In Times Square, in the city where Mayor Mamdani has been hosting Iftar meals while the attendees sat on carpets, a rally was held today where they proclaimed support for the ‘Islamic Republic’.
And does the fact the cadet hasn’t been arrested for possessing a weapon on university grounds mean local PD/DA or even state hasn’t gone off the rails entirely?
Word varies. The FBI was specifically nonspecific, saying only the remaining ROTC class took on the shooter “rendering him ‘no longer alive.’” Some rumors indicate this class exercise was implemented with bare hands, while others indicate there was a stabby item involved in said rendering.
It could still happen. My suspicion is that the state AG would like to do that, but job retention instincts have prevented him from following through so far.
There were several acting in concert, to lethal effect, with mil-skills. They have dozens of similar close associates, and tens of thousands of possible pick-up-team supporters.
Original statement was ‘stabbed,’ and I would guess that there are at least 30 eye witnesses who will inform everyone it was with the pen or mechanical pencil with which he was taking the test.
Or maybe a Swiss Army Knife, which I think qualifies as a tool even though, if all else fails, I suppose it could be used as a weapon I would hate to have to try it, though, between the rather thin and probably not strong enough blade and the lack of a locking mechanism, it would be an iffy proposition.
Scissors could work too. My generic ones that live in the junk drawer to open bags and cat food pouches are pointy-ish, and if suitably motivated, I’m sure I could get them into a terrorist far enough to ruin his/her day.
Dear Editor/Station Manager, You permitted the publication of an article that began, “A Federal Judge today ruled that…”
When your revision: “Federal Judge $FirstName $MI $LastName, appointed in $Year by President $PresName, today ruled that…” has had more views than your original version, THEN I will turn off your shock collar.
Tool or no tool, the ER at the local hospital asks, and if you admit to having a knife (I was feeling awful and too sick to lie), it goes to security for the duration. Annoying, but I had a short stint as ambulance crew, and saw security sprinting to a treatment room that day, so I can understand.
I did get the knife back when the festivities were done.
One could do a fair amount of damage with a 3″ knife.
Long ago I saw a movie about a hijacking where the passengers finally found their cojones and overpowered the terrorists. Somebody predicted what would happen: they’d have a huge expensive trial, be sentenced to a few years in prison, all their terrorist buddies would commit further atrocities demanding that they be freed, and the chickenshit government would cave.
At the end of the movie, the plane is on final approach and the camera pans forward along an aisle, showing passengers in their seats with expressions of stress and trauma, then a pair of feet dangling a few inches above the floor, swaying gently with the plane’s motion. Then another pair of feet, and another… 😊
I have personally used non locking blades more than once in a fight. Slashing is generally ok. A bit of downward pressure furing a stab can keep the blade open. Both of which one can practice on cardboard boxes.
Cardboard fiercely ducks knives, forcing one to learn to sharpen properly.
A really sharp pocket knife can do a great deal of damage, other than deep stabs, which are the actual fight stoppers. And those only need about 4″ of blade if you are strong and know where to stick it.
“Too young and too dumb to know better” also can work surprisingly well until one can buy that boy’s first Buck 110 “Folding Hunter”.
An old Army TL-29 non-lockblade will do until then. (Thanks Pop)
The State AG is apparently a Dem, and iirc made some noises that lead me to suspect that the only reason why the AG hasn’t had him arrested is due to the massive public furor that would erupt if that happened.
The state government still blamed lack of gun control for what happened, as usual.
Son was Air Force ROTC at local state college (’07 to ’12; he did not commission, most of his class didn’t … program cuts, Obama). IDK if they had map/compass orientation or not. He would, or should have done fine. Two reasons. Eagle Scout, and we’d been both drilling him on map and compass before he entered cub scouts as a 6-year-old wolf; before he could read.
SCHOOL BUS FULL OF ROWDY TEENAGERS INVADES HELL, DEMONS HOPELESSLY CONFUSED
Back in the late 90’s a guy showed me an old picture of his wife — a little girl wearing a Star Wars T-shirt. I was like, holy shit, practically a baby when Star Wars came out, now married with a kid that age.
I’ll have you know, the Greta Thunberg is made out of recycled cardboard!
OK, the gallows look fine, but where are the guillotine plans? 😁
Hah! Any self-respecting redneck can grind a piece of scrap steel into a guillotine blade, or forge one in the garage. Guillotines are better. The French never got any complaints!
Yes, this is my mood lately. But then I remember that Canada is a fricking sleeper cell. Yes, the whole thing.
Premiere #BlubberDouggie got all hot under the collar on TV yesterday and DEMANDED(with yelling!) an injunction blocking the Al Quds Day parade/terrorist showcase in Toronto this weekend. Conveniently too late to actually -get- an injunction, be it noted, so the farce will go forward and we will have terrorist flags of nations and organizations we are actively at war with being waved on University Avenue in front of provincial parliament. (And stuff will no doubt be thrown at the American embassy during a time of trade negotiations which is totally not a big deal or anything.)
But #Douggie ‘stood up for Canadians!!!’ so it’s all good. Or something. >:(
In other news, Ottawa says Canadian Forces in Kuwait getting shot at by Iran was no big deal, just a misunderstanding, the mullahs didn’t really mean it, and kumbaya and stuff.
“Can’t we all just get along?” [from the collected sayings of St. Rodney]
Given that Ponder is the owner of the Final Girl blog, and has been for over 20 years, I’d say her focus is on horror films rather than British mysteries.
Sounds right. I’m not much into horror movies, so not familiar with Ponder’s work.
If a Midsomer count got done, it would likely be quirky. Perhaps a writer from the show would do it. Maybe. [Category: Coffee table books destined to be on the remainder shelf.]
My research skills aren’t good, I have real problems when it comes to systemically organizing and writing about what I have found.
I have actually been working on the self-regulation, and have made progress.
re: starvation, I’ve been wondering if I am an extrovert, but no, that seems to be one of the stupider things I’ve made progress in convincing myself of. (Editor: Actually Bob, you are underestimating your other stupidities.)
Garage man room shows evidence of female influence. History class meme is not my exact experience, but might the closest succinct summary.
I stopped wanting to be a great man who did great things years ago. My ambitions these days can potentially be accomplished in ordinary circumstances, and do not require me to place highly competing with others. My major life goals don’t have much to do with waging really cool wars on the awful governments of other nations.
My Mom once told of reading a novel about a little girl growing up during the American Revolution and wishing she could live in such exciting historic times. As near as I can tell she would have read this book when she was ten years old in the summer of 1939.
I’ve been asked if I’d ever thought about the Oregon Trail west that great-great-grandfather was on with his family.
Answer: Yes
Did I ever wish I was part of it?
Answer: Hell, No. They walked that distance. Every single day. Day after day. For months. With the same *view, day after day. Seriously. Until one hits the Columbia, the high desert prairie is the same, mile after mile. Not like they went north through Tetons, or Yellowstone, or south through Colorado Rockies and Utah. Even the alternative trail that avoids the Columbia River rafting, doesn’t take on mountains until Cascades.
(*) Drive it. FWIW — Not somewhere one wants to go bare foot either.
Actually. There were rules for that. Be ready before a certain time. Lined up ready to go. Who got done first, got in line first. Kept you out of the dust, the further ahead in line. Also get a sense that there was more than one line through stretches, because there could be. Plus the wagon trails weren’t established. Route was. Actual trail, no. Which also meant the train was early enough that no one was lost, unlike later emigrants on the trail paved with graves (alternative for Oregon Trail), until on the Columbia River.
If you’ve ever driven I-84 across Idaho, eastern Wyoming or Montana, you know what I mean. The prairies are not flat, exactly. But they are the same, mile after mile. There would be challenges in some of the dips, that modern freeways and road remove. Not counting unavailability of locations of where the Snake River is way, way, down in the Canyon (um, Twin Falls, ID).
A guy I knew who spent some time in Ohio told me that the most popular post card at the local gift shop near where he was staying was the scenery, but with a mountain photoshopped into the otherwise completely flat horizon.
It is pretty common for movies and TV shows set in Ohio to have Californian or Canadian mountains in the background. So I expect the postcard is goofing on that.
Every Wright Brothers dramatization and time travel episode does this with the mountains of Dayton, so the Japanese time travel anime showing their birthplace in the Fuji-like mountains of Indiana was a worthy addition to the lore.
(We do have some high hills, deep ravines, and even gorges, but not like that.)
Different setting, a century or so earlier, but a great book that shows just how hard pioneer life could be is “Look to the Mountain”. It’s set in New Hampshire, in the years leading up to independence. The story is of a young man, just getting married at the start (at age 18 I think), heading North from where he grew up (Merrimack NH) to be the second settler in what is now Ossippee. He stakes out his land, clears it, builds a cabin (12 by 12 I think), after some wavering decides to splurge on a luxury (a chimney).
Once scene has him walking to his neighbor to help with calves being born — 10 miles or so. And at the end he walks to Fort #4 to join the NH armed forces — that’s Claremont, on the VT border, 50 miles or so from Ossippee.
My local (LA County) grocery store has had a couple of aisles walled off (transparent walls assembled around the aisles, with only one way in or out) for a while now. The contents are things like shampoo, razors, toothpaste, etc…, and anything in that area is supposed to be paid for *before* you leave that area and go to the rest of the store. There’s a cashier and register (not self-service) at the entrance/exit. It’s a measure that’s been popping up in various places to help reduce shoplifting. A month or two ago, the walls disappeared, and I figured that the powers that be had decided it was no longer necessary.
Today, I discovered that was not correct. They’ve put the walls back up again, but now it’s *four* aisles that are sequestered from the rest of the store. All of it is household items.
Going to the dressing up the buffalo as a missionary, how far down the totem pole does one have to be to draw the duty of putting the clothes on the buffalo or do they anesthetize the buffalo?
I remember reading somewhere of a historian who used barley production numbers in Northwest Europe in the middle ages to calculate that Europeans in those times drank up to five liters of beer per person per day. Most of it would have been 1-2% abv, but I wonder if fetal alcohol syndrome is an unappreciated cause of historical weirdness?
I grew up around FAS kids. They liked attacking me. Often physically.
It is completely known that the “one drink can cause it” thing is a lie.
Diagnosable FAS, their mom was pickled. Before, during, and after.
And no, none of the so-called “researchers” would manage this.
For a contrast, I know a family where they have 6 kids, and the only one who isn’t a practicing doctorate had a brain tumor at age 3. She has the danger-sense of an orange tabby, but isn’t stupid.
Their mother had roughly three shots at 3:45 pm every day from age 24 to her death, because that was the family ritual.
I have also had to council ladies through “no, don’t murder your kid just in case” because they found out that vanilla extract has alcohol in it, as well as “no, canned tuna won’t mercury poison your child.”
Because internet randos are sooo much more reliable than actual scientists.
Unfortunately, we’ve been bombarded with so much government ‘Science!’ that the randos might actually be more reliable. Most randos, at least, don’t deliberately lie. ☹️
For what it’s worth, most of the misinformation is from scientists. Notably bad, even for science-by-press-release.
Just, well meaning ones…who think they’re saving everyone.
Grandly shortening stuff again, the studies on FAS?
They were interviews.
They asked life-long alcoholics, many of whom had been drunk since they were barely teens being systematically raped, if they had ‘a drink’ while pregnant.
And completely ignored the social pressure contamination where you ruled out your daily martini. Because that’s not drinking.
I grew up knowing the children of alcoholics, who were as normal as upper middle class I have no idea on their intake folks’ kids.
But they weren’t “I am attempting to blot out that my life is only abuse” level alcoholics.
OT: the attack has now shifted. There were a good TEN “new commenters” with dubious English at least one of whom (There might have been more, I read only the first sentence before consigning them to spammy oblivion) was the classic “How dare you write this? Don’t you know how to write an essay? and then the rules for writing essays from the Oxford English for foreign learners” and telling me I was all over the place and bored him, in stultifyingly correct classroom English>
Hey, fifty cent army, you ain’t fooling anybody!
I was up late, and also could not tell what was going on.
I’m a bit of a lunatic and my thoughts are not yet unjumbled this afternoon. (Still morning here, but I am often especially slow on Sunday mornings.)
The sides and positions were a bit opaque to me.
My waking up rant this morning, mental outlining led to an editing choice about hunter gatherers, which segued through the observation that data scarcity and other things mean that we definitely can’t use a particle filter to tell us what was really going on.
We have much much more data for scientists and for internet randos. Internet randos should in theory be more tractable by particle filters, but I simply intuit that it is still qualitatively non-tractable. I intuit, but am not yet to the point of arguing it.
I do not know that the true distributions might be for internet randos, and for scientists.
I have prejudices. I do not have knowledge. (on those topics/sources)
I know that I can have good motivations, and can at times accomplish honest communication. I know I can also have motivations that can be fairly bad.
(I somewhat take my failings for granted, can underreport them, adn there are times where I have had massive failures of communication because of that. I am also significantly blind to my own failings even so.)
Me as an estimator tells me to be cautious looking at scientists and at randos.
That is an early/naive estimator.
LAter estimators based on indicators from other people? I have subsets, some of which indicate significantly more caution.
I view this as navigating groups containing unknown and hidden numbers of ‘bad’ people. (But, that framing is a bias on my part, because I started using it young, and overused it to depression and withdrawal.)
Sounds like I may have unintentionally set off a minor stuff squall.
I worked as a family physician on the Res for 14 1/2 years, then spent another 16 practicing in the adjacent town.
I agree with you, FAS is a thing. I am certain that the self-righteous AWFLs who scold pregnant strangers for having a glass of wine with their meal in a restaurant need to be beaten about the head and shoulders for medical as well as social reasons. First rule of toxicology remains: the poison is the dose.
My own commentary: The Russophile simps and traitors in the UK ‘cultural elite’ and fraudulent non-representative ‘government’ are the toothless lions chasing a sleigh, and American ‘cultural elites’ and traitors running big social media still want to throw the little guys from the sleigh.
Cadeate Eos: Let the market eat them.
(Note: I mean US traitors in the strict sense of the US constitution. de facto war with the Chicoms, and what the ‘elites’ ‘know’ versus what ‘everyone’ ‘knows’. However this latter thing is too difficult to prove, and may be outright intractable.)
I am just inchoately angry, and have differences with the Linked Ins (which I do use), and the Discords (which I have used), etc. In particular, there are still a bunch of really old independent web board forums which still have rules against covid misinformation.
Widespread government pressure, effective on web hosts, etc. (AWS, etc. and Trump’s speech on elections.)
Re: Telling stories to younger folk – relating a story from my time in Panama ca. the Noriega excitement to the Panamanian au pair living with some friends of mine, and learning that she was still in swaddling clothes when it happened.
Also, realizing that I had officially entered Middle Age when I noticed in passing that the Centerfold of a recent issue of Playboy was born the year I graduated from High School. Hey, I only picked it up because it had a story by Theodore Sturgeon. 😉
Not activists, sorry. Main character syndrome sufferers, who think they can street-race and run over old people.
Apparently these people are why they stopped having monthly car shows at the local shopping centers. Because the idiots would show up and pull dangerous stuff.
According To Hoyt 
The third meme should have ended in “self-regulatory…. ooh, shiny!” :P
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Okay, second week in a row that I had to stop on the first one, print it, and post it.
I should rethink the office renovation – might as well just put corkboard up on ALL the walls.
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Speaking of NYC terrorists, does anyone else see this as a perfect example of “publicly renounced citizenship”, or is it just me?
https://twitchy.com/justmindy/2026/03/13/times-square-protest-support-islamic-republic-n2426019
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A2 says brrrrrrrrrp. Cheaper and more fun than deporting
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But can the LT find 6/6 points on the Fort Benning land navigation course with a compass and a map?
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And does the fact the cadet hasn’t been arrested for possessing a weapon on university grounds mean local PD/DA or even state hasn’t gone off the rails entirely?
(yeah, yeah, I know, ROTC exceptions.)
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My understanding was that it was a bare jands job. Is there actual information anywhere? I’ve seen both.
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No, I haven’t really heard of weapons really or lack either.
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Word varies. The FBI was specifically nonspecific, saying only the remaining ROTC class took on the shooter “rendering him ‘no longer alive.’” Some rumors indicate this class exercise was implemented with bare hands, while others indicate there was a stabby item involved in said rendering.
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They may have dogpiled the shithadi, making an orderly description impossible.
If they were enthusiastic, “cause of death” may never be determined beyond “misadventure”.
Stabbed, beaten, strangled, and possibly torn apart. They had lots of time.
And it may not have been particularly quick, either.
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In Canada that dude would be in jail right now. Un-aliving an armed terrorist in mid-terror? That’s like ten years here.
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It could still happen. My suspicion is that the state AG would like to do that, but job retention instincts have prevented him from following through so far.
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The Reader, who lives in the Commonwealth, believes that the Norfolk Commonwealth Attorney (DA in any other state) is waiting for the buzz to die away before bringing charges. In case anyone is wondering, this was his take on the act of terrorism. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/soros-backed-da-sparks-backlash-after-blaming-old-dominion-on-pro-gun-lawmakers-f-right-off
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I am happy to live in a (relatively) sane part of Oregon, where the DA wouldn’t dream of putting out such Bovine Manure.
300 miles to Portland, and it’s still too close.
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There were several acting in concert, to lethal effect, with mil-skills. They have dozens of similar close associates, and tens of thousands of possible pick-up-team supporters.
Someone may be afraid to drop that hammer. (Grin)
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Original statement was ‘stabbed,’ and I would guess that there are at least 30 eye witnesses who will inform everyone it was with the pen or mechanical pencil with which he was taking the test.
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Or maybe a Swiss Army Knife, which I think qualifies as a tool even though, if all else fails, I suppose it could be used as a weapon I would hate to have to try it, though, between the rather thin and probably not strong enough blade and the lack of a locking mechanism, it would be an iffy proposition.
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Pointy things are like real estate:
“Location, location, location!”
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Scissors could work too. My generic ones that live in the junk drawer to open bags and cat food pouches are pointy-ish, and if suitably motivated, I’m sure I could get them into a terrorist far enough to ruin his/her day.
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Longed-for meme:
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Note to self: next time you want to post a standalone, clear the cache, clear the cookies, reinstall the OS…
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With WP(DE) you also have to sacrifice a goat.
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In Iran, the goat sacrifices you.
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A duck may suffice, if you use enough duck tape.
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A swiss army knife is terrible for stabbing, but if you keep it sharp it has at least some self defense utility.
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Tool or no tool, the ER at the local hospital asks, and if you admit to having a knife (I was feeling awful and too sick to lie), it goes to security for the duration. Annoying, but I had a short stint as ambulance crew, and saw security sprinting to a treatment room that day, so I can understand.
I did get the knife back when the festivities were done.
One could do a fair amount of damage with a 3″ knife.
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Reminder that the 9/11 hijackers used box cutters.
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That was just because we were told over and over and over “Cooperate with the nice terrorists so nobody gets hurt!”
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While true, they’re razor sharp. If they slice a major vein or artery, the victim could easily bleed to death.
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Long ago I saw a movie about a hijacking where the passengers finally found their cojones and overpowered the terrorists. Somebody predicted what would happen: they’d have a huge expensive trial, be sentenced to a few years in prison, all their terrorist buddies would commit further atrocities demanding that they be freed, and the chickenshit government would cave.
At the end of the movie, the plane is on final approach and the camera pans forward along an aisle, showing passengers in their seats with expressions of stress and trauma, then a pair of feet dangling a few inches above the floor, swaying gently with the plane’s motion. Then another pair of feet, and another… 😊
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Someone tried to hijack a Nigerian airliner.
The passengers overpowered the Jihadiot, tied him to a seat, and cut his throat.
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I have personally used non locking blades more than once in a fight. Slashing is generally ok. A bit of downward pressure furing a stab can keep the blade open. Both of which one can practice on cardboard boxes.
Cardboard fiercely ducks knives, forcing one to learn to sharpen properly.
A really sharp pocket knife can do a great deal of damage, other than deep stabs, which are the actual fight stoppers. And those only need about 4″ of blade if you are strong and know where to stick it.
“Too young and too dumb to know better” also can work surprisingly well until one can buy that boy’s first Buck 110 “Folding Hunter”.
An old Army TL-29 non-lockblade will do until then. (Thanks Pop)
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Unless for a dress uniform ceremonial sword, I doubt there’s any “stabby item” ROTC campus exception…
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The State AG is apparently a Dem, and iirc made some noises that lead me to suspect that the only reason why the AG hasn’t had him arrested is due to the massive public furor that would erupt if that happened.
The state government still blamed lack of gun control for what happened, as usual.
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People still learn to use a compass and map? That’s good to hear.
Yes, I can use those, but then again I was a boy scout in 1970, that could have something to do with it. :-)
Do ROTC cadets qualify for medals? This one should, obviously.
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They dropped orienteering from the PE curriculum at my alma mater, so probably not.
ALSO:
”While authorities confirmed the suspect was not shot, the specific physical methods used to subdue him have not been fully detailed by law enforcement” from an AI article on WAVY’s website (https://www.wavy.com/news/local-news/old-dominion-university-issues-active-threat-at-constant-hall/).
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Son was Air Force ROTC at local state college (’07 to ’12; he did not commission, most of his class didn’t … program cuts, Obama). IDK if they had map/compass orientation or not. He would, or should have done fine. Two reasons. Eagle Scout, and we’d been both drilling him on map and compass before he entered cub scouts as a 6-year-old wolf; before he could read.
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very odd status. If “under contract” they possess US Army Reserve ID cards, with rank “Cadet”. It doesn’t count for time in service.
There are a host of cadet/ROTC awards. I think they are elligible for US Army ones depending on circumstance.
And I suspect the rules may have changed, just a bit, since the 1980s.
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I would personally train him in Land Nav until he can do so.
If he was of the 5% that simply cannot, detail to him an orderly/driver/RTO PFC that can.
He fights. He has proven he has that essential spark of killer violence directed to a decisive outcome.
Men will trust and follow that.
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SCHOOL BUS FULL OF ROWDY TEENAGERS INVADES HELL, DEMONS HOPELESSLY CONFUSED
Back in the late 90’s a guy showed me an old picture of his wife — a little girl wearing a Star Wars T-shirt. I was like, holy shit, practically a baby when Star Wars came out, now married with a kid that age.
I’ll have you know, the Greta Thunberg is made out of recycled cardboard!
OK, the gallows look fine, but where are the guillotine plans? 😁
Ayatollah Pinata! 🤣
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Have you priced steel lately?
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Hah! Any self-respecting redneck can grind a piece of scrap steel into a guillotine blade, or forge one in the garage. Guillotines are better. The French never got any complaints!
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A while back I saw another “Magic School Bus goes to H*ll” meme that had the teacher armoring up as Doomguy (complete with shotgun).
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Need more coffee. ☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕
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Seconded. My poor brain… ~:(
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Have coffee on my behalf, ye blessed ones what can still enjoy it.
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SFBS!
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“Activate the sleeper cells!”
Yes, this is my mood lately. But then I remember that Canada is a fricking sleeper cell. Yes, the whole thing.
Premiere #BlubberDouggie got all hot under the collar on TV yesterday and DEMANDED (with yelling!) an injunction blocking the Al Quds Day parade/terrorist showcase in Toronto this weekend. Conveniently too late to actually -get- an injunction, be it noted, so the farce will go forward and we will have terrorist flags of nations and organizations we are actively at war with being waved on University Avenue in front of provincial parliament. (And stuff will no doubt be thrown at the American embassy during a time of trade negotiations which is totally not a big deal or anything.)
But #Douggie ‘stood up for Canadians!!!’ so it’s all good. Or something. >:(
In other news, Ottawa says Canadian Forces in Kuwait getting shot at by Iran was no big deal, just a misunderstanding, the mullahs didn’t really mean it, and kumbaya and stuff.
“Can’t we all just get along?” [from the collected sayings of St. Rodney]
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Just a note, since I’m the one who gave her the meme:
The “Casual Friday the 13th” meme is art by the great Stacie Ponder, and she did an indie book almost a decade ago, Death Count: All the Deaths in the Friday the 13th Film Series, Illustrated.
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I’d love to see a compilation of death counts in the Midsomer Murders show.
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Given that Ponder is the owner of the Final Girl blog, and has been for over 20 years, I’d say her focus is on horror films rather than British mysteries.
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Sounds right. I’m not much into horror movies, so not familiar with Ponder’s work.
If a Midsomer count got done, it would likely be quirky. Perhaps a writer from the show would do it. Maybe. [Category: Coffee table books destined to be on the remainder shelf.]
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Which Barnaby solved this murder? Now that would be a funny table book. Only about ten more Barnaby’s to go and they catch up with Dr. Who…
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There’ll be a few more seasons before Betty Barnaby is ready for the force, but…
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My research skills aren’t good, I have real problems when it comes to systemically organizing and writing about what I have found.
I have actually been working on the self-regulation, and have made progress.
re: starvation, I’ve been wondering if I am an extrovert, but no, that seems to be one of the stupider things I’ve made progress in convincing myself of. (Editor: Actually Bob, you are underestimating your other stupidities.)
Garage man room shows evidence of female influence. History class meme is not my exact experience, but might the closest succinct summary.
I stopped wanting to be a great man who did great things years ago. My ambitions these days can potentially be accomplished in ordinary circumstances, and do not require me to place highly competing with others. My major life goals don’t have much to do with waging really cool wars on the awful governments of other nations.
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I am generally happy just waking up, then of course I try to spoil it all by moving.
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A couple of memes about living in eventful times.
My Mom once told of reading a novel about a little girl growing up during the American Revolution and wishing she could live in such exciting historic times. As near as I can tell she would have read this book when she was ten years old in the summer of 1939.
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I’ve been asked if I’d ever thought about the Oregon Trail west that great-great-grandfather was on with his family.
Answer: Yes
Did I ever wish I was part of it?
Answer: Hell, No. They walked that distance. Every single day. Day after day. For months. With the same *view, day after day. Seriously. Until one hits the Columbia, the high desert prairie is the same, mile after mile. Not like they went north through Tetons, or Yellowstone, or south through Colorado Rockies and Utah. Even the alternative trail that avoids the Columbia River rafting, doesn’t take on mountains until Cascades.
(*) Drive it. FWIW — Not somewhere one wants to go bare foot either.
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The view? As in, “If you’re not the lead dog, the view never changes”? 😁
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Actually. There were rules for that. Be ready before a certain time. Lined up ready to go. Who got done first, got in line first. Kept you out of the dust, the further ahead in line. Also get a sense that there was more than one line through stretches, because there could be. Plus the wagon trails weren’t established. Route was. Actual trail, no. Which also meant the train was early enough that no one was lost, unlike later emigrants on the trail paved with graves (alternative for Oregon Trail), until on the Columbia River.
If you’ve ever driven I-84 across Idaho, eastern Wyoming or Montana, you know what I mean. The prairies are not flat, exactly. But they are the same, mile after mile. There would be challenges in some of the dips, that modern freeways and road remove. Not counting unavailability of locations of where the Snake River is way, way, down in the Canyon (um, Twin Falls, ID).
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A guy I knew who spent some time in Ohio told me that the most popular post card at the local gift shop near where he was staying was the scenery, but with a mountain photoshopped into the otherwise completely flat horizon.
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It is pretty common for movies and TV shows set in Ohio to have Californian or Canadian mountains in the background. So I expect the postcard is goofing on that.
Every Wright Brothers dramatization and time travel episode does this with the mountains of Dayton, so the Japanese time travel anime showing their birthplace in the Fuji-like mountains of Indiana was a worthy addition to the lore.
(We do have some high hills, deep ravines, and even gorges, but not like that.)
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Different setting, a century or so earlier, but a great book that shows just how hard pioneer life could be is “Look to the Mountain”. It’s set in New Hampshire, in the years leading up to independence. The story is of a young man, just getting married at the start (at age 18 I think), heading North from where he grew up (Merrimack NH) to be the second settler in what is now Ossippee. He stakes out his land, clears it, builds a cabin (12 by 12 I think), after some wavering decides to splurge on a luxury (a chimney).
Once scene has him walking to his neighbor to help with calves being born — 10 miles or so. And at the end he walks to Fort #4 to join the NH armed forces — that’s Claremont, on the VT border, 50 miles or so from Ossippee.
There are a lot of other good parts in it.
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My local (LA County) grocery store has had a couple of aisles walled off (transparent walls assembled around the aisles, with only one way in or out) for a while now. The contents are things like shampoo, razors, toothpaste, etc…, and anything in that area is supposed to be paid for *before* you leave that area and go to the rest of the store. There’s a cashier and register (not self-service) at the entrance/exit. It’s a measure that’s been popping up in various places to help reduce shoplifting. A month or two ago, the walls disappeared, and I figured that the powers that be had decided it was no longer necessary.
Today, I discovered that was not correct. They’ve put the walls back up again, but now it’s *four* aisles that are sequestered from the rest of the store. All of it is household items.
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Going to the dressing up the buffalo as a missionary, how far down the totem pole does one have to be to draw the duty of putting the clothes on the buffalo or do they anesthetize the buffalo?
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Okay, but it really was supposed to be space travel.
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Internet connection says it all….
And the alligators get lunch!
Starship indeed. Are allergens the Borg?
Those club rules are surprisingly practical!
My deepest fantasy, indeed….
Yep. Guys would do that.
It was supposed to be space travel!
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Re: “wine for breakfast”
I remember reading somewhere of a historian who used barley production numbers in Northwest Europe in the middle ages to calculate that Europeans in those times drank up to five liters of beer per person per day. Most of it would have been 1-2% abv, but I wonder if fetal alcohol syndrome is an unappreciated cause of historical weirdness?
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….have you ever been around folks with FAS?
Long term?
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As concisely as I can manage:
As a kid, we were next to the rez.
I grew up around FAS kids. They liked attacking me. Often physically.
It is completely known that the “one drink can cause it” thing is a lie.
Diagnosable FAS, their mom was pickled. Before, during, and after.
And no, none of the so-called “researchers” would manage this.
For a contrast, I know a family where they have 6 kids, and the only one who isn’t a practicing doctorate had a brain tumor at age 3. She has the danger-sense of an orange tabby, but isn’t stupid.
Their mother had roughly three shots at 3:45 pm every day from age 24 to her death, because that was the family ritual.
I have also had to council ladies through “no, don’t murder your kid just in case” because they found out that vanilla extract has alcohol in it, as well as “no, canned tuna won’t mercury poison your child.”
Basic science education has been poisoned.
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Because internet randos are sooo much more reliable than actual scientists.
Unfortunately, we’ve been bombarded with so much government ‘Science!’ that the randos might actually be more reliable. Most randos, at least, don’t deliberately lie. ☹️
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:shoves glasses up nose:
For what it’s worth, most of the misinformation is from scientists. Notably bad, even for science-by-press-release.
Just, well meaning ones…who think they’re saving everyone.
Grandly shortening stuff again, the studies on FAS?
They were interviews.
They asked life-long alcoholics, many of whom had been drunk since they were barely teens being systematically raped, if they had ‘a drink’ while pregnant.
And completely ignored the social pressure contamination where you ruled out your daily martini. Because that’s not drinking.
I grew up knowing the children of alcoholics, who were as normal as upper middle class I have no idea on their intake folks’ kids.
But they weren’t “I am attempting to blot out that my life is only abuse” level alcoholics.
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I was agreeing with your last sentence, and expanding it to ‘public scientific guidelines have been poisoned too’.
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Ah.
This is why I shouldn’t stay up four plus hours. ^.^
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OT: the attack has now shifted. There were a good TEN “new commenters” with dubious English at least one of whom (There might have been more, I read only the first sentence before consigning them to spammy oblivion) was the classic “How dare you write this? Don’t you know how to write an essay? and then the rules for writing essays from the Oxford English for foreign learners” and telling me I was all over the place and bored him, in stultifyingly correct classroom English>
Hey, fifty cent army, you ain’t fooling anybody!
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Because clearly we come here for :checks notes: Oxford standard essays.
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I was up late, and also could not tell what was going on.
I’m a bit of a lunatic and my thoughts are not yet unjumbled this afternoon. (Still morning here, but I am often especially slow on Sunday mornings.)
The sides and positions were a bit opaque to me.
My waking up rant this morning, mental outlining led to an editing choice about hunter gatherers, which segued through the observation that data scarcity and other things mean that we definitely can’t use a particle filter to tell us what was really going on.
We have much much more data for scientists and for internet randos. Internet randos should in theory be more tractable by particle filters, but I simply intuit that it is still qualitatively non-tractable. I intuit, but am not yet to the point of arguing it.
I do not know that the true distributions might be for internet randos, and for scientists.
I have prejudices. I do not have knowledge. (on those topics/sources)
I know that I can have good motivations, and can at times accomplish honest communication. I know I can also have motivations that can be fairly bad.
(I somewhat take my failings for granted, can underreport them, adn there are times where I have had massive failures of communication because of that. I am also significantly blind to my own failings even so.)
Me as an estimator tells me to be cautious looking at scientists and at randos.
That is an early/naive estimator.
LAter estimators based on indicators from other people? I have subsets, some of which indicate significantly more caution.
I view this as navigating groups containing unknown and hidden numbers of ‘bad’ people. (But, that framing is a bias on my part, because I started using it young, and overused it to depression and withdrawal.)
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Sounds like I may have unintentionally set off a minor stuff squall.
I worked as a family physician on the Res for 14 1/2 years, then spent another 16 practicing in the adjacent town.
I agree with you, FAS is a thing. I am certain that the self-righteous AWFLs who scold pregnant strangers for having a glass of wine with their meal in a restaurant need to be beaten about the head and shoulders for medical as well as social reasons. First rule of toxicology remains: the poison is the dose.
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Sorry, new at this. I was trying to reply to Foxfier ‘way up there.
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Thank you St Sarah for the weekly meme posts. A bright glimmering star in the weekly darkness. You are blessed.
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Ah, the weekly memes! Thank you St Sarah. You are a bright glittering diamond in the universe. Blessed are you!
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Trump looks good in a cowboy hat.
https://x.com/MargoMartin47/status/2032556733030170852?s=20We
Resistor makes good ones. I have more than one.
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Resistol
Sheesh
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Check out the prominent portrait of President Reagan in the background. 😊
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Everyone looks good in a cowboy hat.
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https://prestonbyrne.com/2026/03/12/i-never-thought-the-lion-would-eat-my-face/
Woohoo!
My own commentary: The Russophile simps and traitors in the UK ‘cultural elite’ and fraudulent non-representative ‘government’ are the toothless lions chasing a sleigh, and American ‘cultural elites’ and traitors running big social media still want to throw the little guys from the sleigh.
Cadeate Eos: Let the market eat them.
(Note: I mean US traitors in the strict sense of the US constitution. de facto war with the Chicoms, and what the ‘elites’ ‘know’ versus what ‘everyone’ ‘knows’. However this latter thing is too difficult to prove, and may be outright intractable.)
I am just inchoately angry, and have differences with the Linked Ins (which I do use), and the Discords (which I have used), etc. In particular, there are still a bunch of really old independent web board forums which still have rules against covid misinformation.
Widespread government pressure, effective on web hosts, etc. (AWS, etc. and Trump’s speech on elections.)
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Re: Telling stories to younger folk – relating a story from my time in Panama ca. the Noriega excitement to the Panamanian au pair living with some friends of mine, and learning that she was still in swaddling clothes when it happened.
Also, realizing that I had officially entered Middle Age when I noticed in passing that the Centerfold of a recent issue of Playboy was born the year I graduated from High School. Hey, I only picked it up because it had a story by Theodore Sturgeon. 😉
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https://www.fox19.com/2026/03/15/cincinnati-police-arrest-39-tow-65-vehicles-after-street-takeover-attempt/
The Cincinnati police have lost their chill, when it comes to activists trying to block streets.
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Not activists, sorry. Main character syndrome sufferers, who think they can street-race and run over old people.
Apparently these people are why they stopped having monthly car shows at the local shopping centers. Because the idiots would show up and pull dangerous stuff.
So they are kinda narcissism activists, in a way.
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