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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.
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Claims are floating around that 85 percent of the world's refugees are Muslim, and the UNHCR's response isn't "No, they're not," but rather, "A spokesperson for the UN's refugee agency UNHCR said the number of Muslim refugees is likely to be less than 85% of all refugees worldwide." Which is another way of saying "you're in the right ballpark." And those refugees aren't fleeing to Muslim countries.
In other words, it's an invasion, either for economic or political reasons, and according to a whistleblower at the Home Office in the UK, almost every "asylum seeker" is a fraud.
From The Times (UK):
Only one in 100 asylum claims are genuine, according to a whistleblower who has revealed widespread fraud and dysfunction in the system.
The Home Office official, who has worked for years as a decision-maker on asylum and has assessed thousands of claims, said asylum seekers from certain countries use the "same script" in what he and colleagues describe as "package claims".
He said he had encountered a large number of Iraqi Kurds claiming asylum who said they had been in a relationship with the daughter of the prime minister of the Kurdistan region. The official said it had become a "running joke" among colleagues that the number of Iraqi Kurds who said they were involved with the daughter was in the "hundreds".
He also said that "hundreds" of claims from Pakistanis were based on the assertion that they were in fear of their lives in their home country because of their gay relationship with the same man who had provided letters supporting their claims.
The source also disclosed suspicions about large numbers of Bangladeshi claimants purporting to be dissidents of the former governing party, which is now banned, even though they were unable to provide basic information about the group.
Strom believes this state of affairs might have something to do with AfD's rise and the CDU's collapse. Could be. Could be.
But you know who else opposed rampant immigration fraud?
Note that four of the left-wing AGs are dropping out of the communist coalition to demand further concessions, so I can't say this deal is actually struck quite yet.
Done! Paramount Settles Antitrust Suit, Set To Seal Deal For Warner Bros. Discovery
UPDATED WITH MORE DETAILS: Paramount has settled an antitrust lawsuit brought by a dozen state attorneys general led by California's Rob Bonta, the last obstacle to closing its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, Deadline has confirmed.
Specifics are still scant but will come when the deal is formally announced later this morning. There will be concessions. Deadline hears that Paramount has agreed to some CNN guardrails, financial penalties linked to CEO David Ellison's 30 movies a year commitment, and some sort of separation of the studios for a period.
They mean they want Warner Bros. to remain separated from Paramount/Skydance for a period, which I heard was two years. Usually mergers involve reducing corporate staff by combining the old staff and firing the now-redundant staffers. So this is a move to keep those jobs for a period.
Terms of the deal are said to include an investment of $1.5 billion for home-grown film production and protecting and creating jobs, along with requirements for additional domestic production if the federal government approves tax incentives. The settlement also provides for a $47.5 million workforce development fund and obligation to honor existing collective bargaining agreements.
By promising to create "domestic" or "home grown" jobs, do they mean just in California, or the United States? I assume the latter, but I'm not sure.
News of settlement talks began trickling out on Friday but four of the AGs in the group were subsequently described as holding out for more concessions from Paramount. The attorneys general of New York, Connecticut, Minnesota [Keith Ellison] and Nevada came around late Sunday, sources tell Deadline, after assurances from California's Bonta that he would hold Paramount's "feet to the fire" to ensure the company stuck to its commitments. He had said previously he preferred structural remedies like asset sales to resolve antitrust issues, rather than behavioral remedies, which require monitoring.
...
"It's jobs, job, jobs, that's what this all about," a source close to power players in Sacramento told Deadline.
Of course, with $6 billion in cost savings promised to investors, expectations remain for significant layoffs, though those details will become more clear in the coming days and weeks.
Paramount shares rose 9% on the news. WBD gained 10%, trading at about $30.50. The deal calls for Paramount to take out Warner stockholders for $31 a share.
We don't know yet what "guardrails for CNN" have been agreed to. What I would guess is that Paramount/Skydance agreed to keep current CNN management on for some period. Maybe 3-5 years or something. It obviously can't be forever.
Boy oh boy, wouldn't want any bias creeping in to CNN or CBS!
More on the Jake Tapper Permanent Employment Treaty:
Under the agreement, Bonta announced that Paramount is legally required to distribute at least 30 movies in theaters annually and will face a financial penalty if it fails to do so.
The company also committed to spending an additional $1.5 billion on film production over the next five years, with a guaranteed increase in the proportion of movies produced within the U.S., specifically benefiting Hollywood, according to Bonta.
Wait, so is the deal to produce "home grown" jobs in the US or in the Hollywood area? That seems to claim both or either.
Additionally, Paramount agreed to establish an independent board of journalists to oversee the newsrooms of CNN and CBS News to preserve editorial integrity and prevent consolidated corporate bias, Bonta said.
Independent journalists may include Dan Rather, John Harwood, Jim Sciutto, and Don Lemon. I'm making that up but I'm sure that's who the left has in mind.
Now that we've set the precedent that the government can sue media companies to end bias, when does Trump's AG Kash Patel put this new power into action?
December, 2020. Jake Tapper says that during Trump's first term, he refused to have some of Trump's people on his show because they lied too much. Tapper said that he couldn't put lies on air. 😂
Tapper claimed that Kayleigh McEnany lies like most people breathe and that she… pic.twitter.com/3Yn64GuisJ
The deranged partisan freaks like Mark Ruffalo demand that the deal be scuttled.
The primary group mobilizing opposition to the Paramount--Warner Bros. Discovery merger condemned the state attorneys general settlement of their antitrust lawsuit to block the transaction.
Just minutes before California Attorney General Rob Bonta was to appear at a press conference to announce the details of the settlement, the Block the Merger Coalition put out a statement calling the proposed resolution "a bad deal for the future of film, entertainment, independent journalism, and a strong democracy in this country."
"We are disappointed and angry that the interests of average Americans have been trampled to benefit oligarch billionaires," the group said.
Who the f*** do they think own major movie studios? Do they think they're mom-and-pop shops?
No, of course not, this is all stupid communist agit-prop.
In addition to demonstrations and online campaigns, the coalition helped organize an open letter of industry professionals opposing the transaction, including JJ Abrams, Damon Lindelof, David Fincher and Denis Villeneuve.
The only person there I wouldn't want to boycott is David Fincher, but I'm sure I can live without him.
As for Denis Villeneuve -- I know everyone's supposed to say he's great but I think he's boring as hell. His idea of making something feel "important" is just to make it slow and film it in low-key, low-energy way.
I didn't like Dune or Dune 2. I might actually like the David Lynch version more, but that might be too spicy a hot-take for me to commit to.
...
Mark Ruffalo, a prominent opponent of the merger, weighed in on X earlier on Monday. "Gavin Newsom hands huge win to Trump and his billionaire cronies," he wrote, referring to the governor's involvement in reaching a settlement.
In some Hollywood: Shit or Garbage? material: the Resident Evil movie is supposedly the first good Resident Evil movie. What I've heard critics say is that it's not based on any of the actual characters from the game -- it has its own original characters -- but it is based on the scenarios of the game, including puzzle-like levels, I mean movie scenes, the main character has to figure his way through.
In other words, the world of Resident Evil is fairly well adapted, while it doesn't include any of the characters featured in the game.
Which is an interesting way of being both very faithful to the material while also ignoring much of the material.
Multiple reviews say, however, that it ends abruptly and that the climax is rushed.
It's directed by the guy who did Weapons so I'm inclined to think it's pretty good. I dunno. I'll wait for it to be on TV.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, Who Is Unaccountably Wealthy Due to Being a DEI Race Grifter and History Hoaxer, Sent Her Kids to Poor-Performing Schools As a Political Race Stunt
—Disinformation Expert Ace
This grifter created a fraudulent, and now debunked, narrative that Americans declared independence from England not for freedom or political sovereignty but for the only thing the race grifters know about history, slavery.
Because she's a Stronk Empowered Woman of Color who pushes Jason Arday-level fictions, the left made her rich.
Although actually -- she grew up fairly well-off too.
So she could have sent her kids to good schools. Or she could have paid for private schools.
Instead, she sent her kids to the poor-performing public schools in Brooklyn out of a deranged sense of racial solidarity.
In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?
A decade ago, I made a decision about my daughter's education that I hoped would challenge New York City's separate and unequal school system. Now 16, she thinks I made the wrong choice.
...
"Did you know my school was bad like this when you decided to put me here?" [my daughter] asked.
My hands tightened on the steering wheel as I worked to keep my face neutral, buying a few moments to gather my thoughts.
Now thinking of applying to competitive colleges, she googled her high school's rankings to estimate what her chances would be of getting into an Ivy League school.
She found out her mother had deliberately sent her to a shithole school.
Najya's shock had turned to boiling, and the seatbelt had barely clicked before she was confronting me.
I had braced myself for this moment, spent nearly a decade expecting it, preparing for it. When Najya was entering pre-K, my husband, Faraji, and I decided to send her to the type of school that wealthier families with choices uniformly avoid -- one that is low-income and mostly Black. Our decision had been informed by values shaped by my years of reporting on the enduring and too often seemingly hopeless battle for school integration.
...
In New York, a combination of housing segregation and "academic" sorting, called school choice, that begins as early as pre-K means most Black students -- even middle-class ones -- are forced to attend racially segregated schools with high rates of poverty.
Note that this Race Communist had gone to a good school, but denied this to her daughter.
Being given access to the most resourced public schools in my hometown allowed me to flourish academically, and I am convinced that the integrated education my husband and I received set the foundation that has allowed us to become the successful upper-middle-class family that my daughter was born into.
We are both beneficiaries of educational opportunities that were forced into existence by generations of Black parents willing to put their most personal stake -- their own children -- in the fight for school equality for all Black children.
...
And yet decades later, integration now exists for a minority of Black children -- usually those born to families like ours who have the money to pay for private schools or live in tonier ZIP codes zoned to heavily white public schools, or who can pay for tutoring that allows their children, from a very young age, to test into programs for "gifted" students. Most Black students, however, languish in the type of schools that the law was supposed to have eradicated.
So, like the generations of Black parents who came before us, Faraji and I felt an obligation to make educational decisions based on the collective good and not just our individual advantage. New York is considered one of this nation's most liberal cities, while operating a school system that is among the most racially segregated. This segregation exists because policymakers and affluent parents -- even those who profess a belief in integration and equality, -- shed their advocacy at the schoolhouse door and refuse to take or support any substantial action to integrate the city's schools. Faraji and I decided that our role in this struggle meant upending the status quo and sending our child not to a wealthy white school but to a poor Black one.
...
We thought by sending Najya to a mostly low-income and Black school, we could help improve it for all the children there.
LOL, she thought that her daughter's mere presence would improve the school.
This sounds like a lie. It sounds like she sent her daughter to a shit school to boost her own career by proving how Blackety Black she was, and is now trying to justify that selfish choice.
I hadn't intended at first to write about our decision. But a few months into the academic year, P.S. 307 became embroiled in an integration battle when parents protested the reassignment of their children from a wealthy and predominantly white school to ours. It felt impossible for me not to weigh in.
See? There was a school controversy on the Upper West Side -- I assume this is the case of school that resisted having minority students air-lifted in; leftwing Daily Show cow Samantha Bee was one of the many white liberals fighting it -- and so she ax-grinded about it.
And having put herself on the record, she had to show she was no hypocrite, so she dumped her daughter into a shit school.
In 2016, I wrote an essay in this magazine called "Choosing a School for My Daughter in a Segregated City," about our experience in a system in which educational inequality was widely accepted. Our daughter, then a kindergartner with Afro puffs, a plaid school uniform and Jordan-clad feet, appeared on the cover.
The piece struck a chord in a way I could not have predicted. Readers flooded my inbox and posted hundreds of comments. Producers invited me for interviews, book publishers came calling and I was asked to speak all over the country by communities and institutions grappling with the issue of school segregation. The essay spurred community meetings in places near and far; and in New York City, it helped ignite parent and student activism around a subject that had largely disappeared from public discourse. Even a decade later, parents still share with me how my essay led them to make similar educational decisions for their children.
In the outside world, my choice had earned me valor. And yet that day, under the withering glare of my daughter, the words that I was formulating sounded hollow to my ears even before they passed my lips.
Virtue signalling by harming your children.
Now she gaslights her daughter:
"Your school is not bad," I told her, modulating my voice. "What are you talking about?"
Najya grew agitated. "You know what I am talking about. We looked up our school! We saw the test scores. We saw the ratings." She ticked off the school's below-state average reading and math scores, and that it ranked poorly on a popular school-rating website. I said I was aware of her school's academic rankings, but that test scores alone do not define a school.
Glancing between her and the road, I told her everything that I had said a hundred times on stages, in interviews, in discussions since I had made her a symbol of how the choices we make can help sustain -- or dismantle -- educational inequality. I talked about the deep inequality in New York's schools and how, like those Black families who came before us, we had an obligation to be part of the struggle of our larger community. Even if her schools were not academically the strongest, I explained, her father and I knew that we could provide for her tutoring and any other assistance to make up for what her school may have lacked.
But my child just shook her head, her face a mask of disbelief, and something else: betrayal.
"So you had money to send me to one of the best schools, and you chose not to?" she said, hurling her words. "Because other kids are disadvantaged, you didn't want to put me in a great school?"
Najya was asking what I'd accomplished by not choosing the "best" school for her. And the honest answer is, I don't know. When it comes to the choices my husband and I have made about public education, these days I feel that I failed both my values and my child.
Yeah, you did. You are a deranged, bitter, racist, narcissistically evil cunt.
By the way, this article is about 4,000 words long. It's an epic. I can only assume she digs herself deeper into a hole of self-justification and ego as it goes along, but that will remain an assumption on my part, because I can't read this evil racist's defense of child sacrifice any longer.
Rich Lowry
@RichLowry
It's bad enough that Nikole Hannah-Jones sacrificed her child's education to her racial ideology, but she experienced the dismal results--and *learned literarily nothing from the experience*.
You'd think she'd be radicalized against the teacher unions and the complacent, self-serving NYC education bureaucracy--which is run by people who agree with her politically--but apparently it doesn't even occur to her.
If there's one lesson she should have taken from this experience, it's that consequential decisions about your child's future shouldn't be driven by an obsession with racial solidarity.
That's not how the NYC white and Asian parents that Hannah-Jones scorns think about educational decisions--overwhelmingly, they simply don't want the prospects of their children blighted by scandalously incompetent schools.
They freak-out if their kids aren't getting homework, if the lunch period is unsupervised mayhem, etc., not as part of a conspiracy to leave behind black kids, but out of a intense focus on their duty as parents to see that their own children are getting the best education possible.
Nikole Hannah Jones clearly could have learned a lot from them.
President Donald Trump on Monday defended his decision to ban three news networks from the White House, characterizing his actions as a crackdown on "fake news" and not an attack on the free press.
...
"The White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish. It is instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS, something that has grown like Cancer in our beloved United States of America," he posted on Truth Social. "It is corrupt, purposeful, pervasive, fully coordinated, and totally out of control. It is a threat to our National Security, and must be stopped, NOW!"
Have you heard of Natalie Harp? If not, you haven't been paying attention to CNN and MSNOW and the Fake News Outlets. She's Trump's personal aide, and she's pretty, blonde, and reportedly very loyal.
So of course Democrats and the Democrat-Media began suggesting, WITHOUT EVIDENCE, that Trump is having a sexual affair with her.
This is really going to set off the Fake News Media: Reportedly, it was Natalie Harp who shared clips of the fake news coverage of these outlets that prompted Trump to ban them.
Natalie Harp, a close aide to President Donald Trump, reportedly showed him a series of media clips before he moved to ban CNN, MSNOW, and Politico from the White House, CNN reported, citing "people familiar with the matter."
...
Harp, for her part, has been in the news recently, with the media focusing on her intense loyalty to the president. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., kicked off speculation about their relationship when he mentioned her in a campaign speech.
Major television networks agreed on Monday to suspend their pooled coverage of President Donald Trump after the White House refused to allow CNN to serve as a pool representative.
The decision escalates a showdown between the Trump administration and the legacy media outlets following Trump's decision to ban MS NOW, CNN and Politico reporters from entering the White House, the New York Times reported.
Those networks plan to file a lawsuit against Trump over the ban.
For years, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC have shared television coverage of presidential events, pooling the financial costs and distributing the footage that is aired by news organizations globally. The networks perform these duties on a rotation, and CNN had been scheduled to cover Trump's travel to the United Nations General Assembly on Monday.
Here is some of the work of these totally unbiased outlets:
Here's Jake Tapper repeatedly spreading the Fine People Hoax, falsely claiming that Trump never condemned white supremacy. He repeatedly used deceptively cut video to push the false narrative.
Flashback to Jake Tapper pretending that Joe Biden wasn’t in cognitive decline, and gaslighting Lara Trump by trying to make it seem like she’s bullying children for calling it out….
AfD Wins Another Regional Election in Germany; Ruling Chancellor's Party Collapses So Badly It Fails to Win a Single Seat in the Regional Parliament
—Disinformation Expert Ace
The SPD are the socialists.
Parties need to garner at least 5.0% of the vote to get one seat. The "center-right" party -- now really a left-wing party due to endless coalitions with the left -- won about 4.9%.
Chancellor Merz admitted this is a "disaster"
Don't get excited -- AfD failed to win an outright majority and the far left did almost as well. Thanks to the usual "firewall" f***ery, all of the left-wing parties will join in a coalition to exclude the top vote-getting party completely.
Still: The trend.
German papers are calling this the "Merzpocalypse."
Germany's ruling center-right party, Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Christian Democratic Union, was shut out of a state parliament for the first time Sunday as the far-right Alternative for Germany scored its second victory this month.
Why it matters: The result marks the third state election AfD has won -- and its second this month -- underscoring its growing strength even as Germany's other major parties refuse to govern with it.
Driving the news: Merz, who has low approval ratings, told reporters that "reforms have to come."
By "reforms," he does not mean that the CDU will embrace the AfD's winning issue of immigration realism.
He means that the CDU will join with the communists to ban the AfD and further restrict speech so that no one can publicly agitate for immigration realism.
AfD won about 38% of the vote in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, while the CDU recorded its worst result in any German state election since World War II. The CDU fell from 13% to 4.9% and lost all representation.
In Berlin's state election, the Left more than doubled its vote share to 25.7% and finished first for the first time.
Flashback: AfD won its first state election in Thuringia in 2024, though other parties kept it out of government because they refused to enter into a coalition.
They refuse to enter coalitions (when they're asked at all) because the other parties refuse to cede ground on the only issue AfD is running on. They want the AfD's support without giving the AfD any actual ground on their main issue.
Earlier this month, it won 43.8% in Saxony-Anhalt, but fell just three seats short of a majority. It is now seeking enough outside support to form Germany's first far-right state government since World War II.
Vice President JD Vance met with AfD's co-leader days before last year's federal election and told the Munich Security Conference there was "no room for firewalls," referring to mainstream parties' refusal to govern with the AfD.
...
Germany's domestic intelligence service continues to monitor AfD nationally as a suspected extremist organization. A court in February blocked the agency from classifying the entire party as a confirmed right-wing extremist organization while a broader case proceeds.
The anti-migration party calls for "remigration" -- large-scale deportations and encouraging immigrants to leave. It also wants to abandon the euro, lift Russian sanctions and end weapons deliveries to Ukraine.
BERLIN -- German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Monday pledged to overhaul his party's platform and decision-making processes after suffering another humiliating election defeat, calling the result a "major turning point."
...
"It is a dramatic and unprecedented result for the CDU ... an entire state parliamentary caucus has been eliminated from the state legislature," Merz told reporters Monday at his party's headquarters in Berlin. "We will feel its repercussions for a long time," he added.
Party officials had warned that an outcome below 5% for the CDU in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania would unleash a storm of criticism and renew calls for a change in leadership, or Kanzlertausch.
But Merz is clinging to power -- for now.
Unless he steps aside voluntarily, forcing a leadership change risks triggering a snap election at a time when polls show the far right to be the country's most popular party -- making such a move unlikely for the time being. That could quickly change if party members begin speaking out against him.
That's why Merz has vowed to chart a new course for the CDU, announcing consultations in the coming days to unite the party's rank and file behind him.
...
"We will discuss the party's work and structure, our platform, and the CDU's public image," he said. "To be frank, we no longer have satisfactory answers to too many questions. And that is something we will and must change."
During a meeting with science students, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz openly derided the principle of freedom of speech and defended the need for the state to "protect" citizens from American-style libertarianism on the internet.
What would have typically been an unremarkable photo-op for the increasingly unpopular German leader drew condemnation over a major gaffe (read: accidentally revealing his true feelings) as Merz held court at the Chancellery with the winners of the 'Youth Researchers' competition on Tuesday.
When pressed by a young student on whether his plans to end online anonymity would impede personal liberties, Chancellor Merz reacted indignantly, declaring: "Please, no one comes to me with free speech... That has nothing to do with free speech anymore."
The supposedly conservative politician -- who made sure to use English when repeating the phrase "free speech" as if to mock the very concept -- said that he rejects the "libertarian understanding of politics," which he claimed emanates from the United States.
Merz said that his vision of a liberal society was rather one in which the state steps in to protect citizens "from false information, from personal degradation, from discrimination" on the internet.
The Chancellor complained that in the "analogue world" of his youth, German newspapers were liable to face legal action for spreading false claims, but this is no longer possible with the advent of anonymous social media profiles, and thus the media landscape lacks "hygiene".
He also asserted that anonymity allows the proliferation of bot-generated messages, which he claimed were instrumental in helping the Alternative for Germany (AfD) trounce his globalist Christian Democrats in the Saxony-Anhalt state elections earlier this month.
Yet, it is doubtful that any amount of censorship from Berlin would bolster the Chancellor's faltering coalition government, which rumours suggest may be on its last legs.
[Bloomberg:] "We can't sugarcoat it, it was a disaster," Merz told reporters in Berlin in a statement earlier directly after exit polls were released, breaking with a past practice for chancellors to speak the day after an election. He gathered senior CDU officials to party headquarters, where he sought to gauge their support for his leadership.
The far left party Der Linke, which just means The Left, was fueled, of course, by the Karen Vote.
And as with Mamdani's win in New York, Die Linke's victory was driven almost exclusively by young voters and women coming out for the communist/socialist parties.
Visegrád 24
@visegrad24
This is how people under the age of 25 voted in the Berlin regional election tonight.
71% of women under 25 voted for the far-left, the left or the Greens.
51% of women under 25 voted for the party that is the direct, legal and organizational successor to communist party that ruled East Germany as a dictatorship between 1949 to 1989.
But are they really the Karens we're used to? Or New Foreign Karens?
Jo Bhakdi
@JOBhakdi
Germans wonder how young people , especially women , could vote majority communist in Berlin.
They wonder what went wrong : do they not have a dad ? Don't they think? Don't they have loyalty to their country?
But those who ask these questions picture the wrong "young women" in their mind.
Yes, they have a dad. Yes, they are deeply loyal to their country. But neither their dad nor their country are German.
Young people with a migration background make up nearly 50% of all children and teenagers living in Berlin.
The new version of the communist parties in Sweden and Germany are not delusional white female liberals. They are clan-connected invasion machines.
They are not dumb, they are not naive, they are not pampered.
They are brutal, determined and ready to plunder.
And if you were a young woman in that crowd, you also would vote communist. Because you want to live.
Eesh. In 15-20 years almost every country in Europe will be Islamic and Communist.
🚨HOLY SMOKES! 🇩🇪 Germany’s RIGHT-WING party [AfD] is heading for its SECOND consecutive VICTORY in a regional election! 🤯
In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the AfD party is projected to secure approximately 37% of the vote, while the Social Democrats are projected to receive… pic.twitter.com/VXV0snT90A
THE MORNING RANT: Trump Executive Order Targets Employers that Lay Off American Citizens to Hire Foreign H-1B Labor
—Buck Throckmorton
There was great news over the weekend, as President Trump just issued an Executive Order to combat H-1B abuses, and to hold accountable those employers who terminate American employees and then replace them with foreign H-1B labor.
The H-1B issue has become a major political issue, with growing disgust among the American public about employers bringing non-citizens from foreign countries to the states for the purpose of displacing American workers. As I have previously documented, the appeal of H-1B labor for those abusing it is usually for one of the following reasons:
1) It’s a form of chattel labor, in which the H-1B worker is paid less than American prevailing wages, creating a de facto indentured servant relationship, because the H-1B employee may not seek other employment.
2) A way for those of an anti-American bent to provide employment in the United States to preferred foreign demographics.
There are a disgusting number of stories to be found about corporations laying off American citizens to replace them with foreign H-1B labor right here on American soil. Microsoft is one of those dishonorable companies:
Microsoft announced that it will lay off 4,800 people total and 1,600 from the corporation's XBOX division, which makes and sells the dominant video game console. Meanwhile, Microsoft has been approved this year to hire from foreign countries 2,273 employer-sponsored, non-immigrant workers under what is known as the H-1B visa program.
The business fad of replacing American employees with foreign chattel labor had become so “respected” that even the semi-public TVA utility tried to do this a few years ago – until President Trump got wind of it. Then-CEO Jeff Lyash thought it would be clever to find “cost savings” by laying off American citizens. Apparently cost savings helped justify his $8 million compensation. Even worse, Lyash made the laid-off employees train their foreign replacements – the corporate term was “knowledge transfer.” President Trump was so angry that he fired several TVA board members, including the chairman, for allowing this to happen, and for not immediately firing Lyash. Donald Trump takes H-1B abuse seriously.
It’s often a condition in these situations that if the employee being let go wishes to receive a severance package, he must first train the indentured servantH-1B who is taking his job.
Ideally, the president wouldn’t have to address the H-1B mess with executive orders if Congress would do its job. Unfortunately, there is a solid bi-partisan majority in Congress in favor of replacing American labor with foreign labor, specifically:
1) Democrats who despise the United States, its people, and its heritage; They therefore seek to aid foreign nationals (and their homelands) at the expense of Americans.
2) Corporate / Chamber of Commerce Republicans who have embraced slavery-adjacent forms of labor in their quest to reduce labor expense to as close to $0 as possible.
It is tiresome that those of us who oppose the H-1B replacement of American workers are branded as “racist” by Democrats, RINOs, and the media. I’d like to push back and ask how it’s not racist that 70% of all H-1Bs come from just one country – India. Is it not racist that hiring managers trying to hire for “jobs Americans won’t do” look almost exclusively to India?
America’s adversary, the People’s Republic Of China, provides another 12% of all H-1Bs. A whopping 82% of all H-1Bs come from India and Communist China.
Returning to the specific subject of today’s post, here is what President Trump’s new Executive Order entails:
• Companies petitioning for H-1B employees (or subcontracted H-1Bs) must disclose all previous and planned layoffs. Federal agencies must ensure that laid off workers are not being replaced with H-1Bs.
• To approve an H-1B going forward, a byzantine tangle of bureaucratic approvals will be needed from various federal agencies, with input required from the Departments of State, Labor, Homeland Security, Commerce, Education, and SBA. The process full of red tape is part of the deterrent.
• The Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division is going to start auditing previous applications to determine if violations have occurred and if enforcement penalties should be imposed.
There may be consequences for employers replacing Americans with foreign labor, but the obvious intent is to re-set the playing field so that employers stop trying to find workarounds to replace their American workforce with imported labor.
The text of President Trump’s executive order can be found at this link. Here is a sample of what it says:
The abuse of cheaper H-1B labor places downward pressure on domestic pay. H-1B visa holders earn far less than comparable United States-born workers, despite the statutory mandate that H-1B workers be paid equally to their domestic peers, with the estimated wage gap starting at $9,000 and climbing as high as $20,000 in H-1B reliant industries. One company even warned its shareholders that restrictions on cheap H-1B labor could force the company to use “local” workers, which “may only be available at higher wages.”
Many employers have laid off large numbers of highly skilled American workers, only to promptly hire large numbers of H-1B workers who are often lower-skilled and lower-paid. For instance, technology sector employers have collectively requested H-1B visas for hundreds of thousands of workers, yet have also laid off somewhere between 800,000 to 1.3 million American employees from 2022 through 2026. Employers have even forced laid off American workers to train their foreign replacements.
One last comment: Socialism is flourishing as a political and economic concept right now. We on the political / economic right must repel the advance of socialism and protect the free market economy. But it is extremely deleterious to our cause when the corporate class is seeking the replacement of the American workforce with a foreign workforce by using the indentured servant model of labor.
I couldn't find anything remotely interesting for Yom Kippur that I hadn't used before, so I figured I would plague you with one of my favorite paintings!
First of all I want to wish all our Jewish friends a blessed Yom Kippur and may you all be inscribed in the book of Life for a year of health, happiness and prosperity and I extend these wishes to all of you. Instead of wishing damnation to our enemies I think it appropriate that the Lord open the eyes and minds to those who are working to sow the seeds of our destruction, so that their souls can be redeemed.
California previously got away with blocking cooperation with federal law enforcement on immigration, including by threatening local law enforcement with penalties for cooperating with federal law enforcement. This secessionist stuff is now being boosted by also blocking cooperation with federal election oversight. Passing state laws to block federal investigations is creeping rather close to a Fort Sumter moment, but Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Dem supermajority decided to bypass creeping towards Fort Sumter and went right to racing towards it because this fourth bill takes the treason cake. This new law gives the Governor — as commander in chief of California’s militia — a defined role in determining when out-of-state military forces may enter California for state missions.
The new law prohibits military personnel from another state, territory, or the District of Columbia from entering California to perform military duty or law-enforcement functions without the permission of the Governor. The bill preserves an exception for forces lawfully called into active federal service under Title 10 and acting under the authority of the President or Secretary of Defense. Passing laws like this seems utterly senseless unless a state is preparing to resist federal authority using military force.
Two Quick questions for this greasy bastard, first how many U.S. army, navy, air force and marine corps bases are on California soil that are manned and ready to roll. And how many soldiers, sailors and airmen comprise the California armed forces?
Time to nationalize/federalize all California polling places and call out the Army to guard them while preventing any and all wetbacks from casting a ballot. ICE should be sent in force to California.
Protests broke out in the Texas Capital City on Sunday after an ICE officer reportedly shot a fleeing illegal alien. According to the Austin police chief, City Councilman Mike Siefel made false allegations about the circumstances, saying the ICE officer fired five times through the car’s windshield. Facts surrounding the shooting remain under investigation.
Down in the backwater leftist stronghold of Austin, Texas, Talarico is selling progressive politics with a halo. He has shamelessly transformed Jesus into a mouthpiece for leftist progressivism. But that same feeling that we used to get when we watched the PTL Club pervades his aura. I have to hand it to American Protestantism; despite its amazing versatility, it can still make you feel dirty, cheap, and used.
The Justice Department has charged 16 people across several states with alleged illegal voting, voter registration violations and other election-related crimes, including cases involving noncitizens accused of casting ballots in federal elections.
Eight noncitizens residing in Texas were charged, while other defendants face cases in Idaho, Georgia, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, New Jersey and Michigan.
“Let this be a warning to ANYONE trying to cheat and undermine our elections,” DOJ wrote on social media. “Spread the word!”
The allegations include noncitizens voting in federal elections, falsely claiming U.S. citizenship to register or vote and making false statements related to naturalization. Investigators also uncovered alleged passport and identification fraud, wire fraud and firearm offenses.
The illegal alien invader iced by ICE no doubt like tens of thousands of others of his ilk have and will vote in our elections. It's why Joey Sponge-Brain Shits-Pants Biden thoroughly erased our borders during his illegitimate tenure in the Oval Office which saw upwards of 11 million illegal aliens flood into our country on top of the at least 35-40 million illegals already here for decades.
Gavin Newsom’s polished media appearances reveal a carefully managed strategy to ignore both his actual record and schisms among Democrats. . . No matter how destroyed or decrepit the state of California has become, Newsom is a legend in his own mind, and the phenomenally fawning media will always glow up the Democrat candidate, regardless of how incompetent that candidate’s record of governance is. No matter how destroyed or decrepit the state of California has become, Newsom is a legend in his own mind, and the phenomenally fawning media will always glow up the Democrat candidate, regardless of how incompetent that candidate’s record of governance is. . . In the words of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Gavin Newsom is a plastic Ken version of Patrick Bateman from American Psycho. He can lie with impunity without breaking a sweat, fidgeting his hands, blinking, or turning away from the camera. This kind of psychopathology can play very well with the progressive voter base as he competes for the 2028 Democrat nomination.
This little book contains much, much more in this vein, but it is by no means a manifesto of despair. The Red/Green Axis 3.0 concludes with solid and specific recommendations for what patriots can and must do now to beat back this axis, reclaim our nation, and preserve it as a free republic that upholds equality of rights for all people and the freedom of every individual. These recommendations are alone worth the price of the book, but the analysis of the red/green axis itself is likewise essential. Yes, They Really Want to Destroy Us: The Startling Details of the Islamic/Leftist Coalition
“Marx’s dynamic conception of class and of the class struggle has endured... We were trying to describe an incipient majority that could win power...Salaried professionals find their freedom constricted...There are some grounds for optimism.” The Death of the Professional-Managerial Class
In recent weeks, Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi movement has staged a lightning offensive, seizing swathes of territory in one of the world’s poorest countries, leaving the internationally recognised government, which is backed by Saudi Arabia, scrambling to respond. Saudi-led coalition says Houthis fired ballistic missile at Riyadh
US President Donald Trump cut short a weekend at Camp David, a secluded presidential complex in rural Maryland, to return unexpectedly to the White House. US warns of rapid escalation in Mideast war
South Korea’s decision limits the Trump administration’s ability to build a broader international military effort around the Strait of Hormuz while avoiding direct South Korean involvement in the Iran conflict. The move could add strain to the U.S.-South Korean alliance as Seoul seeks to balance Washington’s demands with concerns about escalation, Iranian retaliation, and domestic opposition to deploying troops overseas. South Korean Prez Officially Refuses Trump’s Request for Military Aid in Hormuz.
ISRAEL vs IRAN & GAZA/HAMAS, HEZBOLLAH . . . AND LEFTISTS. . . The U.N... AND HISTORY
What should become of New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle when their socialist experiments blow up? Tough Love For Blue Cities?
As companies and individuals continue to relocate, California's economic future becomes increasingly less certain. The Fall of California
FIRST AMENDMENT ISSUES, CENSORSHIP, FAKE NEWS, MEDIA, BIG BROTHER TECH
This move will likely lead to legal challenges, with corporate media outlets claiming they have a First Amendment right to White House access. President Trump has indicated that more “Fake News Media Outlets” will be banned in the near future. Trump Bars ‘Fake News Outlets’ CNN, MS NOW, POLITICO From White House Access.
Appearing on Sunday at the Fenix, the annual national youth festival organised by Gioventù Nazionale, the youth wing of her Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, told her student supporters that Italian children should not become a minority in their own classrooms. Meloni Announces Plan to Ban Burqas in Schools, Limit Number of Migrants in Classrooms
OFFICIAL DEMOCRAT PARTY/LEFTIST-ENDORSED ANTI-SEMITISM, ANTI-CHRISTIANITY, PLUS VARIOUS & SUNDRY GODLESS HEATHENS
Eighteen-year-olds “may vote, serve on juries, be drafted, and face adult criminal penalties,” and now they can purchase handguns and handgun ammunition from a licensed firearm dealer without the dealer being prosecuted by the DOJ if they are otherwise eligible, Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser announced in a statement Friday. DOJ: Federal Ban On Sale Of Handguns To 18-Year-Olds Is Unconstitutional
THE 2020 AND OTHER ELECTION HEISTS & AFTERMATH
Eight noncitizens residing in Texas were charged, while other defendants face cases in Idaho, Georgia, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, New Jersey and Michigan. “Let this be a warning to ANYONE trying to cheat and undermine our elections,” DOJ wrote on social media. “Spread the word!” DOJ Charges 16 in Illegal Voting Cases as Election Enforcement Expands
“Rob Bonta knows that Prop 39 is likely to pass because it is a bipartisan solution to Voter ID and is supported by a supermajority of Democrat, independent, and Republican voters. Knowing he can’t defeat our bipartisan solution to Voter ID in a fair election, he has decided to rig the vote against Prop 39 with a false title claiming it prohibits citizens from voting!” said Assemblymember Carl DeMaio (R-San Diego). Netflix Co-Founder and Wife Donate Millions to Oppose Voter ID Initiatives.
DEMOCRAT/LEFTIST AND RINO SCANDALS, MESHUGAS, CHUTZPOCRISY, INSANITY
Roger Kimball: There is something in the air—a budding crispness, fresh scents, valedictory echoes—that tells us that a change is nigh. The Political Weather Is Changing
Every presidential election cycle, certain parts of the country become very popular. Iowa and New Hampshire, for example, see a parade of primary candidates fill up diners and barbershops as they woo “everyday Americans” in those early primary states. Later in the campaign, the swing states, and even swing counties, take center stage Anatomy of MAGA’s Takedown of the Republican Establishment in a Blue Swing County
Since at least 2019, Trump has publicly spoken out about the need to protect the Arctic corridor by replacing the 1951 Treaty. And he was reviled unfairly for the effort. Greenland Bases Forever
In case you missed it, on Friday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz confirmed that Venezuela's "interim president" Delcy Rodríguez will be in New York this week for the UN General Assembly (UNGA), and Donald Trump — and presumably Marco Rubio — will meet with her in an informal "pull-aside." Set This Date?
The picture...was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of a survey of the galaxies in the Virgo cluster of galaxies, whose center is estimated to be about 50-55 million light years away and which is thought to contain one to two thousand galaxies, of which the Milky Way is part A galaxy not what it seems
The Clancy story is a cautionary tale that touches on our universal dilemma—that, as imperfect as we are, we attempt to discern right from wrong, moral from immoral, and to choose wisely. Lindsay Clancy’s Devil’s Bargain
In the wake of the Lindsay Clancy Verdict and the Sydney Sweeney Pile-On and the Sophie Cunningham Point-ology it is time for a comprehensive and mandatory discussion of the issue of Women in the Public Square. A Discussion About the True Nature of Woman
CULTURE WARS, NATIONAL SUICIDE
Christian Toto: Hollywood is deeply ashamed of the disparity between male and female directors working in the industry. Dizzying DEI Disaster
Under the settlement, Starbucks will end identity-based quotas and preferences across board composition, executive compensation, hiring, mentorship programs, pay, promotions, pay, and supplier selection. Starbucks will also submit annual certifications of compliance for four years, ensuring adherence to the state’s civil rights laws. This lawsuit represents the pushback against corporate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) ideology. It also demonstrates how state-level cases can have a nationwide impact. Starbucks Caves on DEI in Landmark Legal Settlement.
A new book shows how unsupervised play offers children something that increasingly expensive and competitive youth sports can’t provide: some time and space of their own. In Defense of Recess
America’s muted 250th birthday year reveals a nation increasingly divided by politics, memory, identity, and competing visions of its founding story. America 250 Proves That Patriotism Is Vanishing
The author’s 1971 novel, Love in the Ruins, dramatizes how today’s divisions originated in the upheaval of the countercultural era. Walker Percy’s Prophetic Vision
ALSO: The Morning Report cross-posts at CutJibNewsletter.com usually within an hour or so of posting here, if you want to continue the conversation all day.
Howdy Hordelings! Welcome to the Sunday ONT. Appreciate you stopping by. Open thread, as always. Fashion and music, as always. What's on YOUR mind tonight?
Leaving babies at their grandparents’ doorsteps. Those reactions are priceless 😆 🥰 pic.twitter.com/xtzft5DrTh
Buck Rogers premiered OTD in '79. Erin Gray became a defining childhood crush for a whole generation of young viewers as Colonel Wilma Deering. Wilma striding around in those sleek, form-fitting spandex flight suits is permanently etched into the memories of many pre-teen boys. pic.twitter.com/YlVG4eJok6
A fourth person in Florida has died after contracting flesh-eating bacteria commonly linked to consuming raw or undercooked oysters, health officials said.
The death was included Thursday in the Florida Department of Health's updated fatality count for the deadly flesh-eating bacterium Vibrio vulnificus.
The individual was from Broward County and between the ages of 75 and 79, WSFA reported. It remains unclear exactly how the person contracted the infection.
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Another day, another something happening differently than the "scientists" thought it would
Geologists have discovered that the African continent will split apart sooner than we thought. An active rift has reached a "critical threshold" and will soon break apart, forming a new ocean.
That said, 'soon' is a relative term – it'll still take a few million years more, but that's a blink of an eye on a geological scale.
"We found that rifting in this zone is more advanced, and the crust is thinner, than anyone had recognized," says Christian Rowan, a geoscientist at Columbia University.
"Eastern Africa has progressed further in the rifting process than previously thought."
These super smart people want us to make long term policy decisions based on their predictions of stuff. Yet they are constantly proven wrong.
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Need a place to stay for the Texas MoMe? Maybe this is your answer!
Personally, if I was living in a tiny house, I'd want to get the largest and most luxurious model I could afford, but a lot of people neither want nor need all that extra space. This A-frame on wheels is for such people. With a length of just 4.8 m (15 ft) and consisting of one room, it's about as small and simple as they come.
The Mini Brda Classic is designed by Poland's Mini Domy and is a pint-sized take on the firm's much larger Brda. Taking its name from a traditional Polish A-frame house, this thing is seriously small and is more like a hardshell tent than a proper house. To put its diminutive size into perspective, the 2023 Ford Expedition is significantly longer.
It's built from wood and clad in metal, with a classic A-frame triangular form, while the interior is finished in tongue-and-groove wood and laminate flooring. Though pictured here on a double-axle trailer for easy towing, it can also come without a trailer for permanent installation.
The humble shipping container is little more than a basic metal box, but designers and architects never seem to run out of ideas for what to do with it. The Luna Cottage is a particularly nicely done example, transforming a standard container into a cozy tiny house for two.
The Luna Cottage is based on a 20-ft (6-m)-long shipping container, but it has been heavily modified with a door and windows, plus given a uniform coat of paint. A secondary roof has also been added, which does a good job disguising the metal box's original industrial origins and should improve its thermal performance.
Not bad looking inside - check the link for more photos.
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'Ette Couture (Courtesy of Piper)
It's that time of the week - when we turn the ONT over to our good friend Piper for a bit. Here's this week's fashion pr0n.
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Late 1800s–1940s:
Organized cheering began at American colleges in the late 19th century, and it was mostly men. There was no official uniform industry. Squads wore sweaters, slacks, or whatever athletic clothes they already owned.
Women were not widely allowed onto squads until the 1920s. During World War II, men left campus and women took over the activity, ruining it just like they do everything else they touch. Dang 19th Amendment. Anyway, a recognizable girls’ look began to settle in: long skirts, sweaters over blouses or turtlenecks, sturdy shoes and pointy elbows.
1950s-60:
By mid-century the uniform had a formula people still picture when they think “old-school cheerleader”: a bulky letter sweater, a long wool or cotton skirt, saddle shoes or oxfords, and socks. School letters and megaphone patches made the squad readable from the bleachers.
Skirts were still modest—often calf-length or longer. The point was identity, not range of motion. A 1959–60 school photo captures the look almost perfectly: oversized letter sweaters, below-the-knee green skirts, white shoes, and a megaphone appliqué on the hip.
1970s:
Uniforms kept evolving toward mobility: shorter skirts, tighter sweaters, short sleeves, and tennis shoes. Some teams tried jumpers, hot pants, go-go boots, or capes. Hemlines rose because tumbling and partner stunts were not feasible with extra fabric.
The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, redesigned in the early-to-mid 1970s, put a midriff-baring top, tiny shorts, fringe, and white boots on national television.
An early Cowboys photo still has hats, longer skirts, and a more costume-like Western theme.
Within a few years the signature formula was set: cropped vest, knotted blouse, short white shorts, belt, and boots.
1980s–1990s:
Skirts kept shrinking through the ’80s and ’90s as routines got more athletic. A common school rule had been “skirt to the fingertips.” That rule lost to tumbling safety: extra fabric can catch during a back handspring. Fitted stretch fabrics replaced stiff wool. Metallics and rhinestones crept in by the late ’90s, especially on college and all-star teams.
2000s–today:
A current uniform is sleeker than the 1980s version but still built on the same pieces: fitted top, short skirt, team colors.
The through-line is simple. Every time the choreography got harder, the clothes got lighter, shorter, and more engineered. The letter sweater never fully vanished, it just got compressed into a shell, then into a crop top covered in rhinestones.
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Thanks, Piper!
The rest of you - Don't forget to check out Piper's X page.
Speaking of Piper's X page - evidently the Emmy's took place on Monday. Piper posted a bunch of fashion stuff. Including this
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 the Third September Edition? October will be here before you know it and we'll be in Texas!
With that, step into the dojo and let's get to the gun stuff below, shall we?
The time has come to begin the discussion of the upcoming TXMoMe in Corsicana, TX on October 16-17. This is the eleventh annual TXMoMe, or Conservative Burning Man as it's popularly known, and it promises to be a doozy. A double=doozy even. A bigly double-doozy! If you're in either the Northern or Southern Hemisphere of the Planet of the Earth, contact Ben Had for details on attending. The dates and email links for all MoMes are always helpfully included on the blog's main page, left sidebar.
What started years ago as a small get-together and informal plinking session lasting a couple of hours has matured into a full scale jamboree-hootenanny including a program of shooting activities for both handguns and rifles over two days. I have to thank Ben Had, Cow Horse Queen and RancherBob for making this whole thing happen and providing the opportunity for the shooting to comprise such a significant portion of the event.
But wait! There's more! Combine that with world class food and drink, and the even world classier company of your fellow Morons, and you have a weekend that legends are made of. For those not inclined to shoot (?), there are non-stop opportunities to relax in the shade of the carport or under a handy nearby tree with a beverage and visit with your online pals to your hearts content, which is really what the whole damn thing is about in the first place..
Allow me to be serious for a minute. I have said this probably two hundred and eighty-three times now. These gatherings are a really good time, and I know of no one who expresses regret after having attended one. Actually it goes beyond that. It's not just a weekend of laughs, it's an opportunity to connect with lots of like-minded people and create lasting friendships and priceless memories. No kidding. Think that's hyperbole? It snot. Would your ol' pal Weasel lie to you? Well, yes he would, but not about this. TXMoMe veterans will attest to the funness and completely laid-back nature of the event. Don't be a dork, do yourself a favor and get yo' ass to Texas!
TXMoMe veterans: please jump into the comments to encourage the scairdy-cats to join in the fun! What was your first MoMe like? What were you expecting? Were you surprised? Did you have a great time?
If you are attending the TXMoMe this year, and all the cool kids are, please keep an eye on this section for important information and updates in the coming weeks. I also want to reiterate the TXMoMe is not a gun thing with some socializing attached, but rather is a social thing with some shooting attached. If you aren't a shooter, I guarantee you will not feel out of place and will have a great time. No fooling!
Are all y'all getting excited? Weasel are!!
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09/20/26 Update/Reminder
Well, not really an update but rather more of a reminder.
Volunteers: If you are interested in helping out, please send me a note (gunthread at protonmail dot com) on when you plan to arrive (day and approximate time). It is really critical to have this information for scheduling and to make certain we have the proper coverage to make the shooting portion safe and enjoyable for all concerned. Thank you in advance!
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2026 TXMoMe Schedule
Here is an outline of the schedule of events. Times are tentative and subject to modification/change. This schedule will be included in the Gun Thread with any changes incorporated going forward until the event, so please check back weekly.
Friday, 10/16
Rifle Program
8am - 10am: Rifle Clinic (carport)
10am - 11am: Combined Range and Safety Briefing - Mandatory for Friday Shooters! (carport)
Noon: Light lunch provided (carport)
11am - 4pm: Live fire (rifle range - targets to 1,000 yds)
Handgun Program
10am - 11am: Combined Range and Safety Briefing - Mandatory for Friday Shooters! (carport)
11:00am - 12:00pm: Handgun FUNdamentals
Noon: Light lunch provided (carport)
1:00pm to 2:00 pm (carport - confirmation pending) - Demonstration: Basics of Rifle & Handgun Cleaning and Maintenance - EdL
1pm - 4:00pm: Static live fire (pistol range)
Saturday, 10/17
Rifle Program
9am - 10am: Combined Range and Safety Briefing - Mandatory for Saturday Shooters!
9am - 1pm: Live fire (rifle range)
Handgun Program
9am - 10am: Range and Safety Briefing - Mandatory for Saturday Shooters! (carport)
9am - 1pm: Live fire (pistol range)
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Shooters: Bring your own hearing and eye protection, and wear sensible shoes as the ground on the ranges can be uneven! Also, please plan on stopping somewhere along your way to Texas and picking up some ammunition if you plan to shoot and aren't bringing your own weapons/ammo. Everyone is very generous with sharing, but please don't rely on the generosity of others to provide everything for you. You can really help out by grabbing a box of 9mm or 5.56mm or whatever you want to shoot. Here is a link to Brinson Power Sports in Corsicana which sells ammo. They also sell ATV's if you want to grab one of those while you're there.
Anyhoo...
For a while I have been conducting a Rifle Clinic on Friday morning followed by range time Friday afternoon and then again well into Saturday. Most of you (I think) have endured this presentation before, so if there are other topics you would like to have covered, speak up in the comments and I will try to address your request.
We have also been steadily refining the handgun portion of the program and this year will be focusing on the static pistol range as well as continuing to offer a separate setup for gun-curious beginners desiring one-on-one supervision and instruction. If you are a novice shooter, or even have never been to the range before and think guns are icky, you are welcome to shoot! Just see an RSO and they will set you up with an experienced shooter to help you.
These times are approximate and programs may change as weather conditions and participation warrant. We anticipate a hard stop on both ranges at 1pm on Saturday to allow everyone to participate in the bigly fun TXMoMe festivities.
Range Safety
You will note there are combined rifle and handgun range safety briefings both days and attendance is mandatory if you want to shoot. We take your safety seriously and ask everyone who wants to shoot plan on attending this important briefing. Again, we are conducting one combined safety brief each day. No exceptions.
At the conclusion of each day's safety briefing you will be asked to sign a general liability waiver, after which you will receive a color-coded wrist band. The color is different each day, and it is your ticket onto the range(s) for the day. No wrist band, no shooting that day. Don't want to sign the waiver? No problem, just do not expect to shoot. If you miss the mandatory range safety briefing which is mandatory and must be attended, you are welcome to watch the live fire activities from designated observation areas.
All shooters are asked to check in with an RSO (sporting an Orange Cap of Dorkiness for easy identification) upon your arrival at either of the ranges who will answer questions and direct you to an open firing position. The RSOs wield unspeakable power so it is in your best interest to be nice to them. Want to do things your way? I suggest that your own personal range on your own personal property is a good place for expressing your individuality.
IMPORTANT: I would hope this goes without saying, but anyone failing to immediately and politely follow RSO instructions will be removed from the range(s). Period. No exceptions. This means YOU.
I will probably think of more things to yell about in the coming weeks so please stay tuned.
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Too Heavy To Carry?
With Hikok45
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More Hikok45
This time with Weasel's fav-o-rite, the '03 Springfield.
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Machine Gun Madness!
Starring the M-60.
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Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR)
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Ax Weasel
Q: Weasel, what is the story of copper?
A: I'm glad you axed.
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Our Pal Fluid Coupling
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Highway Patrol!
This week's episode: Reward!
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Day Of The Triffids!
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Cigar of the Week
This week our pal rhomboid scores again with this excellent review of the Karen Berger Tailgate.
Karen Berger is one of if not the only premium cigar brands run by a woman. She is the widow of Don Kiki Berger, a cigar entrepreneur and blender who passed in 2014. Karen has continued and expanded the premium cigar line.
Her "Tailgate" comes only in the toro size (6 X 52), it's a nice looking medium-brown stick with a Sumatra wrapper, with Nicaraguan binder and fillers. Construction seemed spot on - draw was perfect, burn line needed minimal management, smoke was ample and fairly thick. Flavor throughout was consistent, pleasant, and interesting. For me it was a cedar festival, with sweetness (some reviewers term it graham cracker or vanilla notes) along side. Not complex, but enjoyable, and barely changed from light-up to the nub stage. All in all, an appropriately named cigar - perfect for an event like a tailgate party, tasty, well constructed, but not requiring much attention to get every bit of enjoyment out of it. Karen Berger tailgate is available online for $7.50 and up - not featured on a lot of the big sites, but Neptune Cigar and Cigars Daily have it.
Excellent, rhomboid! 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?
That might look a bit weird, but damn! It was delicious. It is a block of pâté made from pigs feet that was breaded very lightly and then pan-fried. That other stuff is a horseradish cream that went perfectly with the rich meat.
Wow. I ordered it not knowing whether it was going to be glorious, or a cold blob of pork jelly with a trotter in the middle of it. Which I have seen!
The best thing about this dish is that it isn't particularly complicated. Making a pâté is surprisingly easy, and frying it is simple. The horseradish cream is also straightforward, but what makes this dish special is that somebody A) thought of it, and 2. executed it extremely well.
That's what most good cooking is...attention to detail and a bit of imagination.
The small restaurant group that runs Fallow and a few other restaurants in London is run by a pair of English chefs (along with a money guy) who are talented in the kitchen and surprisingly good at making cooking videos. Their successful restaurants allow them the flexibility to do all sorts of fun videos, and this one, dedicated to the best chicken fricassee one can make, is a hoot!
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Aside from the uncomfortable reality that I can eat a couple of massive bowls of beans and rice at one sitting, it is a glorious food! My preference is black beans, but red beans will work quite well thank you very much! Red Beans And Rice With Pickled Pork sounds very interesting, especially since I have no idea what pickled pork is!
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Most people don't obsess over wine, and that is healthy and wise. It is, after all, just a drink. You know...like the .45ACP is just a cartridge.
But if you do obsess, and that is my personal recommendation, expanding your horizons is going to pay off quite well indeed. It's easy to fall into the rut of buying the big names in wine grapes: Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay and Pinot Noir and Zinfandel and Sauvignon Blanc and few others. Chosen well they are very good wines, and at the top of the wine game they can be absolutely incredible.
But most people don't drink the top wines very often, especially on a hectic Tuesday night eating a quick meal before you take one of the brats to his travel game or have Back-To-School night.
That's when looking bast the big names is a good plan. Those grapes may make excellent wine, but they carry a premium because of their fame, and at the low end of the range they can be thoroughly mediocre, soulless wines that are just a step above crap cooking wine. Sadly, that evaluation often extends into the pricier ones!
Trying a less well-known grape can pay dividends, because the grapes themselves are less expensive, and since the grapes are only a part of the total cost of the wine, the winemaker often gets better quality grapes and still brings the wine in at a competitive price. So the $15 Cabernet that is made from mass-market grapes grown on an industrial scale can't compete with a supposedly lesser grape that is nonetheless higher quality.
Give it a shot!
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I want to like eggplant. Really! But aside from baba ghanoush, I find it sort of...meh. Oh, I'll eat it in Eggplant Parmigiana or Chicken Sorrentino or crispy fried with some tasty sauce. But it's just not that exciting!
So, while I really want to think that Crispy, Oven-Fried Eggplant is going to change the way I see eggplant, I doubt very much that it is anything other than a small evolution of a boring food.
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The great garlic experiment of 2025-2026 was a resounding...meh. Send all of your excellent home-grown garlic to: cbd dot aoshq at gmail dot com.
About the Bourbon Bubble...I think it has burst, but the category is also suffering from the inflation that affected everything else (Thanks Biden!). I think the sweet spot is still $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 or fifty years, but it is worth it!
That seems like the perfect package to carry in one's pocket! But beneath the calm and seemingly well-designed exterior lays a trap!
The wheel at the base has a stop at one end of its range, but not at the other. So randomness suggests that eventually it is going to turn one way more than the other, and that direction pushes the lip balm into the cap, where it happily stays.
A better design would have some sort of ratchet or lock to keep the wheel from turning when not needed, and also a cooling system so that the balm itself isn't so soft from body heat that it seeps out!
Yemen Is Saudi Arabia's Back Yard, And It Is Their Responsibility, Not America's, To Police It
—CBD
The Houthis, or Anṣār Allāh (“Defenders of God” ), have been around in one form or another for many years. The name derives from their founder: Hussein Badr al-Din al-Houthi, who was killed by the Yemeni government in 2004. The origins of the terrorist movement follow the tired pattern of so many Muslim terrorist groups...some religious or tribal schism that drives maniacal killing for reasons that most modern people would think are nuts!
But that doesn't matter much when their chaotic violence expands past the borders of their failed state. The Houthis have expanded their drive to subjugate Yemen into Saudi Arabia, and at the behest of their Iranian masters have attacked shipping near the western Yemen coastline, which is conveniently (for them) near the narrow Bab Al Mandeb strait, choking Red Sea and Suez Canal shipping. They now control almost 100 miles of that coastline, so they have plenty of opportunity to disrupt a major sea route for world commerce.
Saudi Arabia has tried, and failed, to control the Houthi expansion in Yemen. Apparently the Saudi armed forces have modern weaponry that doesn't translate into quality forces. They have gotten their asses kicked by what -- at least on the surface -- looks like a bunch of 7th century tribes that hide out in the mountains and conduct guerilla warfare against the KSA. Except they are being supported by Iran, which means they have sophisticated (for Muslims) weaponry that they use to good effect against anyone within reach. And what they have discovered is in reach are the oil pipelines that KSA uses to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran is trying to control petroleum exporting to the rest of the world.
Saudi Arabia has dithered and obfuscated and fought (poorly) and tried to negotiate with the Houthis, and nothing they have tried has worked. They are unwilling and probably unable to mount a concerted military effort against them to end, once and for all, the Houthi threats against petroleum commerce and the security of Saudi Arabia.
But...that ain't America's problem. We have sold KSA billions of dollars worth of modern arms, have trained their armed forces, have conducted training exercises with them, and have supported them in all respects. It is time for them to step up and do the work that is necessary. Otherwise, why have we spent so much time and effort?
Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Thursday that the situation is escalating in the Middle East as Iran "likely instigated the Houthis to force a blockade on Saudi Arabia."
"I think this situation is really precarious for the Saudis. This is the biggest threat to their production of oil since their kingdom was founded in 1932. And this is almost existential," he said.
"We see that the Saudis are trying to shop for some force to fight their war for them. And I think along the lines, they also called President Trump. It doesn't look to me that Washington is going to get involved in this one," he added. "We'll probably offer them advice and tell support, but I don't think we, the United States, will get involved with this war over Bab el-Mandeb."
That evaluation is a bit histrionic, but the conclusion is perfect. We have better things to do with our military than bail out the Saudis and, once again, do the heavy lifting that the rest of the world is unwilling to do.
Saudi Arabia on Saturday said that Yemen’s Houthi rebels tried to attack Riyadh with a ballistic missile, the first time the Saudi capital has been targeted since the escalation in fighting with the Iran-backed rebels opened a new front in the Iran war.
The statement said the attack was intercepted. Some residents in Riyadh heard an explosion, and later some saw a plume of smoke near the airport. There were no reports of casualties or damage.
The statement also said the Houthis tried to attack civilian infrastructure in the Red Sea port city of Yanbu — where a key Saudi pipeline ends — and in Taif, Baysh and Farasan but they were thwarted, giving no further details.
The Houthis earlier claimed, without providing evidence, that they had targeted “sensitive sites” in Riyadh and facilities of Saudi oil giant Aramco in Yanbu, causing “massive fires.” Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, did not respond to a request for comment.
Maybe attacks on the capital will be enough to get the rulers of Saudi Arabia off their ample rear ends and actually do something other than pay for others to do their work!
Sunday Morning Book Thread - 9-20-2026 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]
—Open Blogger
Click for larger image
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 (Yoko Ono edition!). 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...(is there a sincere pumpkin patch near you?)
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?
Earlier this week I had a dream where I was flipping through a stack of books in a library or bookstore and came across a "Choose Your Own Adventure" version of Lord of the Rings. For some reason, that tickled my fancy, so I asked Grok to generate covers for each of the volumes of Lord of the Rings as if they were each a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book.
Then I wondered, "How would that even work?" Who would be the main viewpoint character? Frodo or Sam would do for that up to a point (until the Fellowship split up in The Two Towers). What sort of decisions would the reader have to make to reach the canon outcome? What are the alternative outcomes? Anyway, I just found it amusing to imagine the greatest fantasy epic of all time as a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book.
Note that Grok did get an extremely important key detail wrong on the cover of its version of Fellowship of the Ring, which I also found amusing.
Which book would YOU like to see as a "Choose Your Own Adventure?"
CAN'T YOU FEEL IT CALLING? (EMPIRE!)
At the risk of being permabanned, I'm starting this section with a lyric from Queensrÿche's classic song "Empire."
For the past several month, every book I've read has featured an Empire of one sort or another. Either the Empire is front and center (Dune) or the Empire is an integral part of the background in the author's worldbuilding (Ana and Din Mysteries).
In the Expansion phase, the Empire is still growing and seeking to conquer new territories. The Empire may be very young, having come into existence within a few decades. The Malazan Empire from the books written by Steven Erickson is this sort of Empire. It's constantly attempting to find new lands. During this phase, a lot of effort will be spent on military adventures, as new resources flood into the expanding empire, allowing it to continue its growth. You will also see lots of intrigue and betrayals, as those responsible for expanding the Empire see opportunities to create their own fiefdoms under their direct control.
The Stabilization phase is where the Empire needs to consolidate its control over its new citizens, reminding them in no uncertain terms just who is now in control of their lives. The Catenan Empire is James Islington's Hierarchy series is in the process of stabilizing its control over the continent, now that its eliminated any competing systems of government. Naturally, there are elements of rebellion that crop up. The Empire will also seek to consolidate any new resources it may have acquired in an effort to pay off any debts its incurred due to the war effort. The Empire also need to figure out what to do with a massive military industrial complex that now doesn't seem to have much purpose as there are no more territories to conquer. The Empire may still do some expansion if there are some areas that they've left alone because they were not worth the effort to acquire earlier, if only to continue a path for growth forward. The Empire in the Ana and Din Mysteries by Robert Jackson Bennett is in this process. There are still some outlying areas beyond its direct control, but its seeking to acquire them through peaceful, diplomatic means rather than outright conquest.
Once an Empire has stabilized, there's really no place else to go but down. The Decay will soon set in. Corruption and graft will become the normal state of being during this phase. Characters may still be noble, clinging to an upright moral code while those around them sink into decadence and hedonistic pleasures. The Empire may be ruled by weak men and women, heirs of their previous much stronger ancestors who were able to conquer and rule with a firm hand. Administrators and bureaucrats may ultimately decide that THEY are in charge, rather than a faceless Emperor who supposedly rules from a distant capitol city or world. This is the status of the Galactic Empire at the beginning of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series.
The fourth and last phase is the Long Night, when the Empire begins to slowly decline into irrelevance. The Empire may rule in name only as various factions and warlord squabble amongst each other to acquire their own power bases. The Long Night can last for centuries or even millennia. In the Dune series by Frank Herbert, God Emperor Leto II's goal is to shepherd the Galactic Empire through this phase so that humanity is able to come through the other side as a species, despite the massive destruction that will occur along the way. The purpose of the Foundation in Asimov's series is to minimize the Long Night from the estimated 30,000 years to a mere 1,000 years or so until the next Empire can arise in its place.
Empires in fantasy and science fiction usually take inspiration from one or more examples from history. The Roman Empire is a frequent template for fictional empires. It was large, powerful, lasted a long time, and we have copious documentation from that time about how the Roman Empire functioned. Several of the series I've been reading recently take direct inspiration from the Roman Empire, such as Islington's Hierarchy series and Bennett's Ana and Din Mysteries, with faux-Latinate terminology sprinkled throughout the story.
A few series will mix and match Empires, again based on real-world historical Empires, to lend an air of authenticity to the story. Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar Saga, for example, has three distinctive Empires. The Kingdom of the Isles spans an entire continent and is based on a medieval British-style governing system, with a King, Dukes, Barons, Earls, and so forth. South of the Kingdom of the Isles is the Empire of Great Kesh, which occupies the southern continent and is modeled after an African/Middle Eastern Empire. On the distant world of Kelewan, we have the Empire of Tsurannuani, which is very much pattered after a Japanese/Asian culture, with Buddhist elements thrown in for good measure.
In stories that feature Empires, the main conflict is almost always something that can undermine or even collapse the current Imperial system--i.e., a threat to the status quo. Empires rise and fall, as is only natural, and they experience numerous inflection points during their histories. Some Empires will last millennia until they finally collapse due to circumstances beyond their control. The Empire in Dune was over 10,000 years before Paul Muad'dib came along and stole it. However, the Empire in Star Wars (under Palpatine's rule) only lasted a single generation before Darth Vader killed the Emperor to save his own son. The Imperial Remnant continued for several generations afterwards, though.
What can Empire do for you?
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HT: Sharon (willow's apprentice)
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HIDDEN LIBRARIES
Moronette vmom sent me this link (goes to x.com) about a Syrian man who hid his private library in the city of Damascus, Syria, to prevent the Assad regime from discovering any forbidden books, which could have led to him being imprisoned, tortured, and killed. The old man returns to Syria now that Assad is gone and uncovers his impressive library, returning it to its former glory in his home.
Governments around the world (including ours, unfortunately) LOVE to control the flow of information within their borders, as that gives them control over the people within them. What lengths will YOU go to to protect your collection of precious books? Which books do you consider to be the most valuable if you had to hide them from an oppressive regime? I suppose for me, the number one book would be the Bible, as it's the moral code that gives our lives meaning, one that transcends mere temporal government control. There are a few others that I might throw into the mix, especially those that would allow me to rebuild a civilization if it ever came to that.
MORON RECOMMENDATIONS
Albert Campion has been asked by a friend from college to investigate the disappearance of his fiancé's uncle. Before he even arrives in Cambridge, the body is found, and the trouble truly begins. In Police at the Funeral, Margery Allingham brings the reader a chaotic mystery that defies a simple explanation.
Great aunt Caroline is the matriarch of a dysfunctional family, and the widow of a famous professor at Cambridge. She wanted Campion involved to forestall police involvement and keep the situation quiet, but after Uncle Andrew's body is found tied with rope and a bullet hole in his head, and her son William was the last to be seen with him, it becomes impossible to keep things under wraps. William's army pistol is missing, and a shank of rope from the attic is gone as well, which all point to William.
All of Caroline's adult children sponge off of her and live in the same house in a festering atmosphere. When yet another death occurs in the house, it seems that a curse has fallen upon the family, and Campion must use all of his intuition and skill to break open the case and find the answers, however fantastical they appear. This is a classic Campion mystery.
Posted by: Thomas Paine at September 13, 2026 09:27 AM (0U5gm)
Comment: "Tied with rope and a bullet in the head?" Must be suicide, according to local police...I enjoy these types of mysteries because the reader is never quite sure "whodunnit" until the end when all shall be revealed. Every suspect has a motive, multiple suspects have the means, and may have opportunity, but only ONE will be found to have the right combination of means, motive, and opportunity to accomplish the murders. When multiple bodies start dropping, it's often a sign that the killer is panicking and beginning to make mistakes, which gives the detective the necessary clues to unravel the mystery. The detective may even acknowledge this in universe.
Star Wars - Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader by James Luceno
I suppose this would be an "interquel" between Star Wars - Episode III - Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars - Episode IV - A New Hope. Anakin Skywalker has fully embraced the Dark Side of the Force and become Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine's right-hand man and enforcer of the Emperor's will throughout the Galactic Empire. However, in his early days he's very much an unknown quantity among the Imperial troops. They know he's different than they are and that he has a very high rank in the Empire, but they're not quite sure how to react to Darth Vader.
Here we get to see Vader's internal struggle as he comes to grips with what the Emperor has done to him, by providing Vader with a life-support system that is inferior to normal Imperial technology, causing constant pain and discomfort to Vader. This makes him a bit grouchy, as you might expect, so he unleashes his misery on anyone who defies him. Which of course helps establish a reputation of brutal capriciousness that will become Vader's trademark strategy for dealing with problems.
Meanwhile Bail Organa, Mon Mothma, and a few others start to plant the seeds of active rebellion against the Empire. Obi-Wan Kenobi lives in exile on Tatooine, keeping an eye on the the infant Luke Skywalker, who will turn out to be a new hope for the galaxy.
Hierarchy I - The Will of the Many by James Islington
I've heard good things about this book and I enjoyed Islington's earlier Licanious Trilogy, so I decided to finally get around to reading The Will of the Many. It's about a young many who seeks to defy an Empire that crushed his homeland, but the nature of the Empire means he must work to defeat them from the inside, becoming that which he hates most.
The Empire here is very unusual, as it is literally a pyramid scheme with those at the top using the "will" of those below them to enforce their rule. It's a highly stratified society. The problem with this type of world is that it's hard to figure out how the children of the nobility inherit their rank, which is strictly based on how much "will" of those below a person possesses. It doesn't look like anyone is born possessing that much will--it has to be earned through advancement. So technically everyone starts out at the bottom. It's a very strange system of government when you start looking at it too closely.
Things get considerably more complicated after the climax of the book, but to say more would be a major spoiler.
The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett
The Tainted Cup is the first book of a series that was originally called Shadow of the Leviathan but now seems to be called Ana and Din Mysteries. Bennett (and reviewers) compare these stories to Nero Wolfe mysteries, where the main detective largely sits around their lodging, cogitating on the mystery at hand, while the assistant goes out to collect the clues.
In the first book, the assistant Dinios "Din" Kol" is tasked with finding out how a prominent officer of the Empire was killed in a bizarre manner by an organism that shouldn't exist. Naturally, intrigue abounds as Din uses his enhanced memory to collect the information that he brings back to his superior officer Ana, the mind behind the detective duo.
Along the way we are introduced to a very strange world where biological and alchemical engineering are used to secure the power of an Empire that defends its people from the enormous leviathans that come ashore every wet season to wreak havoc on the countryside. The bodies of dead leviathans are also the source of the Empire's prowess, as reagents from their bodies are used as the basis for the bioengineering practices of the Empire.
A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett
Another And and Din Mystery, the pair of investigators are dispatched by the Empire to a remote kingdom that will one day join the Empire. Their task is to find out who killed an agent of the Imperial Treasury. Here they become enmeshed in a local political controversy as there is one faction in Yarrowdale that wants to join the Empire and another that wants to remain independent. Meanwhile, the Empire's greatest leviathan research facility remains just off shore where the Apoth faction (apothecaries and alchemists) dissect the corpses of leviathans to find out what makes them tick. The strangeness of the place warps reality itself, corrupting everything and everone that comes into contact with it, which is the cause behind all of the bizarre events in Yarrowdale.
A Trade of Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett
This is the third and most recent installment in the Ana and Din Mystery series. Ana and Din are sent to an agricultural community within the Third Ring of the Empire. It's the source of much of the Empire's food, as it's the home of the largest ranching facility as well as the home of the most important farming family. As usual, the ranching family and the farming family are at odds with one another, but there's a Romeo & Juliet subplot that connects the two families in a web of malice and deceit.
We also learn more about the Empire's history, as it turns out that several centuries ago, two Elder Races also had a conflict in the region that is the cause of the current day's woes. The Elder Races are long gone, but their legacy remains.
Tips, suggestions, recommendations, etc., can all be directed to perfessor -dot- squirrel -at- gmail -dot- com.
Choosing his own adventures since 2022...
Disclaimer: Breeding cats with hands and then controlling them via a brain fungus so that they can pick crops for you is not recommended.
They always were. They are, without exception, "the dog ate my homework" stories.
"Did you actually do the homework?"
"No. But if I had, the dog would totally have eaten it!"
In the first case, Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate and current CEO of mobile carrier Noble Moble
What.
told CNN on Thursday that he had "met with the head of a lab" who had "a belief"
Love the specifics here.
that OpenAI's Hugging Face hacker bots "have planted self-replicating code all over the internet, which makes the internet now unusable for the testing models."
In what universe does that even make sense?
Yang said that this means that the real reason OpenAI and Anthropic have called for a slowdown is because "they have to create synthetic internets to train their bots, which is going to take some time and money."
Step 1: Unplug the router.
Step 2: There is no Step 2.
The second comment came from Noam Brown, who leads AI reasoning research at OpenAI. Speaking to Dwarkesh Patel on a podcast episode released on Thursday, Brown noted that the true take-away of the Hugging Face incident was that "people underestimated the AI."
No, the takeaway is that people overestimated AI researchers, who turn out to be completely fucking retarded.
Brown said that the weak sandbox - the system intended to prevent an AI from communicating externally - was obviously also a contributing factor.
"We left it connected to the internet and were shocked, shocked, to find that it had access to the internet."
Brown pointed out that he's "not convinced" that even an air-gapped system - where the computer isn't connected to anything external at all - would stop an AI from breaking out. He pointed to research from 2015 showing that air gapped computers can be theoretically breached.
Dogs. Homework.
Yes, this does work. If you have two computers sitting right next to each other in a controlled environment - that is, not a busy AI datacenter with tens of thousands of machines - where one computer is doing nothing but attempting to send a signal and the other is doing nothing but listening for it.
You know how, back in the bad old days, every connection between computers required a different cable? Well, here's why that was a good thing: In most cases you couldn't physically connect things using the wrong cable because they were designed using different numbers of pins and simply wouldn't fit.
Enter modular power supplies. The ends of the cables that plug into your motherboard and graphics card are standardised. Sometime the standards are horrible, and they keep changing, but at least there are standards.
The ends that plug into the power supply itself not only change between manufacturers and models, but sometimes between units with the same model number. And since there are only so many possible pin layouts, it's often possible to plug a cable from one power supply into another in a way that will permanently destroy your computer when you flip the switch.
Not the reason: An M6 Pro being faster than an M5 Max. The M5 Max is no faster than an M5 Pro on the CPU side. It has twice the GPU performance and twice the memory bandwidth, but the CPU is unchanged.
Saturday Night Club ONT - September 19, 2026 [Disco & Dino]
—Open Blogger
Welcome to Club ONT - a whelming collaboration of The Disco and The Dino.
Open thread - bar is open, too. Come in in, grab a drink or 2. Or 3. Keep it light and friendly. September 19 is the first day of Oktoberfest, so put on your lederhosen or dirndl and a stein of Paulaner and do the Chicken Dance. The Moose won't mind.
In our new research published in Lingua, we analyzed more than 1.7 billion words of online language across 20 English-speaking regions. We identified 597 different swear word forms - from standard words, to creative spellings like "4rseholes," to acronyms like "wtf."
The findings challenge a familiar stereotype. Australians - often thought of as prolific swearers - are actually outdone by Americans and Brits, both in how often they swear, and in how many users swear online.
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Club ONT Jukebox
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Top 10ish Comments of the Week
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Club ONT is brought to you by perimeters
We have you surrounded, you hosers!
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Club ONT is accepting applications for hosts of our potential satellite location in Greenland. See Disco or Dino at the bar for more information!
This is Townsend's acoustic version of "Pinball Wizard," which he did at "The Secret Policeman's Ball," a fundraiser for Amnesty International. I overlook the cause because the music is great!
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The Lumineers Flowers In Your Hair. Who? Never heard of them until...you know...I heard them!
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Hank WilliamsJambalaya (on the Bayou) is a lot better than The Carpenters' version, which is treacly and childish.
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At the risk of tipping off my age, I remember this from high school. But that's not what is important...it's the hair and the mustache! Absolutely awesome.
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The Derailers100% Pure Fool
Another band I have never heard of, but who aren't bad!
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Beastie Boys (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)
This used to be ubiquitous, but luckily it was after my time, and even luckier, it has faded from our collective memory. I think it would be a lot better if it hadn't been played 8,000,000 times.
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. For this week, the Wheel of Hobbies (TM) is feeling lucky and decided on a tool plus theme for this Hobby Thread.
This started as a tool thread, but I found a few other things along the way that warranted space in the content. You're welcome to talk tools, screws, framing, cannons, whittling, art or anything else related or adjacent.
If you wish to stay on topic, I'm very interested in knowing what cheap tools perform just as well as expensive ones? This often comes up in the context of "what should I buy or not buy at Harbor Freight?" More below.
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What are you hobbying?
The theme may not be your favorite but give it a chance before you judge and bail out. Any adjacent hobbying is in scope, so jump in with your interests, stories and questions.
In any event, the thread is not limited to to the theme. Anything (legal) you are hobbying is welcome. Even if the theme does not speak to you, you might learn something or be entertained. If not, offer something else relating to hobbying. If all of that fails, just check in and say hello.
As per usual Hobby Thread etiquette, keep this thread limited to hobbying. Leave politics and religion to threads elsewhere (unless your hobby is building or restoring churches). Pants? Nope. As always, puns are welcome and encouraged.
Play nice and do not be rude. Do not be a troll and do not feed the trolls.
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Wow. Just wow.
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I don't know what this tool is or what it is used for but it is a combination of awesome and terrifying.
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This is a great topic - what cheap tools perform just as well as expensive ones?
I would not have guessed that a Forstner bit was on the list.
Higher price typically means more precision and durability. The more parts, the more risk with cheaper. The more that specific metals and materials matter, the more risk with cheaper. A clamp or extension cord from Harbor Freight probably works fine. A caliper, measuring device, a heavy-use table saw, or chisel might not.
Having said that, there are always exceptions and bargains. What cheaper tools or hobbying equipment or supplies or cleaners work just as well as expensive ones in your experience?
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Screw knowledge
I never use Torx. Perhaps I should??
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Not sure where I got these photos, but they've been sitting in my computer folder waiting for the right opportunity to shine. Where did this wrench come from? I've never seen a wrench with Ford lettering. An old Ford toolkit? A Ford factory?
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I appreciate people that appreciate history. I appreciate people that can make things. I also appreciate clever people that can tell a story in an amusing and engaging manner.
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Impressive (well done theme, art and video). Could you do this?
JTB - this guy has a video for you:
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Cross stitch framing at home on a budget:
How about a professional frame maker? Lots of useful knowledge, but the jigs and templates in this video alone earned it a place in the content.
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If you're not a reloader, can you melt down spent bullet casings to make brass stock for hobbying? Turns out the answer is yes!
I know what you're saying. Isn't this the same guy that made his own cannon? Yes. Yes it is. I think making a cannon at home qualifies as hobbying.
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Did you miss the Hobby Thread last week? We did a tractor theme. The comments may be closed, but you can re-live the content.
Notable comments from last week:
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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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Reminder: if you put links in the comments, use a URL shortener and describe what you're linking to. Failing to do either or both makes you barrel-eligible. Don't make people click to find out what you're linking.
Send thoughts, suggestions and photos of your hobbying to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com. Or just email to say hello. Do mighty things.
In Switzerland, autumn brings a charming tradition — cows adorned with vibrant flowers and clanging bells are led down from alpine pastures to the valleys, marking their return for winter. pic.twitter.com/Gp7pKXkdWg
Extra vertebrae and free floating clavicle bones allow cats to pass their body through incredibly narrow spaces. Basically they can squeeze through any space larger than their skull. pic.twitter.com/FivOvWdGZe
Zuko was featured on the Pet thread twice. He was such a lovely dog, Perfect temperament, gentle and kind. He will be missed.
Roger
So sorry that you have lost Zuko. I looked back, and saw this note from you in August of 2023: "Recently, on our afternoon walks, he has taken to resting for few minutes beside the creek below our house. I believe he's looking for that bridge that gets mentioned here from time to time. I will continue enjoying our time together until he finds it."
You have picked a lovely photo for us to remember him by.
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i KT here are some photos of our resident bluebird enjoying a bath. Thanks for the gardening thread! -San Franpsycho
A charmer.
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Hi KT,
This is Fat Della, trying to clean her butt. She's wrecked that cabinet.
Miley
I need a name for a sleek black kitten with golden eyes like Della. Male. Neutered.
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PetMoron Adjacent Animals
Encountered by Members of The Horde
Hi! Mr Aspirin Factory here.
Not pets, but an invasive species. These are Jolo spiders, orb weavers from East Asia. They are everywhere and some sizeable.
So far they are in SC, NC, GA, and FL.
Ever been bitten by one? Ever touched one?
Here's a little video to go with the photos. You can share it with the kids. Maybe they will want a pet spider for Halloween.
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Thank you for sharing your pets and animal photos and stories with us today.
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Podcast: Did the SCOTUS leftists slow-walk the USPS decision, Newsom's mendacious pledge not to run if Harris does, Canada's return to the trade negotiations, AI fear-mongering, The Goo Goo Dolls are adults, and more!
Forgotten 80s Mystery Click, Guitar Hero Edition Oh here it comes
That funny feeling again winding me up inside
Every time we touch
Hey I don't know
Oh, tell me where to begin cause I never ever
Felt so much
Okay, that was pretty easy. Here's one that's 3% harder. But still easy. Ooh, can you feel the static?
So many contacts being made
We've got up-front fanatics
Tearing down the barricade
To reach the stage
Can you feel the rage?
Podcast: Is the Iran situation reaching a steady state? The UK sides with the enemies of the West, Vance the Squish? France and Germany and their coming elections, Canada trade war is one-sided, and Clancy is evil incarnate!
Dear RNC; Go f*ck yourselves. I have gotten 56 texts in the last two weeks...all offensive and sneaky and all begging for money. At this point I would rather donate to AOC. [CBD]
"The irresponsible reports that have been published stating that Maria Bartiromo was fired or is no longer an employee of Fox are absolutely and unequivocally false," Freedman said Friday. "Make no mistake, we have the receipts and witnesses and they will come out whether through the courthouse or otherwise."
He added: "Those reporting her firing or the incredulous facts supporting that fiction have exhibited a complete and utter reckless disregard for the truth."
from anon2020 So what, she quit?
Megyn Kelly (accursed be her name) used to say all the time that Fox has a top female PR person who is a nasty pitbull and leaks nasty claims about anyone Fox is at war with, including those who have left the network. So I guess maybe she technically resigned? I don't know.
NEW: @FoxNews has obtained Lindsay Clancy defense attorney Kevin Reddington's appeal filing to the MA Supreme Court, which includes Reddington accusing the lone holdout juror of being "biased" against those with "debilitating mental illness", which he says is a protected category.
Holiday Break: I've had a rough couple of weeks -- the shoulder is healing now and I'm finally getting decent sleep -- and I've decided to take a long weekend.
I'm taking Friday off, and then Monday off, too. I have Open Threads for both days and I will post if big news breaks, but if it doesn't -- and it probably won't, news is slow before a holiday weekend -- I'm going to take a four day weekend.
Sh0eOnHead discusses the Psychotic Cult of Lindsay
Real quotes:
"This case has me feeling like I'm on Law & Order with you guys!"
"We literally binge true crime as a hobby, we've been trained for this moment" Worth the watch. If you haven't seen the genuinely upsetting insanity motivating thousands of women, you should watch this just to see how society is crumbling. Ban TikTok, Trump. I don't care if Barron tells you it's popular with the yutes. It is an evil Communist China op and it is driving women insane.
Dolly Parton tells the story of the supposedly real-life Jolene As Andrew Branca says, can we see this Jolene, finally? Who was this hottie that was a genuine sexual threat to Dolly Parton? I think this is Fake News personally. When a magician claims he learned a trick from a Himalayan wise man, I don't believe him either.
