Prototype Infrared Glasses

From TechXplore: "Prototype glasses can turn infrared into color vision." Chinese researches claim to have produced a light weight (23-gram or 0.8-ounce) pair of glasses that allow a person to see into the infrared spectrum.

    The prototype device uses microscopic particles called mercury telluride colloidal quantum dots. When infrared light strikes them, they absorb it and convert it into electrical charges.

    These charges flow into an organic light-emitting diode (OLED), a type of light-emitting display that contains a red and a cyan color zone. Low-energy, or weaker, infrared signals carry enough charge to light up the red zone, while higher-energy infrared signals generate enough charge to activate both zones.

    "We redefine infrared vision by transcending the monochrome paradigm, translating infrared spectral and intensity signatures into discernible color variations rather than mere brightness changes," wrote the study authors in their paper.

Prototype glasses

    The scientists built a lightweight, 23-gram (0.8-ounce) prototype pair of glasses and tested it by shining infrared light through different shapes and moving objects. The results showed that the device projected sharp, color-coded images of these objects while still letting normal light pass through. This means a user can see the regular world and the infrared world at the same time. The team also measured electrical responses in human eyes, showing that the converted light triggered normal responses in the retina.

    Although the technology is still at the prototype stage, the researchers believe their innovation could have applications far beyond infrared vision.

    "By surpassing the evolutionary boundaries of biological photoreception, this technology paves the way for next-generation visual prosthetics and human-integrated sensory expansion."   

More: "Infrared glasses could push the boundaries of human eyesight"--Popular Science.  

More On Elite Overproduction

Peter Turchin's theory of elite overproduction being behind revolutions shows up in another article. In his Breitbart piece, "Peter Schweizer: One Third of Democrats Now Call Themselves Socialists," Sage San Martin writes:

    Besides being overwhelmingly white, the DSA’s voters are “largely Millennials who don’t remember history and did not grow up during the Cold War,” he says. “They grew up with prosperity, and they have no understanding of the failings of socialism, whether it’s the Soviet variety, the Cuban variety, the Venezuelan variety, or the Angolan variety,” Schweizer says.

    Schweizer also mentions the theory of “elite overproduction,” which an academic first theorized in the 2010s. “When revolutions take place, they are generally led by people who think they belong in the elite. So, they get the training, they get the education, and they have the family background. And then, when they try to get into the elite, they realize that they’re not going to make it and they get angry,” Schweizer says.

    “So, they blame the American system. They blame capitalism, and they take their anger out politically on the system, rather than maybe engage in some self-reflection and realize that they’re all not all that they think they are,” he adds.   

Interesting times. 

Number of Americans That Carry Concealed Continues To Rise

The Crime Prevention Research Center reports: "New Survey on the Rate that People Carry Concealed Handguns: Percent of Americans Carrying Continues to Increase from 24.3% in December 2024 to 29.8% in May 2026 to 30.9% in July 2026." Note that this is not a general population survey, but a survey of likely voters.

In the survey, 15.7% carry all/most of the time, with another 15.2% carrying sometimes/rarely. The percent who carry all or most the time increased from 13.0% in December 2024 to 13.2% in May 2026 to 15.7% in July 2026. But total percent who care increased from 24.3% in December 2024 to 29.8% in May 2026 to 30.9% in July 2026.  

Or, from the other side of the coin, the number of people that never carry a concealed handgun decline from 73.0% in December 2024 to 66.6% in July 2026. 

Dinosaurs May Have Been Incinerated By Heat Trapped By Dust From Asteroid Strike

Science News reports on a new study that suggests that after the Chicxulub asteroid struck the Earth, creating a 200-km wide crater, the land dwelling dinosaurs not killed immediately from the impact would have been incinerated by heat trapped under the dust kicked up into the atmosphere. 

    When the asteroid hit, it vaporized the surrounding rock, creating the 200-kilometer-wide Chicxulub crater underneath the Gulf of Mexico. Some of the vapor cooled in the atmosphere and condensed into droplets of molten rock. The rest became a cloud of fine dust.

    What happened next has been a long-standing question, says planetary scientist Brandon Johnson of Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana. Using deposits of asteroid material from North Dakota, Johnson and his collaborators simulated what would have happened as this dust spread around the globe.

    The results painted a frightening picture. Molten rock would have rained down with the force of a bullet, generating a lot of heat. Instead of escaping into space, that heat would have been trapped by the dust cloud and radiated back to Earth’s surface. The air would have warmed rapidly, turning the sky red, while any creature that couldn’t take shelter received 17 times the lethal dose of thermal radiation for humans. About an hour later, the radiation would have dissipated, and the dust cloud would have blocked out the sun. The only light would have been from global wildfires spontaneously ignited by the heat.    

And, per this article from the Guardian, the Chicxulub asteroid may not have been a one-off:

    Detailed scans of an underwater crater off the coast of Guinea in West Africa suggest that it was created when another large asteroid smashed into the planet around the same time at the end of the Cretaceous period.

    The violent impact between 65m and 67m years ago produced a crater more than five miles across, the scans reveal, with scientists estimating that the asteroid measured a quarter of a mile wide and struck Earth at nearly 45,000mph.

    Though smaller than the asteroid that sparked the mass extinction, it was still large enough to leave scars on the face of the planet. “The new images paint a picture of the catastrophic event,” said Dr Uisdean Nicholson, a marine geologist at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, who first discovered the Nadir crater in 2022. At the time, the details of the impact were unclear. 

[snip] 

    The researchers cannot pinpoint when the asteroid struck Earth, but the discovery of the crater and its approximate age have prompted speculation that it may have belonged to a cluster of impacts at the end of the Cretaceous period. The asteroid linked to the extinction of the dinosaurs was far larger than the rock that produced the Nadir crater. It left a crater 100 miles wide in what is now Chicxulub on the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico. 

Traitors: Retired U.S. Generals Consulting For China

Natalie Winters writes about "Top American Generals Joined a CCP Spy Front's Backchannel Pushing China’s Military Agenda in Washington. Some Ended Up on China’s Payroll." As she points out: 

    The Chinese Communist Party did not need to penetrate the Pentagon to gain access to America’s military leadership.

    It built a private network around it.     

The program, she reveals, was called the Sanya Initiative (and, later, the “U.S.-China Military-to-Military Dialogue”); and it brought together "some of the most powerful retired officers in the United States participated in closed-door meetings with senior Chinese military leaders" to discuss "Taiwan, the South China Sea, missile defense, cybersecurity and the future of relations between the two militaries." She names names, which include a bevy of former top generals of the various branches of the military as well as chairmen or vice-chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But it didn't stop there:

According to the foundation’s own brochure, they met:

• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

• Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen

• Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell

• Rep. Rick Larsen

• Rep. Mark Kirk

• Adm. Timothy Keating

• Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle

CUSEF published a photograph of the Chinese and American generals meeting Clinton in Washington.

 And it appears that lasted, with only a few years skipped, between 2008 and 2024. 

Federal District Court Rules Portions Of NFA Illegal

From Shooting News Weekly: "US District Court in Texas Rules That With $200 Tax Gone, NFA Registration is Unconstitutional." Since the justification for the NFA was that it was to collect taxes, the removal of the $200 tax stamp on certain NFA items, such as SBRs and sound suppressors, left Congress without Constitutional authority to regulate those items. However, the ruling only applies to the plaintiffs in the case and would not extend to NFA items that are still, in theory, taxed. The Mr. Guns & Gear channel has more:

VIDEO: "Breaking: The NFA Ruled Unconstitutional - What You Need To Know"
Mrgunsngear Channel (15 min.)

Wilder: They Broke The Deal...

John Wilder's latest--"They Broke The Deal: The Economics Of Loyalty And Patriotism"--delves into why so many Westerners are no longer willing to fight for their country. 

    What changed?

    Well, I think the deal that I had has been broken so completely that they simply don’t see a country worth fighting for anymore.  At all.  Why?  Because the economics and culture I grew up in have evaporated, been swallowed in a sea of foreigners, or been the subject of a leveraged buyout.

This is another example of Robert Putnam's research showing that greater ethnic diversity leads to lower social capital. Michael Jonas provides a good summary of Putnam's study and conclusions in his article, "The Downsides of Diversity" published by Harvard's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. An excerpt:

    It has become increasingly popular to speak of racial and ethnic diversity as a civic strength. From multicultural festivals to pronouncements from political leaders, the message is the same: our differences make us stronger.

    But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam—famous for “Bowling Alone,” his 2000 book on declining civic engagement—has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.

Or, as John puts it in regard to willingness to fight for their country:

The teeming cesspit of India (76%) and the perennially unemployed Armenians (96%) are much more willing to fight than the United States (41%) because India is filled with Indians, Armenia is filled with Armenians, and in America, at least 29% of the people in the country are illegal, on visas, or are first or second generation immigrants with little tie to the country. 

Read the whole thing. 

Arsonist Arrested For Spokane Fires

If you think that you are safe from wildfires because you live in a city, Spokane, Washington is showing that it is not necessarily true. The New York Post reports:

    The Old Trails Fire ignited Saturday and quickly became one of the most destructive fires in Washington history as powerful winds, drought conditions and extreme heat fueled explosive growth.

    Together with several other major fires burning around Spokane, the blazes have destroyed at least 700 structures, scorched roughly 12.5 square miles and prompted evacuation orders affecting about 67,000 people.

    Residents allowed back into some neighborhoods Monday were met with scenes of almost unimaginable destruction. Entire streets had been reduced to ash, with burned-out vehicles, twisted metal and collapsed homes stretching block after block. In many cases, only brick chimneys remained standing. 

Additionally, "[a]s of Sunday nearly 10,000 customers were without power and another 5,300 customers were without natural gas." The New York Post article indicates that a suspected arsonist has been arrested for setting one of the fires--the Old Trails Fire. (More at this Fox affiliate). 

Communism In Action: DHS Blacklists Chinese Firms For Slavery

Breitbart reports: "U.S. Homeland Security Blacklists 43 Chinese Firms for Slavery." From the lede:

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has added 43 more companies to the “entity list” under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), directing customs agents to presume that all goods from the listed companies are tainted by slave labor from Uyghurs and other oppressed minorities in China.  

VIDEO: "Satan's Storm"

 On June 15, 1960, temperatures in the town of Kopperl, Texas, spiked to near 140 °F (60 °C). 

VIDEO: "The Night Texas Hit 140°F (60°C) During a Thunderstorm"
Swegle Studios (24 min.)