I’m moving to Tennessee.

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Republican Gov. Jeff Landry directed the Louisiana National Guard on Monday to restore “Camp Beauregard” as the name of its training center in Pineville.

But instead of honoring Confederate Gen. Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard as it was intended when the center opened in 1917, it will be named for the general’s father, Capt. Jacques Toutant Beauregard, a member of the Louisiana militia who fought in the 1815 Battle of New Orleans, a defining moment in the U.S. victory over Britain in the War of 1812.

“We’re naming our premier training installation after an American hero and patriot who fought for the freedom of the city of New Orleans, the State of Louisiana, and the United States of America against a foreign invader,” Maj. Gen. Thomas Friloux, adjutant general of Louisiana’s National Guard, said in a news release.

Another win against Wokery … sort of.

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In a groundbreaking moment for the American mining industry, the Fluor Corporation has confirmed the feasibility of large rare earth element deposits at Ramaco Resources’ Brook Mine in Wyoming. This announcement marks a significant step towards redefining the United States’ position in the critical minerals market. The confirmation by Fluor not only solidifies the economic potential of the Brook Mine but also positions Ramaco Resources as a key player in reducing the country’s dependency on foreign sources of rare earth elements.

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I am not making this up.

It’s Independence Day. You have better things to do than be exposed to people who hate America.

Take a break. Eat a hot dog. Light a sparkler.

Watch it.

I remember the original Datahand, but they were extraordinarily expensive, and by the time I was in a position to buy it, the company had gone out of business.

Each finer can trigger five switched by moving only millimeters, while the rest of the hand remains still. No possibility of RSI or arm fatigue.

New York Post.

50 Cent said he’ll pay a pretty penny to get rid of Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani and his tax-the-rich plan — after the Big Apple mayoral hopeful name-dropped the Queens rapper on a popular podcast.

“Where did he come from? Whose friend is this? I’m not feeling this plan. No. I will give him $258,750 and a first class one-way ticket away from NY,” 50 Cent wrote on Instagram Wednesday.

The 49-year-old hip hop star, whose real name is Curtis James Jackson III, was firing back at comments Mamdani made about raising taxes while appearing on “The Breakfast Club” earlier this month.

I like him already.

“All the girls who weigh less than one-twenty wear as little as possible, and the rest of them put on cloaks and medieval dresses to conceal their bulk. You get used to it.”

— Sharyn McCrumb, BIMBOS OF THE DEATH SUN (1988)

A book about SF conventions. Highly recommended.

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The release last fall, after 44 years, of the Beach Boys’ abandoned masterpiece Smile is a milestone of American popular culture. Rolling Stone has called it “the most famous unfinished album in rock & roll history.” But Smile is also something much bigger. It is the pinnacle artistic achievement of a lost civilization, the middle-class, baby-boom, sun-soaked, clean-cut, work-hard-play-hard, bungalow-and-car culture of post-war Southern California. It was a paradise for the common man, one that produced legions of loyal and productive citizens, developed the modern aerospace industry, helped the West win the Cold War, and exported an attractive and fundamentally decent (if often vapid) vision of American life to every corner of the globe.

Before The Sixties screwed everything up.

Babylon Bee.

And neither side reads Greek, so it’s not as if they know what they’re talking about.

Read it.

More bad news for Democrats.

UPDATE: Economist/YouGov Poll: GOP Widens Popularity Gap Over Dems

Read it.

Allium Engineering, founded by two MIT alumni, has developed a process for improving steel rebar to triple the lifetime of bridges and other infrastructure.

Read it.

There’s a house for sale on the northern plain, in a place you’d never go. It sits by a field just a mile from the river, where a million bass and perch are jumping just now as I write this. By modern standards, it’s a tiny little house — just 600 square feet. But if you adhere to the standard of our great-grandfathers, it’s a fine-sized place, where any young, industrious couple could easily raise a whack of kids.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

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Despite the millions of dollars some business owners earn each year to become part of the nation’s 1 percent—or, in some cases, 0.1 percent—those individuals aren’t associated with the flashiness and glitter that Jeff Bezos, George Clooney, or top Goldman Sachs executives are. Instead, these entrepreneurs represent the “stealthy wealthy” who build their fortunes by turning bland business activities into potent, albeit discreet money-making machines, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“The road to riches is paved with cup holders, burgers and miles of elementary school carpeting,” the Journal said in a story profiling prospering founders whose styles and success are far more Buffet (Warren) than Kardashian (take your pick).

Why focus on relatively rare entrepreneurs who’ve wound up becoming millionaires? Because statistically speaking, the Journal says, those owners of thriving small and medium-sized regional businesses are the “largest source of income for the 1 one highest earners in the U.S.”

The Robb Report.

When you’re flying in a small plane, the possibility of the pilot becoming incapacitated is usually filed in the very-unlikely-to-happen category. But it happens, and with no other pilot on board, outcomes range from a Hollywood best case—the air-traffic-control tower talking you through a safe landing—to much more devastating scenarios.

On a recent flight aboard a Cirrus SR22 in California’s Bay Area, we did more than explore the possibility. We created a situation in which pilot Ivy McIver (also executive director of the SR Series Product line) gave up control of the joystick to demonstrate how well Cirrus’s new Safe Return automatic landing system performs. Cirrus recently announced this adaptation of Garmin’s Autoland technology as the standout feature of its new SR Series G7+, shorthand for the seventh-plus generation of its SR20, SR22, and SR22T. An SR22 like the one we tested, retailing for $1,236,500, is also the world’s first single-engine piston aircraft with the Autoland system.

When McIver let go of the joystick control, instead of heroically grabbing the stick (Hollywood-style) to attempt a landing myself, I reached overhead and pushed the red button labeled “Safe Return.” Within seconds, the button triggered a complex network of automated motors, servos, communications systems, and AI-fueled algorithms.

The Wall Street Journal

Rios, 17 years old, is a junior taking welding classes at Father Judge, a Catholic high school in Philadelphia that works closely with companies looking for workers in the skilled trades. Employers are dealing with a shortage of such workers as baby boomers retire. They have increasingly begun courting high-school students like Rios—a hiring strategy they say is likely to become even more crucial in the coming years.

Employers ranging from the local transit system to submarine manufacturers make regular visits to Father Judge’s welding classrooms every year, bringing branded swag and pitching students on their workplaces. When Rios graduates next year, he plans to work as a fabricator at a local equipment maker for nuclear, recycling and other sectors, a job that pays $24 an hour, plus regular overtime and paid vacations.

“Sometimes it’s a little overwhelming—like, this company wants you, that company wants you,” says Rios, who grew up in the Philadelphia neighborhood of Kensington around drug addicts and homelessness, and says he was determined to build a better life for himself. “It honestly feels like I’m an athlete getting all this attention from all these pro teams.”

The Washington Poop, a Voice of the Crust.

Pope Leo XIV, the newly elected pontiff, must answer to at least one more higher power: the IRS.

The United States generally requires all citizens to file an annual tax return, even those who live out of the country. But assuming he doesn’t renounce his U.S. citizenship, Leo — born in the Chicago area and known until this week as Robert Prevost — has special tax considerations, both as a clergyman and now as the head of a foreign government.

Leo’s situation differs from that of other popes in recent memory, because many countries do not assess taxes on citizens living abroad. “Recent popes from Poland, Germany and Argentina were not taxed by their home countries,” said Jared Walczak, a vice president of the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, who called the first American pope’s accounting situation “uncharted.”

The U.S. is the only non-Turd-World country that does this.

The pope’s job as a member of the clergy does not exempt him from U.S. taxes. American citizens abroad must generally file tax returns if their income level and other personal circumstances would require them to file if they were living in the U.S., according to the Internal Revenue Service.

Now that’s comedy. The obvious move is for the Pope to renounce his American citizenship and remain only a citizen of the Vatican City State … but many Americans can’t climb that particular curb, as the people at Nomad Capitalist have discovered to their frustration.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

Read it.

A quiet energy revolution is underway in the heart of West Texas. Abilene, a small town on the edge of the Permian Basin—America’s largest oil-producing region—is now home to the first Small Modular Reactor (SMR) under construction in the United States. In a moment laced with irony and historical significance, the energy stronghold known for oil and gas is pivoting, not away from its roots, but toward a bold expansion into nuclear power. And not just any nuclear, but advanced molten salt technology, designed to redefine safety, scalability, and reliability in power generation.

WARTHUNDER (2013). Available for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Oculus, and Vive.

… that it’s impossible to get angry about politics while listening to classic rock.

Bob Seeger and Huey Lewis are the only things keeping me sane.

What this country really needs is more air guitar….

Read it.

Amazon.com said it would spend more than $4 billion to expand its U.S. rural delivery network by the end of 2026, doubling down on faster shipments to drive up demand from shoppers in small towns and the countryside.

And all without a government program!

Don’t they understand that, if the government doesn’t do it, it doesn’t get done?

Back tomorrow.

You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave.

New Atlas.

According to Eureka, the Bengal MC pushes the envelope further by introducing a fast-attack ship with heavy payload, high speed, and a range of 1,000 nautical miles (1,150 miles, 1,852 km) that has a modular construction, which allows it to be reconfigured to meet specific mission requirements. This means it can not only be used as an autonomous attack vessel, it can also act as a troop transport, landing support craft, electronic warfare platform, drone mothership, minelayer, or minehunter. In addition, it has facilities for a crew if the mission requires one.

This is made possible by its hull, which is configured to make it a Surface Effect Ship (SES), which travels on a cushion of air by combining the attributes of a hovercraft and a catamaran by trapping pressurized air beneath the hull. This reduces friction with the water and enables high speed.

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The Trump Effect in action.

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I had the privilege of lending Barry Strauss my Greek Selectric type ball when he was a grad student and I was an undergrad at Yale.

[Drop name]

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SpaceX delivered four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) early Sunday as part of a NASA crew rotation mission that will bring home two Boeing Starliner astronauts stranded on the ISS for eight months. The lengthy delay occurred because the Biden-Harris regime sought to avoid optically displeasing headlines about Elon Musk rescuing the astronauts before the presidential election last November.

Babylon Bee.

That, I would actually buy.

I would even spring for the ‘Democrat-seeking missile’ option.

Michael McCune:

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Firefly Aerospace’s “Blue Ghost” lander became the first private spacecraft to successfully land on the Moon after descending from lunar orbit early Sunday morning.

Firefly confirmed on X around 0336 ET that the 6.6-foot-tall lander “stuck the landing” and “became the first commercial company in history to achieve a fully successful Moon landing. This small step on the Moon represents a giant leap in commercial exploration,” adding this “paves the way for future missions to the Moon and Mars.”

Watch it.

C’mon, admit it, you’ve always wanted to do that.

Read it.

In the two months since President Trump won the US election, US industrial production has jumped by the most since Nov 2021 (up 1.5%) to its highest since Sept 2022 (boosted by utilities in a month marked by colder temperatures), up 0.5% MoM in January (better than the 0.3% increase expected). That, along with an upward revision for December, pushed US Industrial Production up 2.00% YoY (its strongest pace of growth since Oct 2022)…

Scott Johnson at PowerLine.

Following up on John’s post regarding the terrorist attack outside the Trump International Hotel yesterday in Las Vegas, I want to note that police now say camp-fuel canisters and large firework mortars were stuffed into the back of a Tesla Cybertruck. These materials caused the explosion that killed the driver and inflicted minor injuries on seven others.

Elon Musk and Tesla immediately provided assistance to law enforcement in the investigation. Elon himself reported on X that he had “confirmed that the explosion was caused by very large fireworks and/or a bomb carried in the bed of the rented Cybertruck and is unrelated to the vehicle itself.” In fact, the design and integrity of the vehicle prevented the explosive materials from doing wider damage.

I’d consider buying one if I could get it as a hybrid. All-electric cars are simply rich-people-toys at this point.

The Times.

Crowds booed Taylor Swift while they cheered for President Trump at the Super Bowl. He later took to his Truth Social account to mock the pop singer.

Trump shared a clip to Truth Social of the audience giving him and his daughter Ivanka a rousing applause beside footage of Swift being roundly booed when she appeared on the stadium’s jumbotron.

In a separate post, Trump quoted a celebratory quip from the hard-right Libs of TikTok account, who wrote: “Trump gets massive cheers at the Super Bowl while Taylor Swift gets booed — the world is healing!”

Swift endorsed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the past two presidential elections.

New Atlas.

This is just all kinds of outrageous. Last November, a skydiver jumped out of a helicopter, glided down into the Grand Canyon wearing a wingsuit, turned around to face the sky, and hooked up to a plane flying above him so it could tow him up and away into the air.

Tyler Cowen.

The White House just issued an executive order on South Africa that includes admitting Afrikaner South Africans as refugees to the United States

Here is one of many reports. Let me first say that I am happy to have more Afrikaners in the United States. It reminds me of my “open borders for Belarus” proposal — numbers are limited and assimilation is not going to be a problem.

That said, the symbolism here can only be described as…grotesque. South Africa is a poorly governed country, so you can find many examples of bad policy decisions foisted on Afrikaners. But, if one is going to make generalizations about classes, blacks in South Africa suffer far more from that poor governance. This Executive Order, taken in context, is a deliberate attempt to invert the actual reality of the situation, and make a subset of the whites the supposed real victims. You don’t even have to get into apartheid history to see the outrageousness of this framing.

Watch it.

This reaction of a British-born new citizen is very heartening.

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What did President Donald Trump learn during his four-year hiatus from the White House? For one thing, he seems to have learned how to listen. But also, to judge by the first week of his second term, Trump 2.0 seems more focused, mission-driven, and prepared to get things done at warp speed.

Watch it.

If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

Read it.

Lawmakers returning to Salem for the start of the Legislative session this week are being greeted by roadside messages encouraging them to “Free Eastern Oregon” by moving the border. The billboard campaign is the work of the Greater Idaho Movement, an organization seeking to move Oregon’s border so that the conservative eastern counties of the state can become part of Idaho.

The messages, running on five different screens across the Salem area and I-5 corridor, are varied, but all relate to the same theme of self-determination for the people of eastern Oregon and the feeling that the wishes of the people there are not being heard or respected.

“For four years, voters in eastern Oregon have been passing our measures telling their elected leaders they want them to pursue moving the border. The people have spoken and the Idaho Legislature has already passed a memorial supporting border talks. It’s time for Oregon’s Legislature to stop holding eastern Oregonians captive and let us go,” said Matt McCaw, Executive Director of the movement. “This campaign is a message directly to the legislators who have the power to do that.”