought might be useful or interesting:
• An article from The Armory Life on when is using your CCW a mistake? Basically telling you that you need to consider that the weapon is the tool of last resort and you should be avoiding or withdrawing from danger when possible.
• Recoil offers some tips for buying a firearm over Gun Broker.
• An article on selecting the best defensive weapon for your handgun, which can vary according to caliber, power, and velocity. I see a lot of tests of ammo that work fine out of a  longer barrel but lack the expansion due to lower velocity when shot from the shorter barrels of the compact and micro sized weapons. 
• An article from Skilled Survival on putting together a get-home bag and what to do if caught up in a riot. 
• Athlon Outdoors gives a basic overview of the primary models of AKs issued by the Soviet Union and, later, Russia. It doesn't address the variants (like the AK-74U) produced by the Soviets/Russians, nor the models produced by other countries. 
• Wideners tests shooting a tire and whether it can disable a car. Mythbusters did an episode on this that I would also recommend that you watch if you can locate it. Basically, shooting through the sidewall leaves too small of hole--but the Mythbusters had a spectacular result when a shot went through the tread and blew a chunk out of the barrel of the wheel.  But even with the tires flat, a car can still drive. 
• Pew Pew Tactical has some advice for concealed carry for big guys (i.e., husky, but not with a particularly big gut). Basically, it shows that even those guys can carry concealed if they have a large enough, loose enough, cover garment that they can wear untucked. 
• Gun Digest offers on what to do after a defensive shooting. The main takeaway is do not have a firearm in your hand when the police show up or you might not survive the encounter.
• An interesting article that Jon Low of Defensive Pistolcraft shared with me: "A Spelunker Thought She Found Trash in a Cave. It Was Actually Evidence of a Lost Civilization"--Popular Mechanics.  Jon knows I'm interested in archaeology. Anyway, an excerpt from the article:

    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. 

•  "The USB drive in your drawer is slowly losing your data right now"--MakeUseOf.com. If you are backing up important documents or data on USB drives, you might want to look at other options for long term storage. 
• "A de-extinction company has hatched live chicks from an artificial eggshell"--Associated Press. From the article:

    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. 

•  "Davy Crockett and the Geopolitics of the Alamo"--Rob Martin. A review of Davy Crockett's career, that there were many Hispanics that supported Texas liberation from Mexico, and the long term geopolitical importance of the Alamo and Texas independence:

    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. 

Northern Ireland's Unrest And Gun Control

Tom Knighton writes about "Ireland [sic], Unrest, and Gun Rights: How Gun Control Played a Role in This Week's Events." Knighton's basic argument is that the mostly peaceful protests we are seeing in Northern Ireland would not have happened if the UK government actually listened to its people. He writes:

In [Northern] Ireland, a lot of people feel unheard. They don't like the direction their country has gone, but the ruling authorities don't actually give a damn about their feelings, and so they witness the same thing we see all over the rest of the continent, where so-called immigrants walk around decide the rules of Irish society don't apply to them, sexually harassing women, grooming children for sexual preditation, assaulting and/or killing innocent people; all while the authorities protect these monsters and the people are powerless to protect themselves. 

He also argues that if the citizens of the benighted UK had an actual right to self-defense, including being able to carry and use firearms, none of the unrest we are seeing would have happened: the Sudanese migrant that sliced up a man's face in Belfast and attempted to decapitate him may well have been shot and killed; ditto for the Sikh that stabbed Henry Nowak to death. Knighton explains:

    Ireland [sic], like most other European nations, has strict gun control laws that basically make it impossible for anyone to have a gun they could use for self-defense purposes. They trusted the government to protect them from the evil of the world, but instead, the government brought the evil in and then acts as a shield [for that evil]. ...

    Still, the gun control thing exists, and those who don't want to assimilate to their new homes are still shielded, while the people who trusted their governing authorities to protect them fail.

    It's not surprising that a particularly brutal attack on a Belfast street riled people up. The fact that it was another example of how there is no protection for the Irish was made abundantly clear, and the truth is that the Irish [sic] government has little to fear from its disarmed population. The riots are a response to being ignored by the state.  

Unfortunately, besides confusing Northern Ireland for Ireland, Knighton fits into that part of the political spectrum where he doesn't care whether white people go extinct; that we should still accept migrants even if some are evil, explaining: "No, not everyone who immigrates to a Western nation is evil by any stretch of the imagination. I know far too many who are good, decent people who just wanted to become Americans, and one must believe that it's true throughout the rest of the Western world." One wonders if he would give his child a bag of candy knowing that some of the candy is poisoned, arguing that it is okay because much of the candy is perfectly good.  

"Red Rabbits" Training For Uprising

The article is "Socialist ‘Red Rabbits’ are training for national uprising against cops" and it relates:

    As its national influence has risen, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has simultaneously grown more extreme. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the group's "Red Rabbits" initiative.

    The Red Rabbits Security Commission, a subgroup within the DSA focused on "community defense" efforts, is, according to its authorizing resolution, preparing for a "national uprising against federal agents and police brutality."

    In practice, that means training cadres in tactics like armed and unarmed self-defense, blocking intersections, and fighting "fascists" with umbrellas.

    A recent panel offered an unprecedented window into what the project looks like. Organizers from Minnesota, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Tucson, Austin, and Portland compared notes.

    As the discussion made clear, the DSA is trying to construct a nationwide security apparatus to support its expanding role in street protests and direct-action organizing. And in so doing, it fears drawing the attention of the Internal Revenue Service — likely with good reason.   

If Anonymous Conservative were to read this, he would probably laugh. You see, in his book The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics, he explains how the differences between conservatives and liberals can be explains by reference to evolutionary psychology: essentially, that liberals are what are termed r-select while conservatives are what are termed K-select. He used the short hand of "rabbits" to describe liberals and "wolves" to describe conservatives. 

    The article explains that "[o]rganizers chose the deliberately innocuous name as a nod to the novel 'Watership Down,' in which anthropomorphized rabbits are outnumbered and beset by enemies." But I have to wonder if, subconsciously, the name was selected because they recognize that they are like rabbits: promiscuous, generally pacifistic and anti-competitive, not invested in raising their children, lacking in-group loyalty, and existing only to consume public resources. 

    This is not to downplay the danger. This group is training and acting as the tip of the spear when it comes to disruption and street protests. Some of their training involves firearms and hand-to-hand combat. Even rabbits can bite.  

Some More Indian Diversity

From the New York Post: "Brutish $100M Newport Beach bank fraudster used armed thugs to seize hotels in ruthless campaign of terror, courts docs reveal." From the article:

Indian-born businessman Mahender Makhijani, 44, was pulled out of his tony Newport Beach mansion Wednesday morning by gun-toting federal agents who took him into custody for allegedly defrauding a local bank out of nearly $100 million in a complex real-estate scheme.  

But bad as that was, it was not all:

    Last month an arbitrator found the Makhijani — who’s alleged to have a taste for sex and drug parties —liable for a more than $1.3 billion in damages over his real estate dealings with Laguna Beach businessman Mohammad Honarkar.

    Court documents in both cases allege that he ruthlessly used threats, intimidation and even violence to gain an upper hand on business rivals, including Honarkar.   

In an article at the Unz Review entitled "Predation Wearing the Mask of Civilization," Jayant Bhandari explains how corruption is endemic to Indian culture. He writes, for instance, that:

    Even in the most civilized nations, courts decide only the tiniest sliver of human reality. The vast majority of civilization—trust, restraint, honesty, the silent agreements that make daily life possible—exists below the threshold of formal law. Verbal promises and everyday decency were never meant for judges. They rest on an internalized moral order.

    In India, that moral order does not exist.

He goes on to describe the pervasive corruption and necessity of paying bribes just to get officials to do their jobs. You would think that Indians would clamor for reform, but that is not the case:

Indians do not want the system abolished; they want access to it. Their ambition is to reach a position from which they can extract, or to marry their daughters into households enriched by extraction. How the money is obtained is irrelevant. Corrupt wealth commands respect—often more respect than the same wealth earned honestly. Money and power are the only yardsticks. You can be assured that love, a civilizational value, is conspicuous by its absence. 

Bhandari gives some personal experiences from growing up in India and the addresses the underlying problem: the complete lack of a moral foundation.

    When you talk about morality or truthfulness with Indians, they make fun of you and ask, “Are you becoming a saint?” Or they suggest that religion belongs in the temple, not in everyday life. You are judged as naïve, unaccustomed to real life. In their minds, goodness and honesty are not the duties of ordinary people; they belong to saints, while ordinary life is expected to be crooked. They do not understand sainthood as moral elevation; they understand it as withdrawal from real life. The phrase survives as a verbal reflex in a society where morality itself has no ordinary authority.

    In such a society, everyday conversation does not rise toward moral reflection. It remains trapped in gossip, spectacle, magical politics, and the misfortunes of others.

    In such a culture, competence is not the organizing ideal; power is. Education is pursued not for formation but for certificates that open the door to office, money, and status. Parents help children cheat because the certificate, not the discipline it is supposed to represent, is what matters. Once such men enter institutions, they do not acquire respect for the office or its responsibilities. The seat becomes a resource to exploit. Lacking inner authority, they compensate through cold arrogance, petty tyranny, and sadism; the higher they climb, the more vicious their insecurity becomes.

    The same lesson begins in school. Authority is converted early into leverage: private tuition, gifts, favoritism, and exam manipulation. The student learns the real curriculum long before adulthood: authority is not to be respected, but navigated; rules are not to be internalized, but managed; power exists to extract. 

The article offers a lot of insights to Indian society and mindset, so be sure to read the whole thing.

Usual Suspect: 55 Teens Charged In Hersheypark Brawl

From the New York Post: "55 kids, teens charged in Hersheypark opening day brawl — as families shielded children, hid under tables." Although the fight took place on April 3, the charges apparently are only now being brought. Most of the "teens" involved were under 18, but the article notes: "Omar Ibraham, 19, Jerome Ross, III, 18, and Quaneek Williams, 18, all from Harrisburg, Pa., were publicly identified as the only three adults facing charges in the massive brawl, police said."