Back in the Good Old Days of above-ground nuclear testing, a series of solid propellant smokey-trailed rockets would be launched just before detonation. They would leave vertical trails in the sky near the detonation. The video below explains just what they were for, as well as some of the physics of the detonation itself… the radiation front and the shock front. It’s interesting.
The Supreme Court could hand down a decision any day now in National Association for Gun Rights v. City of Naperville, a case that could legalize assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in all 50 states.
“Assault weapons:” Normal semi-automatic rifles
“High-capacity magazines:” the standard capacity magazines that come with the gun
Most of the article, apart form the above bit of Scare Text, is pretty straightforward. However, there’s this bizarre bit:
And there is good reason to fear that this Court could, at the very least, decide to make semiautomatic assault rifles legal throughout the United States.
“Fear:” a funny way to spell “hope.”
Anyway, “National Association for Gun Rights v. City of Naperville” is on the Supreme Court “Shadow Docket,” which means they could issue a ruling without the usual trouble of oral hearings. This would speed things up a *lot.*
The concept of a Shadow Docket is a bit strange, and one I’m not entirely sure I’m entirely behind. However, I would accept any Shadow Docket ruling *IF* that ruling came down in favor of rolling back government power, impositions on the citizens or curtailments of rights. If s Shadow Docket ruling was in favor of the government, then it should automatically be set aside in favor of a full court proceedings.
The James Webb Space Telescope recently took a shot of deep space, showing a multitude of galaxies lensed *spectacularly.* Full-rez version at the link.
https://esawebb.org/images/potm2303a/
That view is *littered* with lensing, especially on the right.
And dubious reliability… and dubious manufacturing quality. Kentucky Ballistics tests a knife-gun from the 1980s.
Every now and then I see posts, tweets, comments, etc. mentioning that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has a net worth over a billion dollars. For a comedian to be that rich, especially when his nation is gettign bombed into gravel, is suspicious to say the least. The implication, of course, is that there is financial chicanery goign on… likely American tax dollars being funneled directly into his pockets.
But as with so many Interesting Stories, this appears to be complete BS.
An article from Forbes:
In short, he’s nowhere near a billionaire. Forbes estimates he’s worth $20 to $30 million, which is a surprisingly high amount. But there is a fair explanation for that:
His main asset: an estimated 25% stake in Kvartal 95, a group of companies that produce humorous shows, which he transferred to his partners after being elected president, though he’ll likely regain his shares after leaving office. Kvartal 95 produced and owns the Servant of the People series, a popular political comedy starring Zelensky as a Ukrainian high school teacher who is elected president. Netflix, which previously streamed the show between 2017 and 2021, snapped up the rights again in March. With estimated revenues of $30 million annually, Forbes Ukraine values Zelensky’s stake at $11 million.
He was an entertainer, and prior to the war had a goodly stake in an entertainment company. This makes sense.
If there is evidence that he’s substantially richer than that, in the “Russian Oligarch” category, I’m sure the world would be interested to see it. But “evidence” has to be more than the say-so of some Russian talking head.
Interesting times *here* and interesting times forthcoming. In the past day or so Texas has seen a mass shooting with 8 dead, and an SUV *apparently* intentionally rammed a group of “migrants” at a bus stop, killing at least 7. In both cases it appears that the killer was a narrative-busting Hispanic male. In the former case, the shooter has been ID’ed as one Mauricio Garcia… and HERE the narrative is being spun that this Hispanic guy, who had a prominently displayed tattoo for the “tango blast” Hispanic prison gang, was a white supremacist and a neo-Nazi. In the latter case the suspect has been arrested but not yet identified, but a potato-cam video of him being arrested *appears* to show a Hispanic guy, though that’s uncertain.
With hundreds of thousands to potentially *millions* of illegal aliens preparing to invade in the coming days and weeks, expect this sort of thing to only increase. You’ll get a vast increase in third-world cartel members in the US here to sow chaos, and who knows how many native Americans losing their minds and going buggo. When you couple that with the Just In Time For Summer deaths of a nutjob on a subway train in Manhattan and a thief in Oakland, BLM and related activists are getting ready to start up another summer of burning cities to the ground. Stock up on essentials while you can; if you live in cities, your favorite stores may well be ashes and bits of broken glass before you know it.
UPDATE: A photo reportedly of the SUV driver:
He has multiple Rio Grande Valley Tango Blast gang tattoos. From bottom lower left RGV for Rio Grande Valley, above the R Valluco, above the V is the 956 area code. above either side of the RGV block letters are the two palm trees. And those are just the ones I can see. pic.twitter.com/rqAf0UssbB
— 🍊 🍊 🍊 🍊 MrsLibertyBelle pronouns: bad/bitch (@MrsLibertyBell1) May 8, 2023
In 1983 “Science Digest” ran an article that 13-year-old me lost his tiny little mind over. Illustrated by Rick Sternbach, designer of, among other Star Trek vehicles and artifacts, the USS Voyager, it described a series of possible means of interstellar travel. While the physics and engineering of some of them have proven dodgy in the years since (the Bussard ramjet has serious problems with the proposed magnetic fiend, the Enzmann starship has turned out to not be as well thought out as many had assumed, etc.), it remains a tantalizing glimpse of what might be. The article has been scanned in full color and made available to APR Patrons/subscribers at the above-$10 level.
If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program. Back issues are available for purchase by patrons and subscribers.
So, here are a young couple reacting to the movie “Apollo 13.” Nothing particularly noteworthy, except to the likes of me: they didn’t know how it was going to end. The public schools may well teach kids to hate western civ and to think the US was built by slaves and to count an uncountable number of imaginary genders, but actual history? None of that.
The AI apocalypse has just been made inevitable:
How is a woman of no intelligence going to save us from artificial intelligence? The only possibility i can think of is that once a suspected threatening AGI is produced, the CIA/FBI/NSA/USSF/NASA will plop Harris down in front of it and have her begin to babble her incoherent nonsense in the hopes that the machine will do like Landru or Nomad and burst into flames, it’s processors driven past the the point of incandescence trying to make sense of her gibberish.
The funniest Italian-Iranian pro-life right wing comedian you’ll probably see today: