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After Marine Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum died last week in Kabul, Afghanistan, two fundraisers were set up for his widow and unborn child.

McCollum, 20, was among 13 U.S. service members killed in a terrorist bombing Thursday at Hamid Karzai International Airport.

A GoFundMe page, ”Rylee McCollum’s Child Education Fund,” set up by the Into the Breach Supply Co., reads that ”this is a fund specifically dedicated to the education and upbringing of Marine Rylee McCollum’s child who is expected for September. His sacrifice at HKIA to protect the lives of those who cannot themselves will not be forgotten.”

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Kudos to ABC News for reporting true news that hurts their party. A group of volunteers, retired and active duty special operators and intelligence field officers, has apparently launched a successful covert mission that rescued 500 Afghans who had helped the American special operations community over the past 20 years. Men and their wives and children were quietly moved through the streets and then entered the Kabul airport perimeter through sewer culverts. These American heroes were not in uniform and apparently were not carrying weapons as they bluffed their way past Taliban checkpoints with their protectees. The mission name: “Pineapple Express.”

Severian is delightfully dyspeptic today.

Lord knows I have my issues with the guy, but The Smartest Genius in the History of the World (and the “Game” guys in general) have done yeoman’s work on what they call the “gamma,” aka the Secret King. This is the humble farmboy who is of course the rightful heir to the kingdom, who has powers far beyond mortal ken — the standard-issue protagonist of what I-forget-who called GEFP, Generic Extruded Fantasy Product. Luke Skywalker, basically, but even more secret, even more powerful, and much, much whinier.

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I had the honor of taking courses from Kagan in the mid-70s and the pleasure of knowing a number of his graduate students, including Paul Rahe (now at Hillsdale College), Ken Harl (now at Tulane), and Barry Strauss (now at Cornell). My favorite memory is his turn as Big Julie From Chicago in a student production of Guys & Dolls in Timothy Dwight College. “Let’s shoot craps!”

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A New York robbery crew that targeted drug runners hit the jackpot late last year, netting $500,000 in cash after tracking a targeted criminal’s car — with a hidden Apple Watch, new court documents show.

We have the technology.

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

We have the technology.

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Well, if sea levels are rising as fast as the Narrative Media would have us believe, it’s a reasonable thing.

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Before chemicals replaced them, workers pulled weeds from the farm. Greenfield Robotics puts the “workers” back in the field with a new kind of worker — a mechanized one.

“We want to control weeds with labor and make it robot labor,” Brauer said. “Robotics is our way of putting (mechanized) labor back into the farm.”

No migrant farm workers need apply.

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Site Selection magazine says Texas topped the list of states with the most new projects for 2020, buoyed by business-friendly climate and an accessible talent pool.

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A confrontation Tuesday between a police sergeant and member of the public didn’t start out unusually. James Burch, policy director of the Anti Police-Terror Project (APTP), was standing outside the Alameda Courthouse in Oakland, California when an officer approached him and asked him to move a banner. As the two argued, the sergeant noticed he was being filmed. Then, he pulled out his phone and started playing “Blank Space” by Taylor Swift — in an apparent play to exploit copyright takedowns and keep the video off social media.

“You can record all you want,” he said, according to a video obtained by The Verge. “I just know it can’t be posted to YouTube.”

Pretty clever.

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Researchers at the University of Maryland have turned ordinary sheets of wood into transparent material that is nearly as clear as glass, but stronger and with better insulating properties. It could become an energy efficient building material in the future.

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Medicine Crow completed all four tasks required to become a war chief: touching an enemy without killing him (counting coup), taking an enemy’s weapon, leading a successful war party, and stealing an enemy’s horse.

…

He also led a successful war party and stole fifty horses owned by the Nazi SS from a German camp, singing a traditional Crow honor song as he rode off.

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Anybody can run a Tesla on battery.

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Brown University researchers have shown that tiny channels between graphene sheets can be aligned in a way that makes them ideal for water filtration.

Babylon Bee.

Here at The Babylon Bee, we always make sure to impose our modern woke narrative on authors who lived decades or even centuries ago. It’s the only way to truly figure out what a text really means.

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Hey, a dog’s gotta do what a dog’s gotta do.

The great thing about dogs is, when given the opportunity, they do Dog Stuff. No existential angst, no attempt to find The Real Inner Dog; they just Do it.

Watch it.

Who’s going to tell him he can’t?

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This is really clever.

Some of us remember.

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I love sites like these, and only wished I knew something about music.

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I first saw this vehicle in THE PRESIDENT’S ANALYST, a great Coburn flick.

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I built Heathkit stuff in high school and the Navy. They were first-rate.

Watch it.

You really have to have been in the Navy to FULLY appreciate these, but they’re situations that almost anybody can enjoy.

Jeff Bacon is a national treasure.

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One of America’s most well-known conservative think tanks, The Heritage Foundation, rejected hundreds of thousands of dollars from Big Tech corporations. The organization specifically took issue with Big Tech’s censorship of conservatives.

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A Google search for “President of the United States” showed both current President Joe Biden and Richard Grenell.

Grenell responded to the Google gaffe on Twitter, saying, “I will run up the stairs without tripping and then announce a plethora of Executive Orders.”

And that’s all you can ask for.

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For some years now, a Jewish baking practice has served as a kind of kitchen-based healing service, organized largely by women. Following the commandment in Deuteronomy that orders the removal of a small portion of dough and the donation of that piece to the priests, these home bakers separate a ball of dough, recite a blessing, and then—in the absence of bona fide priests—burn this “challah” offering. As they do so, they recite the names of those in need of healing. No one knows quite how this form of the ritual emerged, but for those who practice, it has a logic and a set of rules all its own.

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Whereas refusing to wear a mask outdoors in DC is an act of resistance, in Florida it’s expected. Some businesses have their own indoor mask mandates, but they are often loosely enforced if at all. At first, mingling and schmoozing in a crowded bar without a mask felt naughty. By my second night in town, I reveled in the freedom. No flimsy piece of cloth would slow down my ability to slam old fashioneds and inhale jumbo shrimp.

New Yorkers love to express disgust and horror at videos of the pool parties and clubs in the south. They ignore the awkward truth that their own state and neighboring New Jersey have the highest COVID-19 death rates despite strict lockdown measures. Free Florida sits comfortably below average. I suspect the NY outrage at pina colada-sipping Sunshine Staters is more down to jealousy.

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As Congress tried to provide COVID relief for struggling Americans, they concocted a ludicrously pork-laden bill that included $10 million for gender programs in Pakistan along with over $1 billion in foreign aid. Their pathetic attempt to help the American people took months to draft and lard up.

In contrast, what did the millionaire entrepreneur Portnoy, a semi-regular on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News primetime show, do for his economically-afflicted countrymen?

He created a fund that has already raised more than $33 million and is able to get money directly to small-business owners in less than 72 hours. Call it Portnoy populism.

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This is why God gave us trash bins. Recycling is for slaves.

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Because cheerleading is not governed by the N.C.A.A., its participants can sign lucrative endorsement deals that would lead to punishment for most college athletes, including soon-to-be N.F.L. and N.B.A. millionaires.

Sounds fair to me.

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I love good cartoons.

Scott Adams.

‘Californians can act like stupid fucking idiots better than any other state.’

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What goes down, must come up, and one quarter after US GDP collapsed by a record 31.4% annualized, moments ago the BEA reported that in Q3 the US economy rebounded by a similarly record high 33.1%, the biggest annualized increase in history.

This isn’t as amazing as it appears, because most of that growth is just a return to normalcy after the Pandemic Panic, but it’s still a Trump win.

Steve is focusing on what’s important.

Our nation is hurtling downward toward chaos, BLM is trying to kill cops in Philadelphia, Christians are predicting a 2020 rapture, and what am I doing? I’m smoking ribs.

Babylon Bee.

To the relief of Texans across the state, Governor Greg Abbott has signed a law prohibiting escaping Californians from voting after they move to Texas. Experts say this will prevent the happy and prosperous slice of heaven from sliding into the endless despair and crushing poverty of leftist policy.

And about time, too.

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A viral campaign on TikTok urged users to reserve spots at Trump’s rally in Staten Island, New York in September. The goal was to try to drive down attendance. Instead, the Staten Island GOP turned the tables on them, the New York Post reported. The local Republican group charged for the previously free tickets.

Now that’s comedy.

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You can’t be a Really Engaged Voter without a Babylon Bee Debate Bingo Card.

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Although you ought not to need a reason.

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San Francisco salon owner Erica Kious got a letter from Placer County Board of Supervisors Chair Bonnie Gore welcoming her to move to the community.

“While you may already know your next destination, I would like to invite you to consider setting up your next salon here,” Gore wrote. “Our arms are open to hard-working small business owners.”

Read it.

GoFundMe and Patreon, of course, wouldn’t touch it.

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A rotating globe image showing you the earth in whatever past year you wish.

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An Army sergeant major who rescued around 75 hostages from being executed by ISIS fighters in Iraq will be awarded the Medal of Honor on Friday, the U.S. Army announced on Tuesday.

Sgt. Maj. Thomas “Patrick” Payne ran through a burning building and enemy gunfire with a pair of bolt cutters to free the hostages during a rescue mission, according to the Army.

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“What do you mean, I have to wear a mask?”

Joel Kotkin.

For roughly the past half century, the middle swath of America has been widely written off as reactionary, backward, and des­tined for unceasing decline. CNBC recently ranked the “worst states” to live in, and almost all were in what is typically defined as the Heartland.1 Paul Krugman of the New York Times sees the region populated by “jobless men in their prime working years, with many suffering ‘deaths of despair’ by drugs, alcohol or suicide.”

Another Times article describes much of the small-town and rural areas as home to “the left behind”—Trumpian knuckle-draggers at war with modernity. This coastal contempt for the interior is nothing new, going back to celebrated figures such as Sinclair Lewis and H. L. Mencken, who dismissed it as hopelessly “backward if not reactionary.”2 Two New Jersey academics have even proposed, with the ap­proval of much of the national media, that large parts of the Great Plains be evacuated to make way for an expansive “Buffalo Commons.”3 One progressive publication suggested that the country should send “reparations” to the region, as if it were incapable of devising its own recovery.

Yet in reality, the Heartland—a region of twenty states between the Appalachians and the Rockies—has remained a critical part of our country. In 2016, this area generated nearly $5 trillion in goods and services.4 As of 2015, it was also home to nearly 60 percent of the U.S. population,5 a percentage that is likely to increase as both the North­east and coastal California are projected to grow less than the national average between 2010 and 2030.6

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In the early 1960s, Julia Child and her husband handed Barbara Ketcham Wheaton the keys to their home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The famous couple was going to California for the summer, but they wanted their young neighbor to be able to continue one of her favorite activities: perusing Child’s collection of historical cookbooks.

Now an honorary curator of Harvard University’s Schlesinger Library Culinary Collection, Wheaton was then in her early 30s, with young children at home. She had left an art history PhD program a few years before to marry historian Bob Wheaton, but she still had a passion for the past. When she discovered her love of cooking, and her neighbor’s trove of unique books, Wheaton wondered: What if she turned the same methodology she had learned in art-history classes to a more humble text—the cookbook?

Check it out.

Straight outa 1988.  Ah, those were the days….

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Members of Brooklyn’s Jewish community used a pair of bolt cutters on Monday to cut the lock on Middleton Playground in Brooklyn, according to footage posted by NYC Scanner.

A heavily Jewish community’s nearby entrance to the park had been welded shut Monday morning. The city’s Parks & Recreation department then “unwelded” the gate and installed a linked chain and padlock.

You want identity politics? We got your identity politics, right here.