A convincing case is made that the Kakhovka Dam was destroyed not by military action, but through incompetence.
Jun 102023
Jun 082023
The Constitution has of course been amended numerous times before. But amendment that curtail existing right have been few and haven’t gone well.
Governor Newsom Proposes Historic 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution to End America’s Gun Violence Crisis
The 28th Amendment will permanently enshrine four broadly supported gun safety principles into the U.S. Constitution:
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- Raising the federal minimum age to purchase a firearm from 18 to 21;
- Mandating universal background checks to prevent truly dangerous people from purchasing a gun that could be used in a crime;
- Instituting a reasonable waiting period for all gun purchases; and
- Barring civilian purchase of assault weapons that serve no other purpose than to kill as many people as possible in a short amount of time – weapons of war our nation’s founders never foresaw.
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Translation: deletion of the 2nd Amendment. The 1st Amendment will be “amended” shortly after, I suspect.
Of course, Newsom knows that this is going nowhere. An amendment must be ratified by three-fourths of the states; the map below suggests that that is unlikely at best. But these sort of announcements are always good; it’s useful to be reminded from time to time that some of our “leaders” are evil.
If Governor Newsom *actually* cared about gun crime victims, instead of making millions more citizens into criminals, he’d actually demand enforcement of existing laws, and would ensure that those arrested for any and all violent crimes would actually see justice. But that’s not what he’s doing.
Jun 082023
Uuuuuuuhhhhhhgh.
UK no longer able to manufacture large-calibre gun barrels, BAE Systems admits
Britain is doomed. Lack of manufacturing, wholly uncontrolled mass invasion… “Britain” will soon be relegated to the chapter of the history book filled with nations that no longer exist. But while the Soviet Union or Austro-Hungarian Empire went away, the *people* remained, as did their language and much of their culture. But England specifically and Britain as a whole? Their own government is working to erase their existence. It’s remarkable.
Jun 032023
Good news:
In a First, Caltech’s Space Solar Power Demonstrator Wirelessly Transmits Power in Space
This is *many* orders of magnitude away from a practical solar power satellite… but ya gotta start somewhere.
And on the other hand, bad news:
Boeing finds two serious problems with Starliner just weeks before launch
Problem one: bits of the parachute system aren’t as strong as they should be. Bad, but readily solvable.
Problem two: the wiring is flammable. This… is monumentally stupid, a problem that has been well understood since the Apollo 1 fire. this may well require that the capsule be largely disassembled so that *miles* of wiring can be replaced.
Good luck with *that.*
And while Boeing continues to struggle to get a capsule not fundamentally different from Apollo flying SpaceX continues to send crews to the ISS in Dragons.
19 years later… pic.twitter.com/2xead0zqaA
— Rare North American Space Koala (@culpable_mink) June 1, 2023
Jun 022023
Today I swung by “The Davenport,” the century-plus old apartment building that partially collapsed a few days ago. Roads were closed off for a radius of a block or two around it so I couldn’t get very close in my car, and I didn’t have the time to find someplace to park and walk. Ehhh, oh well. Anyway, a lot of information has come out about it; the city of Davenport has released a bunch of inspection reports and other documents going back several years showing that it has been falling apart for some time. Bricks have been popping out of the face of the building for years. It looks like the sort of place that your average person would have been able to look at and go “Nope” and run to some other accommodations.
Someone’s gettin’ sued.
The City of Davenport website with the documents:
https://www.davenportiowa.com/cms/One.aspx?portalId=6481456&pageId=19580321
In retrospect this sort of thing is not too surprising. A lot of the buildings around here are old brick structures, and The Davenport was only a few blocks from the Mississippi river. “500 year floods” seem to happen every few years now; this had *got* to have an effect. Whether water seeps into the ground that far inland I don;t know, but having tens of thousands of tons of new watery overburden from time to time has got to cause the ground to flex at least some. There are also the occasional earthquake; small by the standards of even Utah, but if you have a brick building not built with earthquakes in mind… that’s not so great.
In all honesty, “The Davenport” looks like a *lot* of buildings in this part of the midwest. Built a century ago, having seen better days. Like our roads and bridges, the infrastructure has not been well looked after. I won’t be surprised if the next few years are filled with increasing tales of buildings and bridges falling. Imagine if the dozens of trillions dumped down the black hole of welfare were instead spent on repairs, maintenance and replacements of structures that needed it.
Jun 012023
A recent Mexican TV news piece showed a cartel member wandering about with a shoulder-fired AT-4 anti-tank rocket slung over his shoulder. A number of commenters immediately leaped to one or both of two wrong conclusions:
1: It’s a Javelin missile
2: It’s a missile we gave to Ukraine, which they then turned around and sold on the black market.
Number 1 is easy enough to debunk; it’s simply not a Javelin. Number 2 is more troubling: but then there’s a little detail on the launch tube that makes it clear that wherever the cartel got this thing… it’s not something to fret about too much.
May 272023
It seems obvious by this point that a rational corporation would, when presented with the option of weighing in on politically decisive “culture war” topics, just stick their fingers in their ears and hum real loud until whatever -themed month it is ends, and spend their time trying to sell their normal merchandise to their normal customers. But, no. Due to the insidious and invasive influence of “woke” ideologies and diversity initiatives, companies have been led to believe that they *have* to build up their diversity social credit scores, or else… something.
Target stores are the latest to discover that attempting to appease a small group of weirdos ticks off a far larger group of people who don’t want to sterilize, mutilate and drive insane their children.A lot of customers have expressed outrage; a few by pestering the employees (these are just regular folk trying to earn a paycheck, leave ’em the frak alone); a few others by causing damage (come on, you’re not on the left… the law *will* go after you for vandalism). But by far, from Targets perspective the biggest threat to the corporation are the large number of customers who are simply not spending their increasingly thin dollars there. Apparently Target has lost about nine *billion* dollars so far. So Target has decided to move their displays of child-grooming-friendly products further back in the store where they’ll be less conspicuous. This, supposedly, is in response to threats to the stores, products and employees from customers who don;t like those products.
But now they’re getting threats from the *other* side… bomb threats from weirdos ticked off that Target is now attempting to appease right wingers.
You know who’s not getting bomb threats from *either* side? Companies that didn’t delve into goofy identity politics in the first place. There might be a lesson there.
Utah Target Evacuated After Reports of Trans Extremists Threatening to Bomb Multiple Target Locations for Removing Satanic Groomer Products
May 232023
… that the market for them is being filled by non-white people. There was the “white supremacist” Mexican, and now this guy who was supposed to have tried to ram his U-Haul into the White House:
19-year-old Missouri man arrested in U-Haul crash at White House security barriers
U.S. Park Police on Tuesday identified the driver as Sai Varshith Kandula, 19, of Chesterfield, Missouri.
That’s a weird name for a Whitey McWhiteGuy.
This is Sai Varshith Kandula, the Missouri man who drove a U-Haul into the White House gates
The media is referring to him as a “white supremacist” after authorities found a Nazi flag in the vehicle
Just wanted to share his driver’s license photo
PC: @karol pic.twitter.com/15PgcmsGTz
— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) May 23, 2023
NEW: Investigators pulled what appears to be a Nazi flag out of the U-Haul, but they haven't provided any further details.
Here's what we know: https://t.co/cXt81Ji2NA pic.twitter.com/jBsb1uPJA3
— Troy Pope (@troycpope) May 23, 2023
Behold, modern “journalism:”
19 year old who rammed White House barrier threatened president
News of the arrest just feet from the White House comes amid a climate of fear and hostility as Republicans continue to demonize diversity programs while downplaying the threat of white supremacist violence.
Yeah. *THAT’s* the big problem plaguing society… white supremacy that’s so
May 212023
History is *filled* with astonishingly bad ideas. And who would have guessed that some of the worst would come out of collectivist totalitarian systems like Nazi Germany?
The Case of The Radioactive Toothpaste
Curiously, the toothpaste in question was filled with Radium, the radioactive element of choice for insane and/or stupid product manufacturers in the early 20th century, but Thorium. Why Thorium? Well… “why not” seems to have been the answer.
May 192023
So the latest internet distraction is the case of a white pregnant nurse who was declared a “racist” and a “Karen” because she tried to use her White Privilege to steal a bicycle from some black guys, and get the cops called on them to get them killed. Shock of all shocks, it turns out that that narrative was in fact a lie; the guys stole the bike from *her* and filmed her and released a video in order to smear her.
How the fraudulent narrative got going:
This is unacceptable! A white woman was caught on camera attempting to STEAL a Citi Bike from a young Black man in NYC. She grossly tried to weaponize her tears to paint this man as a threat. This is EXACTLY the type of behavior that has endangered so many Black men in the past! pic.twitter.com/CLUMNzjSDY
— Ben Crump (@AttorneyCrump) May 15, 2023
How it’s going:
NYC hospital ‘Karen’ paid for Citi Bike at center of viral fight with black man: lawyer https://t.co/VZ07f7iW7t pic.twitter.com/IuHBgJ8GTr
— New York Post (@nypost) May 18, 2023
She has apparently lost her job and been chased out of her home due to threats from the usual mob. A Gofundme has been set up to generate some living expenses… presumably, after her lawyer gets done reaming her former employer, she’ll be set for a good long time, but that will probably take a while.
Help Sarah Comrie fight being branded a “Karen”
Now here’s where I’m spit down the middle. The story as related above, if that was the sum total of it, would make Sarah the aggrieved party and fully worthy of sympathy. But this is what’s written on the Gofundme:
My name is Bob Roe, and this past Saturday, my niece, Sarah Comrie, a Physicians Assistant at Bellevue, became embroiled in a much-publicized incident with a Citibike that unfairly painted her as a racist “Karen.” The facts have since proven this is a lie, but the damage has been done. In fact, Sarah is a dedicated healthcare worker who is six months pregnant. She holds racial justice and equity dear, and has dedicated her life to serving NYC’s most challenged individuals. She does not wish to become a cause celebre, but the legal bills to save her livelihood and her reputation obviously are mounting. Please help!
Ummm… She holds racial justice and equity dear
Does she now. If that’s the case… she just got a good dose of racial justice and equity. She got what she holds dear. This would seem to make her about as sympathetic as the proud mayor of a “Sanctuary City” getting upset about all the buses of migrants showing up.
Now, I don’t know. Perhaps her uncle just made that up, spewing the sort of virtue signalling that far too many people think needs spewing in the futile hope of staving off the unthinking hordes of protestors. After Bud Light and Target and Ford and Miller Lite, I have lost the last little bit of patience I have for this nonsense.
