ON THE DESERT NATURE OF WAR

 There are some reports that water supplies and infrastructure were attacked in the last round of missile and drone attacks in the Middle East. This is the sort of thing that made war so unpleasant for everybody. Attacks like this were not banned but they do get a solid wave of condemnation from the usual supporters of infinitely long wars. Once the water runs out, the people don't usually last more than 3 or 4 days, tops. 

On the other hand, I cannot imagine anyone being foolish enough to launch attacks on the potable water supplies of any civilization in the desert. That sort of thing is really frowned on and it might invite something almost as strong as a Demarche and perhaps even a certain amount of 'viewing with alarm.'

On the gripping hand, the day that the Iranians fired a barrage of missiles and drones into my critical oil infrastructure in the current unpleasantness is the day I would have ordered the immediate installation of anti-drone netting and the hardening of my water supplies, desalination plants and the various maintenance and support facilities to keep both the oil and water moving.* The mullahs in Iran are a known quantity of pure evil and there is literally nothing they will not do in the name of their God. 

The River War Quotes, 

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. 

Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”

 I think anybody might profit from reading the observations of a young military man, young reporter and man solidly grounded in the scientific world created by the science and engineering that flourished in Britain. He wrote this book in 1899 and it is probably the last honest and forthright words written about that part of Africa and the people who made it and lived there. You can find The River War here. Simply read the first chapter. 

I can attest to the words he wrote over 120 years ago. Very little has changed in Omdurman or Khartoum and the people not at all. You could say much the same about Egypt, Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti, Yemen and even the rest of the Arabian Peninsula. Change and growth are simply incompatible with islam. 

Ordinarily I would think them the very last to lay waste to water supplies but they have innovated so magnificently in just the last 20 or 21 months so who knows? Of the mullahs and other evil man controlling the Persian weapons, well, we know them by their actions.

Oh, and if you have family in the arabian peninsula, it might be time to think about having them relocate to someplace a little more blessed with potable surface water. Just saying.

*The effects of inshallah have to be seen to be believed. So, an order to immediately protect infrastructure will make it out of the palace sometime next month, sit on desks for a month or two unless it is vacation time in which case add 2 months and then it will be carefully considered and relatives consulted to see which family member is best positioned to 'win' this bid and make money when he starts building the defenses which will be sometime in late 2029....inshallah.

ON THE OLD VIRTUES

 It looks like a spiral sometimes but I don't think that's how it really works. History is way messier than that. 

According to the lore, Nelson threw another signal in the air to his captains during the Battle of Trafalgar.

 "In case signals can neither be seen nor perfectly understood, no captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy." 

He suspected that all of his captains were intelligent naval officers stuffed with all of the virtues decades of waging naval war against France had to offer them and content that they all recognized the enemy and knew what to do once they got alongside.

Wouldn't it be nice if Western Civilization shared a similar outlook on dealing with the enemy? 

LONG TIME COMING

 I have to admit that I let the whole rock and roll era of my youth pretty much slip by without ever once taking it up and really paying attention. The music was always there in the background and for me that is just what it was, background. In just the last year or two I have slowly come to discover what almost everyone else probably picked up right about the time they turned 15. I just want to say in my own defense, I was poor, could never read music, never played an instrument and there wasn't much of a musical nature out on the water which is where I spent most of my time.

I think I might have first heard it the first time I heard John Prine when I was 19. I just want to say that I definitely hear it when I hear John Prine and quite a few other musicians now. I now stop and take notice when the noise stops and the music starts to play. I still have no idea why people go to concerts but I can hear why they might be inclined to go.

I'm glad that 3 engineering tours of duty didn't damage my hearing and that I can still hear the music. 

RED IN TOOTH

 I lived there for almost 30 years and even I cannot comprehend how legislators in a state can seriously propose releasing the largest apex predator on its own constituents but then, we are talking about California. This is their next trick.

I would have no problem with this if there was a mandatory requirement that all bears be released and left undisturbed in Sacramento. It's close enough to the mountains that the bears interested in returning to the wild could make it on their own and there's plenty of stupid animals  to eat in the valley of the American River.

Another fine proposal that has not left the legislature calls for all of them to be paid in gold but contains an ironclad provision that mandates that every ounce of gold has to travel from Los Angeles main train station in downtown Los Angeles on the High Speed Rail Line and disembarked only after its arrival at San Francisco Station at 4th and King. They only get the money if the train sustains an average speed from LA to San Francisco of 140 mph.

Can you imagine the uproar? The station in LA is another beautiful remnant of a better time and the idea of blasting a high speed train up the San Francisco peninsula to downtown San Francisco is just ludicrous. The Caltrain from San Jose to the City averages about 60 mph on a good day.

So I don't know about you but I'd be happy to see impoverished California legislators hiding from famished grizzly bears while waiting for their train to come in. 
 

OLDEN DAYS

 I run across this video every couple of years and it shows the ridiculous Bailey's Beach Club in Newport, RI which Senior Klansman and Senator Whitehouse belongs to in his spare moments between advocating for the armed overthrow of the United States and giving free killer drugs to everybody under the age of 12. What I like though, is those two little cottages you see in the immediate background behind the beach. Those were where I dropped off the last half dozen newspapers on my paper route back in 1975.

 The mansions were both very posh back then and probably even posher these days but they really had nothing to do with the beach. We used to go there all the time and nobody ever bothered to tell us about it being members only. If they had, we simply wouldn't have cared. Our house was directly behind the one with the white chimneys and lay alongside the one with the red chimneys. We shared the driveway.

The beach is one end of Cliff Walk and there was no special markings or anything to keep people out of the beach. The enforcement that may have existed probably simply extended to looking at stickers on the windshields of cars in the parking lot. Obviously, this was not a problem for us.

One of the other houses I lived in in Newport was at the other end of Cliff Walk. Back in the mid 70s and early 80s it was a very nice little coastal town on par with Solana Beach, Del Mar and Encinitas.

IN RETROSPECT

As you look back on our history you see a chain forged with links that are made from the bodies and bones of the people of this country and the one thing that makes you pause and wonder, is that again and again, we found it necessary to draft the youngest and most expendable and send them off to fight in our name. That right there is a sign of failure and it should have been addressed the first time it became 'necessary' to do something like that in a country that believed once so strongly in inalienable rights that it founded the greatest Republic the world has ever known and surely the first of those rights was the right to, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. You can see it here if you like: 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

If the powers of reason and persuasion are not sufficient to sway the young men to fight and die for your cause perhaps yours is not a just or worthy cause. If the old soft words don't work to get enough men then that leaves the mercenary form as the final offer from a government that truly believes in inalienable rights. You can pay them what the measured worth of their lives is to them and see if they'll fight for gold.

This is one of those days of the year where we make mention of the men that fought and died at Normandy and they are the standard bearers for all the tens of thousands of young men that fought and died in our name and, I suppose, in the name of liberty and justice for all. That said, there is nothing American about drafting young men. It did not happen in the Revolution and it should not have happened in the Civil War. The idea that we were going to do it in World War I and did it in World War II, Korea and Vietnam is a crime against this country's young men.

You see the brave battalions and divisions storm ashore at Normandy and also in Sicily, Italy and all the islands in the Pacific but you never ever hear about the collections of bodies that are simply moved en masse to the Replacement Depots you never heard of where they are parceled out to fill the gaps in the ranks left by days, weeks and months of fighting. They simply show up one day and fight and die right next to the guys that have been doing that since the first day. I found this thesis fascinating.

The idea that others may serve at the cost of their lives for no purposes of their own and however unwilling they may be is, on the face of it, unAmerican. It is hard to believe that we were drafting American teenagers to fight and die in Vietnam which as far as I could tell, never suffered from a shortage of Vietnamese soldiers.

I'm kind of displeased that the angry left has utterly failed to make the case that the draft is simply not an option in a free Republic like ours. It will either find the men to fight or it will have proven unworthy and it will fall away just as the Republics have since the beginning of time. That is the thing about a Republic. They ape the words and manners of a system of governance that makes men eager to keep it alive. When they don't come forward in sufficient numbers it is not a failure of the young men but of the Republic. 

I do not think we will ever be able to draft young men to fight again but it is still worth saying. This sort of thing flies in the face of every single thing this Republic was founded on. 

THE GUNGRABBER'S GRAVEYARD

 As long as this is the law of the land, and it is, there can be no argument for disarming people who have an inalienable right to arm themselves and see to their own defense.

 I remember being horrified that this was the approach the law took. The state of NEW YORK has disarmed the people and criminalized gun possession but also accepts zero responsibility for keeping the people safe even when the damned police are right there on the spot.

IF THIS GOES ON

 Seriously, this is how you get revolutions.

🚨🇺🇸The Senate just killed the SAVE Act, 48-50.

Voter ID and proof of citizenship, supported by over 80% of Americans, dead.

Four Republicans voted no: Tillis, Murkowski, McConnell, Collins.

The uniparty showed its face today...pic.twitter.com/A360Vy1Wny

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) June 4, 2026

JUST BETWEEN US NATIONS

 After the news of the last few days and a read of too much Instapundit I wondered if there was meeting or something where various countries spoke very frankly to each other, one ruling entity to another and spelled out exactly what each would take as justifiable causes to instantly resort to open warfare. We have reached the point in history where this might be more necessary than ever before because some things are simply intolerable and yet people seem to discuss doing them all the damned time. For some recent discoveries and speculation here's a few that caught my eye.

Did Trump hire Bessent at Treasury because he was part of the Soros team that broke the Bank of England? Could he do the same thing to China now with all the power of the Treasury?

Smugglers caught bringing in 'new' lethal biological organisms and viruses. Two more just caught after showing up in Detroit International. This is on top of seemingly dozens of other virus smugglers who keep bringing people and plant killing organisms to US as if we don't have plenty of our own.

I actually think those may be the only two out there right now and while somebody could imagine China calling in our Ambassador for a full and frank discussion I just don't see it happening because to worry about what we would do to them is pure speculation. As the world's only hyperpower or superpower we don't seek change. We are the Resistance to Change and we mean it.

That said, I do think it is pretty obvious that somebody well trusted by President Trump and possibly even Mr. Putin have sat down and had a few frank discussions. It has become clear over the last year or two that somebody very powerful had a word with all the idiots running the EU and all of the idiots running the nation/slaves within it and told them to end the practice of turning a blind eye to Ukrainians or Ukrainian partisans launching attack drones out of EU territories into Russia. That Russia would retaliate and that we would do absolutely nothing at all in response because they were literally waging undeclared warfare on all of Russia.

I think both sides of the China Futility have finally drunk the bitter dregs of their long divorce and are now set on inching back together. The writing is on the wall for all to see and it beautiful in my sight. If you cannot imagine tens of thousands of young Americans dying in a stupid, pointless, meaningless war in Vietnam that no American leader in the White House, Congress or the Pentagon actually fought to win, then imagine the tens of thousands of American sailors and Marines dying to fight one group of Chinese for another group of Chinese. It isn't going to happen.

The fix for that is easy and also clearly visible. Taiwan does not now and never had needed American weapons to keep the Chinese out. All that was was theater to show that we were interested in keeping the islands communist free. Since China itself has been communist free since Chou en Lai there is little point to maintaining the charade and they can play among themselves now. Ditto Korea.

The only other player on the planet with untamed ferocity has made its position very clear without ever saying a word. It cannot allow an enemy state to develop nuclear weapons, ever. Every single one of its enemies has declared to the world that had they the power to do so they would wipe Israel off the face of the map and kill every person living there and all have an indifference to life that would astonish 99% of the Westerners that ever learned it.

So if everyone is clear on the situation, why are 'researchers' still smuggling deadly viruses into Detroit?  Why do we keep catching these smugglers again and again and again? You know that they are bringing them here in order to weaponize them which in this case means making them far more contagious since they're already plenty deadly enough so why do they keep bringing them here?  What the hell is going on?

The world is back on the cusp of ignorant and all out vicious war. One of the things few know is that naval developments in 1900 basically rendered Britain's command of the seas moot and made the naval arms race a game that any economically able and industrialized power could play at and win.  The all big gun dreadnoughts and battle cruisers made every previous battleship and battleship navy obsolete including their own. This was how the Allied Powers all had to negotiate after the War to limit construction because they were all bankrupting themselves to build the most powerful navy. The process was intense and makes fascinating reading.

The same thing happened when people finally weaponized the drones that technology made possible about 20 years ago. People, companies, countries, nations can make ten thousand drones a day, arm them and fly them on attack profiles anywhere. There is no defense at all. None. It does not exist.

You would think somebody would be working very hard on this problem but I'm concerned that I don't see Elon Musk working on it. That right there says a lot. 

ON PLOT REJECTION

 This is a problem.

The Great Software Quality Collapse: How We Normalized Catastrophe | Denis Stetskov, From The Trenches

The Apple Calculator leaked 32GB of RAM.

Not used. Not allocated. Leaked. A basic calculator app is hemorrhaging more memory than most computers had a decade ago.

Twenty… pic.twitter.com/GMQa3jRpBm

— Owen Gregorian (@OwenGregorian) April 21, 2026

It would be a good use of your time to read the whole thing. He describes problem that has a number of perfectly acceptable solutions and fixes that would correct the problem and goes on to show that virtually none of the solutions will be implemented and that nobody will even try to implement one. It is really quite sad but predictable what happened at Apple after Jobs died there. There is literally nobody running the top 3 tiers there who cares about the customer or the product except as a method to put money in their pockets.

My own solution to this problem has been a very low level campaign of rejection. Starting even back when Mr. Jobs was alive and turning out awesome products, I wasn't buying cutting edge. My unique philosophy was that only an idiot would stand in line all night to buy the latest and greatest iphone or very best top of the line computer systems that came with a brand new OS. When my 14 year old Workbook Pro died I replaced it with a 12 year old Workbook Pro which has served me very well these last 4 years. My phone was an iPhone4 but I upgraded a couple of years ago to an iPhone 8 because the networks purged my phone's ability to connect to their networks.

The hidden underlying and unstated reason for this wholesale rejection of cutting edge tech was not the prices blowing through the roof but the disdain for 99% of the 'improvements' that were making the new stuff not better....for me. I don't need it.

This kind of reminds me of watching the Tactical Action Officer simply reach out and hit 'reject' every time the satellite navigation system updated our geographic location on the planet. Mind you, he was rejecting the navigation data that showed where we actually were on the planet and he did it over and over again.

"Why"

"We have 300 sonobuoys out there, all shown in our master plot relative to where we thought we were back when they were dropped. If we let the system change our position it will adjust all of them too."

Since we were hunting Soviet ballistic missile submarines very quietly this seemed, on the face of it, reasonable. As I thought it over though the obvious question floated to the top and wondered, 'what kind of idiot designs a navigation system that seamlessly adjusts everything on a plot just because the master reference location shifted?

Obviously, its exactly the thing a software developer would do and never think twice about. Our ability to guide sensors to target based on a relative plot would be destroyed the instant we converted it to a true plot. 

Nevertheless, it used to gall me that I all of Microsoft Word 4.0 fit on a single floppy disk and that it has now grown into such a kluge of a tool that it takes over your entire computer. Fortunately for me, when Microsoft destroyed my ownership of Office I simply gave it up and went elsewhere for my software needs. That was over 30 years ago and I never looked back.

IDLING THE WAR MACHINE

 As I heard it, one of the reasons that the democrats did not get away with stealing the vote in 2024 was because Trump and his team had lawyers, guns and money standing by in every precinct to make sure that the vote was fairly and honestly held, administered, counted and reported. 

I think he made that happen.

Is that same machine going to be in place for the next Presidential election or are we going straight back to precincts and cities that take 48 hours to count the vote and exercise exclusive control using democrats on the counting and reporting? I think that the Republican verifty the vote machine is the exact same shower of feces that the SAVE Act is showing us it still remains. The squishy party will go back to doing what it does so tolerantly well, viewing with alarm and doing nothing.

IN THE DARK

 I see that we may be moving back into a shooting war with Iran and it strikes me that we never hear about America applying the Dark Arts to our enemies. When are we going to see the EBO* of our cyber warriors, or will we? All through the 90s we were told that our 'enemies' had the power to remotely shut down our electrical distribution and generation simply by sending 'commands' over the internet. Can we do that?

The best part of the Dark War is that I spent the last couple of years of the last millennium fighting bravely in the Y2K trenches at Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command where we diligently went crazy doing every kind of regression testing you could imagine and then doing it again and again and again and tried to justify hooking up to an OTCIXS network while also using the internal network to merge our graphical data fusion, sensors, C2 and OTCIXS over a purely one way link. Our method and our approach didn't fail any arcane tests, they just got disconnected by fiat.

It was 'way too dangerous' to our national cyber security. We'd point out that there was no physical means for any data to leave our network computers because they were fully isolated; all to no avail. The connection was severed and that was that, the Nation was once again cyberly secure.

So, as we move into more explodey operations in the Gulf and Iran, is it possible that they will be proceeded or accompanied by a sort of network fire that wreaks havoc on the oil pumping, distribution and storage systems via the computers that control all that in Iran and lays them waste or do we actually have to bomb the crap out of all that?

Just asking, for a friend.  

*Effects Based Operations. A cruel mirage perped by the Planning Class who brought you COAs. 

MARCHING TO TYCHO PURPLE PENAL COLONY

 Well it seems we are finally back on track to establishing penal colonies on the moon. First step of course was to set up the means to get there and then it is just a matter of time before some bright spark discovers that sending the dregs of humanity to the Moon is the answer to the question that has dogged liberals since they were dropped on their heads as babies. What do we do with the people who are truly horrible despite the fact that there is no such thing as a bad kid?

That's right, Comrade, We send them to the Moon!

I enjoyed The Ring of Charon by Roger MacBride Allen and was really delighted to find both that book and the sequel, The Shattered Sphere in a very odd used book store south and east of Zanesville. The story featured some wonderful bits from the Naked Purple Movement and their takeover of the Soviet Penal Colony on the Moon. Once the Purples hit there was no coming back.

So now it looks like, at long last, we are on our way to Penal Colonies on the Moon and I for one wonder if they'll take after the place described by Heinlein in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress or something else along those lines but you know, there's going to be people that find the idea of sending horrible people to the moon is a grand idea. Out of sight is out of mind.

On the gripping hand, which is closer, the moon or Chicago? 

Well duuh, you can see the moon......

 

INTERPRETIVE SMOKE SIGNALS

There is another feel good story out of the the New York Post that could use a little modifier or explanation for those who are not familiar with the term, 'process is the punishment.' On the face of it Bolt CEO fired his Human Resources Department because they were "creating problems that didn't exist." He's not wrong in his thinking, merely in his approach.

HR is the modern version of the process that used to require a record of at least 2 counseling sessions before lowering the boom on a man who was screwing things up in the workplace. What I learned as a new officer was that if it wasn't documented previously, it could not be used as justification for non-administrative punishment. With some of the knuckleheads this was not a problem. You could literally tell them not to do X any more and they'd do it before they left my office and 4 more times walking back to the workcenter.

As I used to see it, HR was the permanent recording secretary documenting the little crimes that would safely see you rid of people that you and your colleagues really did not want to work with anymore. They were the corporate version of the ship's XO. 

They would mandate training on a given topic, record who was present and then when there was a failure to adhere to the mandates and your peers and work colleagues despised you, the HR department was there to chop you into pieces and walk them out of the building.

I had several issues with the HR process. The first was the obvious one that the rules only applied to the people that they didn't like. The second was that any given training on, for instance, sexual harassment, could be safely and comprehensively covered in something less than 5 minutes. It did not take an hour and need to be repeated and beaten to death.

My final issue with the HR is perhaps only one of my imagination. In that place I would just assume that the HR we're talking about was staffed entirely by people who met all the specifications for enrolling in the Witchfinder's General Assembly and frankly, I never liked those guys.

The HR was top-cover for getting rid of people that you no longer wanted to work with and getting rid of HR means you're stuck with those people because there are arcane rules about disposing firing workers you no longer like or can't tolerate. So we're back to where I was as a young junior officer being told by the XO that no, I cannot throw Fireman X over the side or shitcan him because I need to document that he was counseled and I must also have a record showing that his counseling included all the steps he must take to avoid becoming shark food. Only after repeated failures to stay off the menu could I get rid of him in strict accordance with procedures.

The upshot though was a day after that little chat the Engineer sent me note asking if I wanted to keep another particular bane of my existence who had just left my office after trying to explain how it was that he missed the last liberty boat back to the ship and was 'forced' to remain overnight on Diego Garcia. It seems his Background Investigation had finally come in and he had a rap sheet 22 pages long and had therefore fraudulently enlisted. He was on the next boat back to Diego Garcia and the next plane back to the United States.

What Mr. Breslow and his HR failed to comprehend was that his HR was supposed to work for him. I'm sure he'll be able to replace them with something ten times better but then, when we are talking about HR, we can be talking about multiplying by zero.

LEGITIMATE PEACEFUL DEMOCRATS

 It speaks volumes that on seeing this I immediately concurred. Honestly, who would assassinate a candidate for Mayor in America?

As I read those words very early this morning at Chicago Boyz I was struck by the thought, this was the very first time I have ever seen somebody suggesting that a man doing nothing more than standing for public office as Mayor of some crappy little town in the United States could be assassinated for daring to stand up for himself and others in the environment created by liberal democrats.

I remember sitting in the airport in Manila as I was waiting to leave the country and reading about the discovery of this election massacre and thinking, "Wow! This sort of thing could never happen in America." I'm beginning to get the distinct feeling that I'm wrong.

REMEMBRANCE

 While the day comes around every year I find that it takes forever to write anything because once I start digging in I find hours pass as I look through the things I have and the places I have been to see what calls forth the memory this time. These were some of the most evocative words I ever ran across: 

It really doesn't take very much to evoke them. Sometimes it's the wind on the water or the leaves rustling and other times it's as simple as seeing something you've seen a dozen times in a different light. 

 

And then there is an item from sippican's cottage.  

STRANGE HAPPENINGS

 I see from the news so take that for what it's worth, that USS Nimitz is now operating in the Caribbean which, you must admit, is a strange place to find an aircraft carrier based out of Bremerton, Washington on the very point of a dignified retirement. I know, she is underway to her final homeport for decommissioning but it still seems odd to send a nuclear ship all the way around South America to commence its final act. Those who have read the Fighting Words to the top right know my connection with the ship but I liked this picture:

 and I never saw this one until now:

Catherine Nimitz Lay christened Nimitz on 13 May 1972.

She was the very first person outside the family that I worked for. I slaved away all through 7th grade as one of the assistant librarians at Thomson Junior High School in Newport, RI where she was the Head Librarian. She was a fascinating lady.

As the war got out of control and more and more wounded soldiers returned to the States I read about the 'disgraceful' conditions at Walter Reed Hospital and winced because I knew from one of my officers that closed down NAS Alameda and Treasure Island that the immediate effect of appearing on the BRAC list was deterioration of the buildings and infrastructure because nobody would approve contracts to spend money on 'dead' facilities. It was a shambles.

One can only hope that this is not how the delayed decommissioning has affected USS Nimitz. Getting jerked around like that at the end of service life is bound to have been a major pain in the ass. I saw that with the MSOs, an LST and the poor Destroyers. Bean counters are never kind but they are positively vicious at the end.

Good luck and Good Night Cuba. 

MORE FOOLISH IMMORTALS

 I get some kind of weird kick out of taking a few minutes every now and then to listen to NPR. I know, I keep hoping that one day I'll turn the radio on and hear nothing but static on their channels but they still give that kind of amusement that draws a snort from most intelligent people. Today was no different.

The moderator got another moderate to discuss those whacky rethuglicans and. how they are viciously turning on the Sainted John Thune and his lackey Cornyn and it was kind of nice to hear the two lockstep fascists excoriating the rethuglicans for being anti-democratic and so stuffed with hate that they are TEARING DEMSELVES APART!!!!! I used to wonder at how anyone could be so simple as to believe a word they hear on NPR but this kind of thing makes me think there is still some room for idiots.

It's as if the only way democrats can think about politics is always 150% lockstep and any who ever doubt or waver or vote other than as directed by the Leadership are cast into the outer darkness forthwith with no dillydallying or foot dragging. 

They just cannot comprehend a party that allows for diverse opinions on every single topic and really does largely consist of a big tent in which all are welcome. They see any failure to obey as the rightful kiss of death and start cutting off heads, throwing firebombs and burning down anything that they haven't already toppled and peed on. Notice how they never set fire to universities or schools?

Republicans just see it as a time to winnow out some of the democrats who have been masquerading as republicans for too long. I don't know what it will take to get those idiots to finally approve a law that 85% of the entire country wants but they will one day and unlike the useless democrats, it's not going to involve a man with a gun shooting at politicians.

I'm looking forward to an actual Flight of the Starship tonight so the weather better hold on. 

IT WAS MAY 1919

 It was a fascinating time but then I say that about every time. This one though, was special. One of those things I like about real sailors is that no matter what, at the end of the day, a real sailor never gives up. Give them a chance to hoist sail and be a hero and they do it.

The NC flying boats were designed as aircraft that could fly across the Atlantic to the coastlines of Europe and be ready to patrol for German U-boats upon arrival. Too late for World War I, the NCs still took up the challenge of traversing the Atlantic by air, and in May 1919, the NC-4 made the first successful transatlantic flight, a milestone in aviation history that brought great acclaim to Naval Aviation. 

Originally built as a long-range antisubmarine warfare platform, the NC flying boats were delivered too late for World War I combat and appeared to be aircraft without a mission. Yet, even before the guns fell silent on the Western Front, a bold proposal written by Commander John H. Towers caught the imagination of the Navy Department. When peace returned, it called for the U.S. Navy to regain American prestige in aviation by achieving a feat that all who flew aspired to flying across the Atlantic. 

On 3 May 1919, crews of the NC-1, NC-3 and NC-4 gathered at Naval Air Station (NAS) Rockaway, Long Island, for the transatlantic attempt. In the ensuing days a series of mishaps cast a pall over the endeavor, including a fire that damaged the NC-1, and one of the NC-4's crewmen accidentally sticking his hand into one of the aircraft's whirring propellers during an engine test. 

By 8 May 1919, with a four leaf clover presented to each crew member for luck, the three flying boats launched on the first leg of the their flight from Rockaway to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Only two completed the nine-hour trip, the NC-4 being forced down off Massachusetts with engine trouble and the media giving her the nickname the "Lame Duck." Once reunited at Trepassey, Newfoundland, the flying boats launched into the early evening sky on 16 May 1919, bound for the Azores Islands, the longest and most demanding leg of the transatlantic flight, covering some 1,200 nautical miles. Increasing clouds and rain caused the aircraft to separate, with NC-1 and NC-3 making forced landings. Only NC-4 successfully reached the Azores, the crew of NC-1 rescued by a Greek freighter and the crew of NC-3 actually sailing their battered craft 205 miles to the Azores. 

Thus, the "Lame Duck" became the sole survivor of Seaplane Division One, and on 27 May 1919, the keel of the NC-4 flying boat sliced through the waters of the harbor in Lisbon, Portugal. The aircraft's commander, Lieutenant Commander Albert C. Read, later wrote to his wife that the successful flight represented "a continuous run of unadulterated luck," but indeed the skill and bravery of the crew combined with fortuity in making the NC-4 and her crew the first to fly the Atlantic.

 For those that never watched Top Gear, you missed a great show. One of the amusing bits was how whenever one of the trio broke down the others would sometimes mock him for awhile and then drive away and head to the hotel bar. I can only imagine what it was like to watch as one of your wing men landed on the ocean and you continued on. Now I'm going to have to find the book one of these guys must have written and see what happened.

ON REASONABLE

 Every time you turn around the idiots in the legislature have passed yet another law designed to limit your inalienable right to possess and carry a firearm and every single damned one of them knows that the Supreme Court has addressed this issue countless times and found that legislatures doing this are in the wrong. They say so. They write it down so you don't forget. The legislatures still do it.

Here's a simple solution to this imbecilic trait that sends gun owners to the Courts to seek redress every time the legislaturds go all tyrannical; every legislator who voted for the law will,  in every court case that challenges and contests yet another arbitrary unconstitutional anti-gun law be personally liable for a $50,000 per plaintiff penalty to be paid promptly or the legislator goes to prison until it is paid. 

Enough of this pussyfooting around with these gun grabbers. Make them liable for their personal stupidity and make them pay for inflicting it on the rest of us. This is not one where they get to dip into the treasury to pay us, it is to come right out of their personal bank accounts. Sell their houses if they need to come up with the money.  And they will.

CUSTODIANS OF THE TRUTH

 The more I read about AI, the companies behind the construction and fielding of AI and the hallucinations and outright lies and the lengths to which one has to go to pin an AI down to the actual truth of things, the more inclined I am to thinking we need to make sure that the Encyclopedia Britannica is always published in hardback and updated annually by the old system of publishing a new collective volume every year. The old versions must all be retained and safely stored. 

The things people know now are largely completely unknown to Gen X and below. They don't know and they don't care and yet these are the essential truths underlying our reality and cannot be ignored for long because that was what DEI was all about and we know how that worked out. History demands controls and it should not be continually rewritten to satisfy the lowest common denominator or the other idiots with academic titles and degrees.

Vernor Vinge captured the future path of AI pretty closely when he wrote Rainbows End. I don't recommend the book to read but the subplot described the plan to equip AI with the knowledge of everything ever written down by feeding it every book ever written and to that end the evil corporation bought all the biggest/best libraries in the world and took the books and dumped them into book shredders so that the optical scanners could store them electronically in the AI database.

As those who have walked into modern public libraries know, there is no need for evil corporation because fewer and fewer books are found in more and more libraries. It's all available online now. Read it on kindle. How this jibes with the accurate recording of The Conquest of Mexico or The Conquest of Peru is best left in the flooded basement. In a hundred years there won't be any modern books left. There is literally nobody who wants them and they end up in the dumpsters.

 

INTO THE DARK

 It looks like there may be no end to the pussyfooted wars of the 21st century which leaves only room for the large steps involved in creating darkness and oceans of blood. I think we'll skip the bloodletting the maximum extent possible but I suspect pretty soon the lights are going to go off and stay off in Iran and once that happens it is a certainty that the same will happen in Ukraine. If we're sick and tired of Ukraine, think how Russia feels and if we are fed up with the 'resistance' of multiple cells of viciousness, well, we cornered the market on viciousness a very long time ago and there's no reason we can't haul it back out of the closet and go forth again with the intent to destroy everything in our path.

I get a kick out of how we are not fighting a fighting war while looking around for others to jump in and take part and do their 'fair share.' I think President Trump has made his point about the utter uselessness of NATO and it is now readily apparent to everyone that there simply is no NATO force at all if one excludes the United States. There is NOTHING AT ALL THERE.

If it is obvious to all of us now, imagine how blindingly obvious it has been to Russia since the long slide to powerlessness began in 1988. All of those armored divisions are long gone and so too are all of the artillery tubes, mechanized infantry, armed helicopters and thousands of fighter bombers poised on their frontier. There is a great void into which Poland has been tentatively sticking its generative member very very quietly and instantly putting it down again. 

They have learned overnight what it is to be a 'frontline' State on the NATO Front and find that absolutely nobody at all has your back. Even if Britain and France were barking mad they would never go to war to support a central European power again. They lost EVERYTHING the last time they did that and they won't do it again. I think the Germans figured that out right about the time Ronald Reagan started talking about rearming and rebuilding a credible NATO force. They knew deep down that France and the Low Countries would simply abandon them and stymie US efforts to return forces to Europe. That's when the Greens won it all.

It was a very nice long weekend jaunt for me as I traveled into the heart of darkness to visit with family in the National Capital Region. We didn't cross back over the Potomac after making the crossing southbound in Hancock but we did stop for gas at Fort Myer.... 

ROAD TRIP

 Back Monday. 

ON POWER

 So I read today that Nevada is entering a new Dark Age. It's really kind of funny because anybody with the power to read the news could have and did forecast this moment way back in 2000. The writing wasn't just on the wall it was splattered everywhere. Power grids around the world look a little like the coliseum after Brian finished.

 I mean anybody could see that the ridiculous destruction of nuclear power around the world and the destruction of the fossil fueled peaker plants and base power plants was going to proceed to a foregone conclusion, we'd be in the dark.

A Nevada utility just told 49,000 Lake Tahoe residents that it’s redirecting 75% of their electricity supply to data centers — and they have less than a year to find a new power source. It’s one of the starkest examples yet of the AI boom’s impact on everyday Americans. 

The case is extreme, but the pattern is not. Across the country, data center electricity demand is reshaping the grid, driving up rates, and pushing a growing number of homeowners toward solar and battery systems — not as complementary power, but as essential infrastructure.

You remember, everyone was going to plug their trucks and cars into the grid 24 hours a day to get a full recharge of the battery and it was simply going to be absorbed by a power grid that was already stretched to capacity.

The inability to cope with reality is still kind of startling. People educated by our public schools are now making the policy that we and our children will be forced to live with and I'll be honest, the kids coming out of our schools are barely literate and a little frightening if you know what I'm talking about. This is how they think and it is beyond reason. In fact, reason is not permitted to take off its hat or sit down before being driven off by men with clubs and guns.

I sure hope that they put this electric power plant into layup but that costs money and it takes skill that few have anymore so I doubt they even tried as they complied with Obama's EPA directive to shut down all coal fired power plants. The local university has one like it but it was also shut down about the same time as the one below. I still drive by them all the time and the shells remain but it takes no time at all for steam machinery to degrade to uselessness if not maintained properly. Just a little rust and it's all over.

 We're on track to needing quite a few of these if the data center and AI manias continue.

INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY

 The man running for Mayor in Los Angeles won't win but he is very cleverly exploiting some new technology that I believe will sweep the nation from now on and even if the various legislatures and other corrupt anti-democratic forces ban and outlaw it, it will just go underground and still enjoy wide circulation. It is unstoppable. It is what brought down the USSR. In the long run, it won't fail to do what it sets out to do.

Doesn't mean that Spencer Pratt is going to win in LA despite dozens of killer spots like this:

pic.twitter.com/YPrZIS0Mp1

— Spencer Pratt (@spencerpratt) May 12, 2026

 The real innovative dawn is the one slowly breaking in the minds of former liberals and even some of the die-hard fanatical liberals. It is finally dawning on them that they/you cannot turn to the State/City/County for the things that Civilization itself demands and must provide it yourself. 

– Your children get no benefit from Public Schools and you better educate them yourself.

– Fire protection and insurance is no longer assured no matter where you live or taxes paid so you better invest in innovative engineered home defenses against fire because nobody else will.

– The State is under NO obligation to protect you or yours so you better be able to do it yourself without their 'aid'.

– Right now and just for this moment you enjoy unrivaled Freedom of Speech and Thought but the State can and will take this away from you. They have done it before and the instant they can do it again they most assuredly will. You better figure out how to stop it or make yourself anonymous and nobody really listens to anonymous.

– Consider innovations in medicine. Doctors are burning out and leaving the practice in droves because it is not medicine anymore and simply nothing but business. Find out if you can still see GPs in your neighborhood who are simply willing to hang up a shingle and advertise their services. I remember medicine from back when this was the case for almost everyone in America and I cannot say that the practice of medicine and medical outcomes got better because they forced this practice to end. 

– Think innovatively. There's money in it if you work at it.