Gun & Prepping News #82

Some links that may be of interest:

• "Silencer Saturday #433: Scout Rifle Silencers"--The Firearm Blog. The primary attribute of the Scout Rifle is that it is to be light and handy--i.e., light weight and a barrel length of 19" or less. Thus, this article looks at silencers that are light weight and compact. 
• "The Long Game: Gear That Actually Held Up"--Guns Magazine. The author mentions:

     The items below didn’t just review well — they stuck. They’re the things I kept using long after the article ran, the stuff that didn’t end up in the closet only to emerge a year or two later: “Oh heck, I forgot I had that!” This gear proved itself over time instead of just making a good first impression.

    Not new or trendy stuff, just durable, reliable and worth giving a second look.  

The products included are: Buck 791 Range Elite Knife,  5.11 Founder’s Jacket, Vortex Razor UHD 10x32 Binoculars, Viktos Range Trainer XD Shoe, 5.11 Aerial Short Sleeve Shirt, Fisher Space Pen, and Clinger Holster Cushion. 

• "HK VP9CC Review: Micro-Compact German Heat"--Guns America.  It looks like a great pistol, but at $1,400 it is out of my price range. Short take:

• Pros: Pure HK feel in a micro-compact package, 800 trouble-free rounds, excellent barrel accuracy, intuitive paddle magazine release, optic-ready slide cut that sits up to 40% lower, clear Vortex Defender CCW optic, ambidextrous controls, safe disassembly design, and 10-round and 12-round magazine options.
• Cons: Small trigger guard, short trigger shoe, potential trigger guard hot spot during longer range sessions, smooth grip side panels, and a base MSRP of $1,049 that will not appeal to everyone.

• "Fudd Friday: Why You Want An SKS For Hunting (And Why You Don't)"--The Firearm Blog. The author goes over the plusses and minuses including its reliable but not particularly accurate; and doesn't use a particularly powerful cartridge. Although, on that point:

The 7.62x39mm round the SKS fires has often been roughly equated to the hitting power of the .30-30. On paper, they’re relatively close out to the 150-yard limit where they both start to lose some steam; the 7.62x39mm actually fares better at longer ranges, thanks to its pointed bullets. We won’t get into the decades-old, tired arguments over bullet construction and everything else that clutters this conversation; we’ll just point out that on paper, the SKS looks like it will work, and that has been proven countless times in the real world, in North America, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Australia. Big deer, little deer, big bears, little bears, big hogs, little hogs and a lot of other wild game has fallen to the SKS. And the gun is a lot easier to shoot than other full-power hunting rifles, thanks to low recoil. 

• "Fudd Friday: Marlin Model 60 - Classic Classy Rimfire"--The Firearm Blog. An excerpt:

    The Model 60 was developed by Marlin’s engineer Ewald Nichol. He had previously developed a rimfire rifle that was an exterior lookalike to the M1 Carbine; this was called the Model 99, and was released in 1959. The Model 60 came along in 1960, with a full-length tube magazine under the 22-inch barrel that held 18 rounds of .22 LR (barrel length and magazine capacity came in different numbers later on). The Model 60 was an adaptation of the Model 99 platform, and while the Model 99 ended production in the 1960s, the Model 60 or other variations of the platform were built until around 2020, with 11 million rifles sold.

     That’s a lot of guns, with production far exceeding centerfire hunting rifles like Marlin’s own 336 lever-action, or the Winchester Model 94. The Model 60 was not going to be immortalized on the cover of a deer-hunting book, but it—and rifles just like it—were the start of many kids’ hunting careers.

    Marlin wasn’t coy about it; the Model 60 was a hunting rifle, with a squirrel factory-carved right into the grip of many of the rifles sold. While millions of Model 60s probably shot an exponentially larger number of rounds at cans and targets in plinking mode, they were intended as a hunting rifle, and they did it well. You could snipe small game with this gun right off the shelf, with Marlin’s microgroove rifling providing excellent accuracy with .22LR ammo.

• It should have been a defensive gun use: "Woman, 50, 'dragged to her death' by neighbor's two bloodthirsty pit bulls as husband fought to save her"--Daily Mail.  Always carry. And it wasn't her husband, but a romantic partner. 
• "Frankford Arsenal’s Turret Press: Cast-Iron Reliability"--The Truth About Guns. 

Eight is the magic number for this turret press. I had graduated from the Lee’s four-holer to the RCBS six-station, and now had eight die stations. That allows some customization… You can add a “powder cop” and separate taper crimp dies if desired, not to mention adding a case-driven powder measure for pistol or practice rifle loads. The tool head is hand-advanced and has positive ball detents at each station, so it locks into place easily and doesn’t wobble. We got an extra tool head with the press, so another caliber can be set up and ready to go.

• Given the tick issues this year, this article may prove useful: "Permethrin: The “Chemical Weapon”
  Every Shooter Should Consider"--Guns Magazine. An excerpt:

    Most shooters obsess over optics, ballistic computers and gear selection while largely ignoring one of the simplest upgrades available for summer shooting comfort: treating clothing and equipment with permethrin.

    If the name sounds vaguely familiar, there’s a reason. Permethrin has been around for years and has long been used by military personnel, backpackers, hunters and serious outdoors enthusiasts. Yet many casual shooters either haven’t heard of it or misunderstand what it actually does.

    Unlike DEET or picaridin, which are applied to exposed skin, permethrin is designed exclusively for clothing and gear. Once applied and dried, the treatment bonds to fabric and helps repel or kill ticks, mosquitoes and other insects on contact.

    In practical terms, it means your pants, socks, boots and shooting mat become far less hospitable to things with too many legs. This matters more than you might realize. 

• "Tecsun PL-330 Review: Compact Shortwave Radio With SSB"--Modern Survival Blog. This is a receiver, Short take:

    ... This compact shortwave radio stands out because it gives you real enthusiast features, including SSB, synchronous detection, ETM+, and broad band coverage, in a very portable package. For preppers, travelers, and everyday shortwave listeners, the PL-330 hits a strong balance of size, capability, and price.

    What makes the Tecsun PL-330 appealing is not that it is the most advanced radio on the market. It is that it offers many of the features people actually want for real-world listening without moving into a much more expensive class. It is small enough for a travel bag or emergency kit, but capable enough for casual DXing, ham monitoring, and international broadcasts.

    That said, the PL-330 is not perfect. Speaker size is limited, the battery type is BL-5C rather than AA or 18650, and charging-port details can vary by version. But if you want a feature-rich portable shortwave radio with SSB and synchronous detection at a reasonable price, the PL-330 is one of the best-value choices available today.

• "The 5 Best Water Filters for Survival: Bug Out, Bug In, and Grid Down Scenarios"--Survival Life.  Short take:

At a Glance: Top Survival Water Filters for 2026

•     Best water filter for Bugging In (Home Use): Waterdrop Gravity Water Filter System
•     Best water filter for Bugging Out (Fast & Light): Sawyer Squeeze
•     Best water filter for Urban Disasters (Chemicals/Viruses): Survivor Filter Pro
•     Best water filter for Hiking & Camping: Katadyn Hiker Pro
•     Best water filter Budget Alternative: LifeStraw Personal Water Filter

• "My 10-Step Guide to Preparing for an EMP"--Modern Survival Online.  An excerpt:

     One of the very best and, somewhat humorously, most commonly overlooked defenses against the ravaging effects of an EMP is simply going analog.

    Basically, any gadget, function, tool, or anything else that can rely on muscle power or something else in order to operate is worth considering, especially if it’s something you need or use all the time.

    In the case of power tools, you could instead go with manually operated equivalents. You might replace a car with a bicycle, or even a horse. Trucks can be replaced with draft animals pulling wagons, etc.

    Get creative, and you might be surprised to learn how little electricity you actually need with the right approach.

• It is always interesting to see how the main stream media treats preppers: "I'm a doomsday prepper. These are the cheap and easy steps you should take to prepare for hantavirus or WORSE"--Daily Mail. Not just a "doomsday prepper" but apparently a well off one:

    The 31-year-old, who lives in Utah, has enough food stored in her house to sustain her family-of-five for at least five years.

    She also has a solar generator, seedling garden, body armor, water filtration system and freezers full of meat.  

And her recommendations?

    Krystal explained that she is already taking extra precaution by stocking up on more gloves, protective masks and medication amidst the surge in hantavirus cases, and she is even avoiding airports. 

But what drugs? The article doesn't say. Also, as the article notes, "There have now been 11 cases (eight confirmed, one inconclusive and two probable cases) and three deaths." So not exactly an epidemic. 

Israel Upset It Has Been Sidelined In Iran Negotiations

If you have been following the news, you will probably have heard that, per the White House, we are close to an agreement with Iran where Iran would turn over its processed Uranium. I'm not hopeful given that Islam has historically used a strategy of pretending to seek peace when it is facing defeat in order to give it time to build strength or otherwise obtain an advantage (aka, the Hudaybiyya strategy). So, over the short term, the Iranians may be negotiating in order to buy time, such as time to move the Uranium to a more secure location, or move weapons around, or some other object. Long term, they might agree to U.S. terms with no real intent on abandoning their nuclear program (or turn to alternative WMD research). 

    Nevertheless, Trump's attempts to negotiate a deal with Iran does not match with Israel's desire to utterly devastate Iran. Thus, I've seen reports of Israeli officials upset that they have largely been excluded from negotiations with Iran (see, e.g., "US has almost completely excluded Israel from Iran negotiations, Israeli defense officials tell NYT" from the Times of Israel). That article relates:

    The United States has almost completely excluded Israel from the negotiations with Iran, two Israeli defense officials tell The New York Times.
    
    Israel was not involved at all in the discussions ahead of the ceasefire and learned of developments in the talks between the US and Tehran from regional diplomatic contacts, as well as through the use of surveillance, the report says.

Someday soon we will need to do something about Israeli spies and hacking of U.S. government computer networks. The article adds:

    The report notes that in the run-up to the start of the war against Iran earlier this year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in close coordination with Trump and was leading a discussion in the Situation Room in Washington predicting the fall of the regime in Tehran.

    “The banishment from the cockpit to economy class has potentially significant consequences for Israel,” the newspaper says.

Consequently, Israel has unleashed its loyal Congress critters. The Daily Mail reports, "Trump lashes out at Republican rebels as Cruz and Graham warn his Iran deal could be a 'disastrous mistake'." It begins:

    President Donald Trump angrily lashed out at Republican critics on Sunday after allies including Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham publicly warned his emerging Iran deal could become a 'disastrous mistake' that hands Tehran a massive strategic victory.

    The extraordinary public feud exposed deep cracks inside the GOP as some of the party's most hawkish national security voices openly questioned whether Trump was on the verge of repeating the very same Obama-era nuclear agreement he once denounced as catastrophic.   

Their complaint is that Trump is considering an agreement that would "reopen the Strait of Hormuz, establish a 60-day ceasefire and continue negotiations over Tehran's nuclear program while details are finalized."

    Senators including Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham openly sounded the alarm over the pending agreement.

    Cruz delivered one of the sharpest attacks over the weekend, saying he was 'deeply concerned' by what he was hearing from inside the administration.

    'If the result of all that is to be an Iranian regime - still run by Islamists who chant 'death to America' - now receiving billions of dollars, being able to enrich uranium & develop nuclear weapons, and having effective control over the Strait of Hormuz, then that outcome would be a disastrous mistake,' Cruz wrote on X.

    'The details are still coming out - and I pray the early reports are wrong - but the fact that Biden's Rob Malley is praising the deal is not encouraging,' he added, referring to the former Biden Iran envoy who helped negotiate the 2015 Obama nuclear deal.

    Cruz's warning then triggered a flood of criticism from other Republican national security hawks. 

It is notable that Cruz has received more money from AIPAC than most any other politician, while Graham ranks very high as well. It is telling that Republican senators will publicly split from the President over this issue just because it does not match the outcome that Israel wanted, even though pursuing a path that would lower fuel prices would benefit Americans.

Very Short Review: "The Mandalorian and Grogu"

Since my kids and I liked "The Mandolarian" series on Disney+ (well, the first two seasons anyway) we decided to go see The Mandalorian and Grogu movie. If you want something with Jedi and flashing lightsabers, or film with a plot and acting with a certain gravitas, this is not the film for you. But if you just want a space opera action flick that seems a cross between Star Wars and John Wick, this is the movie for you. If you have a young son, he will probably enjoy the film as well. 

China Uncensored: Why You Should Care About China's Power And Influence

This video from China Uncensored is in response to all the people that say they don't care or are unconcerned about China's power and influence because, in their minds, it doesn't impact their lives. They are wrong.  

 VIDEO: "I don't care anymore..."
China Uncensored (10 min.)

China's Mass Murder Season Continues Unabated

China seems to be at peak mass killings--more of the revenge on society attacks--mostly due to vehicular attacks but also stabbings. And to top it off, there has been massive flooding in some areas. 

 

 VIDEO: "China's Rampaging Murders Just Peaked! Out of Control"
serpentza (25 min.) 

RPG Saturday: Mongoose Publishing's Traveller

 

Last week, I discussed the classic Traveller from the 1970s and early 1980s. But as I mentioned, there have been numerous updates to Traveller over the intervening years, the most recent of which is the version shown above from Mongoose Publishing: the Mongoose 2nd Edition, 2022 update.

    The basic game mechanics remain the same: roll 2d6 and add/subtract modifiers to achieve or exceed a target number, which is generally 8. And the Core Rulebook covers the same subjects as the three booklets of the classic game's box set: character creation and skills, combat, basic equipment and vehicles, spacecraft and starships (with rules covering both creating them and operating them), psionics, intersteller trade, and world creation. Pretty much everything you need for a basic game and setting is in the core rulebook. But the difference is that this version of the game is more developed and updated over the classic rules, with more options reflecting modern ideas of science fiction adventure. The layout is better set out and, unlike the classic set, there is a significant amount of good quality interior art. 

    Character creation is similar to the classic Traveller, using a life path with the career options available in the classic game, but with several additional careers taken from the Citizens of the Imperium supplement. In the classic game, you were limited to careers in the Navy, Marines, Army, Scouts, Merchants, and "Other". This version also includes careers as an "agent" (spy or law enforcement), a drifter or barbarian, a noble, a rogue (thief, gangster or pirate), a scholar or scientist. And even the basic careers have more variety. And, unlike the classic rules, you can't die in character creation. 

    The classic rule set did not include options for aliens (at least in the basic rules). The Core Rulebook here includes options for an alien character, including the two main alien spacefaring species of the Traveller setting, the Aslan and Vargr. 

    This version has more rules on environmental dangers beyond just a poison atmosphere, including more detailed rules on the effect of different gravities and radiation. It also has examples of alien animals, and random encounter tables.

   The examples of equipment and weapons is much more expansive than the classic rules and includes whole categories of equipment not addressed in the classic rules, including items that would be familiar to a cyberpunk setting: body augmentation, more detailed rules on computers, drugs for enhancing combat, and personal sensors. There are more weapon options incorporating the weapons that players would now consider a must in a science fiction setting including handheld gauss weapons, lasers, stunner, and plasma rifles. And there are rules for vehicle combat and special vehicles, and a far greater selection of example vehicles. (And if you get the Central Supple Catalogue supplement, it has a far greater number of equipment examples plus rules on equipment availability).

    The spacecraft rules or greatly expanded and includes examples of common spacecraft and starships a character might use or even own, including deck plans. Space combat rules are also greatly expanded. 

    The rules on trade and carrying passengers, for those acting as merchants (or smugglers) is more detailed and has more options. The same for world creation. 

     The only downside is that there is still no rules for robots, nor are robots or drones included in the basic equipment (although they include a robot repair kit). For that, you will have to get the Robot Handbook which details robots ranging from tiny nanobots up to "robot brains" used to control starships. It also covers creating robots, androids, cyborgs, cloning and using robots as characters. 

    In short, unless for purposes of nostalgia or economy, there is no reason to play classic Traveller over the Mongoose Traveller. 

     If you want a more detailed look at Mongoose Traveller, Seth Skorkowky did a 10 part review and tutorial going over the basic rules. Here is the link to the playlist. Below is the first video which is an introduction and overview of the game. 

 VIDEO: "Traveller: Part 1 - Introduction"
Seth Skorkowsky (13 min.)

Weekend Reading #57

 Some longer and more involved reading for the weekend:

• First up this week is the latest newsletter from Defensive Pistolcraft by Jon Low.  A few things that stuck out:
• Jon links to a video called "Principles for the Armed Lifestyle" from the Citizen-Defender YouTube channel and, in particular, a section of the video about have rules where you have predetermined reactions to certain actions or circumstances. But that YouTuber broke one of his own rules in a class when a retention screw dropped out of his holster. That rule was to never carry a weapon in a compromised holster; but rather than fix the issue, he just let it slide. On the way home from class he made a stop. After leaving the vehicle, his pistol fell out of his holster and went skittering across the ground. 

 Jon comments:

[Making pre-decisions] is critically important.  If you've already made the decision that when X happens we immediately execute Y, you can move much faster than the enemy.  It's always the decision that takes time, not the action.  You've practiced the action a thousand times, so your execution is fast.  You haven't practiced  the decision, because ever situation is different and often surprising.  So, it's a hard thing to "practice".

I guess the other lesson is to not procrastinate.

• Speaking of pre-decisions, Jon includes this advice:

 Train yourself to immediately gouge the eyes of the attacker, if someone attacks you with our without a weapon.  No thought, no decision, just immediate action.  It doesn't matter that you succeed or not, this will give you time to get to your gun.  

On that topic, when you go into to claw the eyes with the fingers, come up from below rather than a straight shot, because your hand/fingers will be out of view until the last instant making it harder for the target of your attack to blink or otherwise protect their eyes. 

• Jon quotes this from an article by Karen Hunter: "Too many women believe self-defense is only for people who are athletic, aggressive, young, or physically powerful.  That mindset alone stops countless women from ever building skills that could save their lives.  In reality, you do not have to be athletic or in peak physical condition to be dangerous."  It reminds me of a sales slogan for Colt revolvers in the 1800s: "God created men, Col. Colt made them equal."
• For those of you using a weapon light on your handgun, Jon quotes the following from a trainer: "I was doing exercises with my weapon mounted light (WML) in the dark.  I was using my support side thumb to actuate the light switch on my WML.  The light would not turn on.  The lever seemed to be jammed.  It would not move.  The problem was that I was pressing on the housing of my WML, not on the switch.  Something to practice.  Need to get this straightened out immediately.  And did so." Jon adds the following comment: "Never use your trigger finger to actuate the WML.  Lots of documented cases of officers attempting this and firing their pistol.  Task Overload Confusion.  If you don't understand or don't believe, take Chuck Haggard's class.  Don't be that guy." I only have one weapon light for a pistol, which an Olight that has bilateral buttons on it that are pushed in from the side. I can use the trigger finger to activate the light if I wanted, but since I'm probably going to be shooting it two-handed with a thumbs forward grip, the thumb of the off-hand gives me more leverage  so that it the one I use.  So, at least with my light, the safer option is also the easier option.
• Jon includes a good explanation of your vision in low light settings, including how various factors can result in your seeing something (e.g. a dark blog you mistake for an intruder) when there is, in fact, nothing there.  
• A lot more, so read the whole thing. 
•  Greg Ellifritz has published another Active Response Training "Weekend Knowledge Dump". A few links that caught my attention in particular:
• An article on "Hiking with Trekking Poles" from Swift Silent Deadly. Greg attests to his appreciation for trekking poles. I had tried them years ago and returned to using them a couple years ago. The article goes over the advantages and disadvantages to using trekking poles and some of the features that the author suggest (e.g., he likes the clamping adjustments rather than the twist to tighten style; and he prefers the cork handles). The primary disadvantage he lists is that you have both hands full, but that ignores that you can use just a single trekking pole like a walking staff. It leaves one hand free and works great for narrow trails. However, you will want to use both for heavier loads. You might find this article to be useful: "How to Use Trekking Poles and Hiking Staffs" from REI. It not only goes over why you might want trekking poles, but how to select them, different ways they help when hiking (or even just walking), and tips on how to use them. 
• An article on using handheld light with a long gun. The author illustrates his concepts with an AR style rifle. I'm not sure how they would work with other types of actions. You will notice that the author just uses variants of some of the handgun light techniques. I have to say, though, that it looks far more awkward than using a separate light with a handgun. 
• A link to a good article from the Organic Prepper blog on the topic of a hospital go-bag. Probably something you will use more in your life than a "get home bag" or "bug out bag" (unless those bags pull double duty as a "quick overnight camping bag" as well).
• An article for putting together a DOPE card for a shotgun (i.e. for how it patterns at different distances or with different types of ammo). The author also links to a downloadable DOPE card (.docx format).
• An article from ITS Tactical on adjusting your vehicle's mirrors so you don't have blind spots. In many ways, this is probably the most important of the articles in the list since you probably drive every single day and are more likely to be involved in an auto accident than be the victim of a crime.
• A historical piece providing brief bios of 20th Century lawmen gunfighters: Ralph Friedman, Delf "Jelly" Bryce, Bob Stasch, Frank Pape, and Jim Cirillo. 
• And a video entitled "The 4 Tests Predators Run on Targets." As the author notes, predators generally do not start with violence but use methods to test you and close distance: (i) the "help me" script; (ii) the "moral pressure" script; (iii) confusion or distraction; and (iv) being overly friendly or all smiles to bypass your suspicions. Basically, as the author notes, nice does not equal safe. 
• Finally, an article from Guns Magazine on carrying for the mobility impaired (the author uses an electric wheel chair). The author has specific recommendations for a gun belt ("the thick 1.25″- or 1.5″-wide belts offered by CrossBreed and other leather companies") and holster (Bianchi Model 101, Foldaway Belt Slide Gun Holster). Interestingly, Amazon is selling the holster as a two pack in sizes 10 and 16 which will probably cover almost any size of semi-auto handgun you might own. 

•  The Realist, who contributes articles to this blog, directed my attention to this article: "Government Food Confiscation Laws: How Private Food Stores Were Seized in History and What Legal Mechanisms Still Exist"--Preppers Will. The author begins:

    Most people assume that the food stockpiled in their pantry, freezer, or basement belongs to them unconditionally. Under normal circumstances, they are absolutely right. But history tells a far more complicated story, and the legal frameworks governing food supply, distribution, and access during emergencies reveal a side of government power that most people rarely think about until a crisis forces them to.

    Government food confiscation laws, whether formally codified or embedded within broader emergency statutes, have existed in various forms across nearly every major civilization. And in the modern United States, the legal infrastructure for federally directed food resource management remains very much intact, even if rarely invoked.

    Understanding the history of how governments have seized, rationed, and redistributed private food stores is not just an academic exercise. Whether you are a prepper planning for long-term food independence, a policy researcher, or simply a curious citizen, knowing how these laws work and where they come from gives you a clearer picture of the relationship between individual property rights and state power during crisis scenarios.

    From Stalin’s grain brigades to the U.S. Office of Price Administration during World War II, and from the Defense Production Act of 1950 to the FDA’s modern mandatory recall authority, the legal machinery behind food control has always been more extensive than most people realize.

While we generally think of OPSEC regarding food stores as necessary to prevent a mob of hungry people from showing up at our doors, the more likely scenario might well be police or other law enforcement showing up to confiscate your food items. You might also want to check out my post, "An Example of Why OPSEC is Important" for an example of the application of anti-hoarding laws in place during WWI which resulted in the prosecution of a couple living in Washington D.C. for hoarding. As I noted, "The 'offenders' were caught because they were informed on by a friend of the local 'Food Administrator.'" 

•  Probably more important than the events in the Middle East: "Successful SpaceX Starship 12 launch ends with spectacular fireball." The launch has originally been scheduled for Thursday evening, but then scrubbed; then reset for Friday. From the article:

    SpaceX’s Starship 12 rocket had a successful launch Friday night, before its suborbital test run around the Earth concluded with a stunning fireball explosion as it splashed down in the Indian Ocean.

    The rocket’s launch — the largest and most powerful of its kind — took place at around 6:30 p.m. EST and the 66-minute test flight was deemed a success by SpaceX.

[snip]

     During it’s more than hour-long mission, the rocket didn’t go into full orbit and was a pivotal step in testing how new hardware within Starship fares under real flight conditions, SpaceX said. 

     V3 of Starship 12 contained two key features — the ‘Super Heavy’ bottom booster stage with 33 powerful engines and the Starship, which is the upper part of the spacecraft above the booster that has its own engines.

    A few minutes after launch, the ‘Super Heavy’ booster separated and conducted a ‘boostback’ burn to slow down before splashing down in the Gulf of America — unlike previous missions that attempted landing back at the launch site.

    Meanwhile, the upper Starship spacecraft continued into space and released 22 fake Starlink satellites 20 minutes into the flight.

And Musk must be practicing some OPSEC: "SpaceX confirmed that Friday’s fireball eruption was planned since they don’t plan on reutilizing the experimental spacecraft."

    Glenn Reynolds has published a piece entitled "And Away We Go!" which discusses the import of these developments. An except:

    There are still bugs to work out, and capabilities to add, but what we saw on Friday was a full-fledged interplanetary spaceship. Starship v.3 is big enough to carry cargoes to the Moon and Mars. It uses methane fuel which — as Bob Zubrin demonstrated in the 1990s in support of his “Mars Direct” exploration/settlement architecture — can be manufactured on-site from the Martian atmosphere using 19th Century chemical technology. (I’m positive that Musk has studied Zubrin’s work carefully too.)

    It will also support missions to asteroids, which are loaded with precious and valuable metals, carbon compounds, and other useful stuff. (Even rock is useful for radiation shielding, and using stuff that’s already in space is generally cheaper than launching it from Earth.)

    A moon base is practical with Starship. Artemis, for all the hype, uses NASA’s SLS rocket, which is based on technology over half a century old — Congress mandated that it use Space Shuttle technology — and costs literally billions per launch.

    Large structures in Earth orbit are practical with Starship. Elon wants to build data centers in orbit, and others are following his lead. (As I wrote decades ago, the first Earth explorers brought back spices because they had an enormous value-to-weight ratio; space-based communications is even better because photons don’t weigh anything. Computation is similar. Also, the anti-AI-data-center movement on Earth is just playing into his hands.) Space solar power plants, converting the 24-hour, unfiltered sunlight of outer space into electricity that is beamed to Earth via microwave (a technology long-since demonstrated) are practical with Starship.

    And it’s not just lift capacity. The Musk empire also stresses AI and robotics. When we were thinking about large space structures in the 1970s we assumed they’d be built by humans, like offshore oil rigs. In my Space Law seminar last fall we did some rough modeling on how much faster you could build them using robots controlled by AI. The answer was rough, but clear: Much, much faster. And more cheaply, and without labor issues.

    Elon’s other company, The Boring Company, which specializes in tunneling, is often forgotten, but it’s actually revolutionary in itself. And you know what you need for bases and colonies on the moon and Mars? Tunnels. Lots of tunnels. (Also, later, for asteroid habitats.)

    It’s like he’s been thinking about this stuff all along. It’s like that because he has.

 Read the whole thing.

The Government's Secret Army

Big Country Expat has an interesting piece on clandestine operations stateside, including some personal stories and observations that make you go "hmm." But he backs this up with reference to a 2021 article from Newsweek, "Inside the Military’s Secret Undercover Army." The article relates, in part:

    The largest undercover force the world has ever known is the one created by the Pentagon over the past decade. Some 60,000 people now belong to this secret army, many working under masked identities and in low profile, all part of a broad program called "signature reduction." The force, more than ten times the size of the clandestine elements of the CIA, carries out domestic and foreign assignments, both in military uniforms and under civilian cover, in real life and online, sometimes hiding in private businesses and consultancies, some of them household name companies.

[snip]

    The signature reduction effort engages some 130 private companies to administer the new clandestine world. Dozens of little known and secret government organizations support the program, doling out classified contracts and overseeing publicly unacknowledged operations. Altogether the companies pull in over $900 million annually to service the clandestine force—doing everything from creating false documentation and paying the bills (and taxes) of individuals operating under assumed names, to manufacturing disguises and other devices to thwart detection and identification, to building invisible devices to photograph and listen in on activity in the most remote corners of the Middle East and Africa.

    Special operations forces constitute over half the entire signature reduction force, the shadow warriors who pursue terrorists in war zones from Pakistan to West Africa but also increasingly work in unacknowledged hot spots, including behind enemy lines in places like North Korea and Iran. Military intelligence specialists—collectors, counter-intelligence agents, even linguists—make up the second largest element: thousands deployed at any one time with some degree of "cover" to protect their true identities.

    The newest and fastest growing group is the clandestine army that never leaves their keyboards. These are the cutting-edge cyber fighters and intelligence collectors who assume false personas online, employing "nonattribution" and "misattribution" techniques to hide the who and the where of their online presence while they search for high-value targets and collect what is called "publicly accessible information"—or even engage in campaigns to influence and manipulate social media. Hundreds work in and for the NSA, but over the past five years, every military intelligence and special operations unit has developed some kind of "web" operations cell that both collects intelligence and tends to the operational security of its very activities.

    In the electronic era, a major task of signature reduction is keeping all of the organizations and people, even the automobiles and aircraft involved in the clandestine operations, masked. This protective effort entails everything from scrubbing the Internet of telltale signs of true identities to planting false information to protect missions and people. As standard unforgettable identification and biometrics have become worldwide norms, the signature reduction industry also works to figure out ways of spoofing and defeating everything from fingerprinting and facial recognition at border crossings, to ensuring that undercover operatives can enter and operate in the United States, manipulating official records to ensure that false identities match up.

And this was in 2021. Imagine how much it has grown since. 

    With this in mind, BigCountryExpat describes a rather horrific accident involving twin brothers (apparently Syrian) whose car was demolished in a collision with a jacked up truck where both the driver and his passenger were from Langley, Virginia. The driver was apparently never charged, and as far as BigCountryExpat can find, the news stories of the incident have since been scrubbed from the Internet. Anyway, an interesting piece so be sure to read the whole thing. 

Joel Richardson: What Daniel 8 Says About The War In Iran

If you are interested in whether Daniel 8 has any relevance to the ongoing conflict, I'll save you time: probably not. But it is an interesting look at a prophecy that was predictive when made and has relevance to the Last Days.

The prophecy that Joel Richardson is discussing in this video is from Daniel where he is shown a vision of things that were still in his future: a fierce ram (representing the Persian Empire) who is overcome by a goat with a single great horn (Alexander the Great) who defeats the ram. But the single great horn is broken and four horns spring up (representing the division of Alexander's empire after his death) and a small horn that springs up from one of the four, generally believed to be the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Clearly this represents what is now historical periods to us, but Richardson believes it has application to the last days because the Antichrist is also described in Revelation as the little horn, suggesting a connection between the Antichrist of the Last Days and the little horn in Daniel's prophecy. 

 VIDEO: "What Daniel 8 Says About the War in Iran"
Joel Richardson (23 min.)

Major Lithium Deposits Found In U.S.

From Science Alert: "Vast, Untapped Source of Lithium Found in The US Could Last 300 Years." China most disappointed:

    There could be nearly 330 years' worth of lithium hiding beneath the Appalachian Mountains, which stretch like a stony spine across the eastern United States.

    New research from the US Geological Survey suggests that the Appalachians may contain around 2.3 million metric tons (2.5 million US tons) of recoverable lithium oxide locked away in pegmatites, the grainy, granite-like rocks that form as water-rich magma cools and crystallizes deep within the Earth.

    "This research shows that the Appalachians contain enough lithium to help meet the nation's growing needs – a major contribution to US mineral security, at a time when global lithium demand is rising rapidly," says Ned Mamula, Director of the US Geological Survey (USGS).

    Therefore, mapping US mineral resources may help reverse the country's recent reliance on lithium imports. 

Some Stories About Voting Irregularities In 2020 And This Year

 Just some interesting articles and posts:

• "Trump Calls for Investigation Into Maryland Elections After Mail-In Ballot Disaster"--Townhall.  Short version: "President Donald Trump has called for the Department of Justice to open an investigation into the state of Maryland for sending out mail-in ballots to individuals of the incorrect political party ahead of the state’s closed primary elections." The state mailed out 500,000 illegal ballots and, when they "discovered" the error, they mailed out 500,000 correct ballots with no knowing what happened to the earlier ballots. 
• bumbadum on X: "Some people may not be "hip" to this because it was 6 years ago... But in Georgia the Freedom Caucus people sued the state to recount and audit the ballots. The judge never threw out the case so the ballots were held in evidence for over 6 years, and just recently it was found that over 300,000 ballots were certified without poll worker signatures." This was in response to another tweet that claiming that all the allegations of the fraud in the 2020 Georgia election had been debunked. 
•  The SCIF on X: "After the 2020 Arizona election, Republicans were granted access to examine duplicate ballots and found that 2% off all ballots examined were switched from Trump to Biden or just taken away from Trump all together for no reason. The Biden electors then called a special emergency with the judge in an attempt to only have their attorneys examine the ballots and be kept secret from the public."

A Short Sling Tutorial

I think I mentioned in an earlier post that this guy was a consultant and trainer for the sling for the House of David streaming program. In any event, this is a YouTube short video with a very brief introduction/tutorial on using a sling. 

 

 VIDEO: "Sling tutorial in a short" -- Dash Rendar

Austin Spree Shooter An Illegal Alien

The Battle Swarm Blog notes that the oldest of the three shooters who recently terrorized Austin--17 year old Cristian Fajardo Mondragon--is an illegal alien with an ICE detainer. "He was also on probation through the juvenile justice system at the time of his arrest and has a juvenile detainer," as well as an outstanding warrant for stealing a firearm. 

    I have to say that I am positively shocked as I had been assured by Democrats that immigrants committed crimes at far lower rates than Americans notwithstanding the fact that 100% of illegal immigrants are committing federal crimes.

More Ways Diversity Makes Us Stronger As A Nation

• Helping the elderly: "FBI Shuts Down India-Based Call Center Scam Targeting Hundreds of Elderly Americans"--Gateway Pundit. 
• Helping address the shortage of truck drives: "Illegal immigrant truck driver from India arrested in deadly California hit-and-run after Biden release"--New York Post. 
• Providing child care services: "Minnesota’s ‘Quality Learing Center’ raked in $215K federal payout — senator demands receipts"--New York Post. 
• Boosting the economy: "Study finds over half of immigrant households in U.S. on welfare, including legal immigrants."--What Finger. 
• Their energy: "Hundreds of young people take over NJ beach town, sparking chaos and curfew ahead of Memorial Day weekend"--New York Post.  
• The vibrant night life: "Florida duo allegedly gloated about killing off-duty firefighter for his phone and sneakers: ‘Smiling about it’"--New York Post.
• The spices and flavors of their native countries: "Three dead and first responders rushed to hospital after exposure to mystery substance in New Mexico"--Daily Mail.  
• Some of our best doctors: "The “Pipeline” Problem That Medical Schools Don’t Want to Discuss"--City Journal.  
• Bringing new insights into business practices and university life: "Empty offices, Indian HR calling the shots: ICE uncovers rampant OPT abuse by foreign students"--Financial Express.  
• Participating in civic life: "Chinese communists are infiltrating the US by honeytrapping spies, duping pols, buying farmland, more"--New York Post.

Townsends: Bread On A Stick

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.)

Jack O'Connor's Classic Article On "Deer And Deer Rifles"

Outdoor Life has reprinted Jack O'Connor's September 1962 article originally entitled "Deer and Deer Rifles." O'Connor discusses his first deer hunt and the rifle he used before moving on to a more general discussion on deer rifles. He writes:

    This hunter thinks there are two very different kinds of deer rifles—one to be used in brush and forest and the other to be used in hilly, open country. For the kind of brush and forest hunting done for whitetail deer in the East, for blacktails west of the Coast Range in northern California, Oregon, and Washington, for mule deer early in the season in thick spruce and fir at high altitude, and for mule deer in the brushier parts of the Sonora desert he likes a light, fast-operating rifle with a short barrel. He thinks such a weapon should be chambered for a reasonably heavy bullet at moderate velocity.

    The reason for this is that the heavy, round-nose bullet that isn’t traveling at breakneck speed gets through brush with less deflection than faster, lighter bullets with sharp points. But he also knows that any bullet can be deflected by brush. ...

[snip]

    Because there is always a possibility that the first shot at a deer in brushy country may hit a limb or a twig and deflect, he thinks that for hunting of this sort a lever action, a pump, or a semiautomatic is a good idea for the woods hunter. All of these are faster than the bolt action. ...

He discusses calibers, rifles, and types of sights suitable for the heavy brush and short ranges of this type of hunting. Then he turns his attention to rifles for more open country:

    For open-country deer hunting at longer ranges, this chap likes a flat-shooting cartridge giving a fairly light bullet a velocity of from 2.700 to 3 200 ft. seconds. Then he likes to sight in for the longest range that will not give him midrange misses. The world is full of good, open-country deer cartridges—the .30/06 with the 150-gr. bullet, the .270 with the 130-gr., the .280 with the 125-gr., the 7 mm. Remington Magnum with the 150-gr., the 7 x 57 Mauser with the 140-gr., the .300 Savage and the .308 with the 150-gr. He has never shot a deer with the .243 but considers it entirely adequate with the 100-gr. bullet. He bases this opinion on a good deal of use of the now-dying .257 Roberts on deer.

    However, he has done more open-country shooting of mule and whitetail deer with .30/06 and .270 rifles than with anything else. ...

 And he recommends a 4X scope as giving the best balance between field of view and magnification. 

Red-Dot Occlusion Training

From American Rifleman: "Red-Dot Occlusion Training: A Performance-Booster for You & Your Optic-Equipped Handgun." The idea here is to force you to shoot with both eyes open and focused on the target by covering up the front of your red dot. That results in you only seeing the red dot with one eye but only being able to see the target with the other eye. 

An occluded sight’s red-dot is still visible; the emitter beams the dot onto the lens and reflects it back to the shooter. Though the front of the sight is blocked-off, when aiming with an occluded sight with both eyes open (and a hard target focus), the human brain will automatically ignore the occlusion.

The author indicates that you can make this work using masking tape, but that "there are several companies that offer molded Kydex or polymer covers that snap on over the front of major red-dot sights." The one shown in the article is Arise Mfg.’s Occluder for its Aegis optics shroud. 

FBI: Violent Crime Continues Decline

The New York Post reports: "FBI announces US violent crime rate plummeted by fastest rate in nearly 90 years: ‘Changes are working’." These are national statistics, so YMMV depending on where you live. For instance, I see that the usual suspects were at it again: "Three stabbed as hundreds take over Rhode Island beaches." 

For My LDS Readers: Declining Marriage Rates In The Church

Greg Matsen who runs the Cwic Show YouTube channel recently did a video on declining marriage rates in the Church ("The Collapse of LDS Marriage Culture And The Loss of Taught Doctrine"). He relied heavily on an article by "Alexander" at the Send Me substack entitled "The LDS Marriage Recession Is Here." Alexander notes the following statistics within the Church (bold in original):

    According to researcher Jana Riess in the Next Mormons dataset, Latter-day Saint marriage rates have dropped from 71% in 2007 to the mid-60s today, and the share of never-married LDS adults has grown from 12% in 2007 to 19%. (Salt Lake Tribune) Elder M. Russell Ballard told us in April 2021 that more than half of adult Church members today are widowed, divorced, or have never married. Half. Of us.

    The fertility numbers tell the same story. NPR reported in October 2025 that the share of Latter-day Saint women aged 18–45 with at least one child at home dropped from 70% in 2008 to 59% in 2022 — an eleven-point fall in fourteen years. President Dallin H. Oaks acknowledged at General Conference that LDS birth rates, while still higher than the national average, have declined “significantly.” (NPR)

    And retention. The share of childhood Latter-day Saints who remain Latter-day Saints as adults has fallen from 70% in 2007 to 64% in 2014 to 54% in 2023–24 — a generational cliff. (RNS)

    Some readers might not think that declining marriage rates (and falling birth rates) give rise to the level of “calamity.” But the Proclamation names the mechanism by which the calamities come — the disintegration of the family. If we stop getting married and we stop rearing children, families don’t simply shrink. They cease to exist. That is disintegration, in slow motion.

    Five extra years on the YSA range. CES openly trying to teach dating. Half the adult members single. Birth rates falling fast. Retention collapsing.

    These are not five separate problems. They are one problem with five faces.

    So what is the problem?

According to Alexander, it is because women and men want something different out of marriage. He cites statistics indicating that 48% of LDS women ages 18–35 (and 54% of  LDS women ages 18–26) prefer an egalitarian marriage — "one in which husband and wife share decision-making, breadwinning, housework, and childcare roughly equally, rather than dividing them along traditional provider/homemaker lines"; whereas 60% of LDS men ages 18–26 still prefer the traditional arrangement where men are the primary breadwinners and preside over the household. 

    And the reason for that, Alexander contends, is that we--as a Church--have softened the doctrine (I would add, when was the last time you heard 1 Timothy 2:12 preached in Sunday School?). He writes:

We — the cultural Church, the wards, the parents, the institute teachers, the Sunday school adults, the LDS-coded social media voices — have spent twenty years quietly softening the doctrine of marriage to make it palatable in mixed company. We stopped saying “preside” with confidence. Some have even started apologizing for the clarity of the Proclamation. We taught equal partnership in a way that quietly erased the uniquely different roles of men and women that follow’s God’s family model. We trained our daughters to look for an “egalitarian” husband without telling them that the doctrine isn’t actually symmetrical, and we trained our sons to want to “preside” without ever showing them what that looked like at a kitchen table on a Tuesday night.

And, he adds:

    I don’t think it is an accident that during the same years our cultural Church got quieter about gender as an eternal characteristic, the Next Mormons survey found that 94% of LDS Boomers identify as heterosexual versus only 77% of LDS Gen Z — meaning roughly 23% of Gen Z Latter-day Saints now identify as LGB+. (Religion News Service) I am not saying that to shame anyone. I am saying that is a data point we cannot keep pretending isn’t connected to something. When the doctrine of eternal identity gets quieter, identity confusion gets louder.

    Pair the LGB+ figure with the 54% retention number, the dating recession, the birth rate collapse, and the egalitarian-traditional mismatch — and a single picture comes into focus.

    When we evade the doctrine culturally the youth cannot get the foundation. They cannot find each other, cannot picture a marriage worth running toward, and in some cases cannot even locate themselves within the plan.

    That is not their failure. That is ours.

The solution, he contends, is to "say the doctrine out loud again, with confidence and joy." 

    I will be the first to say that I agree that softening the doctrine has not helped us, and to more strongly proclaim the family will help right the ship, so to speak, simply because it would drive the liberals out of the Church. And perhaps if women were, like the men, told that they cannot obtain exaltation without getting married--instead of the usual slop of "if you can't get married its not your fault and God will make up for it"--it might boost marriage rates a bit. 

    But I do not think his "solution" will actually solve the basic, underlying problem.  

    NPR published a piece on "The missing men of the American marriage market." First, contrary to the wording in the title of the NPR article, the men are not missing--it is not like we suffered a war where large number of men were killed or went through decades where male babies were aborted at higher rates than females. The men are there, but they just aren't good enough for the women. From the article:

    The United States is not currently witnessing any demographic imbalances so extreme. The ratio of men to women is pretty even. However, the economic and educational trajectories of men and women have increasingly diverged, with a large swath of men falling behind.

    For example, women are now more likely to graduate from college than men. In recent years, female students have made up almost 60 percent of undergraduate students, and outnumbered men on college campuses by more than two million, according to one government estimate. Meanwhile, many men who didn't get a college education have been struggling economically, and have been much more likely to end up on drugs, in prison, and unemployed.

    A new working paper by economists Clara Chambers, Benjamin Goldman, and Joseph Winkelmann, "Bachelors Without Bachelor's: Gender Gaps in Education and Declining Marriage Rates," looks at how this growing educational and economic gender imbalance is affecting marriage patterns in the United States.

    The study suggests that the struggles of many American men have created something like a game of musical chairs for women looking to get married. College-educated women have largely maintained high marriage rates, but they've done so by increasingly getting hitched to men without a college education. But they're not ending up with just any men in this demographic pool. They're, on average, partnering up with the higher-earning ones.

    Meanwhile, this study suggests that women without a college education are left with a shrinking pool of economically stable husbands. They're still having kids, but their marriage rate has plummeted, and many are raising their kids by themselves.

    Scholars have referred to the demographic imbalance in China as "missing women." One way to interpret these findings is that America increasingly has what you might call "missing economically stable men." It may help explain the dramatic rise of single-mother households, and it could be one driver of worsening inequality in America. 

 For all their screaming about equity, the Left seems ambivalent when the benefactors of a system are women and the ones being left behind are men. 

     But, getting back to the points raised by Matson and Alexander, the primary issue here isn't a misunderstanding of the marriage roles. It is primarily a lack of good jobs for men such that they can (i) attract a wife, and (ii) support a family. You can preach all day long that men should provide for families and women should stay home to raise the kids--something I commonly heard at church when I was younger--but it means nothing if the men cannot get jobs that allow for it. It was the growing economic need for women to get jobs outside the home that killed off the doctrine. And urging men to become better educated only gets you so far because a young man can't just go out and magically raise his IQ a couple standard deviations or have the capitalization to start a business fall from heaven like the manna of old. 

    I know that the there are more facets and nuances, but in the end--even if you convince a woman that the man should be the sole or primary breadwinner--the whole thing falls apart if the man, in fact, cannot win the bread. 

Wilder: The AI Bubble

The latest from John Wilder at Wilder, Wealthy & Wise is "What Does A Bubble Look Like?" John discusses why he thinks we are looking at another investment bubble, but one that goes far beyond prior bubbles such as the housing bubble or the dotcom bubble. An excerpt:

    I could go on for another three thousand words about how frothy we are at this moment in time, but this time really is different.  Most of this bubble is built on debt to build things that are impossible to build in promised timelines using resources that aren’t available.  At least when the dotcom bubble burst, we had lots of unused fiber optic cable in the ground and when the housing bubble burst, we had houses left over.

    What happens when a debt bubble bursts that hasn’t built the data centers it promised and evaporates a huge percentage of the venture capital that was sunk into it and all we have left are mountains of Nvidia© chips sitting in warehouses surrounded by confused pimps?

    Well, that’s just another way that A.I. will change the world, I guess.  

 Read the whole thing. 

Israel: Jews Spitting On Christians An "Ancient Jewish Custom"

From France24: "‘Some hide their crosses’: Jerusalem nun attack highlights Israel’s growing anti-Christian problem." The article relates:

    Harani, who heads the Religious Freedom Data Center (RFDC) – an Israeli NGO that documents anti-Christian incidents and help victims report them to authorities – said there are so many cases now that she and her roughly 100 volunteers are kept busy “24/7”.

    “The most common is spitting,” she said. “But it can also be graffiti on [Christian] signs with crosses on them, vandalism or different forms of harassment.”

    The perpetrators, she said, belong to a very tiny part of Israel’s population of 10 million – “most Jews would never do this” – and mainly identify as ultra-Orthodox, Shas-style Sephardis or nationalist religious Jews.

    “They all wear kippah [traditional Jewish skullcaps]. I’ve not seen one secular Jew misbehave toward Christians.”

    In 2024, her organisation recorded 107 incidents. Last year, the number jumped to 181.

    “There isn’t a month that goes by without at least ten incidents reported,” she said, but noted that in reality, the numbers are likely much higher. This is in part because victims either do not know how to report, or do not want to “make a fuss” over less serious offences like spitting. 

The article tries to minimize the seriousness of the situation by essentially explaining that the Jews doing this are just too stupid and ignorant to know better, but also that it is a Jewish tradition.

Related:  

• "Israel: Spitting on Christians in Jerusalem ‘not criminal’, says Ben Gvir"--Middle East Eye. This October 2023 article notes that Ben Gvir--who was Israel's National Security Minister (and oversees the police) indicated that the Israeli government was not going to prosecute such assaults because it was not illegal. It adds:

    Ben Gvir had previously defended the act of spitting on Christians as “an ancient Jewish custom”. 

    The claim was echoed on Tuesday by Israeli settler Elisha Yered, who is suspected of involvement in the killing of a Palestinian teenager in August. 

    Yered said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that “spitting near priests or churches is an ancient Jewish custom”.      

Also:

    Harassment by Israelis against Christians, including spitting, is not new. However, it has spiked under the new government, which took office late last year and has been described as the most right-wing in the country's history.

    The attacks - committed mostly by ultranationalists or settlers, including soldiers - range from trespassing on churches and spitting on churchgoers to destruction of Christian symbols and vandalising graves, among other acts. 

    Police have reportedly not been taking the attacks seriously, refusing to treat the incidents as part of a trend and downplaying the culprits' motives by saying they are carried out due to "mental illness". 

VIDEO: French SS Units In Vietnam

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.)

VIDEO: When Rifles Don't Penetrate

A good video on why rifles will sometimes have far less penetration than you might think, and some rifles that shouldn't have all that much penetration do. The video is to address why the .30-06 used to shoot Charlie Kirk didn't blow through his spine like someone might expect whose only experience is using full power loads with heavy bullets against deer and elk, but also compares other bullets and other calibers, so it has broader application than just Kirk's assassination.  

VIDEO: "When Rifles Don't Penetrate (And Why)"
TII Armory (13 min.)

Selling Off Access To Public Lands: The Oligarchs Versus The Rest Of Us

From High Country News: "The billionaires’ club at the center of America’s public lands fight."  The basic issue:

    At the end of a dirt road along the northeastern edge of Montana’s Crazy Mountains, a simple sign warns visitors they are now entering private property.   

[snip]

    The road beyond the gate next to Wilson leads into what was, for more than a century, one of two historic public trails into the east side of the Crazies. The U.S. Forest Service relinquished the public’s access to the trail early last year as part of a land swap with the Yellowstone Club — an exclusive mountaintop retreat for the megarich located 100 miles away in Big Sky.  

[snip]

    PERCHED MORE THAN 7,000 FEET above sea level, the Yellowstone Club was built atop former public lands acquired through land exchanges with the U.S. Forest Service in the 1990s. It has since converted more than 15,000 acres outside Big Sky into one of the most exclusive communities on the planet. 

    The club’s membership has included familiar names: celebrities like Justin Timberlake, Tom Brady and Paris Hilton; tech titans like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt; and financial elites like Bill Ackman, Warren Buffett and Robert Herjavec. 

    Inside its gates, the Yellowstone Club has an 18-hole golf course, a concert venue, a movie theater, a dedicated fire department, hundreds of luxury homes and nearly 3,000 acres of private ski slopes. Initiation runs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and an undeveloped lot inside the gate has sold for as much as $10 million, according to Forbes. 

    CrossHarbor Capital Partners, a Boston-based investment firm, bought the Yellowstone Club out of bankruptcy in 2009. 

    In the 17 years since, the firm has expanded its Montana portfolio — developed through a subsidiary called Lone Mountain Land Company — to become one of the largest luxury-resort footprints in the Rocky Mountains. 

The article mentions that some of the top government officials responsible for overseeing public lands themselves belong to the Club or have other conflicts of interest.  The article continues:

    “The landowners now have access to the public lands in a really exclusive way,” said Cleveland of Wild Montana. She said the exchange gives these landowners “easy access into that country where the public has to hike 20 miles of backcountry trail to get in there” and “opens the door to a much more realistic development scenario.” 

    The most contested piece of the deal was the trail network. Two historic public trails had appeared on Forest Service maps for more than a century. The exchange abandoned the public’s claim to both. 

    In their place, the Yellowstone Club agreed to pay for a new 22-mile trail on mostly public land, at a substantially higher elevation, as part of a 40-mile backcountry loop. 

    “Can you imagine elderly folks and younger folks trying to hike that,” asked Wilson on a visit to the future trailhead. “It’s not hiker friendly at all. Definitely not hunter friendly.”

    He looked up at the nearly vertical wall of shale rock where the trail is slated to start. 

    “It’s ridiculous,” he said.  

    Public lands used to be for the public. Even the National Parks and National Monuments, whatever other limitations were imposed on commercial development, largely remained open for public recreation. But then came the Wilderness Lands. These are the modern day equivalent of the "King's Forest" from feudal times. In theory they are open to the public for recreation, but the prohibitions on roads make them largely inaccessible except to the rich who can afford both the time and money to ride in on horses or fly into a handful of airstrips. 

    But it seems that it has become harder to designate additional wilderness. So what seems to be happening is for a federal agency--for instance, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) or the Forest Service--to restrict access. 

    In my neck of the woods, I've seen the BLM sell off the land that has the roads to access certain area, leaving an "island" of BLM land surrounded by private land. Great for ranchers and for environmentalists, but not for the public seeking to access the land for recreation. The Forest Service, on the other hand, is simply not maintaining roads and trails and then closing them as being too dangerous. For instance, there is a wonderful hiking and camping area near my area, up past a reservoir, that used to have three main road leading into the area. The most accessible road suffered a landslide some time back and they simply never reopened it. The difficulty of reaching it from the other directions has severely restricted its accessibility. 

    Sometimes the private landowners will also sabotage access. The article mentions private land owners illegally blocking public roads or trails that crossed their land. I too have seen that, with ranchers putting up fences across public roads and trails on land they are leasing from the BLM. They are supposed to leave a means to go through--a gate or area of fence that can be moved--but more and more do not. One area I've enjoyed for hiking has a section of hiking trail that parallels a fence dividing the National Forest from some private land. This past summer, I found a tree that had been cut on the private side of the fence in such a way that it fell on the public side of the fence and lengthwise along the hiking trail blocking a considerable length. Other sections also had trees that had been felled to block or obstruct the trail. 

Related:

• "Backcountry Hunters and Anglers Sues Montana FWP Over Corner Crossing"--Outdoor Life.  That is, crossing into a federal land that is corner locked--where the only way to access the land is crossing at the corner from one piece of public land to the other. 
• "Senator Seeks to Transfer 140,000 Acres of Louisiana’s Only National Forest. Residents Are Furious"--Outdoor Life.  Per the article:

A draft bill attributed to a Louisiana senator’s office seeks to convey roughly 140,000 acres of the Kisatchie National Forest to the local government of Grant Parish in central Louisiana. That represents nearly a quarter, or about 23 percent, of the state’s only National Forest land. 

The excuse for the transfer is to help speed economic development, which sounds suspiciously like making it possible to eventually transfer the land to a developer.

Pakistan Deploys Figher Jets, Troops To Saudi Arabia

From Reuters (via Yahoo): "Exclusive-Pakistan deploys jet squadron, thousands of troops to Saudi Arabia during Iran war." From the article:

    Pakistan has deployed 8,000 troops, a squadron of fighter jets and an air defence system to Saudi Arabia under a mutual defence pact, ramping up military cooperation with Riyadh even ‌as Islamabad serves as the main mediator in the Iran war.

    The deployment, the full scale of which is reported here for ‌the first time, was confirmed by three security officials and two government sources, all of whom described it as a substantial, combat-capable force intended to support Saudi Arabia's military if ​the kingdom comes under further attack. 

Hickok 45 With Thoughts On Carry Guns

The video starts out as a critique of the Glock 43X but is applicable to other smaller carry guns. What Hickok 45 discusses is that the Glock 43X has a slim enough grip that it can be difficult for him to shoot with his large hands (he notes he tends to shoot left with it unless he really concentrates), but is large enough that it is no longer a pocket pistol but falls into the category of something that needs to be carried on the belt. But, he reasons, if a firearm is large enough that it needs to be carried on the belt, he might as well go with something larger and easier to shoot (e.g. a Glock 19 or something of similar size).  

 VIDEO: "Is The Glock 43X An Overrated Carry Option?"
Hickok45 Clips (11 min.)

Famine Coming To Africa

Basically it is because of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz according to the video, below. Oil used to produce fuel, particularly diesel, comes through the strait; and South Africa relies on Russian fertilizer that would also come through Iran and thence through the strait to South Africa. As he explains, the input costs of growing this season is too high to justify planting the crops. And since South Africa exports food to much of the rest of Africa, there will be food shortages elsewhere in Africa.  

 VIDEO: "South African farmers won't plant crops this season. Here's why:"
Willem Petzer (8 min.)

Yale Med In Trouble For Racial Discrimination

Townhall reports: "The Justice Department Found Yale Discriminated Against White, Asian Med School Applicants." A couple points from the article:

• The department looked at median grade-point averages and standardized test scores broken down by race, and concluded that “Yale’s use of race resulted in a Black applicant being as much as 29 times higher odds of getting an interview for admission than an equally strong Asian applicant with similar academic credentials.”
• The median entrance exam score for admitted Black students at Yale’s medical school last year was 518 and for 517 for Hispanic students, according to the Justice Department. The median score was 524 for both White and Asian students. The highest possible score is 528.
  
  The median grade point average in 2025 for admitted Black students was 3.88 and 3.91 for Hispanic students. For White students, it was 3.97 and for Asians 3.98.     

As the author sums up: "The Left does not care if your doctor harms or kills you, so long as they're diverse enough." 

VIDEO: What's Holding Back The Gun Industry

This video discusses some of the reasons for the lack of innovation in the gun industry. 

    In some ways, I disagree with her premise that there is a lack of innovation because we've seen a lot of development over the past 20 years including: refining the AR system; development of piston systems for the AR; a large number of new cartridges for long range shooting and hunting; the wide adoption of accessory and optic mounting systems on handguns; use of newer materials and incorporation of materials that were formally very expensive like carbon fiber; the revival of lever actions with changes to make them more useful for self-defense; the development of the stack and a half magazine designs making it possible to stuff more rounds into small carry guns; and on and on. 

     On the other hand, I can see where she is coming from: the dominant rifle and handgun designs are the Glock (or other polymer striker fired pistols) and AR and they haven't really changed all that much in the past decade. Most of the innovation is on the margins, so to speak: refinements to existing designs rather than radical departures. 

    But that is not unprecedented. In 1890 most American hunters would have been armed with a lever action rifle; and most people that had a handgun would use a revolver. In 1930--40 years later--the lever actions and revolvers would be more refined, but the majority of hunters would still be using a lever action rifle; and most pistol owners would still be using revolvers. Even as late as 1980, most people who owned a handgun for defense would have had a revolver, although the bolt-action rifle would have long eclipsed lever action rifles in sales. 

    The only period that saw rapid advancements in both ammunition and the basic designs of weapons was in the latter half of the 19th Century. The primary factors were:

• Changes in ammunition. The world shifted from black powder muzzle loaders to metallic cartridges, with the period ending with the adoption of smokeless powder. 
• New designs made possible by the development of the metallic cartridges. Repeating arms had existed before, but they were expensive and dangerous. The only successful designs were black powder revolvers. But the metallic cartridge allowed for the development of repeating rifles such as the lever action rifle, bolt action rifle, and semi- and fully-automatic rifles and machine guns. Revolvers became more reliable and more refined. The first semi-auto pistols were developed. 
• Manufacturing innovations including mass production and better steels. This made firearms less expensive and inexpensive metallic cartridges possible--the better steels allowed for the higher pressures from smokeless powder. 
• Freedom to innovate. There wasn't the laws and regulations prohibiting individual inventors from making new firearms. So if you were a medical doctor that came up with a design for a system of rapid fire using multiple barrels rotating around an central axis, more power to you. And if your system didn't quite work well, you could tinker with it and come out with new variations, until it finally worked right.  
• The new firearms represented a significant improvement over what gun owners already owned. Meaning that it was worthwhile to replace older firearms with newer models.  

 Today the world looks different:

•  In most ways, the ammunition used today really isn't all that different than that used in 1900. There are improvements in design so we have much more efficient rifle ammunition than 100 years ago but not so much that many (most) people are still using 100 year old cartridge designs and calibers. And this is possible because most of the innovation has come in bullet designs. But none of these require or even allow major changes to the basic design of firearms. 
• Radical design changes are generally few, occur fairly rapidly, and then it becomes a game of refinement. Right now we are mostly in a period of refinement. The basic designs are pretty much optimized. And unless the underlying method of propelling a bullet changes, it is unlikely that we will see revolutionary design changes in personal firearms. 
• There is little freedom to innovate. Too many laws and regulations. Too much capital investment required. Fewer large firearms manufacturers. And too many influencers ready to crap on anything that is innovative. 
• Because the innovation is at the margin, newer products offer only marginal improvements over earlier designs or models. A lever action rifle in the 1880s offered a significant improvement--really in the order of a magnitude of improvement--over a muzzle loading black powder rifle because of magazine capacity, ease of use, and ease of loading and unloading. I would even argue that the AR's rise to popularity is because it offered significant improvements over older rifles--particularly at the same time as improvements in bullet design and manufacturing made it more accurate and capable of taking larger game than would have been believed even a decade earlier. And a flattop over the original AR design with the integrated rear sight and carry handle would represent an improvement just because of it being easier to mount and use an optic. But what improvement does the AR coming out this year give me over one from last year?  

 VIDEO: "Whats Holding Back The Gun Industry"
Boondock Ballistician (13 min.)