DYSPEPSIA GENERATION

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Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about the world that my two daughters — both under the age of three— will inhabit when they’re adults. Last night, I was surprised to find that my older daughter Yara was able to recognize a 1980s-style tape deck in a picture book we were reading (“this… a… music box,” she said, after studying it intently). And she certainly knows what the mail is — in fact, one of her favorite books is called The Jolly Postman.

But will the adult Yara personally write out and mail letters? Perhaps about as frequently as she will play cassette tapes. Which is to say: not never, but almost never.

Wired, a Voice of the Crust.

That’s “don’t need it” in the opinion of the ‘experts’. Your opinion, of course, doesn’t matter.

UPDATE: Ozempic linked to lower Alzheimer’s risk in people with Type 2 diabetes

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Look for … the Union label….

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Science and Nature, two leading science journals, have revealed a growing problem: an alarming rise in fraudulent research papers produced by shady paper mill companies. This wave of fake studies is creating a major headache for the academic world, putting the integrity of global academic research at risk.

Paper mill companies offer authorship services to researchers, academics, and students who want their names listed as an author of a scientific article published in reputable scientific journals.

By paying around €180 to €5000 (approximately US$197 – $5472), a person can have their name listed as the author of research paper, without having to painstakingly do research and write the results. No doubt, some experts refer to these paper mills as illegal and criminal organizations.

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The sister of slain soldier Vanessa Guillén slammed The Atlantic after it used anonymous sources to allege that President Donald Trump disparaged her after discovering the funeral expenses.

Babylon Bee.

Satire —  read quickly before it comes true.

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The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), an Anglo-U.S. non-governmental organisation, set out its main “annual priorities” from March to October 2024 in bullet-pointed lists. It aims to “Kill Musk’s Twitter,” a goal backed by an “advertising focus”—i.e., a campaign to deter advertisers from using the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Screenshots from a CCDH monthly planner, obtained by Paul D. Thacker and Matt Taibbi, outline this censorious phrase. More detailed suggestions include reminders to lobby for U.S. and European Union regulation to be tightened, or at least deployed, against ‘disinformation’ and ‘hate’—suitably loosely defined to mean things that the campaigners disagree with. “Social media companies erode basic human rights and civil liberties by enabling the spread of online hate and disinformation,” asserts the CCDH website.

“This is war,” replied Elon Musk, following the publication of the leaked documents. He later added, “This violates U.S. criminal statutes against foreign interference in elections. We are going after CCDH and their donors. AND their donors.”

Babylon Bee.

Satire — read quickly before it comes true.

ZMan cuts to the chase.

The fact is, these antiwhite pogroms, whatever you want to call them, are the logical outcome of generations of jurisprudence. The “Brown Test”, named for the famous Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision, implemented a set of racial and cultural standards that effectively eliminated free association and made openness the standard against which everything is measured. In effect, it made anything that results in racial inequality both illegal and immoral.

That means it is impossible to have a color-blind society under the Brown doctrine because it would lead to racial inequality. The underlying assumption of Brown and the entire moral edifice that sprang from it is that any racial inequality, not matter how trivial, must be the result of discrimination by whites. Therefore, a colorblind society that has racial inequality will mean that color blindness is the cause. It is why people like Ibram X. Kendi can reasonably say color blindness is racism.

This is what makes race a binary issue. You either understand the moral reasoning that lies behind the novelty of the word “racism” or you do not and simply accept it as part of your ethics. You either understand and accept the reality of race as a biological matter or you reject it and embrace the blank slate ideology. There is no middle position and no way to pick a few things from one column and a few from the other to create yourself a bespoke racial awareness.

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Hungary has formally asked the European Parliament to lift the immunity of Italian Green MEP Ilaria Salis, who was imprisoned in Hungary for brutally beating up innocent civilians on the streets of Budapest.

…

Ilaria Salis, a 40-year-old former teacher, was arrested and imprisoned in Hungary last year for participating in a series of attacks organised by the Hammerbande (Hammer Gang), a German left-wing militant group linked to Antifa. The members of the group surrounded and bludgeoned nine innocent people—who the attackers decided “looked like” neo-Nazis based on their choice of clothing—with telescopic batons and hammers on the streets of Budapest.

Salis was arrested and charged with three counts of attempted assault and accused of being part of an extreme left-wing organisation. Her case was widely reported in European media, especially in Italy, with left-wing journalists focusing on her alleged “inhumane” treatment in prison, and not on the shocking crimes she committed.

In May this year, she was released from prison and transferred to house arrest in Budapest, and after her election as an MEP, she gained legal immunity and was released.

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The existence of a secret Israeli drone, referred to as RA-01 and used for covert missions, has emerged from an unauthorized disclosure of U.S. intelligence documents which have now been posted all over social media. Israel’s possession of at least a pocket fleet of long-range stealth drones capable of gathering intelligence and possibly conducting strikes is extremely logical to the point of it being a bit odd if they never pursued such a capability. Israel is home to an extensive and often pioneering uncrewed aviation industry and drones of this kind would be very well suited to supporting the country’s ongoing stand-off with Iran. During a major Israeli operation to strike targets in that country, they would likely play an indispensable role, as well.

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This technology aims to revolutionize the way satellites are sent into space, using a giant rotating arm to fling satellites into low Earth orbit. Remarkably, this process eliminates the need for rocket fuel, relying solely on electricity.

SpinLaunch has already conducted multiple successful tests with this technology. “This is not a rocket, and clearly our ability to perform in just 11 months this many tests and have them all function as planned, really is a testament to the nature of our technology,” said Jonathan Yaney, founder and CEO of SpinLaunch, in a 2022 Space.com report after their 10th successful launch. The company plans to launch constellations of satellites into orbits below 600 miles by 2026.

I wonder if that would work for ICBMs?

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In a record-breaking incident, a boat carrying 231 migrants arrived at the Canary Islands, the largest single migrant vessel to reach the archipelago.

The boat, which departed from The Gambia, carried 58 minors and 13 women among the passengers, all of African origin, including individuals from Senegal, Mali, and Guinea. The dangerous journey across the Atlantic left three of the migrants in need of hospital treatment for minor injuries.

This arrival comes on the heels of a tragic shipwreck in September, the worst in the Canary Islands in 30 years, which left 50 people missing. The number of migrants reaching the Canary Islands has surged this year, with 32,878 individuals arriving between January and mid-October, a 39.7% increase compared to last year. Of this figure, 2,875 migrants arrived in October alone, 467 of them unaccompanied minors.

Why do they do it? (a) They know they’re not going to be sent back where they came from. (b) They know they aren’t going to be left to starve. (c) They know that their injuries will be treated with better medical care than they would get back ‘home’.

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It’s not an easy task these days to commemorate, as the world around us has accelerated. Everything and everyone rushes. For many, the only thing that matters is to seize and experience something instantly: a bite and a sip, a selfie and a post, a tweet and a share. Before you know it, before you could actually enjoy it, it’s already there, and the next one is right on the production line: the newer, the better; the faster, the trendier.

But recalling the memories and values of 1956 offers an opportunity to pause for a moment and reflect: there are things that are stronger than the passage of time and that resist being buried beneath it. These are, for instance, the heroes, their great deeds, or memory itself. Be it a 150, 100, or even 68 years, truly great heroes and feats must be commemorated. Because where heroes are remembered, there will always be new ones! For us Hungarians, 23 October 1956 is one such day in our memory, the cornerstone of our nation.

In the battle of ’56, the people became a nation. The country united. Young and old, man and woman, worker and intellectual, peasant and soldier shared the very same wish: freedom for Hungary, because Hungarians cannot live without freedom. No matter how many times we were deprived of it, sooner or later we regained it. If needed, we fought for it; if forced, we died for it. In October 1956, the freedom we reclaimed brought an end to the fear. If we take a look at the photographs and film footage taken in those late October days, and gaze at one of the faces for a longer time, we might picture what his life must have been like, what his aspirations were, what he hoped for. We shall recognize him as a fellow compatriot longing for freedom, one who has taken the hand of the person standing next to him, clinging to a stranger. He trusted the others, because he knew that they too wanted to be free.

The events of 1956, not only the suppression of the Eastern Europe revolts but Eisenhower’s humiliation of the British and the French over Suez, brought home to the slaves of Communism that No One Is Coming To Save You and that they couldn’t count on any useful help from the U.S. in trying to get free.

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A team of pathophysiologists at the University of Milan has found that climbing stairs or walking for short bursts allows people to consume 20% to 60% more energy than if they do the same activity nonstop for the same distance. In their study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the group asked volunteers to walk on a treadmill or climb stairs while also monitoring their oxygen intake.

The research team noted that available reported energy expenditures tend to reflect activities that are done at a metabolically steady state, which only becomes established after performing such an activity for a while. They wondered if there might be differences in expenditures if people engaged in start-and-stop-type exercise multiple times. To find out, they recruited 10 volunteers.

The volunteers walked on a treadmill or climbed a short flight of stairs for different lengths of time, ranging from 10 seconds to four minutes. As they did so, they wore a mask to measure their oxygen intake, a means of measuring energy consumption.

I always wanted to be a pathophysiologist. It sounds as if it pays well and doesn’t involve any heavy lifting.

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In Ancient Greek philosophy, ataraxia (Greek: ????????, from ?- indicating negation or absence and ?????- tarach- ‘to disturb, trouble’ with the abstract noun suffix -??), generally translated as ‘unperturbedness’, ‘imperturbability’, ‘equanimity’, or ‘tranquility’, is a lucid state of robust equanimity characterized by ongoing freedom from distress and worry.

Sounds like a disease, doesn’t it? “Well, ma’am, you got a really bad case of ataraxia. I recommend watching MSNBC until you get over it.”

“Hey, John, come on over and watch the election/Superbowl/Rings of Power with us.”
“Nope. I’ve got ataraxia, and I need to isolate for a couple of weeks.”

The Register.

Good luck with that.

Sales of “dumb” phones are on the rise in the UK, according to telco Virgin Media O2 (VMO2), with parents choosing them instead of smartphones to try and spare their kids from the perils of social media and instant messaging.

One of the largest mobile operators in Britain, VMO2 says it has seen sales of non-smartphones double year-on-year, with a significant spike this September, as the new school year started.

Many Reg readers will recall feature phones, which supported basic voice calling and text messages, but often lacked a touchscreen or the ability to download and run apps, and even internet access more generally. If VMO2 can be believed, these are enjoying something of a comeback as parents try to make informed choices regarding their children’s online safety.

Make the kid wear an AirTag and you’re good. They can always borrow a friend’s phone if they need to make a call.

Popular Mechanics.

Think back to elementary school science class, and you’ll likely remember studying the water cycle—staring at an illustration filled with arrows forming an overall circular motion and annotated with words like evaporation, transpiration, condensation, and precipitation. This system forms the bedrock of life on Earth as it moves moisture across the planet, but now scientists think that, for the first time in human history, that system is malfunctioning.

Ah, ‘scientists’. There are a lot of ‘scientists’ in the world. Which ‘scientists’ might these be? After all, ‘scientists’ famously often disagree.

That’s the conclusion of a new report published this week by the Global Commission on the Economics of Water—a group of leading scientists and economists formed in 2022 whose mission is to assess the state of Earth’s hydrological systems and how those systems are being managed. The results are not encouraging. The report finds that demand for fresh water will outstrip supply by more than 40 percent by the end of the decade, mostly due to stresses caused by climate change.

Humm. The Global Commission on the Economics of Water. Sounds pretty impressive. In fact, it sounds like a creature of the U.N., and we know how objective and conscientious such agencies are.

But no; their address is:

OECD Environment Directorate
Climate, Biodiversity and Water Division
2, rue André Pascal
75775 Paris Cedex 16
France

So they are a creature of the Globalist Crust. And we know how objective and conscientious the Global Crust are.

I don’t think I’ll worry about the ‘water cycle’ just yet.

The Atlantic.

The backlash against the world’s most hated font may finally be ending.

On the morning of July 4, 2012, two big headlines came from CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Geneva. The first was that the Italian physicist Fabiola Gianotti had made a significant discovery in quantum field theory. The second was that her PowerPoint presentation about it had been delivered in Comic Sans. Hilarity competed with outrage: Critics argued that Comic Sans was a font for children’s-party invitations, with a promise of fun and games. It was not meant for important developments in particle mass. Lisa Randall, the first tenured female theoretical-physics professor at Harvard, emailed Gianotti with congratulations and the question on everybody’s mind: Why Comic Sans? “Because I like it,” Gianotti replied.

Take that, stuck-up Ivy League bitch.

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Emergency services had to move a boulder to get her out

If you’re out and about in nature and drop your phone down a three-meter crevice between some boulders, maybe don’t try to retrieve it.

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Vicki Umipeg was prematurely born at 22 weeks, weighing 3 pounds. Her optic nerve was damaged due to high oxygen in the incubator, resulting in complete blindness. She had no visual experiences, no awareness of light whatsoever.

her neck, back, and leg. While being rescued in the hospital, she found herself floating to the ceiling.

She had panoramic vision and saw a woman’s body lying on a metal operating table, with a male and a female medical staff working to save her. When she noticed the distinct wedding ring on the woman’s hand, she realized it was her ring, and the woman lying there was her.

As she had been blind all her life, she had never seen that ring or her body. Only in that near-death experience (NDE) did she see her ring.

…

“She had a 360-degree vision, where she could simultaneously be aware of and process vision during her near-death experience, in front of her, behind her, right, left, up, down.”

“In fact, I told Vicki that the rest of us in our earthly lives have these pie-shaped visual fields because of the location of our eyes, in our eye sockets. She literally laughed at me because her entire life experience with vision [during her NDE] was at 360 or spherical vision.”

Furthermore, initially unfamiliar with math and science, Vicki intuitively grasped calculus and understood how planets are formed after her NDE. She gained answers to questions about science, math, life, planets, and God, experiencing a flood of knowledge and understanding languages she didn’t know before.

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Democrats cheat. It’s what they do. It’s a centuries-old tradition, practically the only thing that they actually stand for.

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It is well known that California has been among the worst-performing states in the country in terms of job growth. But the latest statistics show that nearly all jobs that are being created in California are government jobs. Between January 2022 and June 2024, total California jobs grew by about 156,000, with government jobs accounting for 96.5 percent of that growth.

California’s job creation record has been even more dismal over the last 18 months. Since January 2023, private-sector employment in the state declined by over 46,000 workers. California’s private-sector job collapse is unprecedented, and with the state representing nearly 12 percent of the country’s population, it is a drag on the nation’s economy.

Part of California’s job weakness reflects the number of people and businesses leaving the state. California’s population declined by about 75,000 between 2022 and 2023 (the latest data available), and a number of business headquarters have departed.

Not to mention that California government, state and city, are hostile to business in the extreme. Between punitive minimum wage laws, police incompetence to do anything about mobs looting stores, shoplifters hauling out carts of loot that no one dare impede, and oppressive taxes, I’m surprised that there are any businesses left in California.

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And they’ll suffer no consequences, so they’ll do it again.

UPDATE: ‘Blatantly Supporting Terrorism’: Anti-Israel University of Minnesota Students Storm Campus Building, Trapping Employees Inside

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Last month the mayor of Portland, Maine, shocked Jewish communities in his backyard and beyond when he expressed full-throated support for his city council’s successful resolution to divest from companies linked to Israel.

Now, Mayor Mark Dion is taking it all back.

“Upon personal reflection and following many private conversations I have had with our Jewish neighbors, I have come to the conclusion that my vote on the divestment was wrong,” Dion said during prepared remarks at Monday’s city council meeting.

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Facebook parent company Meta Platforms Inc. has removed several accounts across Threads and Instagram that were used to track celebrities’ private jets, including the jet owned by its Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, citing a risk of “physical harm.”

The accounts, which rely on publicly available information to track a jet’s location and CO2 emissions, among other details, were banned without warning this week after Meta updated its privacy policy. The newly banned accounts include those tracking planes for celebrities, including Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner, and business leaders, including Zuckerberg, former Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos, and Tesla Inc. CEO and X owner Elon Musk.

As I was once told by a wise old gunnery sergeant, “If they can’t find you, they can’t hurt you.”

Many of the accounts impacted were operated by Jack Sweeney, a Florida college student who has gained notoriety by tracking celebrity jets. In a letter posted to his Threads account, Sweeney said he “received no communication from Meta” about the bans before they were initiated. “These platforms operate without transparency, and it feels like they make arbitrary decisions,” he wrote.

There is no legitimate reason to ‘track celebrity jets’, and the obvious abuse to which such information is liable ought to be obvious to any person with a room-temperature IQ. Anybody who would have been surprised by Meta’s action probably has a hard time walking and chewing gum at the same time.

It’s not Sweeney’s first run-in with a tech company or billionaire that wanted his accounts removed. Musk has long taken issue with Sweeney’s account that tracked his private plane, once calling the information his “assassination coordinates.” Shortly after buying X in late 2022, he banned Sweeney’s account and made a new rule that forbid sharing someone else’s location in real-time. Sweeney still tracks Musk’s jet on X, but posts the jet’s location on a 24-hour delay.

If I had Elon Musk’s money, I’d have a couple of goons visit him and explain the error of his ways. That’s the only sure method to keep him from just starting fresh accounts and continuing being a brat.

The Register.

Fake review writers are officially on watch – the US is now enforcing a new rule to ban the practice and is promising a crackdown.

“As of today, @FTC’s final rule banning fake online reviews and testimonials has come into effect,” the head of the agency Lina Khan wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “If you encounter any of these prohibited practices, you can report them to @FTC at: https://reportfraud.ftc.gov.”

And then what? How are they going to identify the perpetrators? How are they going to identify the perpetrators with the surety that legal rules of evidence require? Or are they just going to do the Deep State dance and hit people with penalties on the basis of rumor and suspicion?

Naval Matters.

Pivoting our thinking away from the ship-sinking role for the PT-ish boat (we’ll use the term ‘PT boat’ in a generic sense for the rest of the article) and keeping in mind that the most effective use was as barge-busting gunboats and ISR, we could easily imagine a very useful PT boat component in the Navy, today. For example, we could flood the Persian Gulf with PT boats to monitor and eliminate Iran’s maritime harassment, ship seizures, and ship mining. Of course, that would require us to have the will to use force, as necessary, otherwise there would be no point.

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Muslim terrorists have no hesitation in using innocent civilians–and hospital patients–as human shields.

Imagine how peaceful the world would be if the Religion of Peace didn’t exist.

Insider.

It feels like a distant memory, but once upon a time America’s carmakers produced vehicles in a veritable rainbow of colors. As recently as 2005, more than half of all automobiles on the road were painted a color other than black, white, silver, or gray. Some of the tints even sported names straight out of a Hot Wheels collection: Tangerine Scream, Go Green, Plum Crazy.

But over the past quarter century, the range of hues has narrowed dramatically. Today, less than 20% of vehicles listed in our database of 1.7 million cars are a color other than black, white, silver, or gray. In an age of infinite digital luminosity, America’s roads have become as dull and washed out as a Civil War daguerreotype.

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The Regime Media takes delight in exhibiting recently conquered conservatives as role models for others to emulate. Such was the case during Adam Kinzinger’s tearful heyday, but the Regime now has a bigger prize: former Congresswoman Liz Cheney.

As part of her endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, Cheney is touring the country in hopes of wrangling disaffected conservatives over to Harris at events festooned with imagery meant to evoke Reaganite nostalgia. But such conversions require an abandonment of prior deeply-held beliefs. Such is the case with Cheney and abortion, which the networks gleefully featured.

Power Line.

Frontpage has proclaimed Tanya S. Chutkan number one in their series on the ten worst judges in America. An Obama pick for the DC District Court, Chutkan goes easy on Islamic terrorists and violent criminals but cracks down hard on the January 6 defendants. Her handling of the Imran Awan case failed to get the attention it deserved.

Of all the IT people in all the IT firms in all the world, House Democrats thought Awan was best man for the job. Sometimes working from his native Pakistan, Awan and his family team accessed the computers of some 40 Democrats, including those on the intelligence and foreign affairs committees. Without their consent, Awan and his team stashed the Democrats’ data on a server controlled by Xavier Becerra, chair of the House Democratic Caucus. Capitol Police sought a copy of the server but were handed a fake.

In February, 2017, Awan and his team got booted off the House computer network, but Becerra had already fled to California where Gov. Jerry Brown made him state attorney general. In July of 2017, Awan attempted to flee the country but the authorities busted him for bank fraud. For Andrew McCarthy, who prosecuted “Blind Sheik” Omar Abdel-Rahman, “this appears to be a real conspiracy, aimed at undermining American national security.” Some in Congress agreed but the IT man had his defenders.

Gates of Vienna.

The municipal authorities put in a bike path that ended up being in violation of the fire regulations, so the solution was to compel residents to move out of adjacent apartment buildings.

Makes sense, right?

Right?

Well, I guess it does if you’re German.

New York Times.

Sales of solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles have soared over the last few years — helping to slow global warming and take dangerous pollutants out of the atmosphere.

“Why are you spreading sawdust around?”
“Keeps the elephants away.”
“But there aren’t any elephants in Brooklyn.”
“See how effective it is?”

But one technology critical to fighting climate change is lagging, thanks to a combination of high interest rates, rising costs, misinformation and the cycle of home construction. Adoption of heat pumps, one of the primary ways to cut emissions from buildings, has slowed in the United States and stalled in Europe, endangering the switch to clean energy.

Oh noes!

Homeowners may also run into trouble when trying to find contractors to install heat pumps. Barton James, the president and CEO of the Air Conditioning Contractors of America, says many contractors don’t have training on how to properly install heat pumps; if they install them incorrectly, the ensuing problems can sour consumers on the technology.

Oh, ya think?

In the United States, low gas prices also make the economics of heat pumps more challenging. Gas is around three times cheaper than electricity — while heat pumps make up most of that ground with efficiency, they aren’t the most cost-effective option for every household.

Being ‘climate-friendly’ is easy … if you’re rich.

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Giulia Manfrini, 36, from Turin in northern Italy, had been surfing in the waters of the Mentawai Islands Regency, West Sumatra Province, before the incident on Friday, according to reports.

Two witnesses are said to have tried to provide first aid to Ms Manfrini – who was later taken to a medical centre – after a swordfish struck her in the chest.

James Colston, who set up a travel agency with Ms Manfrini, said on Instagram: “Even with the brave efforts of her partner, local resort staff and doctors, Giulia couldn’t be saved.”

Be careful out there.

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We have gotten what appears to be our first view of a Mk 41 vertical launch system (VLS) for the Aegis Ashore air defense system that has been installed on the highly strategic American island of Guam in the Pacific. The land-based Mk 41 launchers are one step toward addressing the vulnerabilities of the U.S. military bases on the island to attack — something that China, in particular, has directly referenced in the context of a full-scale conflict in the region. Ultimately, Aegis Ashore on Guam will be just one element in plans to make the island’s airspace the most heavily defended anywhere on Earth.

…

Aegis Ashore is primarily designed to engage ballistic threats during the midcourse portion of their flight outside the Earth’s atmophere using SM-3 interceptors. However, the Mk 41 is a modular launcher, meaning that additional anti-missile interceptors, such as the terminal-stage intercept and anti-air SM-6 and the forthcoming Glide Phase Interceptor (GPI), which could also be added. With its ability to take down certain incoming hypersonic threats, as well as other weapons, the GPI could be especially relevant for the defense of Guam. With additional launchers, even dispersed around the island, shorter-ranged missiles, such as the Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile (ESSM) Block II and even the latest SM-2s, could feasibly provide protection against air breathing threats, such as cruise missiles and drones. Patriot interceptors are now also now a possibility.

 

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A roughly 2,000-person-strong migrant caravan left southern Mexico on Sunday in hopes of reaching the U.S. in the coming days, according to the AP. The latest caravan is so far the largest since newly-elected Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum entered office in October.

Among those in the caravan are individuals who expressed concern that a new administration in Washington, D.C., would lead to the end of a popular app that has allowed hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals to schedule appointments with Customs and Border Protection officials in hopes of entering the country.

“That is what makes us fearful,” Joel Zambrano, a Venezuelan national, said to The Associated Press. “They say this could change because they could both close the CBP One appointment and all the services that are helping migrants.”

Thank you, Joe Biden.

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This test is not impossible (except perhaps in the minds of progressive who think that black people are hopelessly stupid, such as — obviously — the publishers of this web site).

Actually, I wouldn’t want anybody who would fail this test to be able to vote, black or white.

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The top technology executive at Sam’s Club, Walmart Inc.’s club chain, is leaving the company due to a policy requiring thousands of corporate employees to relocate to headquarters in Arkansas, people familiar with the matter said.

Cheryl Ainoa, chief technology officer of Sam’s Club, is declining to move to Bentonville, Arkansas, due to personal reasons, the people said. She’s departing the company after nearly five years.

sWalmart has asked many of its employees from smaller offices, as well as remote workers around the US, to move to the company’s larger corporate offices. Most employees are going to Arkansas. The policy has moved many executive roles to move to Bentonville, according to a memo from Walmart Chief Technology Officer and Chief Development Officer Suresh Kumar, which was viewed by Bloomberg News.

I thing she just doesn’t want to move to Arkansas. Can’t say that I blame her.

Joel Kotkin.

No power on earth is more fearsome than a highly educated class that faces a constrained, even dismal, future. Such people have played a role in revolutionary upheavals in Europe, Russia, and Latin America—and could potentially do so here in the United States.

The key to radical agitation lies in what one Marxist scholar described as “the swelling population of college graduates caught in a vise of low-paying jobs.” Modern activism rarely stems from blue-collar workers. Instead, it mostly comes from the alienated-educated class, which emerged in its contemporary form with the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The key lies in the disjunction between those who consider themselves enlightened and fit to lead, as defined by tests and degrees, and the less-educated classes that work hard, innovate, and take risks. The educated class has expanded globally as college enrollment has exploded—which grew almost 80% between 1970 and 2010—even as job opportunities for many of that class have declined.

ZMan indulges in a little history.

Long forgotten is the fact that the label “neoconservative” was a smear coined by a socialist named Michael Harrington. These newly minted conservatives were often called Trotskyites because they never abandoned their old ideology, but simply opposed the people who came to dominate the American left. Of course, others accused them of being a stalking horse for Zionism and the Israel lobby. Still others suspected that their obsession with Russia was the real motivation.

In other words, from the very start no one trusted their sincerity with regards to their conversion to the conservative cause. They brought lots of money and organizational might, so the Buckley crowd overlooked these concerns and welcomed them into the movement over many objections. Before long, the neocons organized the purge of their doubters and enemies in the movement. Half a century or so since this started, the skeptics of these people have been vindicated.

Buried in that post about Kristol and Cohen is an easily overlooked assertion that has always been at the heart of the issue. They claim that conservative Jews have specific interests that they think are better served by the Democrats now. Leaving aside their definition of “conservative Jews”, what they are arguing is that this subgroup of Americans has interests peculiar to themselves that can conflict with the majority interests of the country, but those minority interests come first.

New York Times.

If you’re 16 years old, live in California and just passed your driver’s license test, the first thing you should do is drive your family to In-N-Out Burger for a milkshake and some animal-style fries.
The first thing a parent should do is call the insurance company to update the policy. That part, however, will probably give you indigestion.

Last month, when Debbie Mukamal called her insurer as she and her daughter rolled away from an In-N-Out drive-through in their 2018 Subaru, the representative casually informed her that her annual premium would triple, from about $1,700 to over $5,000.

She has it pretty good, it turns out. There are plenty of families with three or four children whose annual premiums will top $20,000 this year. That can be enough to replace one of the cars that the policy covers.

How can this be? It’s the insurance industry, which means it’s complicated, unpredictable and more or less mandatory. Buckle up, since failure to do so can cost you money, and away we go.

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A deceptive New York ballot initiative would empower the blue state’s lawmakers to pass such progressive laws as allowing illegal migrants to vote and mandating the most radical reading of transgender rights, according to the New York Post editorial board.

Named the “Equal Rights Amendment,” Proposition 1 was placed on the ballot under the guise that it’s just about abortion. Proponents say enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution would make it harder to restrict if the political situation were to change.

However, New York’s state Republican Party says the state already has anti-discrimination laws — Article 1 Section 11 of the New York state Constitution prohibits discrimination based on race, color, creed, and religion — and the amendment goes well beyond creating a constitutional right to abortion.

Wall Street Journal.

No doubt it was inevitable. As Election Day nears, and the progressive panic over Donald Trump escalates, Democrats are closing their campaign with a favorite theme: Mr. Trump is a threat to the Constitution, to democracy itself, and is even a “fascist.” But is this true, and could he really impose authoritarian rule in the U.S.?

The fascist meme is all over the place, an upgrade from President Biden’s description of the MAGA movement in 2022 as “semi-fascist.” MSNBC interviews earnest academics who draw a straight historical line between mid-20th-century Europe and the 21st-century GOP. A writer for The Atlantic takes the hyperbole prize with a headline that says Mr. Trump is talking like Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini. Why leave out Chairman Mao?

Kamala Harris is also hitting the theme. Mr. Trump “is seeking unchecked power,” she told a crowd this week in Pennsylvania. “Listen to General [Mark] Milley, Donald Trump’s top general. He has called Trump, and I quote, ‘fascist to the core,’ and said, quote, ‘No one has ever been as dangerous to this country.’ ”

Read it.

Mohammed Khatib, a leading figure in the Islamist Samidoun group, has been announced as the main speaker at a seminar hosted by Radboud University Nijmegen (RU), scheduled for the end of October, reports the NieuwRechts website.

While the Islamist outfit presents itself as dedicated to Palestinian prisoners’ welfare, it is banned in Israel and Germany. Designation as a terror group in the United States and Canada came as recently as October 15th, when the slogan “death to Canada” was used at a rally in Vancouver arranged by the group.

In April this year, Belgian authorities attempted to expel Khatib and revoke his refugee status due to his role in celebrations of Hamas’s October 7th massacre, which his group called an “act of resistance.”