Bandersnatch 2024
GnuBreed 2024
Captain Hate 2023
moon_over_vermont 2023
westminsterdogshow 2023
Ann Wilson(Empire1) 2022 Dave In Texas 2022
Jesse in D.C. 2022 OregonMuse 2022
redc1c4 2021
Tami 2021
Chavez the Hugo 2020
Ibguy 2020
Rickl 2019
Joffen 2014
AoSHQ Writers Group
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published.
Contact OrangeEnt for info: maildrop62 at proton dot me
Howdy, Y'all! Welcome to the wondrously fabulous Gun Thread! As always, I want to thank all of our regulars for being here week in and week out, and also offer a bigly Gun Thread welcome to any newcomers who may be joining us tonight. Howdy and thank you for stopping by! I hope you find our wacky conversation on the subject of guns 'n shooting both enjoyable and informative. You are always welcome to lurk in the shadows of shame, but I'd like to invite you to jump into the conversation, say howdy, and tell us what kind of shooting you like to do!
Holy Shitballs! How in the ever-loving Hell did it get to be November? Did everyone survive Halloween? Any hauntings at the range?
With that, step into the dojo and let's get to the gun stuff below, shall we?
FUNdamentals
So we had a fair amount of fundamentals focus going on at the TX MoMe. Lots of individualized instruction on the handgun range and some very good shooting back on the rifle range. Our pal and host extraordinaire Rancher Bob shares a look at how some of these rifle targets looked afterward. For those not attending, we had targets at 50, 100, 200, 300, 500, 750 and 1000 yards.
300 yds - lots of hits on the target
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500 yards, some nice groups here
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750 yards - somebody using a shotgun?
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1000 yds - three grouped close to center - very nicely done!
All in all, not bad shooting for a bunch of morons! Nicely done! All y'all should be proud of yourselves.
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Guns of the Horde
Guess who bought a new AR upper! Go ahead! Guess!
Why, it;s none other than our pal CBD who is out there buying uppers!
Oh look! Another gun I don't need, but really, really want! But I have an excuse; Weasel made me get it.
That's a White Oak Varmint Upper with a 24" barrel. And if you look carefully you will see that ejects on the correct...left...side! Yup! They make left-hand uppers, which is very nice, because depending on the load and how the rifles are gassed, the ejected shells get mighty close to my face. The lead time was supposed to be six-eight weeks, which was a miserable bit of news to get from White Oak, but they built it and shipped it in just a couple of weeks. And when it arrived and I stripped it to check a couple of things -- like was the gas key staked properly, and was the barrel nice and tight -- I discovered why they have a good reputation. Everything was exactly as it should be. It was even lubed well, although I run my ARs dripping wet, so it got some more oil before I reassembled it. I also noticed that they had test fired it, which is a nice touch.
I put it on a lower with a good trigger (Timney), but eventually I will build a dedicated lower, because it is sort of a specialized rifle and I will hopefully get better accuracy with an adjustable stock and a rifle-length buffer and spring. But for now? The carbine-length stuff worked just fine when I sighted it in at my little 25-yard range.
I shot about 40 rounds of 77 grain .223, when all I really needed was about 10 rounds to get it on paper. Because it was fun! Even contorting myself on a shooting position designed for pistols, it was a hoot to shoot a long-barreled rifle in a caliber that has seen shorter and shorter barrels on the market. The first round was on paper, so I knew that I got sort of close to maybe mounting the scope halfway decently. I know there are 93-step processes for mounting a scope, but all I did was make sure the upper was level, then I carefully leveled the scope as I slowly tightened the rings...checking the level after each round until I reached the specified tightness.
Next step? A 100 yard range!
And that's where everything fell apart...sort of. The eye relief and stock length (I put an adjustable stock on the lower) were way off because I had adjusted them while standing. So when I got behind the rifle on the bench I had to contort and squish and do all sorts of stuff that made the range babes run for the hills! Oh...my rear bag, which fit my other ARs perfectly, was a little low. What a mess.
But the rifle is very accurate, and that made it a very satisfying trip in spite of my own-goal with the rifle set-up. My best was a 0.45 MOA three shot group, and I had a couple of five-shot groups nicely under 1.0 MOA, all with commodity 77 grain ammo!
I learned a bunch of lessons, but they can be distilled down to: "Test your set-up before you go to the range!" I'm not complaining though. I shot an accurate rifle on a gorgeous autumn day, chatted with the friendly range officer (There is one asshole at this range), and had a great time.
And the best part is that I have to go back when I fix my set-up! First World Problem?
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Basic Handgun Cleaning
These videos should give you an introduction to the basics of handgun cleaning.
Revolver
Semi-AutoPistol
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Colt Python v. S&W Model 686
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'Jer' Sez:: Don't Do This
So don't do it.
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Zeroing Red Dots
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Welcome Gerdie!
FSJ's new little sister has a name! Gertrude, or Gerdie for short. Here they announce the arrival of the mailman!
PROTIP: Sound on LOW
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Oil: Synthetic v. Regular
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Seems Ill-Advised
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It Came From Beneath The Sea!
Q: Weasel, did it come from beneath the sea?
A: Well yes, evidently it did.
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Musical Interlude
Here is John Lee Hooker, Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones with "Boogie Chillen'"
Cigar of the Week
This week our pal Diogenes scores again with this excellent review of the H Upmann AJ Fernandez
I have said it before, you cannot go wrong with H Upmann cigars. The H Upmann AJ Fernandez is no exception. The company describes it as a "historic" Cuban-legacy brand with a fresh blend drawn from an Ecuador Sumatra wrapper leaf and a hearty interior of premium Dominican and Nicaraguan long-filler tobaccos.
Yeah;yeah;yeah, blah, blah...
Marketing guys. Annoying aren't they? But this part hits the nail: "The result is a medium to full-bodied profile of cedar, nuts, coffee bean, and oak with hints of pepper from the first draw to the last."
In my experience I have found that the first time you put any cigar to your mouth, you get the immediate taste of the tobacco and all the more subtle notes are there as well. Then, as you ease into the middle of the cigar, they mellow out into a blend with the smoke and overall taste of the stick. The AJ Fernandez hits you with the cedar and pepper right from the start and those flavors do not diminish. This can be off-putting to some but for most cigar smokers, it is a fine way to stay focused on the cigar, and to enjoy the flavor of whatever you may be enjoying with it. In my case, a generous dollop of Aberlour single malt. Additionally, I found, in my cigar at least, the coffee flavor ebbed and flowed with the smoke. I thought that was kinda cool and very pleasant.
Definitely a medium to full bodied smoke, they run about $10 each. Given that, it is a smoke you may "want" to have vice want to "try." But either way, you will likely enjoy it.
Excellent, Diogenes! Thank you!
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Here are some different online cigar vendors. You will find they not only carry different brands and different lines from those brands, but also varying selections of vitolas (sizes/shapes) of given lines. It's good to have options, especially if you're looking for a specific cigar.
A note about sources. The brick & mortar/online divide exists with cigars, as with guns, and most consumer products, with respect to price. As with guns - since both are "persecuted industries", basically - I make a conscious effort to source at least some of my cigars from my local store(s). It's a small thing, but the brick & mortar segment for both guns and tobacco are precious, and worth supporting where you can. And if you're lucky enough to have a good cigar store/lounge available, they're often a good social event with many dangerous people of the sort who own scary gunz, or read smart military blogs like this one. -rhomboid
Anyone have others to include? Perhaps a small local roller who makes a cigar you like? Send me your recommendation and a link to the site!
Please note the new and improved protonmail account gunthread at protonmail dot com. An informal Gun Thread archive can be found HERE. Future expansion plans are in the works for the site Weasel Gun Thread. If you have a question you would like to ask Gun Thread Staff offline, just send us a note and we'll do our best to answer. If you care to share the story of your favorite firearm, send a picture with your nic and tell us what you sadly lost in the tragic canoe accident. If you would like to remain completely anonymous, just say so. Lurkers are always welcome!
That's it for this week - have you been to the range?
As we go deeper and deeper into glorious fall (or not...see below), the pull of that wonderful cultural imperative to stew and braise gets more and more powerful
But don't forget hearty soups! When made well, and that means with lots of meat and other toothsome stuff, they can be immensely satisfying and filling. And even better, most soups freeze really well, so make a big batch and enjoy the contentment of knowing that there is a great meal in the freezer for a rainy or snowy day!
My favorite soup is probably chicken and hominy with tons of roasted tomatillos. It's really a stew, but I'm going to call it a soup just because. Typical Mexican spicing, with the addition of mirepoix and a ridiculous amount of hominy. I modified the original recipe a lot, because it called for chicken breasts, and that's just silly. Thighs rule!
I saw that on the menu at a pleasant Italian restaurant in the Philadelphia suburbs. I get that there are lots of people who don't like the bite of alcohol and would prefer something that is on the sweet side. But...that's really pushing it.
Although I'll bet with a little work it could be an interesting drink, and not just a sugar bomb.
Speaking of Pennsylvania! Scrapple! This was at breakfast the next morning, also in the 'burbs. Nice and big too! And crispy. It was quite delicious, and much better than the sad and embarrassing version that I usually find in Philadelphia proper.
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I bought that last month because I had never heard of it, and really, that's how one finds good bourbons that aren't stupidly priced. But it was crap. Oaky, dusty, without any of the sweet balance that those flavors need to make a well rounded bourbon.
On the other hand, the older brat tried it three weeks after I opened it and said that it really wasn't bad! I wonder whether that little bit of oxidation was enough to improve it?
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I'm playing around with growing garlic, because I like garlic. Garlic is a good thing. And I like vampire movies too, so having a good supply of garlic on hand makes perfect sense to me.
But we had a spell of unseasonably warm weather, and the damned stuff sprouted! Hell. The books say it's going to be fine, but still...
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I was at Costco a few weeks ago and bought the smallest pack of Halloween candy they had...the 10 pounder!
Dildo, why did you do that? You didn't have any trick-or-treaters last year, or the year before (I think).
Because hope springs eternal! And I like candy. I have a pretty significant sweet tooth, although every year I tell myself that THIS year I will control it. And every year I don't.
This pack even had one of my old-time favorites...a "Hundred Grand" bar!
Nope....nobody came by this year. Yet that bag is half empty! I wonder what happened.
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We are in tomato hell, so beware. And send me garlic that isn't grown in heavy metals and human waste in China, well-marbled hanger steaks and elk chops to: cbd dot aoshq at gmail dot com.
Who are those poor deluded souls We know who shake their Manhattans! These are the same people who drink fine bourbon with coke, and probably shake red wine with ice too.
$1,200 for a bottle of bourbon is just stupid, insulting, and a ghastly affront to most people's palates and wallets. I think the sweet spot is $40-$60 for excellent and interesting bottles, and bumping that to $100 gets you an incremental improvement in quality, but nothing mind-blowing. More than that and I think you are paying for hype and rarity, which may look good in your liquor cabinet, but doesn't translate to more quality in the bottle.
The problem...or the solution...is to buy lots of bourbon, take tasting notes, and eventually arrive at your favorites! It should take forty of fifty years, but it is worth it!
Yup...I buy ketchup in 3-packs. Not because I use it as a condiment...I don't. I make a very nice barbecue sauce whose base is ketchup, and because I am a cheap bastard, why not get enough for a whole year's worth?
But getting the last bit of ketchup out of the container is a mess, because while the top is conveniently wide and flat so that the bottle can sit upside down in the refrigerator, the label does not conform to the upside-down position, and the symmetry of the world would be all akilter if the bottle position and the label do not match.
Are We In The Endgame Of The Ukraine Fiasco? Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, And Boeing Hardest Hit!
—CBD
What a shock! Russia is slowly grinding up Ukraine's resources and army, which should surprise exactly nobody with two neurons to rub together.
This isn't an unexpected twist either. Russia is almost five times the size of Ukraine by population, and 10 times the size by GDP. And in a war in which both sides are using roughly the same tactics and strategy, the larger country will have the advantage.
The West is busily sending its own stocks of advanced weaponry to Ukraine, but the results are resoundingly disappointing. And that shouldn't be a surprise. The Ukrainian army is by now mostly conscripts, and advanced weaponry wielded by a barely-trained army may provide a modest advantage, but not a resounding one.
October of 2024 was the most militarily successful month for Russia since July of 2022. After months of sustained pressure, and mostly stagnant front lines, Russian troops have broken through and made significant gains in the Donbas region of Ukraine. According to the New York Times, Russian forces have secured more than 160 square miles there, and are capturing strategic towns along the way.
It seems as though the next goal for Russians in the Donbas is to take the strategic rail town, Pokrovsk, which would seriously inhibit Ukraine's ability to resupply its forces in the region. Encirclement of this strategic city is likely as Ukraine has likely lost Selydove this week, a city which is only about 20 miles south of Pokrovsk.
It is tempting to assume that the West's technological advantage over Russian weaponry will save the day for the kleptocrats in Kiev (Kkyyeeevv?), much like the Israeli technological advantage over the terrorists in Iran, Gaza, Lebanon, and elsewhere. But those Israeli soldiers are very well trained, are drawn from a technologically advanced country, and are immensely patriotic. And most of all, the Israeli battle doctrine rarely calls for set battles on defined fronts, preferring to bring force to bear only after developing good intelligence and preparing the battle space. Ukraine does not have that luxury, or possibly even the ability.
Sadly, the West is quite happy to fight to the last Ukrainian soldier, even when the reality is that Russia will probably hold some of Ukraine regardless of future battles. Absent NATO troops and WWIII, is there any rational scenario that ends with a Russian withdrawal to the status quo ante bellum?
One of the many flaws in American and Western foreign policy is the inability to understand the other side. The military theorist Liddell Hart wrote about understanding "the other side of the hill," which is nothing more than what and why the other side is thinking.
The Russian psyche is not complicated. Why does the West not understand that an expansion of NATO to the borders of Russia is a direct challenge to the Russian bear? Fomenting political revolution in a country on Russia's border is a threat in the minds of the Russian political class and, probably, in the minds of its people. This goes back to at least 2008, when George Bush offered NATO membership to Ukraine and Georgia. The Obama administration had a hand in the 2014 Ukrainian revolution that got rid of Victor Yanukovych in favor of a more western oriented president.
How would America respond if Russia did the same thing in Mexico?
This is not an argument in support of Putin and his thuggish behavior and policies, but it is a recognition that in the absence of a clear strategic necessity for America, perhaps the best policy would be, "a pox on both their houses!"
Sunday Morning Book Thread - 11-03-2024 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]
—Open Blogger
Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading. Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material. As always, pants are required, unless you are wearing these pants...
So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?
Did you remember to set your clocks back last night?
NOTE: I know there's something important going on Tuesday, but let's keep the discussion focused on BOOKS and READING...CBD will be along in a few hours with a political thread. Thanks!
Last week's pumpkin library featuring LEGO minifigs inspired me, so I looked for similar pictures and found the one above. Not bad. It looks like it depicts a writer working at his computer and he's having a "EUREKA!" moment. It's a bit hard to see, but one of the books on his desk is Dune by Frank Herbert.
MORE ON THE FEMALE DISPARITY IN THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY
The YouTuber above claims that the dominance of women in the publishing industry in the U.K. and in America has become "farcical." It's true that publishing was dominated by men for a long, long time, and that did lead to the overabundance of male authors during that time. However, in the past couple decades, the pendulum has swung quite a bit in the other direction. Now, straight, white male authors will be relegated to the bottom of the pile when editors are selecting manuscripts for review.
When men dominated the industry, I suspect they looked down on female authors mostly through a combination of ignorance and arrogance, with some misogyny in there as well, as they couldn't believe that women could write as well as men (despite decades of evidence to the contrary). I don't think there was outright *hatred* of female authors though. Nowadays, there does seem to be a deliberate *malice* targeting straight white male authors to prevent them from succeeding in the traditional publishing marketplace. The result is what you might expect. More and more men will try their hand at independent publishing or alternate publishing houses, which is easy to do now thanks to platforms like Amazon, Smashwords, and Substack.
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READING LIST FOR THE NEXT 30 YEARS
How many of us could plan out our reading activities for the next 30 years? I admire the dedication and determination of both this YouTuber and the man who inspired him, Gustave Doré.
I do have a "bucket list" of sorts when it comes to reading, much of which I was able to accomplish this year before I hit a milestone birthday, which was nice. I still have several hundred books in my personal library that I need to read in addition to the books I'm expecting to receive this holiday season before January. And I'm pretty sure the library in which I work (but do not work for) is planning a book sale in the next few weeks. They usually have one in November. Naturally, *when* that happens, I'll fill y'all in on my book haul...
MORON RECOMMENDATIONS
With all my science fiction and fantasy reading I've been neglecting my history jones, so it's on to Love to Love You Bradys: the Bizarre Story of The Brady Bunch Variety Hour. I caught Susan Olsen on a podcast talking about it and knew I had to check it out. Apart from riffs such as "The Simpson Family Smile-Time Variety Hour", it's been justifiably relegated to the ash heap of TV history. Says Susan, "I believe this show's time has arrived! With the nostalgic love for the horror that was the 70's aesthetic, there is no more garish a Technicolor display than The Brady Bunch Variety Hour. Bring it out to the light of day! We mustn't forget it happened. For we who survived, and for future generations."
I never tuned in as a kid; even then, I had standards. I was not surprised to learn that the spliff-yellowed hands of Sid and Marty Krofft were instrumental in bringing it to horrifying fruition.
"You just have to get stoned and watch it because it all makes sense when you're stoned." --- writer Bruce Vilanch
I was charmed to learn that the cast genuinely loved working with each other and that's one of the reasons they agreed to do it (and of course money).
Posted by: All Hail Eris, Cat Slave at October 27, 2024 09:03 AM (kpS4V)
Comment: From reading the Wikipedia page on this show, it sounds like it was a crazy idea that was too ahead of its time and never given a chance...Kind of like the Star Wars Holiday Special.
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I'm on my continuing Joe Abercrombie streak. I'm on The Trouble with Peace which is just as dystopian and depressing as all of the other books in the series but with some good characters.
The girlbossing is strong in this series but alas...they aren't Mary Sue characters at least. The supreme girlboss in this series spent the majority of the first book eating shit sandwiches (literally) so I'll give it a pass. And her girlbossing isn't in a physical/combat way. In fact there was a great scene where she was practicing fencing with the best knight in the country and she was sick and tired of him holding back and taking it easy on him - her father granted permission for the knight to show her what the real world is like and she was instantly regretting that decision. Her talents lie in manipulation, business sense and cold-hearted ruthlessness...using her money and sex to get what she wants.
Posted by: Defenestratus at October 27, 2024 09:26 AM (SGyXu)
Comment: It's nice to see instances where female characters may appear to be a "girlboss" in some circumstances, but also show key weaknesses in other areas. That's what makes a well-balanced character regardless of gender. Character development is important, so I am OK with female characters who are badass at the end of the story, but who go through a lot of struggle to get to that point.
As an example, Jame from P.C. Hodgell's Chronicles of the Kencyrath is a supremely dangerous young woman in hand-to-hand combat (she was trained by a 3,000-year-old grandmaster) but is laughably incompetent--at first--when she attempts to use any other weapon. It takes her months of constant practice and training before she becomes remotely proficient with any other weapon. Like the character in Joe Abercrombie's series, Jame uses her *other* skills in manipulation and cold-blooded ruthlessness to resolve situations that cannot be solved through strength of arms alone.
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For those interested in non-fiction supernatural horror, let me offer Diary of an American Exorcist by Stephen Rossetti. It's a fascinating book that isn't really scary, but does highlight the reality of spiritual warfare.
A Family Guide to Spiritual Warfare by Kathleen Beckman also has some scary case studies, and while I enjoyed it, she does tend to repeat herself and I found myself skimming ahead a bit because yes, I get the value of prayer, etc.
What's interesting about both books is how mundane evil is. No need for head-spinning and pea soup eruptions - a lot of oppression and possession is just terrible life choices or cruelty that we write off as a personality quirk.
The books also highlight how people can be drawn into evil simply by assuming the spirit world doesn't exist, so cool goth tattoos or Santa Muerte decorations are just fashion statements.
To put it another way, you may not be interested in the spirit world, but it's very interested in you!
Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at October 27, 2024 10:25 AM (llXky)
Comment: I don't know why, but I have become much, much more aware of a spiritual world around us over the past few years. It has led me on a journey back to Christ, so I can't complain. Still, it's pretty obvious to anyone who opens their spiritual eyes that a battle for our very souls is taking place all around the world. The Devil is powerful and can easily sway the weak-minded or weak-willed to his cause, especially those who actively reject a belief in spiritual matters. We will see on Tuesday if the Devil has finally "won" the soul of America, or if there is a Divine Plan to take America back to what it should be.
More Moron-recommended reading material can be found HERE! (1000+ Moron-recommended books!)
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WHAT I'VE BEEN READING THIS PAST WEEK:
After reviewing some of OregonMuse's old Book Threads, I thought I'd try something a bit different. Instead of just listing WHAT I'm reading, I'll include commentary as well. Unless otherwise specified, you can interpret this as an implied recommendation, though as always your mileage may vary.
Watchers by Dean Koontz
What would you do if you found a golden retriever that was as smart as a human? As I've mentioned before, Dean Koontz's favorite animal is the dog and his favorite breed is the golden retriever. This story is, at it's core, a heart-warming tale of a smart, friendly dog that helps two people find each other in love even as he is adopted by them. Being a Dean Koontz story, there is a much darker angle as the dog is not alone--he's being stalked by an evil, bloodthirsty, killing machine created in the same lab. It hates the dog with unholy fury and will do anything to kill the dog. Chasing both of them is the United States government in the form of NSA agents who are out of their depth, but who are also the only ones who know what is actually going on here.
Dean Koontz has an afterword in the book where he says that Watchers is by far his favorite book of the ones he had written until that point (2003) and that it was also among the easiest to write. He experienced "narrative flow" where the words just seems to fly onto the page.
Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife
I'm taking a short break from reading fiction to re-read this book I picked up nearly 25 years ago (it came out in 2000). It's a short history of the number zero, which is pretty unique among all of the numbers. The ancient Greeks were terrified of it. The ancient Egyptians didn't even know it existed, as their geometrical system didn't require zero for their needs. Without zero (and it's counterpart infinity), we would not have the highly technological civilization we have today. Interesting read for the layperson with little-to-no prior mathematical knowledge required.
Saga of the Forgotten Warrior Book 1 - Son of the Black Sword by Larry Correia
Book 5 of Larry Correia's Saga of the Forgotten Warrior is supposed to arrive here on Tuesday (Election Day!). So I need a bit of a refresher. I'm re-reading the first four books in the series. According to Larry, Book 5 was supposed to be the last book, but his editor convinced him to split it up into two books as it was going to be quite lengthy. I guess I'll have to wait even longer for the conclusion. *sigh*
The 9000 series CPUs were - at their launch two months ago - overpriced for their performance relative to the existing 7000 series. They are actually great on some server-oriented tasks, but the improvement since the last generation for desktop tasks and gaming is relatively small.
AMD has adjusted the pricing to match. the 9900X is 6% faster than the 7900X on PassMark, for example, and now costs 8% more.
For me, good enough. That will be my next CPU.
If you're more interested in games or have a specific workload that loves large caches, the 9800X3D is due out this week and should also deliver great performance.
The interior is modular and can be re-arranged as the mission demands, but it is vastly, um, vaster than the Apollo lander, something like ten times the size. It would not be exactly roomy with twenty astronauts packed in, but it has a bathroom which is an automatic win over Apollo.
That's the exciting part. That's a lot for a monitor these days, but it's not a lot for a professional-class 5K display. It's close to twice the price of the 4K model, but also has close to twice the number of pixels.
It's taken a very long time for 5K displays to become affordable. I have the 2015 Retina iMac (which I don't use much anymore) which has an integrated 5K display, but equivalent displays for PCs have been scarce and horribly expensive.
Because they already have a billion dollars of investors' money to burn. If they can wait out another couple of industry implosions like the CrowdStrike fiasco, they could triple the price.
Men Are Just Happier People! What do you expect from such simple creatures? Your last name stays put. The garage is all yours. Wedding plans take care of themselves. Chocolate is just another snack. You can never be pregnant. You can wear a white T-shirt to a water park. You can wear NO shirt to a water park.
Car mechanics tell you the truth. The world is your urinal. You never have to drive to another gas station restroom because this one is just too icky. You don't have to stop and think of which way to turn a nut on a bolt. Wrinkles add character. Wedding dress - $5,000. Tux rental - $100. People never stare at your chest when you're talking to them.
New shoes don't cut, blister, or mangle your feet. One mood all the time. Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds flat. You know stuff about tanks. A five-day vacation requires only one suitcase. You can open all your own jars.
You get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness. If someone forgets to invite you, he or she can still be your friend. Your underwear is $8.95 for a three-pack. Two pairs of shoes are more than enough. You almost never have strap problems in public. You are unable to see wrinkles in your clothes.
Everything on your face stays its original colour. The same hairstyle lasts for years, maybe decades. You only have to shave your face and neck. You can play with toys all your life. One wallet and one pair of shoes - one color for all seasons. You can wear shorts no matter how your legs look.
You can 'do' your nails with a pocket knife. You have freedom of choice concerning growing a mustache... You can do Christmas shopping for 25 relatives on December 24 in 25 minutes. No wonder men are happier!
The Presidential election of 2024 was too close to call. Neither Donald Trump nor Harris had enough votes to win. There was much talk about ballot recounting, court challenges, etc., but it was decided that there should be an ice fishing contest between the two candidates to determine the winner. A week-long ice fishing competition seemed to be a sportsmanlike way to settle things, and the candidate that caught the most fish at the end of the week would win the election.
After much back-and-forth discussion, it was decided that the contest would take place on a remote frozen lake in northern Wisconsin. There were to be no observers present, and both politicians were to be sent out separately on this isolated lake and return at 5 P.M. with their catch for the day to be counted and verified by a team of neutral parties.
At the end of the first day, Trump returned to the starting line, and he had 10 fish. Soon, Harris returned and had no fish. Well, everyone assumed she was just having a bad day or something and hopefully, she would catch up the next day.
At the end of the 2nd day Trump came in with 20 fish and Harris came in again with none.
That evening, the Democrats got together secretly and said to Harris, we think Trump is a low-life, cheatin' son-of-a-gun. Tomorrow, don't even bother fishing. Just spy on him and see just how he is cheating.
The next night (after Trump returns with 50 fish), the Democrats got together for the report of how the Republicans were cheating.
Harris shook her head and said, "You are not going to believe this, he's cutting holes in the ice.” (H/T Diogenes)
STOCKTON, Calif. —
A man's attempt at vigilante justice led to him mistakenly shooting at law enforcement personnel who were in the middle of a foot chase, the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office said Thursday.
Deputies were looking for the people who triggered an alarm around 1:25 a.m. at the Pick-n-Pull along Clark Drive in Stockton, the sheriff's office said. When they got to the business, deputies spotted three people and ran after them, heading west from the northeast perimeter of the property.
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They don't make commercials like this one anymore.
How to find lost objects: 6 techniques that really work
A few years ago, I lost my passport two days before a big, international trip. Getting a new passport expedited would cost hundreds of dollars. And I wasn’t sure if it would even arrive in time.
You can imagine how stressed I was. The last time I saw my passport was on my bed. I turned my room upside down to try and find it, to no avail.
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The ONT Musical Interlude & Lard Emporium
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We tell guys not to stick their d$%( into crazy. What about women? Genius Award Winner.
A female prison worker faces jail after she admitted having a fling with the murderer of law graduate Zara Aleena.
Hayley Jones, 33, pleaded guilty to misconduct in a public office over her ‘inappropriate relationship’ with Jordan McSweeney, 31, at HMP Belmarsh between March and April last year.
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Tonight's ONT has been brought to you by International Brotherhood Of ER Surgeons.
Notice: Posted with permission by someone who claims to be ace. But, it looks more like a hamster. Don't ask, don't tell.
Saturday Night Movie Thread [moviegique]: The Bad and the Beautiful (Megalopolis, Joker 2 & more)
—Open Blogger
Just as I sometimes will avoid a movie that's too over-hyped, knowing that most movies can't live up to the buzz, I occasionally will see movies that everyone is dumping on, especially if there's some conflicting or interesting angle to the criticisms.
For Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis I saw one review that said only "Free popcorn refills" and another claiming that Coppola had reached Neil Breen levels. But our very own Eris said she kinda loved it, and I knew, at a minimum, Coppola would lard the movie up with cinematic references, which appeal to humble fans of cinema such as yours truly.
I then compounded my woes by going to see Joker 2—I'm not typing out that French crap—and what I can honestly say about both films that Pitch Meeting covered both very accurately. In-between, I saw the restoration of 2006's The Fall, which is a beautiful masterpiece and it got me to thinking about how the other two films failed on fundamentals without being beautiful enough to make their flaws overlookable.
For fifty years, until the release of Star Wars in 1977, Metropolis was the science-fiction movie, and is still one of the great cinematic achievements. Even today, it impresses, and it's quite easy to forget that its underlying message, spelled out in a literal epitaph is:
“The mediator between the HAND and the BRAIN must be the HEART.”
In this case, the HAND is Communism and the BRAIN is Fascism. It's 1927 Germany, what else could they say? Nonetheless, the ham-handed messaging practically destroys this classic.
So while it is not surprising that Coppola would take that film as the germ for what would be his magnum opus, it's somewhat surprising that he would say "Only my movie is going to have EVEN MORE painfully inappropriate or inapt epitaphs."
A giant statue of Justice literally swoons in the streets of New York. Er, New Rome. Whatever.
This is not his magnum opus, mind you. But it was to have been. And as I watched, I could see glimpses of his original fever-dream, a vision of a three-day cinematic experience which chronicles the rise and fall and rise of Cesar Catalina, the architect of Megalopolis, a—well, a borough in New York, apparently.
It could've been great: Cesar would rise from the streets to power through his sheer ability culminating in evicting all the people who already lived in the place where Megalopolis was. That'd be the first movie. The second would be his struggles in getting Megalopolis built, securing financing and running afoul of city politics threatening to end his dream. The last movie would have him thwarting his enemies and achieving dream: An advanced city of...moving sidewalks. (Coppola did the writing by himself, with an assist from son Roman, and that was a mistake.)
But the first half of this movie has tremendous charm. Like the best of bad movies, it surprises you with novel ways of being bad. Cesar (Adam Driver) can stop time! This is a metaphor for creative ability, and the only bearing it has on anything is that his love interest (Nathalie Emmanuel) can see him do this.
The rules for this time-stopping are very vague, to boot.
Not weird enough? Well, Cesar carries a bunch of roses to his apartment and when he walks in, they fly off on their own.
A light-saber for nerds.
There's enough in the first third or so to keep things interesting. But then we start getting into plot, which we really didn't need and which drags the movie down.
The mixing of Shakespearean dialogue (Cesar actually does most of "To Be Or Not To Be" speech at one point) and modern vulgar slang works very poorly and most actors are not up to it. Driver actually does. It's hard not to respect him for pulling off reciting what is essentially gibberish. (The other one who manages is Aubrey Plaza, who chews the scenery and spits out the nails as Cesar's jilted lover, and the seductress of Shia LeBeouf, in a particularly porny scene.)
Fundamentally, though, the premise is based on the ultimate left-wing conceit: That a perfect environment will make perfect people. The wretched refuse that Cesar has rendered homeless are, one presumes, going to occupy Megalopolis even as, moments earlier, they threatened to burn it down.
But it's not a bad looking film. There are moments that are quite nice, visually.
It was better in Coppola's head for sure.
Joker: Folie à Deux
By comparison with Megalopolis, Joker 2 is much more successful at what it's trying to do, and also much harder to watch. The conceit of having Arthur (Joquin Phoenix) hallucinate that he's in a musical no one can see, except for Lee (Lady Gaga), who joins in it with him, is actually a clever way to avoid having to do lots of wordy emotional scenes between two crazy people. The choice of upbeat music, particularly themed around showtunes, is also a clever way to get the idea across.
And the idea is, Arthur, who's not The Joker, has a cult following that is dedicated to The Joker. Lee's attraction to him is based on him being The Joker. The world is more-or-less at his feet, if only he'll be The Joker. So our little sad sack of an anti-hero-but-also-not-really-a-hero is given the choice of being even crazier or trying to just, y'know, be himself (which is crazy enough).
This movie has a lot of the original movie's sense of style, evoking pseudo-1981, and the same miserable premise is here: watching a man struggle with his sanity in a cruel and brutal world.
This really doesn't work as entertainment. There are many, many elements of the original that deflect from the misery porn: We sort of root for Arthur. Until we're shown exactly how crazy and dangerous he is, we can kind of believe he's turning his life around. He's moving around the city, doing things. He's trying to achieve his dreams and handling his failures by hallucinating. It's something, at least.
I don't remember this scene from the movie. Maybe I blacked out, though.
Here, he goes back-and-forth between an asylum and a court room.
In a traditional musical, the song-and-dance numbers stop the action. This is also true of Joker 2, except that there was no action to stop. And the musical numbers are uncomfortable to interpret, much like if the "Singin' in the Rain" scene in Clockwork Orange was the entire movie.
I realized early on, the only way to get through the movie was going to be to really pay attention to those musical numbers. That's where the "action" was, the evolution of the relationship between Lee and Arthur was, as well as his struggle with his identity. So I wasn't bored, though I wasn't exactly enchanted, either.
The Boy hated it pretty hard. He doesn't know the songs, and found that the whole identity struggle was neutered by the fact that the movie makes it very clear early on: Arthur is not Joker. He's not wrong about this. It's almost as if the creators were afraid to give Arthur an opportunity to at least toy with being wildly evil.
I would recommend this film to even fewer people than the original. If the two films together average half-a-billion, that's still way too much.
The Fall (2006)
I have a full review up this film up from 2006, one of the first I wrote during the blogging era, and the Boy and I trundled down to catch it, thinking it was a one-night deal. (It actually got a little wider release, I guess because it's a 4K restoration.)
It's a masterpiece. Visually stunning, and using a child's perspective as creative license, the story is both whimsical and grimly serious. I had a stye when I saw it, and had forgotten it was a tearjerker. Then my eye started stinging like crazy. Besides the beauty of this film, it handles tone shifts expertly. The little girl is a little girl and prone to silly things, and the story he tells her is very silly.
She also makes childish mistakes in trying to help him kill himself. She doesn't know quite what he's doing, but she knows something is off. And the switch from the whimsical to the grave is heart-wrenching.
But it's a joyful movie overall, and well worth watching. Director Tarsem (Singh) will probably never make anything like this ever again—probably no one will. But that's okay, this is a genuine magnum opus that knows exactly what it's doing, and does it excellently.
Also Screened:
There were an assortment of movies, both bad and beautiful—actually, they were all pretty good, which isn't a huge surprise given they were all-but-two reissues of films we liked. I may review one of these for next time.
Killer Klowns From Outer Space (1988): A standard invaders-from-space story is enlivened by making the aliens literal clowns. There's an oh-so-brief suggestion that human clowns were inspired by these invaders in the past, but just enough to allow our characters to take the adventure seriously. A limited budget meant that a couple of truly great effects were left on the cutting room floor, but for '80s horror-comedy, this still shines and is very watchable and entertaining. The Chiodo brothers have been threatening a sequel for decades, and IMDB says they're in production, but I'll believe it when I see it.
Lisa Frankenstein (2024): Among the many spectacular flops of 2024, Lisa Frankenstein goes overlooked. It made less than $10M on a $13M budget, so it can't compare with either Megalopolis (less than $10M on a $120M budget) or Joker 2 (less than $60M on an alleged $200M budget), and it's also much easier to watch as a film. It's got a sort of Edward Scissorhands/Heathers feel and even takes place in 1989. The tonal shifts can make things feel uneven and I'm not sure if the ending made sense, exactly, but it already has a cult following, which is why I took the Barbarienne to see it. (I was the only XY chromosome in the place.) Written by Diablo Cody and directed by Zelda Williams, the daughter of Robin.
Ringu (1998): This horror classic is weathering a bit like the old Universal classics. It's kind of slow-moving and low-key, and suffering from its own considerable influence on the genre. It's still good and enjoyable, but the "wow" factor isn't there anymore.
Smile 2: The original Smile is far from a great movie—Jump Scare: The Movie, I think I called it—but it won both the Boy and I over for a couple of reasons. First, the people making it cared. This is someone's baby, and none of it is phoned in. Second, while the beats are mostly pretty predictable, it commits and gives us a Smile monster, so we don't have to go into the whole "well, was there REALLY a monster?" and "Maybe the real monster is the friends we made along the way!" We both had dim hopes the sequel would be able to sustain this but, by-and-large, it works well, maybe even a little better than the original. The Boy did not care for the end, which is telegraphed way early on, but is not really possible with this genre of horror. (I mentioned in my review of the first, that this is my least favorite genre of horror, and I can't say why without spoiling it. Same here.)
The Masque of the Red Death (1964): Part of Roger Corman's "Poe Cycle," pretty much the best movies he made (along with "The Intruder"), and at the height of his directorial powers. Vincent Price is a decadent Italian baron who torments his peasants and brings a pretty young girl in to seduce while he tortures her father and boyfriend. Orgies abound, and the dreaded Red Death sweeps the countryside. Price actually is an avowed Satanist here, convinced that The Devil has killed God and will spare him from the Red Death if he sacrifices enough people to it. Slow by modern standards, with beautiful costumes and sets, and "exteriors" that are (wonderfully) painted soundstages, it was refreshing and held up well.
Terrifier 3: With a $2M budget and looking to pass Joker 2 at the domestic box office with over $50M in ticket sales, this movie is an even unlikelier success than Joker. I've waxed enthusiastic about Terrifier 2, though I am no gore-hound, because I think it really transcends its own genre. Terrifier 3 is not, to my mind, as good, but it's still quite good. It feels more realistically brutal, which makes it harder to watch, but the main focus of the film is showing the aftermath of the previous series of events, which turned Lauren LaVera into a basket case. Certainly worth seeing, and maybe re-seeing, because there are a lot of interesting details. If you can stomach the gore, it's a good film.
Welcome hobbyists! Pull up a chair and sit a spell with the Horde in this little corner of the interweb. This is the mighty, mighty officially sanctioned Ace of Spades Hobby Thread.
We gave the Ace of Spades Wheel of Hobbies(TM) a spin and it landed on a theme of 3D printing for this week. Apparently the Wheel likes building things.
Are you a maker? What do you make? Fun? Functional? Fixes? How long have you done 3D printing? Tell us about your most functional project. Tell us about your least functional but most fun project.
Tell us how you got started and learned. Do you have an early success story? Do you have an early disaster story? Have you made something recently to repair something broken or improve something? Was it easier to make your own part than find and buy a part made commercially? Have you designed and built something bespoke that nobody else makes or sells? Is your 3D printer constantly working?
What equipment do you use, both hardware and software? What resources are helpful? Are you interested but paralyzed because there are SO MANY Youtube videos, websites and other resources? What questions do you have? What knowledge can the Horde help with?
Content below to get the conversation started, but looking for participation from our gray box friends. If meaningful to you, it will be meaningful to the Horde.
As per usual Hobby Thread etiquette, keep this thread limited to 3D printing. Politics and current events can be scary but can reside in threads elsewhere. Play nice. Do not be a troll and do not feed the trolls. As usual, wearing pants is optional for thread participation.
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Top photo: Cybersmythe made 3D printed nametags for attendees to the recent TX MoMe that requested them. They were useful and make a nice keepsake. Thank you!
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Blaster, the Official Explosive Ordinance Disposal Provider for the Hobby Thread, sent a few thoughts and photos:
3D Printing is a good hobby because you can use it to support your other hobbies! I started playing with RC cars during COVID. A 3D printer let me make parts that were not available otherwise. One way to use a 3D printer is download a file (commonly an .STL file) and then you just print what is on the file.
You can use a CAD program to create your own. If you wanted to match something real, you are able to make something just like it.
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Cybersmythe was also kind enough to send some thoughts and photos from his 3D printing experience:
For a long time, I resisted the temptation to get a 3D printer, mostly because I did not have anything specific that I wanted to do with them. Some of my coworkers had them and they seemed to use them mostly to make parts for their Star Wars droids and making that sort of thing does not interest me. I also was not sure that I wanted to commit a substantial amount of my limited beer money getting something and then having to spend a large amount of time fiddling with it to get it to work. Still, they sounded interesting.
Four or five years ago, I got access to a maker space at work that would 3D print anything I wanted, and I figured I would get them to print the parts for my own printer and build one. That turned into a months long ordeal. One of my coworkers suggested just going out and buying a Prusa because that would eliminate the fiddling and allow me to just print stuff. I went ahead and ordered a Prusa printer. I like my Prusa, and I got it because my friend suggested it, but it's hardly the only printer out there.
So, what sorts of things have I wound up printing? There are functional prints that help me 3D print stuff, other kinds of functional prints, and prints that are knicknacks or toys.
My dragon-loving daughter got this articulated dragon that I printed. Some of these objects look really cool with some of the more exotic filaments you can buy. There are a number of Web sites that allow you to download, sometimes for free, and sometimes for a fee, objects that you can print yourself.
As far as general functional prints go, I mostly design those myself. I made some sturdy bookends because I could not find anything that I liked to download. I also made ice funnels to allow me to fill my water bottles from the ice machines at work. Some functional prints are to help me with my other hobbies, like when I printed a case for my ham radio telegraph keyer, or the capacitance hat hub for a low band antenna.
When you download someone elses design, you use a program called a slicer to turn that 3D CAD object into the instructions, called G Code. The slicer allows you to place the objects on the build plate, a process called plating, and allows me to make different parts of the print different colors.
You can get different effects by making different choices in the slicer, but you need to make your own models if you want to do your own thing using a CAD (Computer Aided Design) program. I use FreeCAD for general use or OpenSCAD for designs that are more like simple geometric shapes.
I have had the printer for several years and have figured out enough about CAD and plating to do some simple and some not so simple prints. I do not know what I would do without it. The printer gets a lot of use.
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I like the idea of using tools to make other functional tools like 3D printing this vise:
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Entertaining and informative channel - he had me at off road Viper and land speed racer:
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Favorite Budget 3D Printer, Books, YouTubers and Podcasts from Adam Savage:
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Gridfinity? Yes, Gridfinity. Zack Freedman has inspired an army of organization. Warning - ADHD alert. Think of a record player on faster speed than usual. Lots of interesting organizational ideas, but also highlights the need for thoughtful design before building. When almost anything is possible, what will help you? I really like the microbin design at the 10:55 time stamp.
Interested but do not know where to start? Watch this video:
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Things to 3D print when you are bored:
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Running a 3D printer farm to make 3D printers:
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From Trash to Treasure: Recycle Plastic Cutlery into 3D Filament:
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Czinger 21C 3D Printed Car with Jay Leno:
TRex has seen this car in person and can confirm it is bonkers.
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3D Printing Rockets at Relativity Space:
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Did you miss the Hobby Thread last week with a Halloween traditions theme? The comments may be closed, but you can re-live the content.
Bonus content from the Mid Coast Maine Aquanuts Scuba Club courtesy of Charles (lurker in good standing). The club has an annual underwater pumpkin carving off South End Beach in Rockland, Maine. Wicked fun. Thanks Charles!
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Notable comments from last week:
Last call for now. Anyone interested in a Moron Meetup in Bavaria for 2025 Oktoberfest? If you are interested, send me a note.
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Words of wisdom:
"Because despite all our troubles, when things are grim out in that wide round world of ours, that's when it's really important to have a good hobby." Posted by: tankascribe at June 22, 2024 07:41 PM (HWxAD).
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If 3D printing is not your thing and you have trouble finding something in the content or comments that resonates with you, hijack the thread for your hobbying as you see fit. We will feature a different hobby next time. Send thoughts, suggestions and photos of your hobbying to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com. Ace of Spaces is not responsible for 3D printing projects gone wrong. You are welcome for the extra hour this evening. The bill will come due in Spring. Let the long march through the winter months begin.
Anyone in the US can sign up to get a free horse through the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, provided they have the means to store and care for it. pic.twitter.com/iSOmLfK149
Highland Cows hold the title of the oldest registered cattle breed in the world. These ancient beauties have been a part of Scottish landscapes for centuries, flaunting a variety of coat colors from ginger to brindle.pic.twitter.com/QltnaGorKC
This is Brody, a rat terrier we rescued from the Independence MO animal shelter. He's 15 years and is a cuddle bug.
It felt like things had stagnated at Sheps's over the past year or so but I think things may finally change. JJ finally got adopted and was the reason we could never bring a small dog into the mix. He found the perfect home. Then sadly Roscoe and Hope both crossed the rainbow bridge. They were our 2 invalids.
We have also begun earnest fund raising to make big improvements to Shep's including an expansion of the original building. The cost is $900,000 and we have raised about $200,000 so far. I'm hoping to sign up to volunteer very soon.
Brody is adorable! Thanks for the update about Shep's!
Great to see you sending in Brody's photo so we can root for him.
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Good morning…my screen/nic name is rocdoctom. Here is my story.
The photo is of Sheldon, the cat, and Gunnar, the lab. They are in their usual--Is it dinner time yet?—position. Sheldon came to stay with us while my sister-in-law was doing some home remodeling. Gunnar had never been around a cat so we were nervous at first, but things have gone smoothly from the first minute. They have become fast friends. Gunnar is just happy to have another four-legged companion in the house. When Sheldon left, Gunnar spent quite a bit of time searching around the house for him. And my sister-in-law says Sheldon keeps asking when he can have another sleepover.
There is quite a size difference between Sheldon and Gunnar! It is wonderful that they became such good friends! Hope that Sheldon can visit again soon.
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Good morning! Just wanted to make a contribution.
This is Winnie, the Tiny Tomboy Princess. In two weeks she is going to be eight years old and as you can see, she is happy to take over the couch for a good resting spot.
She also likes the couch in the basement.
Winnie is lovely. Thanks to our mystery contributor (NR Pax). Looks like Winnie might have some company on the couch from time to time.
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PetMoron Adjacent Animals
Encountered by Members of The Horde
From By-Tor:
Lots of scary creatures at the Chaffey College Trunk or Treat
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This is Dusty, who crossed the rainbow bridge last week.
He was rescued as an adolescent from a forest roadside in the Sierras and brought to the home of his rescuer, where attempts to find his owner were futile.
He was beloved by his family and friends and was a good watchdog. He moved to Arizona last year with his family.
He will be greatly missed, but he no longer suffers from arthritis.
Miss you, Dusty.
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BIRDS
We have had Mourning Doves in our back yard for the past few days. Sometimes quite a few. By-Tor seems to find birds in lots of places:
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This bird is too plain for me to figure out what it is. Possibly a female towhee. Maybe a house finch.
By-Tor
Any guesses?
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By-Tor was able to get close enough to this hummingbird to take this photo with his Iphone!
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Thank you for sharing your pets and other animals with us.
If you would like to send pet and/or animal stories, links, etc. for the Ace of Spades Pet Thread, the address is:
petmorons at protonmail dot com
Remember to include the nic or name by which you wish to be known when you comment at AoSHQ, or let us know if you want to remain a lurker.
Greetings, everyone! It rained a little this morning. It's been a while.
Something different in the photo above:
I was really not expecting the rose bush at my stepson's house in southeast Georgia (about 20 miles or so from Ft. Stewart) to have anything in bloom this week. I was even more surprised to see what had taken up residence:
Thanks for the posts, even though my thumbs are far from green, I enjoy the content.
We just had Halloween. Here are a couple of photos from Tony Litwin, from October 28 of last year. More, plus SCIENCE, at the link. Hope things are okay in that part of Florida.
The Temple of Bloom is like the tree of life to everyone who gardens for pollinators. It is a more compact form of Seven-Sons Flower known botanically as Heptacodium micronioides. The Temple of Bloom’s native habitat is China where its wild populations are under threat of extinction.
If you live in zones 5a to 9b however, and you are looking for butterflies, bees and hummingbirds, then this is a must-have plant. I started out with a whip of a plant 3 or 4 years ago and this year it reached 10 feet tall with several blooming branches. I am developing mine as a multi-trunked small tree that I am expecting to be about the size of a redbud or medium-sized crape myrtle. Those grown as a wide deciduous shrub, though a little wild looking, certainly have an appeal.
I mentioned the tree of life at the start and this year’s bloom was a prime example. The butterfly year was pretty incredible March through May. Then once June arrived it was miserable, excessively hot and dry. Though I had an abundance of lantanas, agastache, salvia, zinnias and gomphrena, it just failed to live up to potential. I never even saw a single hairstreak butterfly.
The Temple of Bloom erupts with fragrant white flowers in August and September. Wherever the butterflies had been hiding, they suddenly appeared. Last year it was the White M hairstreak, a lifer for me that showed up with countless others. This year Red-banded hairstreaks, and two that I hadn’t seen in years, the Great Purple hairstreak and the Olive Juniper hairstreak. Then to make it really seem like a wildlife extravaganza, the little Green Anole lizards climbed the tree for their chance at a happy meal.
Red-banded Hairstreak
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail
White M Hairstreak
Green Anole Lizzard
Red Fall Bracts, Temple of Bloom
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Ah, Nature
Hi KT,
I saw this fellow in my grapes after a light sprinkle. The dog saw him first, thankfully she left it alone. I thought it may be fun for Halloween? I hope it's not too late.
B.
Cat faced spider. We get quite a few of these this time of year as long as you don't walk through their webs.
No mixing dogs and spiders, please.
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Puttering
Decor - You can take cut pumpkins to wildlife areas for the animals. They are safe for wildlife.
You could probably take tater jack-o-lanterns, too.
This is cute. Okay after Halloween.
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Adventure
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Gardens of The Horde
What's happening in your garden?
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Hope everyone has a nice weekend.
If you would like to send photos, stories, links, etc. for the Saturday Gardening, Puttering and Adventure Thread, the address is:
ktinthegarden at g mail dot com
Remember to include the nic or name by which you wish to be known at AoSHQ, or let us know if you want to remain a lurker.
Something surprising happened to me on Wednesday, the day before Halloween.
The news cycle had just changed from hysterical declarations that "Trump hates Latinos, especially Puerto Ricans" because of a misbegotten joke by an insult comedian to "President Biden thinks Trump Supporters are garbage". That story still hasn't completely died. But on Wednesday, Biden's remarks were completely overshadowing the dramatic "closing argument" speech by Kamala Harris. Her message was mostly about how scary Donald Trump is. She seems to have adopted this theme as her final message. Other than that, the news cycles have been changing fast!
I had a doctor appointment in the morning, and on my way home, I stopped at Walmart in Selma to pick up a couple of packages of Halloween candy (chocolate), since the Halloween candy supply near where we live might not have been reliable so late.
I found a check-out stand with only one other customer and got in line. I moved his blueberries onto the conveyor and then tried to catch his attention to make sure that's what he wanted, but he seemed preoccupied. When he turned a little, I could see that he was Victor Davis Hanson!
SURPRISE!
I introduced myself and told him that sometimes I wrote about him at Ace of Spades HQ. He had a somewhat quizzical look. I probably didn't fit the image of an AoSHQ co-blogger. And I did not have my secret AoSHQ co-blogger I.D. with me. I guess I will have to do better.
We exchanged some pleasantries. I mentioned that this was a crazy week and he thought that things would calm down some after the election, though we agreed that some nuttiness would continue. He was cautiously optimistic about the election, but mentioned that the left would go crazy if they lost.
I had sometimes thought that someday I might run into VDH at Sal's Mexican Restaurant (The Mister's favorite in our region) but I had never thought I would meet him in Walmart.
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The local news on October 30 was that a ring stealing agricultural equipment in the San Joaquin Valley had been broken up. Forklifts and backhoes were the most popular items stolen. Law enforcement still gets readings from some unrecovered equipment in Mexico. The ring is reportedly connected to cartels in Mexico. These criminal rings and cartels will transport all sorts of things across the border for profit - - Both ways.
VDH was probably interested in that story, too. His deeper attention might have to wait until after the election though.
But local elections are important! Several sheriff's departments, etc. seemed to work together well on this case. Pay attention!
In the last two weeks, Kamala Harris has been trying to revive her stagnant campaign by smearing Trump as being Hitlerian and a fascist. She claims Trump is planning to put his enemies in encampments.
Yet in the modern era, it was not Trump who put large numbers of U.S. residents and citizens into “relocation camps,” but liberal Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt who sent Japanese-American citizens and residents into them.
If Harris refers to Trump’s supposed fascist policies during his prior four-year tenure, there is no such evidence.
Nonetheless, the once “joyful” Harris is ending her campaign by trafficking in lies and smears reminiscent of the Joe McCarthy era.
Many examples are given of Trump's lack of fascist activities along with fascist actions on the part of Trump's opponents.
And:
Fascists seek to control and weaponize the media. So, Facebook and Twitter both conspired with the FBI to censure news accounts favorable to Trump. The major newspapers, social media corporations, television networks, and public broadcasting systematically and continually attacked Trump, censured his supporters, and fused with his opponents.
Why then the charges of Trump the fascist and Hitler reincarnation?
Simple. Harris’s personal negatives are rising, her polls inert.
She has abandoned her prior run-out-the-clock avoidance of the media, her smiley “joy” campaign, and instead now embraces the big lie, while Joe Biden writes off Trump supporters as “garbage”.
Harris is now confirming to voters that she really can neither think nor speak well and has no consistent agenda that appeals to the middle class.
So, in final desperation, Harris is smearing Trump as a fascist, even though ironically, he has been the target of fascist machinations from her own party and supporters for nearly a decade.
I personally think that Kamala can think and speak well if she's in her "San Francisco Elite Power" environment. Or if she has a teleprompter. That's about it, though.
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On the topic of hostility of the opposition, I had (barely) mentioned to VDH an article that had come up in the comments to last week's Thread before the Gardening Thread (specifically about characterizing Trump as Hitlerian in The Atlantic and also a mention of insurrection by James Carville):
Tom Servo quoting me:
It is entirely reasonable to think that this was planned as part of a larger psy-op rolling out over several days to justify violence at some point in time if "necessary".”
Tom Servo:
They don’t actually have the command and control to launch anything that coordinated, even if some of them wish they did. There’s a great essay on substack, linked on X, by a poster calling himself
Bennett's Phylactery. His thesis is:
“We've seen a lot of Vulgar Displays of Power in the last few years (COVID, BLM, Epstein, the steal, etc). But they never seem to go anywhere, because USG is not a human institution with goals - it is a fungus.”
In other words, the radical Left is huge, and powerful, and invasive, and terrifying. But it has no intelligence, and routinely makes errors that anyone could avoid with even a little bit of thought. (Like nominating Kamala). Worth finding and reading.
This piece is by a guy who was actually cancelled in real life, so he knows that the left has power to hurt people. I think what he is saying is that the government is not prepared for an organized civil war. We're not currently at the Soviet Gulag stage. The piece is quite involved, though not long. I'm not sure he is right about everything, but there is a lot to think about in the piece. A few points that struck me:
Hearing a lot of buzz about the impending civil war on the TL, because the Deep State will “stop at nothing” to ensure that Trump does not take office.
It is certainly true that there are powerful constituencies within the state doing everything in their power to ensure that Trump is not elected, with little regard for the law and less regard for “institutional integrity”.
But the way these constituencies act in concert has more in common with an anthill than an explicit criminal conspiracy. The degree to which the system can seem intelligent is frequently uncanny — but it’s swarm intelligence, not human intelligence. No one is calling the shots at the top — which dramatically changes what they can and can’t do to stop him.
This explains many mysteries of the Regime’s inscrutable will.
If They have been shambling toward war with Russia for the last fifteen years, why didn’t They make any preparations for the logistical and infrastructural costs of fighting such a war? Likewise China — why antagonize them while making zero effort to restore America’s industrial base?
More examples are given.
It isn’t just that the parties are individually stupid. These are decisions that even a very stupid executive would not make, if he were really in charge. The system’s behavior is more like a slime mold, blindly crawling toward nutrients — or zombies piling up against a wall until one can climb over the top.
All of these decisions make good sense as the response of individual actors to individual incentives within their narrow bureaucratic fiefs.
There are many other sensible points, beautifully organized, but you should read the whole thing. Might change the way you think about the "God-Emperor Obama".
Concerning actions against ordinary people:
COVID was the high water line of managerial liberalism’s control over the American people.
If you were a boomer-doomer prepper in the 90s, waiting to be deloused in a FEMA camp and microchipped with the Mark of the Beast, COVID was the vindication of all your worst fears — sort of.
Just as you would have predicted, government bureaucrats revealed themselves to be bottomlessly tyrannical, and venal, and soulless, and the American people pretty much went along with it like cattle.
The Illuminati had us right where they wanted us, injected with the demonic sterility plague and cowering in our homes, unable to buy or sell.
But then what happened?
Well, the various tyrannies and absurdities went on in a haphazard way for several more months, enforced unevenly according to the ego and cussedness and status anxiety of local bureaucrats — but the cabal never sprang their trap and permanently consolidated totalitarian control over the citizens.
Instead, every institution of American public life torched decades (if not centuries) of accumulated credibility and good will, only for the herd to eventually get bored and confused, and trundle back to normal life a few months later. . .
Dangers posed by the state because of the election (and by others due to the weaknesses of the state) are described.
Then there's this, which may be applicable to some regulars at this site:
Regardless of which way the election goes, the way to prepare is the same.
Get to a jurisdiction where your civil and property rights will be respected. Get together often with useful friends. Secure assets that are difficult to inflate away or expropriate.
What do you think?
* * * * *
Weekend Reading
It's tough when J.J. Sefton's computer is down.
But Ace is back on Twitter/X and you might look into some of his tweets and retweets from time to time if you start to feel like you are missing something.
*
Contrast to government that thinks like a fungus:
A group of coal miners from West Virginia have finished building a road from Big Chimney in under a week.
Most Americans are heading into the 2024 election convinced that the outcome will be affected by cheating. Polls show that 66% of the electorate are very or somewhat concerned that the vote will be compromised, including 55% of Democratic voters, 58% of Independents, and 83% of Republicans. The reason voters are worried, rightly, about the integrity of the coming election is because Trump has never stopped talking about the last one.
This morning, you might have woken up to the news that former President Donald Trump called for one of his highest-profile antagonists, former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, to be executed by firing squad. There it was on the Drudge Report: “TRUMP CALLS FOR CHENEY’S EXECUTION.” MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said Trump “called for Liz Cheney being shot in the face by nine rifles.” It quickly became common among the journalistic elite to say that Trump had called for Cheney “to face a firing squad.” It was repeated over and over and over again.
You don't hate the corporate media enough.
* * * * *
Quotes
Of course the DC establishment's real problem with Trump is that he's NOT Hitler
Not militaristic and expansionist enough, for one thing. Not deluded, as Hitler was, about the prospect of dominating Russia.
But except for NOT wanting to exterminate every Jew, and invading and conquering an entire continent, and experimenting and mutilating humans via medical horrors, he's EXACTLY THE SAME.
That's a fascinating take on the situation. The DC establishment would prefer to adopt Hitler's expansionist and militaristic agenda rather than cede control to a disruptor who would block their agenda, so they made him into some ruthless enemy of the people and named him Hitler.
Before we enter the Prayer Revival, just a few housekeeping matters to go over. (Rulz for those of you in Peshtigo)
1.This is an open thread. Feel free to lurk, opine and/or bloviate.
2. Be kind, be nice. And please don't jump on the furniture.
3. Running with sharp objects? They better be yours!
4. Have a wonderful weekend.
*****
AoSHQ Weekly Prayer List
Please submit any prayer requests to me, “Annie’s Stew” at apaslo atsign hotmail dot com. Prayer requests are generally removed after four weeks unless we receive an update.
Prayer Requests:
10/5 – tbodie Lurker asked for prayers. During surgery for an ablation, they found an external source of afib on an outer wall of the heart. There will be a second procedure done soon.
10/7 – Piper requested prayers for her stepfather, who fell and broke his wrist. He will need surgery to put a plate in. He is in a lot of pain.
10/7 – NR Pax sent an update and thanks for the prayers – mother-in-law’s masses in her chest turned out to be non-cancerous.
10/7 – 496 asked for prayers for the people suffering from Hurricanes Helene and Milton. 496 is on his third bout of pneumonia in a month, so he could use some prayers, too. His doctors have not figured out yet what is going on.
10/7 – Eromero posted a prayer. “Dear God, Please grant comfort to families suffering worry and despair over relatives missing after the hurricane damage. Give the searchers and rescuers sharp eyes and gentle hands, guide them to any victims’ location. Supply survivors with medical treatment and nourishment, place them in safe shelters. Return them to their loved ones. In Christ’s name. Amen.”
10/7 – Marcus T posted the good news that a family member’s cancer is gone. Marcus T’s cancer is gone, as well, so he says to never lose hope, He will show you the way.
10/7 – FenelonSpoke asked for prayers for her church’s rummage sale, and that the township which has purchased land from the church would complete the transaction and pay for the land.
10/12 – Just call me Bill asked for prayers for his 14 year old granddaughter. She is being evaluated by a rheumatologist and her mother is afraid she has lupus. Just call me Bill is asking for prayers for a better diagnosis.
10/16 – FeatherBlade posted a prayer request for his/her stepdad. He was having heart problems, went to the hospital, and they admitted him. He had a stent put in.
10/19 – Jewells said the CT scan showed growth of 3 tumors on her right lung. There are also new bone lesions on her spine, lower back, and ribcage, and fluid around both lungs which will need to be drained. Not great news, but expected after being off chemo since April.
10/26 Update – Jewells had an infusion on 10/17, and all the terrible side effects came back with a vengeance. That’s it. She’s done. NO MORE. She is looking into ivermectin and fenbendazole.
10/19 – mindful webworker asked for prayers for an elderly neighbor’s health, and strength and solace for his wife and family.
10/21 – J proposed a group prayer, on 10/29 at noon (Central) to ask God for an end to the corruption in DC and a return to the American values that made this country great.
10/23 – T gave an update that Vic, who used to do the morning report on Ace, has passed away. He had been in poor health for some time.
10/24 – buzzion asked for prayers for his friend Christina. She is dealing with a lot of struggles right now and could use the positive prayers.
10/24 – B requested prayers for a friend (age 43) who is having heart and lung problems. He had to take “the shot” for work, so B is concerned about what that might mean.
10/25 – Mental Block requests prayers as his prostate cancer journey transitions from active surveillance to deciding between two treatment options: a prostatectomy or 6 weeks of radiation combined with hormone therapy. Treatment will begin by mid-December.
10/26 – FenelonSpoke asked for prayers for her son, a recent college graduate who is looking for work. He was recently offered a job, but the hiring supervisor hasn’t yet worked out the funding for the position. If you could pray that rough places are made smooth, they would appreciate it. Thanks very much.
10/26 – Semi-anonymous requested prayers for D, who suffered one or two moderate strokes last month. He is ambulatory but has lost half of his vision and had to fight with his insurance company for weeks to get approved for in-home rehab, and for M, who is going in for surgery for the amputation of her lower leg due to a non-cancerous but highly invasive tumor.
cr
10/26 – W sent the following prayer request, with apologies to General Patton –
“Almighty and most merciful Father, we humbly beseech Thee, of Thy great goodness, to restrain these immoderate rains election fraud with which we have had to contend. Grant us fair weather for Battle elections. Graciously hearken to us as soldiers American Citizens who call upon Thee that, armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to victory and crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies the swamp, and establish Thy justice among men and nations. Amen.”
10/26 – Teresa in Fort Worth asked for prayers. She got some troubling and totally unexpected medical news on 10/25, and is being referred to an oncologist to see where she goes from here. She said she is freaking out because this wasn’t even on the radar. It was found while being tested for something completely unrelated.
10/31 Update – Teresa got confirmation that it is malignant cancer. She will be meeting with doctors this week to start the battle against the cancer.
10/27 – Jim Sunk New Dawn posted an update. He was feeling poorly at the TxMoMe. Aviator (a neurosurgeon) and Nurse Ratchet visited with him for a while, and the doctor gave him a “look over”. He insisted that Jim visit his local ER first thing on Monday. He did so, and was in the hospital until Thursday. Jim was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS). He has a 3-5 year life expectancy. He appreciates a raft of Horde Prayers – y’all is the Best Horde EVER!
10/31 – Nan in AZ is thankful for all the prayers; she got good news from the cardiologist this week that after the heart attack and hospitalization in July, and 3 stents, the ejection fraction is back to normal and the external defibrillator has been discontinued. She has to follow up in 4 months, and will be able to resume full function and work, caring for her 84 year old mom. Good is good!
For submission guidelines and other relevant info, please contact Annie's Stew, who is managing the prayer list. You can contact her at apaslo at-sign hotmail dot com. If you see a prayer request posted in a thread comment, feel free to copy and paste it and e-mail it to Annie's Stew. She tries to keep up with the requests in the threads, but she's not here all of the time, so she may not see it unless you e-mail it to her. Please note: Prayer requests are generally removed after four weeks or so unless we receive an update.
2 Corinthians 4:8-9
We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.
There are worse things they could be doing with their money, I suppose. De-orbiting the Moon, or promoting polonium as a pizza topping. Reintroducing rinderpest and smallpox.
Okay, those aren't much worse, but they are worse.
CAMM2 modules lie flat on a laptop's motherboard rather than slotting into a socket, so the take up less room and can have more pins. And that lets them support a 128-bit bus with one module rather than the usual 64 bits.
And they also support faster LPDDR5X memory, which usually has to be soldered directly onto the motherboard itself.
Only problem is they are taking a long time to arrive. There's basically one desktop motherboard from MSI and one laptop from Lenovo using these modules right now.
Long thread claim to show the "Real size" of various big animals. I think in a bunch of cases, we're seeing some perspective shenanigans. But some of the pics and video seem legit. The wolf near the end of the video does look very big compared to the size of the highway lanes it's crossing.
This turtle is innocent! Innocent I say! (Though I should admit, he was caught listening to Kenny Loggins/Michael McDonald collaborations.)
Bill Clinton, Campaigning for Kamala: Israel's Prime Minister Barak Offered Yasser Arafat and Hamas 96% of Gaza and 4% of Israel and They Turned It Down Because They Didn't Want a Homeland, They Just Wanted to Murder Jews
—Disinformation Expert Ace
A very strong statement from Bill Clinton, and one to praise him for.
Probably not the statement that Kamala Harris was looking for, given that she wants to signal, without outright saying, that she supports Hamas' endless terror wars.
Open Source Intel
@Osint613
Bill Clinton On the Palestinians:
"And the only time Yasser Arafat didn't tell me the truth was when he promised me he was gonna accept the peace deal that we had worked out, which would have given the Palestinians a state on 96% of the West Bank and 4% of Israel, and they got to choose where the 4% of Israel was. So they would have the effect of the same land of all the West Bank. They would have a capital in East Jerusalem.
I can hardly talk about this.... And they would have equal access all day every day to the security towers that Israel maintained all through the West Bank up to the Golan Heights.
All this was offered, including, I will say it again, a capital in East Jerusalem and 2 of the 4 quadrants of the old city of Jerusalem, confirmed by the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, and his cabinet. And they said no.
And I think part of it is that Hamas did not care about a homeland for the Palestinians. They wanted to kill Israelis and make Israel uninhabitable.
Well, I got news for them, they were there first before there was their faith existed.
They were there. In the time of King David, in the southern most tribes, Hadjardia and Samaria."
“And the only time Yasser Arafat didn't tell me the truth was when he promised me he was gonna accept the peace deal that we had worked out, which would have given the Palestinians a state on 96% of the West Bank and 4% of Israel, and they got… pic.twitter.com/kQZrqdU3zW
WATCH: IDF eliminates Izz al-Din Kassab, one of last remaining Hamas political bureau members
Kassab was responsible for Hamas's relations and cooperation, strategic and military, with other terrorist organizations within the Gaza Strip.
The IDF eliminated Hamas's National Relations head Izz al-Din Kassab on Friday in Khan Yunis, Gaza, who was also one of the last remaining members of the terrorist organization's political bureau still inside the Palestinian enclave.
The strike that killed Kassab was completed based on IDF and ISA intelligence. His assistant Ayman Ayesh was also killed in the strike.
He was also responsible for Hamas's relations and cooperation, whether strategic or military, with other terrorist organizations within the Gaza Strip such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Kassab also held authority within the Gazan terrorist organization to direct attacks against Israel, the IDF noted.
The video at the link shows his truck being obliterated by a bomb from above.
Trump is campaigning in... Dearborn, Michigan. Muslims are angry at Kamala for supporting Israel. For some reason, they're inclined to support Trump as a protest against the Democrat Party, even though he's a much stronger support of Israel and opponent of Hamas.
Not sure how this makes sense but that's politics for you.
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
During my Administration, we had peace in the Middle East, and we will have peace again very soon! I will fix the problems caused by Kamala Harris and Joe Biden and stop the suffering and destruction in Lebanon. I want to see the Middle East return to real peace, a lasting peace, and we will get it done properly so it doesn't repeat itself every 5 or 10 years! I will preserve the equal partnership among all Lebanese communities. Your friends and family in Lebanon deserve to live in peace, prosperity, and harmony with their neighbors, and that can only happen with peace and stability in the Middle East. I look forward to working with the Lebanese community living in the United States of America to ensure the safety and security of the great people of Lebanon. Vote Trump for Peace!
Meanwhile: Will Iran finally stop attacking Israel?
Or does Israel have get Extra Spicy with it?
Ron M.
@Jewtastic
If after everything that has happened...
▪️ Two failed direct attacks on Israel with 100s of massive ballistic missiles.
▪️ Israel leveling Iran's Russian-supplied air defense system leaving the nation exposed.
▪️ After warnings to Iran by the world's superpower America not to tango with it, especially around the unstable election period.
▪️ After America's deployment of 100s of troops and anti-missile batteries in Israel.
▪️ Israel's defanging of the Hezbollah network, and targeting of leaders in Iran itself.
▪️ After Israeli threats to cripple Iran's economy if another attack occurs..
If after ALL this, Iran AGAIN attacks Israel for a 3rd time it shows the Iranian regime & IRGC are NOT rational actors.
It shows the Mullahs & IRGC only maintain a veneer of rationality that fools the West.
It would prove they are fundamentalist Islamist psychos that can never be allowed nuclear weapons because they are not rational actors.
It would prove that the use of force is necessary to destroy the Iranian nuclear program.
Republicans: The Democrats Are So Insane Right Now That When We Tell People Their Agenda, They Don't Believe Us. So We Have to Tone Down the Democrats' Real Agenda So People Believe a Censored Version of Their Agenda
Republican activists say they have to water down the reality of their opponents' agenda in focus groups. 'They just don't believe it's true. It can't be.'
I know someone like this. An older woman, and a kind of old school normie liberal Democrat.
CNN doesn't ever run stories about Tren de Aragua taking over apartments in Aurora, so when you tell her, she just says "Oh, more lies from Fox."
She, get this, does not believe the Democrats support gender transitions for children or even pronouns.
In the September debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Trump said something so ludicrous that many viewers must have dismissed it out of hand. "She did things that nobody would ever think of," Trump said, while rattling off a list of some of the vice president's most radical past positions. "Now she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison."
The idea that the vice president "wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison" seemed so patently absurd that The New Yorker's Susan Glasser cited it in a column posted the next morning as an example of Trump's lunacy: "What the hell was he talking about?" Glasser wrote of the trans operation lines. "No one knows, which was, of course, exactly Harris' point."
That reaction was understandable--the idea of the operations was, as Trump himself said, a "thing nobody would ever think of." The problem was that it is true. As CNN had reported that week, Harris, when running for the Democratic nomination in 2019, had written in an ACLU questionnaire that she supported publicly funded "gender-affirming care," including transition surgeries, for federal prison inmates and detained illegal immigrants. Follow-up reporting from The Washington Free Beacon revealed that while serving as California attorney general, Harris had in fact implemented a statewide policy of taxpayer funding for prisoners' sex changes, born out of a settlement in which she agreed to pay for the transition of a man convicted of kidnapping a father of three and then murdering him as he begged for his life. Harris later bragged, on camera, about this policy as evidence of her commitment to the progressive "movement"--in a clip that has since become a staple of Trump campaign ads.
The sequence of events neatly encapsulated a pattern that has played out countless times since Trump entered American political life. Trump says something seemingly insane, to many people's outrage and disbelief, only to have his supposed "lie" revealed to be wholly or at least significantly true. Often the specific truth revealed--that the outgoing Obama administration spied on the Trump transition team in order to gather information for what later became the Russiagate hoax, to cite another example--is in fact "crazier" than Trump's exaggerations or garbling of the details. The insanity of the policy becomes the front line of defense against potential blowback: Who would believe that anyone would actually propose or support something so obviously at odds with public opinion and basic common sense? Trump must be a raving nutjob, just like we told you he was.
The reason that this strategy has worked is because Democrats rely on all nonexplicitly right-wing media to adopt their framing of issues and cite the party's preferred experts, which they do. The party's influence over the country's communications apparatus has, for the past decade, emerged into something like a political superpower, allowing it to act outside the normal bounds of American politics without suffering from political blowback.
"All of it," said a Republican congressional staffer, "is insulated by their absolute confidence that they can just use their control over communications institutions to just say words, including change of language, right? Flip a switch and it's now gender affirming care. Flip a switch and it's now undocumented migrants, or undocumented Americans. Flip a switch and now you can change people's pronouns."
The result, for anyone skeptical of the Democratic Party yet bound to operate within the consensus reality of its discourse, is akin to living in a wilderness of mirrors. How to explain, for instance, that elected Democrats from the Biden White House on down support not only taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners and illegal aliens, but policies that allow schools to "socially transition" children without informing their parents? How to explain, without sounding like a lunatic, that the newspapers and expert bodies that recommend life-altering surgeries for children, and defend them as "life-saving" or "medically necessary" care opposed only by cranks and Bible thumpers, either don't know what they're talking about or are lying to you for political reasons? That the claim that such surgeries were rarely if ever performed on children was also a lie? That when President Biden, the kindly old moderate, directed his Department of Health and Human Services to address the "barriers and exclusionary policies" keeping children from accessing "gender medicine," what he was describing was a policy that would see members of his own administration pressuring medical agencies to allow procedures such as breast and penis removal be performed on young children, despite the lack of any proof that these measures contribute to greater mental or physical health?
The same GOP staffer, who is currently working on a competitive congressional race, told me that one problem his campaign regularly faces is that aspects of Democratic governance are simply too insane for voters to find credible, even when they are documented as official U.S. government policy. "When you outline the Democratic agenda, you have to water it down, because in both polling and focus groups, people just don't believe it," he said. "They are critical of things like boys in girls' sports, but they tune out stuff about schools not informing parents about transitioning their children. They just don't believe it's true. It can't be."
Another Republican operative made a related point on the failure of the party's attempt to message on trans issues in 2022, which was that the reality of the procedures was so gruesome that voters simply preferred not to think about it. "Phrases like 'genital mutilation' are disgusting and viscerally off-putting, even to voters who may be sympathetic to the Republicans' position but will just write you off as a freak for talking about it that way."
He then turns to foreign policy. People refuse to believe that Obama "pivoted to Iran" and cultivated the demonic terror state -- the biggest funder of terrorism, including against Americans, in the world -- as a bosom ally.
They can't believe it because it just sounds so insane.
It has to be another one of those Fox Lies -- doesn't it?
Late Tuesday, as Joe Biden's comment referring to Donald Trump's supporters as "garbage" created a firestorm, top communications aides inside the White House broke with protocol, amending the official transcript of his comment -- without waiting for sign-off from the stenography office.
The edit was a single apostrophe -- but one freighted with political and electoral implications.
...
Biden's statement and the firestorm since has threatened to distract from Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign ahead of Election Day. The call on which Biden made the remarks was held shortly before Harris' campaign speech just hundreds of yards away on the Ellipse making her closing argument for voters to reject Trump.
The edit to the official White House transcript underscores the lengths Biden administration officials went to limit the political damage of Biden's comments. The fallout of the president's remark continues to reverberate, adding even greater anxiety to Biden's final public appearances before the election, expected Friday and Saturday. In addition, Republicans on Capitol Hill are already asking questions about the transcript change, raising the possibility of an investigation.
...
The Associated Press first reported on the administration's altering of the original transcript on Thursday night, adding fuel to a controversy that Harris and the White House are eager to move past. Both Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, were quick on Wednesday morning to disavow any disparaging of people, intended or not, based on who they vote for or support.
That report referenced an email the director of the stenography office, Amy Sands, sent to LaBolt, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and other aides in the press and communications shop on Wednesday laying out what happened and why it was a breach of procedure.
Sands, according to two of the people familiar with the process, had sought out those colleagues in person on Wednesday morning and spoke to at least one of them directly before sending the email.
Sands, who has worked in the White House stenography office for more than a decade, declined to comment.
...
In her email, Sands did not weigh in on the accuracy of the press team's edit or indicate that she would or would not have approved the amended transcript. Her expressed concern was not having the chance to review the audio and make a determination herself.
Michael Shellenberger
@shellenberger
Biden didn't call Trump supporters "garbage," the media said. But he did. And now two officials and an internal email reveal that the White House press office altered the transcript after it "conferred with the president" in direct violation of the Presidential Records Act.
AP: White House press office altered transcript of Biden’s offensive remarks calling all Trump “supporters” garbage by making it appear as if the president were referring to just one supporterhttps://t.co/43NFIgQXs1pic.twitter.com/1wdstVFwIX
Trump Makes Standard-Issue "Chickenhawk" Argument Against Liz Cheney, Saying She Blithely Sends Out 10,000 Men To Face Death But Won't Face the Fire Herself; CNN and Jonah Goldberg Claim He's Calling for Her Execution by Firing Squad
—Disinformation Expert Ace
Mollie
@MZHemingway
"He's saying quite explicitly and unambiguously that Liz Cheney should be shot, should be executed by firing squad." -- the absolutely broken and self-hating @JonahDispatch, lying BRAZENLY about what was said.
He's not "self-"hating, Mollie. That would imply he's a conservative.
He's not and never has been. He has always been a liberal who grifted the conservative establishment for millions, and that's an easy game, because the conservative establishment itself has always been liberal, except for the One Thing That Matters -- lowering taxes on the liberal billionaires who funded the conservative establishment.
His entire "conservative" life he was controlled opposition -- no, that still implies he opposed the left.
Glenn Greenwald
@ggreenwald
Trump is saying what every liberal pundit and DNC operative I know was saying for 15 years -- from 2001 until 2016 -- about the Cheneys, neocons, and warmongering.
But now that liberals are aligned with those people, they claim it's a threat of execution to say it
The liberals smeared all war supporters as "chickenhawks" -- now they're pretending it's threatening Liz Chebey with death to call her a chickenhawk.
Trump responded to the newest Fake Outrage Propaganda Attack:
After the newest hoax from the left that Trump called for Liz Cheney to be executed, Trump absolutely destroys her:
“She’s a warhawk. If she had to face the consequences of battle, she wouldn’t be doing it… she is actually a disgrace.”
Jonah's also spreading disinformation about JD Vance.
Yesterday, I pointed out a liberal who claimed Vance was telling a false "weird story" about having to defend his home from possible assassins after Trump was shot, claiming that Vance was only a "junior senator" and thus under no threat.
I pointed out to this ignorant media c*nt that Trump was shot on July 13th, and Vance was announced July 15th, and was widely known to be at the top of the last four candidates for the VP. Vance himself already knew he was the pick.
Look how Jonah parrots this claim from this leftwinger -- and then adds his own made-up bullshit: Vance must have abandoned his children at the mini-golf course when he ran like a coward to board himself up in the house. He parrots the "weird story" language, and then the "junior senator" lie.
Just a junior senator? He had just been chosen to be Trump's VP!
Vance never said he left his kids at the mini-golf course. This fat, disgusting cowardly semi-man is just making this slur up out of whole cloth.
Maybe because it's what he would do -- if he were nasty enough spawn children from his wretched DNA.
David French Cuckdate: He says that it's okay to lie about Trump calling for a firing squad, because you can bang on the table and make his real quote sound bad, too, so what's the diff?
David French
@DavidAFrench
Trump's defenders say he's not referring to a firing squad. Does that make his remarks acceptable?
Not even close. Even if he "only" wanted his opponent -- whom he calls "very dumb" and also wants to put in front of a military commission -- to be at the receiving end of hostile fire, we’re confronting inexcusably malicious political language.
A friend named Fred (not his real name) writes:
Did you notice that Jonah yesterday completely invented out of thin air that JD Vance fled a mini-golf park *without* his kids, leaving them there, to rush to the safety of his home after he found out Trump was shot? No one can find this claim made by anyone, anywhere.
What Vance said, and has been corroborated by witnesses (with tweets and timestamps at the time!) was that he scooped up his kids, rushed home, and loaded his guns.
He apparently just completely made up the leaving the kids at the park part.
The tweet he's quoting doesn't say that.
And in addition to that, Vance already knew he was both being considered for VP, and Trump already hinted to him that he was likely the pick. This was two days before the announcement. Why wouldn't you think you were a possible target when you find out the president was just shot?
I just scanned his feed and when he's not trying to avoid criticism by chain-posting pictures of his dog, he's now defending the Biden economy, claiming it's always been stronger than Trump's.
He also stepped in a whole new pile of shit this morning about the Liz Cheney bullshit, that he issued an "apology" (where he naturally blames mostly everyone else) for getting the story wrong.
This Vance one actually really does piss me the fuck off. Fine, lie about Trump. We're all used to it. But he's suggesting a father of young children got scared and just took off and abandoned his young children? What the fuck is this? Who says shit like this?
Update: Rich Barris says that the factoid that women are voting 10% ahead of men is a week old, and the gap has narrowed since then:
This is not "new data". It's nearly a week old and the margins have closed, in several states considerably. https://t.co/GgycFu9Ndl
— Rich Baris The People's Pundit (@Peoples_Pundit) November 1, 2024
Still: Let's get out there and make Jonah Goldberg finally get an actual job, huh?
NeverTrump will lose their funding if they lose this election.
Pornographer two decades past her sell-by date honored by witches, for some reason I'll tell you one thing: Leftwing omen will have standing to complain about men and their video games the minute they give up their childish, deranged "witchcraft" obsession. Videogames are a sign of immaturity? Okay, that could be true. But tell me, would you agree it's also immature to get together with some 50-year-old tweenagers and pretend to "cast spells" on Reddit threads?
Kamala tosses another salad, again unable to answer why she hasn't been able to execute her (secret) plans to fix the country while in office She can say "i'm not the president" all she likes -- she hasn't even offered any proposals. Remember the alleged dullard Dan Quayle? He was always issuing proposals. True, a lot of these came from Bill Kristol, his advisor, who then allowed people to credit him with these proposals (permitting the "Quayle's Brain" nickname), but he was pumping out ideas and initiatives. And what has Kamala done? She can't even announce her proposals when she's running for president. She still has plans to have plans and intentions to find some intentions.
Also, back when everyone knew she was a horrible person but running for President, the Huffington Post even wrote a long story on her truancy nuttiness.
https://tinyurl.com/588k9umj
PS: You'll be happy to know that MSNBC's Jonathan Capehart debunked this for their viewers.
LOL
Posted by: Jay in PA
Jonathan Capehart you say? Well who am I to dispute the claims of such an august Real Journalist?
a friend writes: "Fox News explaining to me why Trump needed to have Nikki Haley at MSG. I haven't seen FNC in like 6 years. But good Lord." Kamala is banking on Nikki Haley "Republicans" crossing over to vote for Kamala. That's the point of sucking up to the Cheneys. So I can see someone, who doesn't know too much, thinking "Trump needed Nikki Haley to solidfy the Republican left flank." The trouble is, Nikki Haley is like Chris Christie. She would use her appearance to campaign for herself and the Democrat. She is dreaming of running again in 2028 as the "anti-MAGA reasonable alternative" and uses every appearance to put down MAGA and elevate the old and dwindling neocon coalition. So inviting Nikki Haley is just agreeing to run what is effectively a pro-Kamala ad for five minutes.
Actress Teri Garr has died at 79 For many, she was the First Crush And What knockers!
Ace: aceofspadeshq at gee mail.com
CBD: cbd at cutjibnewsletter.com
Buck: buck.throckmorton at protonmail.com
joe mannix: mannix2024 at proton.me
MisHum: petmorons at gee mail.com
J.J. Sefton: sefton at cutjibnewsletter.com
A giant statue of Justice literally swoons in the streets of New York. Er, New Rome. Whatever.
A light-saber for nerds.
I don't remember this scene from the movie. Maybe I blacked out, though.
Final girl.
