Death Ray Spray-and-Pray

Apparently the valiant men and women of the United States Customs and Border Protection agency were using borrowed Army anti drone lasers to protect us from the scourge of children's mylar party balloons (or, since I suppose they could have drifted north from Ciudad Juarez across the Rio Grande, los globos).

A Pentagon plan to use a high-energy, counter-drone laser without having coordinated with the Federal Aviation Administration about potential risks to civilian flights prompted Wednesday’s unprecedented airspace shutdown over El Paso, Texas, multiple sources told CNN.

Two people familiar with the matter said later Wednesday that Customs and Border Protection, not the US military, was in control of the laser technology when it was used this week around El Paso to shoot down balloons.

I'm having flashbacks to that time they shut down the entire city of Boston for a guerilla Aqua Teen Hunger Force ad campaign featuring Lite Brites.

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Meme Dump!

Revolver mods and what they're good for...

I wrote a piece enumerating the various modifications that one can perform to a carry revolver to make it more useful, and which ones may cause more trouble than they're worth.

Memes to Get You Over the Hump!

Incompetence or Malice?

In today's episode of "Government: Incompetent or Malicious?", the FAA announced late yesterday that it would be shutting down El Paso airport and the surrounding airspace below 18,000 feet for ten days due to unspecified national security reasons.

There was no advance warning, nobody seems to know why (as of this writing), and even Biggs Army Airfield at Fort Bliss is affected.

The restriction encompasses a 10-mile area around El Paso, and includes the neighboring community of Santa Teresa, N.M., but does not apply to aircraft flying above 18,000 feet, the F.A.A. notices said. They did not detail the security reasons that prompted the restriction.

The airport issued a travel advisory on social media saying that all flights to and from the airport had been grounded, including commercial, cargo and general aviation. It told travelers to contact their airlines for the latest flight information.

Of course everybody's engaged in wild speculation on social media, but anyone who claims they know anything for sure at this point is talking out their ass.

The only thing I do know for sure that it means is that the airlines are going to be burning cubic yards of money with ELP idled for over a week, and a lot of execs for Fortune 500 companies with offices in El Paso, the 22nd most populous city in the United States, are going to be scrambling to rebook flights via Albuquerque*.

Amazon’s probably not happy either, nor will any manufacturing companies located there who use just-in-time supply chains.

UPDATE: Santa Teresa, NM airport, too. Also, gosh, I hope nobody needs to get airlifted to University Medical Center in El Paso, which is the only Level 1 trauma center in the region, in the next ten days.

UPDATE 2: And now the FAA has lifted the closure.

*I mean, ABQ is a pleasant little airport, but you literally have to traverse the Jornada del Muerto to get there from El Paso.

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Meme Dump!

Moral Panics...

We're in the middle of a couple of moral panics right now and one of them is centered on allowing minors access to social media.

Discord is the latest app to implement age verification requirements to allow full access to the app's functionality.

One problem with this is that different jurisdictions have such different protocols they require app publishers to follow. The UK has one, the EU is fixing to roll out a different one, and the various US states that have passed legislation... I'm not sure how many that is, but I know it's into double digits ...all have their own.

Some require the data collected, usually face scans or ID scans, to be deleted, while others require it to be stored. There are third party providers popping up with varying degrees of legit-ness and sincerity regarding data security. It's all a mess and it's based on something that's about as scientific as the love child of The Salem Witch Trials and Blackboard Jungle.

Add in VPNs and the fact that IP location has an error rate of at least 5% trying to figure out what state a user is in, and this is all just pushing rope uphill for no good reason.

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Monday Memery!

Weirdos.

I see the thought leaders on the Right are yet again rolling a critical failure on their "Can You Just Be Normal For Once In Your Life?" saving throws.

Conventions be damned, I ain't cheering for them.

With Indianapolis being an AFC city, it would be conventional sports fandom to cheer for the AFC team in the Super Bowl if the Colts weren't in it, but... yeah, there's no way I'm cheering for the Pats.

As a kid growing up in Atlanta when the Braves were still in the NL West the joke went "Who are an Atlanta baseball fan's two favorite teams? The Braves and whoever's playing the Dodgers."

So last night's manhandling of New England by the Seahawks was pretty tasty, if vicarious, revenge on our home team's nemesis.

I only caught the second half of the game, which means I watched it devolve from a slightly one-sided 9-0 affair into a 29-13 curb stomping. Seattle fans looked happy about getting sweet vengeance for Super Bowl XLIX.

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Sunday Meme Dump!

Meme Dump!

Overheard in the Office...

RX: "'Archaeologists find evidence of Hannibal's war elephants in Spain'."

Me: "I'm so glad that final consonant turned out to be what it was, because I was braced for 'Archaeologists find evidence of Hannibal's war elephants in space'."

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Gold Medal Memes!

Meme Dump!

Writing Elsewhere...

• People toss "the OODA loop" (aka Boyd's Decision Cycle) around a lot, but what does it mean in the context of personal protection?


• Modifying a Mosin? Why? What do you expect the result to be?

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I like big guns and I cannot lie.

Was HMS Dreadnought revolutionary? Did it trigger a genuine revolution in naval affairs?

For a deep dive into the era, I recommend Massie's Dreadnought and Castles of Steel.

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Gasp. Shock.

After the Department of Justice released three million files over the weekend, blockchain enthusiasts were quick to discover a certain Jeffery Epstein was an active and prominent figure in crypto during its formative years.

You mean the untraceable "currency" most famous for unregulated speculation and its usefulness in paying for criming had some shady figures and twisted sickos in on the ground floor? Who could have predicted that, other than everybody?

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Mid-Week Memes!

Tab Clearing...

• Keeping people mad all the time in order to keep them staying tuned through the commercials to sell Trumpy Bear, commemorative coins, and dick pills has some negative side effects.


• More Epstein Files squickery. (Related: "Russiagate" and the Epstein Files are the same story.)


• Spanish Hornets operating out of Lithuania intercept Russian SU-30 over the Baltic.

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Meme Dump!

Automotif DCXI...

The third generation F-bodies have aged so, so well. Just a really great design, aesthetically. If they'd been built by an Italian manufacturer you wouldn't be able to get automotive journalists to shut up about what timelessly classic lines they have.

More on this '91-'92 Camaro RS can be found here.

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A historical take...

"Wake up babe, new role model just dropped."

Our curators are lowkey rizzlers. So they teamed up with our intern to make this video. pic.twitter.com/5SFyexRO7y

— National Gallery of Art (@ngadc) December 19, 2025

Memes to Jump Start the Week!

Meme Dump!

Automotif DCX...

The vanity plate reads "SWISS 1". Although when I greeted the owner with "Love your car!", she answered that it was her second.

Check out the little silhouette of Switzerland on the hood!

This one was photographed in August of 2020 using a Nikon D7000.

Meme Dump!

Criming in the Open

What's hilarious is that back when Hillary's emails got linked, conspiracy weirdos went poring through them, trying to decide if references to "cheese pizza" were actually code talk for kiddie diddling.

Now that huge tranches of Epstein emails are getting dumped out to the public, it turns out that these kinds of people just send each other emails that straight up say "Had a great time criming with you on KidFuck Island last weekend. Hopefully we can get together and do some more criming next time I have an opening on my calendar. Don't forget to bring some kids to traffic!"

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TGIF Memes!