Read it.

Scientists at Stanford Medicine have discovered a treatment that can reverse cartilage loss in aging joints and even prevent arthritis after knee injuries. By blocking a protein linked to aging, the therapy restored healthy, shock-absorbing cartilage in old mice and injured joints, dramatically improving movement and joint function. Human cartilage samples from knee replacement surgeries also began regenerating when exposed to the treatment.

The Register.

Perhaps not helping is that datacenter firms consistently expect power to be available up to two years earlier than the utilities and power generating companies say it can be delivered, according to the report.

This is forcing operators to go where the power is, and Texas is expected to be a big winner here, thanks to its ample energy resources. Bloom Energy forecasts that, by 2028, the state could exceed 40 GW of IT capacity, nearly 30 percent of the anticipated US total, and more than double its current share.

Read it.

Epoxy resin is a clear, robust polymer that is widely used – especially as part of fiber-reinforced materials in aviation, the automotive industry, and more. Until now, however, it has not been possible to recycle it. Researchers at Empa have developed an epoxy resin that can be reprocessed and chemically recycled, in addition to being flame-retardant and easy to manufacture.

Read it.

They combined a blend of slimy and sticky proteins to produce a fast-acting, bacteria-blocking, waterproof adhesive for use in biomedical applications.

Read it.

A 2025 Intelligence Assessment by the government of Denmark highlights the long term Russian and Chinese ‘threat’ in Arctic waters, at a moment Greenland officials have rejected the US assertion that the large resource-rich island and its waters are being gradually influenced and taken over by the Russia/China ‘menace’.

Trump has recently stated, “We need that because if you take a look outside of Greenland right now, there are Russian destroyers, there are Chinese destroyers and, bigger, there are Russian submarines all over the place. We’re not gonna have Russia or China occupy Greenland, and that’s what they’re going to do if we don’t.”

SciTechDaily.

For generations, scientists and food companies have been trying to recreate the taste of sugar without the health problems that come with it. From saccharin in the 19th century to newer alternatives like stevia and monk fruit in the 21st, the goal has been to keep sweetness while reducing excess calories, tooth decay, and the growing risks of obesity, insulin resistance, and diabetes.

Researchers at Tufts University now report progress toward that goal. In a study published in Cell Reports Physical Science, the team describes a new biosynthetic method for producing tagatose, a naturally occurring but very rare sugar. Tagatose closely resembles table sugar in taste and could offer a way to sweeten foods with fewer negative effects. Scientists say it may also come with additional health benefits.

The Telegraph (UK).

Maria Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader, has “presented” Donald Trump with her Nobel Peace Prize as she attempted to woo the US president.

Mr Trump has made no secret of his desire to be awarded the honour, which has been bestowed on several former presidents including Barack Obama. [For no reason other that being The Magic Negro.]

Ms Machado, whose liberal Vente Venezuela party is widely believed to have won the 2024 election, was given the award for “promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela”.

It follows claims Mr Trump did not back installing Ms Machado as the country’s leader following Nicholas Maduro’s capture because she was given the honour.

Asked whether she had given Mr Trump her award during their meeting on Thursday, Ms Machado said: “I presented the president of the United States the medal of the Nobel Peace Prize.”

She said she had done so “in recognition [of] his unique commitment [to] our freedom”, although it was not clear whether Mr Trump accepted the medal.

ABC News, a Voice of the Crust.

The U.S. experienced negative net migration in 2025 for the first time in at least half a century as a result of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, according to a report released Tuesday by the Brookings Institution.

Although the administration has undertaken aggressive removal efforts, the negative number is mostly due to a significant drop in entries into the U.S., the report said.

“We estimate net flows of -295,000 to -10,000 for the year,” the Brookings study stated. “Though a high degree of policy uncertainty remains, continued negative net migration for 2026 is also likely.”

The Robb Report.

Wouldn’t mind having one of these.

Read it.

Dick Smothers: “Take it, Tommy!”

Tom Smothers: “Take it where?”

Read it.

The Trump administration is considering sending lump-sum payments of up to $100,000 to each of Greenland’s roughly 57,000 residents as part of an effort to buy the Arctic island, media outlets reported Thursday.

The reports followed comments Wednesday from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said he told lawmakers earlier this week that the goal is to buy the semiautonomous territory from Denmark, The Wall Street Journal reported.

U.S. officials, including White House aides, have discussed figures ranging from $10,000 to $100,000 per person, according to Reuters, which cited two sources who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

“We can make you rich or we can make you dead. Which do you choose? — The Mafia

Watch it.

I am as skeptical as Ryan Inis is. But if it works out (and the company involved has a history of innovation) it could be a real breakthrough. At any rate, it will tell you more about batteries than you probably want to know.

Robert A. Heinlein, in his 1982 novel Friday, mentions a similar product called ‘shipstone’. (If you haven’t read Friday, do so. You’ll enjoy it.)

Mackey Chandler’s April series (which I also heartily recommend) use a similar energy storage device, invented by Jeff Singh, one of the protagonists, as a major plot device.

Read it.

Read it.

U.S. forces stormed into Venezuela before dawn on Jan. 3 and captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in a lightning operation that punched in and out of Caracas before its air defenses could mount an effective response.

The operation resulted in no U.S. fatalities and no loss of U.S. military equipment, U.S. officials said.

The U.S. mission—code-named Operation Absolute Resolve—has quickly become more than a political shockwave. Analysts have said it was also a real-world test of U.S. military power against a country that has spent years buying Chinese- and Russian-made air-defense systems and showcasing them as proof that it could deter Washington.

The raid raised uncomfortable questions for Beijing about the limits of the Chinese-supplied systems that Venezuela has leaned on—especially “anti-stealth” radar that China advertised as capable of spotting and stopping U.S. stealth aircraft, a military analyst said.

The analyst told The Epoch Times that the most damaging takeaway for China isn’t the failure of a single piece of equipment—it’s what the operation suggested about deeper weaknesses: corruption in China’s defense industry and lack of reliability of the technology and command structure meant to tie those systems together.

Read it.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed a presidential memorandum directing the U.S. to withdraw from 66 international organizations that the White House said no longer serve American interests.

The White House said the directive orders all executive departments and agencies to stop participating in and funding 35 non-United Nations organizations and 31 U.N. entities that the administration concluded operate contrary to U.S. national interests, security, economic prosperity, or sovereignty.

The White House said the action follows a review of every international intergovernmental organization, convention, and treaty that the U.S. belongs to, funds, or otherwise supports.

And about fargin time. We waste entirely too much money on this socialist crap.

Read it.

Hilton Worldwide Holdings has removed from its system the ?Minneapolis hotel that ?canceled the bookings of Immigration and Customs Enforcement ?agents, the hotel operator said in a post on X on ?Tuesday.

After ICE officers booked rooms using official government emails and rates, ?Hilton canceled their reservations, the Department of Homeland ?Security said in a post on social media platform X on Monday.

“We are taking immediate ?action to remove ?this ?hotel from our systems. Hilton is-and has ?always been-a welcoming place for all,” the statement ?from Hilton said. In a previous statement, the company said the ?hotel ?in question ?is independently owned and operated.

ATQUE: Hilton’s Swift Response to DHS Snub Shows How the Left’s Institutional Power Has Faded

The Financial Times, a Voice of the Crust.

(The Financial Times is the British analog of the Wall Street Journal—if the Wall Street Journal were run by the staff of Mother Jones.)

Venezuela’s government has launched a crackdown in the wake of the US capture of Nicolás Maduro, arresting journalists and deploying paramilitary forces to suppress any show of support for the authoritarian leader’s removal.

The wave of repression comes as Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s former deputy and the country’s new leader, moved to consolidate her hold over the oil-rich nation in the wake of the surprise US commando operation, which snatched Maduro from a military base to face trial.

Gun-toting paramilitaries known as colectivos have been deployed to the streets of Caracas under a state of emergency announced on Monday, which forbade Venezuelans from showing support for the US raid. Media unions said 14 journalists and media workers — 11 from foreign outlets — had been detained for hours before being released.

Most of the arrests of journalists took place around the National Assembly building as Rodríguez — whom US President Donald Trump said would lead a government open to Washington’s interests — was formally sworn in as acting president, according to the National Syndicate for Press Workers in Venezuela.

Since US commandos seized Maduro and his politician wife Cilia Flores on Saturday, the remainder of his regime has sought to stifle public celebration.

Thereby proving Trump’s point, and outing American Democrats as anti-democracy statists.

ATQUE: Venezuela detains journalists and seizes communication devices after Maduro’s removal (Sibylla Brodzinsky/The Guardian)

Read it.

They immediately qualified for an array of generous Federal and State programs….

Read it.

A treatment that blocks an age-related protein restored cartilage in aging and injured joints by reprogramming existing cells rather than using stem cells.

Researchers at Stanford Medicine report that blocking a protein linked to aging can restore cartilage that naturally wears away in the knees of older mice. In the study, the injectable treatment not only rebuilt cartilage but also stopped arthritis from developing after knee injuries similar to ACL tears, which are common among athletes and active adults. A pill-based version of the same therapy is already being tested in clinical trials aimed at treating muscle weakness associated with aging.

Human knee tissue collected during joint replacement surgeries also responded positively to the treatment. These samples, which include both the joint’s supporting extracellular scaffolding, or matrix, and cartilage-producing chondrocyte cells, began forming new cartilage that functioned normally.

Together, these findings point to the possibility that cartilage lost through aging or arthritis could one day be restored using a localized injection or an oral medication, potentially eliminating the need for knee or hip replacement surgery.

Thanks to multiple levels of government regulation, this treatment may be available to your grandchildren.

Reuters, News Service of the Crust.

And the hits just keep on comin’….

Read it.

A federal judge has granted a Lexington, Kentucky, father a preliminary injunction excusing his kindergartener from lessons featuring LGBTQ themes that conflict with his Christian values, reports Universal Hub.

“While defendants contend that implementing the notice and opt-out procedures contemplated by plaintiff’s proposed injunction would burden them to some degree, any potential harm they face does not outweigh that faced by plaintiff — particularly where defendants concede that [the parent’s son] must be opted out of at least some materials,” U.S. District Court Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV wrote in his order Tuesday.

The father, who sued under the pseudonym “Alan L.” in mid-October, said it goes against his religious beliefs to allow his child to be instructed in content that touches on “diversity, equity, and inclusion issues, including issues of race, gender, and sexuality, taught from a secular worldview.”

Popular Mechanics.

The average adult human body contains 206 bones—the hardened mixtures of calcium, minerals, and collagen that provide the biological scaffolding that walks us through our day. While we may not think of them much, bones are incredibly resilient. But if they do break, they have this nifty trick of regrowing themselves.

Teeth, however, are not bones. Although they’re made of some of the same stuff and are the hardest material in the human body (thanks to its protective layer of enamel), they lack the crucial ability to heal and regrow themselves. But that may not always be the case. Japanese researchers are moving forward with an experimental drug that promises to regrow human teeth. Human trials began in September 2024.

Read it.

U.S. Congress quietly rewrote the rules for military service, veterans’ benefits and troop transitions in 2025, forcing legislative changes on everything from tuition bills, foreclosure protections and toxic exposure records.

Between January and late December, Congress passed 14 laws reshaping military and Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) benefits in accordance to rising costs, ongoing deployments, and pressure from veterans’ groups. The laws take effect on staggered timelines into the new years, occurring with less fanfare and without the political theater that derailed previous bigger congressional battles over issues like immigration.

The lawful measures range from automatic increases for disability and survivor benefits; in-state tuition for Selected Reserve students to new foreclosure protections; repayment guarantees for stolen benefits; and required separation counseling for troops leaving the force. Several also fold in wildfire aircraft transfers, clinic construction, and major changes to tax and border spending.

BBC, a Voice of the Crust.

On 24 October 2024, a brief post was shared on the social media network LinkedIn. In it Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s airship company LTA Research finally announced Pathfinder 1’s first if brief untethered flight at Nasa’s Moffett Field in California, part of the space agency’s Ames Research Center. “This morning, Pathfinder 1 reached another milestone: untethered outdoor flight. This successful test marks another important step in our journey, and we are excited to build on this achievement through our rigorous testing program.”

Airships are hard to hide. Despite the secrecy, one YouTuber filmed it from the road and uploaded it to the video-sharing site.

“Pathfinder 1 is a pretty amazing vehicle,” says Alan Shrimpton, editor of the Airship Journal. “It is the first fully rigid airship, certainly of that size, for a very long time, and there was a great expectation that it would fly shortly after it began its outdoor testing programme.

“But Alan Weston [founder and former CEO of LTA Research] always said the biggest fault with rigid airships was that people in the past rushed their development and they were not going to make that same mistake. They were going to check it and check it again – and they did.”

Read it.

Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp last week announced that his university has surpassed even the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology and now has the nation’s largest nuclear engineering research department.

And just in time, because Sharp also announced that Texas A&M is offering land near its RELLIS Innovation and Technology campus, located on 2,400 acres in Bryan, Texas, to several nuclear reactor companies to build small modular reactors (SMRs).

“Plain and simple,” said Sharp, a former State Comptroller and former member of the Texas Railroad Commission, “the United States needs more power. And nowhere in the country, other than Texas, is anyone willing to step up and build the power plants we need.”

Check it out.

On January 1, 2026, thousands of copyrighted works from 1930 enter the US public domain, along with sound recordings from 1925. They will be free for all to copy, share, and build upon. The literary highlights range from William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying to Agatha Christie’s The Murder at the Vicarage and the first four Nancy Drew novels. From cartoons and comic strips, the characters Betty Boop, Pluto (originally named Rover), and Blondie and Dagwood made their first appearances. Films from the year featured Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, the Marx Brothers, and John Wayne in his first leading role. Among the public domain compositions are I Got Rhythm, Georgia on My Mind, and Dream a Little Dream of Me. We are also celebrating paintings from Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee. Below you can find lists of some of the most notable books, characters, comics, and cartoons, films, songs, sound recordings, and art entering the public domain. After each of them, we have provided an analysis of their significance.

Watch it.

Nick Norwitz (MD Harvard, PhD Oxford) explains it all to you.

The Register (UK).

testing, the FAA has confirmed a small plane made a safe emergency landing completely guided by automation at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Colorado.

Garmin’s Emergency Autoland system is built to automatically take “complete control of the flight to land the airplane in an emergency where the pilot is unable to fly.” It can also be activated at the press of a button.

After initial reports speculated that the pilot or pilots may have been incapacitated after the plane, a Beechcraft Super King Air, had pressurization problems, the plane operator assured the public that triggering autoland was a deliberate act by the pilots. No passengers were on board on the flight, which according to the tail number given to the ATC, landed at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport on Saturday afternoon, after flying in from Aspen/Pitkin County Airport, also known as Sardy Field, a small mountain airport measuring just 573 acres.

The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed in a statement that the “Beechcraft Super King Air landed safely at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Colorado around 14:20 local time on Saturday, December 20, after the pilot lost communication with air traffic control.” The FAA added: “An onboard emergency autoland system was activated. Two people were on board. The FAA is investigating.”

While the aircraft did experience “a rapid, uncommanded loss of pressurization,” the pilots put on their oxygen masks, the CEO of the charter company, Chris Townsley, said in a statement to CNN. Townsley reiterated that the pilots had “made the decision to leave the system engaged,” and “automatically engaged exactly as designed when the cabin altitude exceeded the prescribed safe levels.”

Read it.

Scientists from the University of Cambridge have developed a new reactor that converts natural gas (a common energy source primarily composed of methane) into two highly valuable resources: clean hydrogen fuel and carbon nanotubes, which are ultralight and much stronger than steel.

Hydrogen is a promising green fuel because it burns completely, producing only water vapor and zero carbon dioxide. However, the way we make hydrogen today typically involves using high-pressure steam to break apart gas molecules, which releases significant amounts of CO2 as a byproduct.

To avoid this, the Cambridge team wanted to perfect a technique called methane pyrolysis, which converts methane into hydrogen and solid carbon without producing carbon dioxide. However, until now, no one has been able to perform this process efficiently enough for large-scale use because traditional reactors waste too much gas.

Read it.

A federal judge ruled Monday against a California school district’s policy ordering teachers to hide kids’ transgender identities from their parents, in a ruling that a lawyer hails as the definitive end to gender secrecy policies in the Golden State.

“The court has fully and permanently dismantled gender secrecy policies across the state of California,” Paul Jonna, a partner at LiMandri and Jonna LLP and special counsel to the Thomas More Society, told The Daily Signal on Tuesday.

The office of Attorney General Rob Bonta, D-Calif., told The Daily Signal that it filed an application to stay the injunction.

Read it.

The military reported its best recruitment numbers in more than 15 years in 2025, according to the Pentagon.

“In 2025, the department exceeded our annual active-duty recruitment accession goals across all five services,” Undersecretary of War for Personnel and Readiness Anthony J. Tata said Monday.

Tata credited President Donald Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth with the influx of new recruits.

Trump and Hegseth “are focused on our troops and our mission, and on ensuring that we remain the most lethal fighting force on the planet,” Tata said.

Watch it.

Ziroth runs a YouTube channel that keeps an eye on technological advances. Nothing needs technological advance more than the energy storage area.

The reason gasoline is so pervasive is that it is very energy-dense, pretty stable as commonly stored, reasonably safe (movie car gas tank explosions to the contrary notwithstanding—it’s actually very difficult to get liquid gas to explode), and we’ve got an extensive industry devoted to getting high quality stuff to consumers quickly and cheaply.

The use of electricity for transportation is hampered by the fact that electrons can’t just be stuffed into a tank for later use. You either have to generate them on-site (which is how hybrids operate) or store them chemically (via batteries). Energy storage for electrons is neither cheap nor efficient. So I keep an eye out for discoveries that will make our lives easier in this respect.

National Catholic Register.

On the heels of the skull of St. Thomas Aquinas touring the nation, a new study released this week gives Catholics a glimpse at what the “Angelic Doctor” may have looked like.

Liam Neeson, apparently. (What’s your guess?)

Check it out.

I am a sucker for maps. Granted that ‘the map is not the territory’, a good map will pull knowledge together like nobody’s business. One of the benefits of living in an advanced technological society is that a huge amount of knowledge can be pulled together in one convenient package.

Watch it.

The idea of a drone that can operate both in the air and underwater ought to be worth something.

Read it.

FOR MANY YEARS, doctors and technicians who performed medical ultrasound procedures viewed bubbles with wary concern. The phenomenon of cavitation—the formation and collapse of tiny gas bubbles due to changes in pressure—was considered an undesirable and largely uncontrollable side effect. But in 2001, researchers at the University of Michigan began exploring ways to harness the phenomenon for the destruction of cancerous tumors and other problematic tissue.

The trouble was, creating and controlling cavitation generated heat, which harmed healthy tissue beyond the target area. Zhen Xu, who was working on a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering at the time, was bombarding pig heart tissue in a tank of water with ultrasound when she made a breakthrough.

The key was using extremely powerful ultrasound to produce negative pressure of more than 20 megapascals, delivered in short bursts measured in microseconds—but separated by relatively long gaps, between a millisecond and a full second long. These parameters created bubbles that quickly formed and collapsed, tearing apart nearby cells and turning the tissue into a kind of slurry, while avoiding heat buildup. The result was a form of incisionless surgery, a way to wipe out tumors without scalpels, radiation, or heat.

The Royal Society (UK).

Abstract
It is conventionally assumed that all evolutionary adaptation is produced, and could only possibly be produced, by natural selection. Natural induction is a different mechanism of adaptation. It occurs in dynamical systems described by a network of interactions, where connections give way slightly under stress and the system is subject to occasional perturbations. This differential adjustment of connections causes reorganization of the system’s internal structure in a manner equivalent to associative learning familiar in neural networks. This is sufficient for storage and recall of multiple patterns, learning with generalization and solving difficult constraint problems (without any natural selection involved). Various biological systems (from gene-regulation networks to metabolic networks to ecosystems) meet these basic conditions and therefore have potential to exhibit adaptation by natural induction. Here (and in a follow-on paper), we consider various ways that natural induction and natural selection might interact in biological evolution. For example, in some cases, natural selection may act not as a source of adaptations but as a memory of adaptations discovered by natural induction. We conclude that evolution by natural induction is a viable process that expands our understanding of evolutionary adaptation.

The Guardian, a Voice of the Crust.

The Danish postal service will deliver its last letter on 30 December, ending a more than 400-year-old tradition.

Announcing the decision earlier this year to stop delivering letters, PostNord, formed in 2009 in a merger of the Swedish and Danish postal services, said it would cut 1,500 jobs in Denmark and remove 1,500 red postboxes amid the “increasing digitalisation” of Danish society.

escribing Denmark as “one of the most digitalised countries in the world”, the company said the demand for letters had “fallen drastically” while online shopping continued to increase, prompting the decision to instead focus on parcels.

It took only three hours for 1,000 of the distinctive postboxes, which have already been dismantled, to be bought up when they went on sale earlier this month with a price tag of 2,000 DKK (£235) each for those in good condition and 1,500 DKK (£176) for those a little more well-worn. A further 200 will be auctioned in January. PostNord, which will continue to deliver letters in Sweden, has said it will refund unused Danish stamps for a limited time.

Read it.

Would you believe that a tiny British territory has been secretly growing for over 150 years? Welcome to Gibraltar, whose story begins with the stroke of a pen in 1713, when Britain gained control through the Treaty of Utrecht during the War of Spanish Succession. What started as a strategic military outpost has evolved into something far more expansive than those 18th-century treaty writers could have imagined.

Picture this: A limestone giant standing guard at the meeting point of two continents, where the Mediterranean kisses the Atlantic. That’s Gibraltar – but what most visitors don’t realize is that this iconic peninsula isn’t quite as nature-made it. In fact, today’s Gibraltar would be barely recognizable to someone from 1854!

A fascinating map by Abel Gil Lobo for El Orden Mundial tells this hidden story of growth. Like rings in a tree trunk, different colors reveal Gibraltar’s expansion through time:

Harvard Medical School.

A pair of landmark studies has genetically identified the originators of the massive Indo-European family of 400-plus languages.

Results of the international ancient-DNA studies, published Feb. 5 in Nature and supported in part by the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation, place these linguistic pioneers within the borders of current-day Russia during the Eneolithic or Copper Age about 6,500 years ago. They were spread from the steppe grasslands along the lower Volga River to the northern foothills of the Caucasus Mountains.

The Times (UK).

Potholes are the £14.4 billion problem blighting Britain’s roads and leaving behind many a frustrated motorist.

Now engineers believe “self-healing” roads may be the solution. Research suggests that asphalt roads could be made far more durable by adding a new ingredient: recycled cooking oil.

Potholes typically appear when water penetrates cracks in the asphalt over the winter. When the water freezes, it expands, making the cracks larger and forming fresh ones. When the broken-up material is washed away, a pothole is left behind.

The research, which included input from Google and King’s College London, involved creating a sophisticated computer model of how this process unfolds at a molecular level. In particular, the team looked at how bitumen — the sticky black material used to bind together the asphalt mixture — becomes brittle and vulnerable to cracking as it reacts with oxygen in the air.

Read it.

A newly filed patent suggests Tesla may be preparing to embed Starlink dishes directly into vehicle roofs, bringing connectivity costs in-house under Starlink rather than continuing to pay third-party carriers like AT&T. Such a move would unlock space-based, high-speed internet for vehicles. Notably, some Tesla owners are already mounting Starlink Mini dishes onto their vehicles, offering an early glimpse of next-generation connectivity.

Tesla filed a patent covering a vehicle roof assembly that is transparent to radio frequencies, specifically noting that it allows for satellite communications to pass through.

“In some examples, this assembly enables the integration of overhead electrical modules and components, including antennae, directly into the roof structure, facilitating clear communication with external devices and satellites,” the patent explained in the abstract section.

Alma Boykin (“TXRed”).

Short Version: A very well written book about elements of the Medieval Catholic (and later) liturgy, and how they relate to church teachings, to music, and to art.

Long Version: “What color stole?” “Check the liturgical calendar.” Liturgy is a term associated with Christian worship, generally the more traditional denominations or “high church,” such as Anglican, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and the like. But Judaism also has a liturgy, as do other faiths. The Roman Catholic liturgy has had more cultural influence on Western Civilization over the years. Cosima Gillhammer’s book looks at a few specific points in the larger liturgical constellation, bringing in texts, music, images, and the rituals and patterns of worship and meditation. She focuses on the medieval and Dark Ages roots of the liturgy, and the emotions and “sense” of how texts and ideas were used.

The author begins by describing the darkness of the eve of Easter, and the vigil. Hushed darkness, fearful and waiting, then a light. One light, then more and more. Darkness remains outside the church, but fear shifts to hope. Dawn will come. That is the point of liturgy, to guide, and to bring emotion and power to what could be dry and confusing doctrines.

Alma T. C. Boykin is a prolific writer of excellent speculative fiction. She is one of few authors whose name on a book causes me to buy it automatically.

The Foundry.

DHS has added the names, photos, and criminal backgrounds of an additional 5,000 illegal aliens to the searchable platform, bringing the number of listed criminals to 15,000.

“This new update represents just a small sample of the total number of arrests we’ve made—70% of [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] arrests are of criminal illegal aliens that have been charged or convicted of a crime in the United States,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said.

The website is searchable by state and city, providing Americans with the knowledge of “which dangerous criminal illegal aliens the Trump administration has removed from their communities,” McLaughlin said.

The Telegraph (UK).

The man believed to be behind the mass shooting at Brown University has been found dead in a New Hampshire storage facility, authorities said.

Claudio Neves Valente, 48, a Portuguese national who attended Brown 25 years ago, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Providence police chief Oscar Perez said on Thursday evening.

The shooter, who was found at a storage unit along with two guns, is believed to have acted alone.

“Tonight, our Providence neighbours can finally breathe a little bit easier,” Mayor Brett Smiley told reporters.

Investigators believe Valente is responsible for both the shooting at Brown, in which two students were killed, and the murder of Nuno FG Loureiro, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) science professor.

Read it.

These would make a great addition to the sourthern Border Wall. Weed out the weak and stupid and make sure only the truly deserving get across the border.

The Telegraph (UK).

Disney had the right to “resurrect” Peter Cushing in a Star Wars film, judges have ruled.

Don’t mess with The Mouse. He has way more money than you do.

The actor, who played imperial commander Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope in 1977, died in 1994, but the character was recreated in the spin-off using special effects.

The executors of Cushing’s estate agreed to his likeness being recreated for the 2016 film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story in a deal with Lunac Heavy Industries.

But in 2019 Tyburn Film Productions initiated legal proceedings against Lucasfilm, the studio behind the original Star Wars saga, and ?fellow Disney ?subsidiary Lunak, alleging “unjust enrichment” from the use of Cushing’s image in Rogue One without its consent.

Watch it.

Dead cow and spuds are the basis of all true civilization.