- Some Substackers are big mad about the automated AI flag.
- A student wrote a piece for his California high school newspaper looking into local connections in the Epstein Files. Some people got big mad.
- I will henceforth be referring to CVS as "shampoo jail". I hope it makes them big mad.
Friday, July 31, 2026
Tab Clearing...
The Only Two...
Lockheed Snouts!
| Lockheed F-94A Starfire |
The other day I finally did something I've been meaning to do since I first moved to Indianapolis almost twenty years ago.
I booked a room for two nights at a Holiday Inn Express on the east side of Dayton, Ohio. While it's only a little over two hours away, this allowed me to drive out there at a leisurely pace around noon on Tuesday, grab a late lunch, and check into the hotel so that the next morning I could get to the USAF museum about the time it opened, walk until my feet couldn't take any more walking, then go back to the hotel and drive home all nicely rested at a leisurely pace on Thursday morning.
| Lockheed P-38L Lightning |
When I went to Udvar-Hazy back in 2015, I was shooting a Nikon D200 with an 18-140mm f/3.5-5.6 consumer zoom lens, backed up with the Coolpix P7000. Relatively speaking, I had no idea what I was doing. This time I not only had better bodies and lenses, but more importantly I had eleven years more experience taking photos.
Now to sort through the images on the cards and see what I have.
These two images are straight-out-of-camera JPEGs shot with the Canon EOS R5 and RF 24-105mm f/4L IS zoom lens.
Thursday, July 30, 2026
Wednesday, July 29, 2026
Tuesday, July 28, 2026
Zoom Zoom!
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Tab Clearing...
- The state of the air war over Ukraine, four years on...
- The Rise of American Bushido
- Meta, belatedly and ineffectively, gets worried about creepers using its pervert glasses.
I'm good, thanks...
"What is X Money? The new service on X basically provides banking and financial services for paying X Premium and Premium+ subscribers right within the app. X Money includes peer-to-peer payments and money transfers within the X platform, as well as a deposit account. Users will also receive "the X card," a physical Visa debit card for ATM withdrawals and in-person transactions."Now you'll be able to pay for your Grok-generated revenge porn without even leaving the app!
Monday, July 27, 2026
Sunday, July 26, 2026
Automotif DCXXXII...
Saturday, July 25, 2026
To Boldly Nerd Like No One Has Nerded Before
Any kid in my neighborhood when I was in elementary school would have cheerfully murdered people in their beds to get their hands on this USS Enterprise bridge playset.
Friday, July 24, 2026
Houthis in the News Again
Earlier this week, the Iran-aligned Houthis announced they had expanded their campaign against maritime traffic by targeting Saudi oil shipments through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the key chokepoint on the Red Sea, through which Saudi Arabia has re-directed most of its crude oil shipments to bypass the Strait of Hormuz.
China-bound tankers appear to move through Bab el-Mandeb, but some others, including Denmark-flagged products tanker Torm Innovation, have made U-turns in the Red Sea and are now heading north toward the Suez Canal.
Despite the Houthi blockade, “two China-crewed, China-bound tankers loaded at Yanbu and cleared Bab al-Mandeb apparently untouched,” maritime intelligence firm Windward said on Thursday.
Thursday, July 23, 2026
Wednesday, July 22, 2026
You probably weren't doomering hard enough...
Hey, look! (No, seriously, look. Don't just see.)
The first step in the decision cycle is Observing. This is analogous to the “situational awareness” that is often mentioned but rarely defined.
If it’s described at all, it’s with phrases like “Checking one’s six” or “scanning the environment”, but it’s entirely possible to look around and not see, and even seeing isn’t the same as observing. Reducing it to the simplest example, if you are lying on your back in your bed and you wake up and open your eyes, then photons are going to bounce off the ceiling and hit your retinas. You are looking at the ceiling, you are even seeing it, but you are not observing the ceiling, let alone the entirety of your room...
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| How many people in this picture are really aware of their surroundings? |
Tuesday, July 21, 2026
Life in the Panopticon...
LG's Smart TV features being overly intrusive is common among smart TVs, but LG's newer UltraGear computer monitors are now also taking liberties with user privacy and security.
On some Windows systems, connecting a new LG monitor will spur Windows Update to download drivers and the LG Monitor App Installer, which will then display pop-up ads for other LG applications or even McAfee antivirus software. This is disappointing news to say the least, but fortunately my LG UltraGear 27GL850-B doesn't seem to be impacted.
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Hey, look!
"Great-great-grandpa survived malaria, typhus and Spanish Mauser bullets and came home with his trusty Springfield floptop. In the intervening years, the wooden forearm had been shortened and the barrel had been chopped back to a more manageable length for stalking whitetail in the laurel groves of the Appalachians, and at some point, a Lyman peep sight had been added to the old tomato stake, but that timeworn militia rifle had been making meat every autumn since William McKinley was in office. It was just in for a checkup."Bringback firearms, both captured war trophies and issued... uh, "souvenirs" ...were common among our nation's citizen soldiers for most of two centuries.
Monday, July 20, 2026
Tab Clearing...
- "Quick! Announce talks are re-starting before the markets open this morning!"
- Ghost Bikes
- Do the Euros have the stomach for a fight?













































