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A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published.
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Anonymity is vital for the proper functioning of a free society, regardless of legal protections afforded by the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights for free speech, unencumbered by government influence or interference.
But as the current social-media-obsessed culture demonstrates, anonymity from the majority is also vital. Doxxing and deplatforming and worse are now a staple of public discourse.
From: McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission (1995)
Under our Constitution, anonymous pamphleteering is not a pernicious, fraudulent practice, but an honorable tradition of advocacy and of dissent. Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. See generally J. Mill, On Liberty and Considerations on Representative Government 1, 3-4 (R. McCallum ed. 1947). It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation-and their ideas from suppression-at the hand of an intolerant society. The right to remain anonymous may be abused when it shields fraudulent conduct. But political speech by its nature will sometimes have unpalatable consequences, and, in general, our society accords greater weight to the value of free speech than to the dangers of its misuse.
It is relatively simple for political and social elites to speak freely; they have walls, both figurative and literal, built around them by dint of their wealth or their government connection. It is exactly those people against whom anonymity is a powerful weapon, because their reach is far more powerful than the mere citizen.
Entrance into the public sphere as a politician (or the quaint term: public servant), or commentator, or pundit, or as an entertainment figure immediately expands one's megaphone far beyond that of the citizen, and it also affords one the protection of the organized media, the state and, sadly, in many cases, the long arm of the state or media that reaches out to punish one's interlocutors.
Against this we have one tool: anonymity. And who are the enemies of anonymity? Those who have other protections!
Here is a comment from a purported 1st Amendment lawyer, who thinks that anonymous speech should be held to a different standard. He was responding to some "famous" person whose name I barely know, but whose attack on anonymity is self serving and intellectually weak. I cited one obvious need for anonymity...The United Kingdom, which is busily imprisoning people for their speech! But there are countless others here in America that are powerful defenses of anonymity as one of the pillars of our free discourse in ideas. For example; "Whistleblowers" are sometimes self-serving and craven, but there are numerous examples of their importance in exposing government malfeasance.
And our current legal and political structure was debated in The Federalist Papers by "Publius," (Hamilton, Madison, and Jay), and rebutted by "Federal Farmer," whose identity is still not certain after almost 240 years!
If anonymity was an appropriate right to be exercised by those men, then it is certainly something worth defending.
In spite of the technological advances since 1787, instant communication via the internet has changed nothing...we are all still pamphleteers!
[Crossposted at CutJibNewsletter and X/Twitter]. If you folks who are on X/Twitter would follow us it would be much appreciated!
Good morning kids. With the United States heavily engaged in military operations against the Iranian regime, and Cardboard Cutouts notwithstanding, that regime still capable of hurling missiles at Israel and other nations in the region, is this something?!
A massive explosion ripped through the Valero refinery in Port Arthur on Monday, sending a towering column of black smoke over the city and triggering an emergency response across Jefferson County. The cause of the explosion is under investigation. . . The Valero refinery in Port Arthur is ranked as one of the ten largest refineries in the United States. Valero reported the refinery produces 435,000 barrels of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel per day.
In the wake of Israel's recent strike on a key Iranian/Qatari oil facility and President Trump's threat to obliterate Iran's energy infrastructure if the regime does not capitulate or accede to his demands for a cessation of hostilities, is there a link to Iran or was this some freak accident. Given the our props borders and joke of an immigration enforcement system prior to the Trump era, sabotage not only can't be ruled out but IMHO it most likely was the cause. Perhaps this brainwave might be pushing things but our own homegrown traitors in the form of Antifa and the red-green-climate change maniacs could have used the war as cover to pull off an attack or are in league with Iranian/Islamic terror cells? And then this happened:
Barksdale Air Force Base (BAFB), a major U.S. strategic bomber installation in northwest Louisiana, has just experienced an unusually serious series of unauthorized drone incursions over its most sensitive areas.
More than a dozen unsanctioned drones repeatedly swarmed a US Air Force base that is home to a nuclear bomber fleet — and were able to resist efforts to bring them down via jamming technology, according to military officials.
A Chicago alderwoman appeared to blame an 18-year-old woman for her own fatal shooting last week, allegedly at the hands of an illegal alien.
Chicago police announced Sunday that Jose Medina-Medina had been arrested for the murder of Sheridan Gorman, a freshman at Loyola University. Chicago Alderwoman Maria Hadden speculated that Gorman was in the “wrong place at the wrong time.”
Democrat Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker refuses to say whether he will honor an ICE detainer request for an illegal alien accused of killing an 18-year-old college student.
Loyola University freshman Sheridan Gorman was walking in a park on Thursday morning around 1:00 a.m., to “catch a glimpse of the Northern Lights” when Medina-Medina allegedly approached her. Gorman “attempted to flee,” but Medina-Medina allegedly shot her in the head. Gorman was pronounced dead at the scene, according to local reports and the Department of Homeland Security.
Fuck that noise. Send in the Green Berets to storm the jail and take the scumbag out by force - and Arrest Fatzker for insurrection or obstruction of justice. He needs to swing if he dares interfere, but there isn't a construction crane sturdy enough to hoist him up by his brontosaurus neck.
Have a great day!
And lastly, a quick shout-out and a huge thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know.
ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY LINKS
The blast erupted inside the sprawling Gulf Coast facility shortly after midday, shaking nearby neighborhoods and prompting officials to warn residents to stay indoors as fire crews and industrial‑hazmat teams rushed to contain the incident. The explosion produced a thick plume visible for miles across Southeast Texas, adding new scrutiny to one of the nation’s largest refining corridors as authorities worked to determine the cause of the blast and assess potential hazards. Massive Explosion at Texas Oil Refinery, Cause Unknown — Residents Told to Shelter in Place
“We’re looking for all of the things that we’ve been talking about,” Trump told reporters. “We want to see no nuclear bomb, no nuclear weapon, not even close to it, low-key on the missiles. We want to see peace in the Middle East. We want the nuclear dust, we’re going to want that, and I think we’re going to get that.” Trump Lays Out Terms For End To Iran War
Two of the suspects are sisters, Samaneh Ghandali, 41, and Sorvoor Ghandali, 32. They were charged alongside Mohammadjavad Khosravi,40, who is Samaneh’s husband, with allegedly using their employment at unidentified technology companies to “obtain access to confidential and sensitive information,” according to the Department of Justice. Alleged Iranian spies are already in the US — and infiltrating Silicon Valley
Instead of gutting immigration enforcement, he’s sent ICE into more than a dozen of the nation’s busiest airports to make up for TSA’s missing manpower. Democrats, predictably, are furious — and fearmongering to the nth degree. “The last thing the American people need is for untrained ICE agents to be deployed at airports across the country, potentially to brutalize or to kill them,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries frothed on CNN’s “State of the Union.” What about the Americans brutalized and killed by illegal-alien criminals? How Trump’s ingenious TSA fix calls the Democrats’ bluff
Mass immigration, driven by elites, has fractured national cohesion—only deliberate reversal, not drift, can restore sovereignty and social trust in the West. Hispanic Mass Migration and Remigration (Part 1)
THE GREAT SOMALIAN SIMOLEON SWINDLE
Anar Rustamov, 39, “who appears to have entered the United States illegally,” has been indicted on 14 counts of allegedly orchestrating a scheme to file thousands of false claims for medical equipment with the Medicare Advantage program, according to a statement by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California. Feds Charge Azerbaijan Migrant with $90M Healthcare Fraud
DOMESTIC AFFAIRS, THE COURTS, WASTE/FRAUD/ABUSE
ICE was deployed Saturday to assist Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers amid a nationwide airport crisis, as the partial government shutdown left TSA officers without pay and suspended their “nonessential privileges and courtesies,” according to DHS. President Donald Trump had threatened in a Saturday Truth Social post to deploy ICE agents to airports if the “Radical Left Democrats” failed to agree on a funding bill — hours after a fifth vote to end the shutdown failed 47-37. ICE Agents Arrive At US Airports Amid TSA Shortage As Democrats Keep DHS Shutdown Going
The effects of the TSA shutdown have been mixed, but major airports have seen massive security lines at peak travel times. Unpaid for the second time in recent months, TSA officers are quitting or calling in sick at growing rates. Democrat Party messaging is deadly simple . . . Democrats Have Nothing To Offer But Fear And Misery
When governments increase taxes, it's expected to happen slowly and gently enough to not be too destructive. Chicago did not choose that path. Checking Out Chicago's Checkout Bag Tax
WE-ALL-SLAM-FOR-I-SLAM
The group, Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiyya, posted a video through networks tied to Tehran’s Axis of Resistance proxies asserting it had targeted the Machzike Hadath synagogue in the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Golders Green, the Daily Wire reported. The actual damage, however, fell on ambulances belonging to Hatzola, a Jewish volunteer emergency service parked in the synagogue’s lot. Iran-Tied Islamists Claim Jewish Ambulance Service Attack As Their Responsibility: REPORT
Robert Mueller is dead, but his toxic legacy lives on in the destroyed lives of the innocent victims targeted by the Russia collusion probe that bears his name. To understand why President Trump had no kind words for the former FBI director when he died over the weekend at age 81, you have to understand the human toll on the president and dozens of his friends and allies. Who knows whether Mueller, who had Parkinson’s, was in command of all his faculties when he was appointed special counsel at age 72? But the deep state evildoers on his team knew exactly what they were doing when they used his formerly prestigious reputation to pervert the course of justice for their “Get Trump” frolic. Miranda Devine: We’re still learning the full rot of the Russiagate scandal
The Russia-collusion saga ranks among the boldest political deceptions in modern American memory -- not for the facts it revealed, but for the damning realities it worked so hard to obscure. The Deep State’s Biggest Lie
It isn’t the job of a special counsel to exonerate anyone. It’s also not his job to convict anyone. That gratuitous line in the conclusion of his money pit of an investigation served as nothing more than a lifeline for Democrats and the rabidly anti-American, anti-Trump media to maintain that they had every reason to continue calling the president a Russian agent, though they had none. Robert Mueller’s Legacy Is Self-Destruction Because He Failed To Stay In His Lane
FIRST AMENDMENT ISSUES, CENSORSHIP, FAKE NEWS, MEDIA, BIG BROTHER TECH
“For too long, outdated regulations have forced providers to keep consumers on antiquated networks,” said FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. “We will cut through that red tape with this decision. This FCC vote will finally allow those Americans to benefit from an upgrade to next-gen infrastructure.” America Doesn’t Need Copper Phone Lines In 2026
One of the locations in the area officers responded to following the stabbing was a restaurant called Zaya, according to the New York Post which cited early reports that said the stabbing occurred during a fight between the women. Police: Multiple Women Injured in Downtown Los Angeles Stabbing
He said the crime levels were a product of “years of local politicians, judges, and prosecutors who sided with violent criminals over law-abiding citizens.” Trump: We Have Fixed the Memphis Crime Problem
The Supreme Court seemed open Monday to cracking down on states’ ability to accept mail-in ballots that arrive late. Several justices seemed concerned about the “slippery slope” of counting ballots received after Election Day, raising questions about who can receive ballots and how to address perceptions of fraud. Supreme Court Seems Open To Taking Away Key Election Rule Beloved By Dems
DEMOCRAT/LEFTIST AND RINO SCANDALS, MESHUGAS, CHUTZPOCRISY, INSANITY
Victor Davis Hanson: The canonized legacy of Cesar Chavez is collapsing under revelations that recast a sainted activist as a deeply flawed—and possibly predatory—man the Left can no longer easily defend. Who Was Cesar Chavez—and Who Will He Become?
POLITICS
Trump’s potential absence would mark a significant shift for CPAC, eroding its reputation as a major platform for his political messaging and influence within the Republican Party. Trump Set to Miss CPAC, Breaking Decade-Long Streak.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS, INTERNATIONAL
The video, was initially shared by the anti-communist Twitter account@JaviXCubaLibre and widely circulated by Venezuelan journalist Emmanuel Rincón and shared by Cuban-American journalists. Breitbart News could not independently confirm the authenticity of the video, but it surfaced in the context of a visit by the “Nuestra America” group to Havana. Report: Video Claims to Show VIP Leftists Making Starving Cuban Children Dance for Cookies
Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have obtained a new high resolution image of the Crab Nebula, and by comparing it with earlier Hubble images taken in 1999/2000 have been able to track the continuing expansion and evolution of this supernova remnant over a period now covering almost a quarter century. Changes to the Crab Nebula after a quarter century
Early in the history of SpaceX Musk learned that being dependent on outside contractors was crippling. Too often those contractors saw SpaceX has a competitor and acted to sabotage it. He soon decided his companies must be vertically integrated, doing as much work as possible in-house. He is now applying that policy in chip production as well. SpaceX, xAI, and Tesla to build large-scale computer chip factory in Texas
FEMINAZISM, TRANSGENDER PSYCHOSIS, HOMOSEXUALIZATION, WAR ON MASCULINITY/NORMALCY
despite the efforts of psychopathic teachers and professionals, and despite celebrities parading their transgender/homosexual children as a status symbol in Hollywood, we can expect the continued decline of transgender surgeries. The Twilight of the Transgenders
It's the production crews who suffer most from Tinseltown's downfall, and by and large, they aren't woke Hollywood progressives. They're workingmen and women who tend to be far more centrist or even conservative than the stars and studios they work for. Who Killed Hollywood? Or Did it Kill Itself?
Once again, it is essential if you want to understand the past to read the perspective the people who lived it. Sadly our modern universities no longer demand this, and so we now have several generations of college-educated students who really only know the past through the cartoon ideologies of their teachers and the academics these teachers admire. Wheeler’s book is a great way to counter that shallow education, and to get that more humane perspective of our country’s past. The battle of Gettysburg as seen by those who lived it
ALSO: The Morning Report cross-posts at CutJibNewsletter.com usually within an hour or so of posting here, if you want to continue the conversation all day.
Are they fast? Yes. They close in on the regular AMD parts for gaming, and the 270K competes with the 9950X for heavy desktop workloads.
Are they power-efficient? Not especially, but they are a big improvement over Intel's notoriously power-hungry 13th and 14th generation chips.
Are they good value? Definitely. $200 for the 250K with 6P and 12E cores, and $300 for the 270K with 8P and 16E cores would make them hard to resist if you could buy the rest of the components for a system.
Should you buy one? Probably not. These run in Intel's Socket 1851 platform and that will be retired within a year for Nova Lake and its Socket 1954.
If that's not a concern - and particularly if you already have DDR5 memory sitting around - then yes, these look worth considering.
That is a bar in West Yellowstone, Montana. Not quite as impressive as the bar from Saturday night's ONT, but what it lacks in aesthetics, it more than makes up for in food and booze quality. The elk chop is superb, but the bourbon list is incredible, especially considering the location, or maybe it is exactly why the bourbon list is so impressive!
It also has a bear spray rental kiosk in the lobby, and that might make it the best bar in America!
It's easy to ignore places like this, but this is America, where appearances can be deceiving. There is great...everything...to be had across our wonderful country, and to the disgust of the elites in the cities, a lot of that greatness is far outside of NYC and Chicago and Los Angeles.
Not just food -- although I would argue that the best American food is found outside of the cities -- but tradesmen and teachers and contractors and dentists and clerks in stores and...
It is 100% real. Click on the graphic for the Union Pacific Railroad website.
[Hat Tip: dhmosquito]
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There was this poor, pious old guy who hears that the Pope is going on tour and will be parading through his city. He was very excited that he might get a chance to meet the Pope, shake his hand, and maybe even receive a blessing from the Holy Father! So he decided to make a plan: perhaps the Pope would want to meet the richest man in town! Figuring that if he were somehow able to appear wealthy, and stand by the road, the Pope would see him, be impressed, stop, and he would get to shake the Pope‘s hand.
So this poor old fella went out and bought a nice new expensive suit that he couldn’t really afford, a sharp fedora and wingtips, and on the appointed day, got up early, put on his new clothes, hit the barber shop and got a neat comb-over haircut, then made his way to the edge of the street where the Pope would soon be passing by in the vaunted Popemobile.
After what seemed like an eternity, our newly-outfitted guy finally spots the approaching motorcade, and he begins to get all tingly with anticipation. As the Popemobile gets closer and closer, it suddenly stops right in front of him. The Pope climbs down, out of his vehicle, walks toward him, but without even looking at him, walks past toward a scruffy little dude nearby, sitting obliviously and leaning against a wall. The little guy is wearing nasty, dirty clothes and is obviously stinking drunk. The Pope, arms folded, stands silently over the drunk, who finally looks up. The Pope unfolds his arms, slowly leans down and whispers something to the drunk that nobody can hear. Then smiling stupidly, this drunk gets up and hobbles down the street as the Pope makes his way back to his Popemobile, to the roar of the nearby crowd.
Our friend is momentarily confused, but then it dawns on him: Of course! The Pope doesn’t want to meet rich people; he wants to meet downtrodden, poor people! So he goes to “Plan-B” and runs after the drunk guy. When he catches up to him, he offers to swap clothes (and shoes!) with him. Of course, the man immediately agrees. So they go behind a couple of bushes and proceed with their transaction. While he’s momentarily overcome by the stench of his new clothes, he tells himself that sacrifices must be made to get a blessing of the Holy Father, and off he runs after the slowly moving Papal motorcade.
He runs and runs, and finally catches up to the motorcade. He goes a little ways ahead, then stops and sits down just like the drunk guy did, to wait for the Popemobile to pass by. Sure enough, as it gets to him, it stops! He’s beyond excited as the Pope climbs down and walks straight over towards him. Just as before, with arms crossed and with a stern, pious expression, the Pope stands over him. After a few seconds, the Pope leans down in his face and quietly says,
.
.
.
.
.
“I thought I just told you to get the fuck out of here.”
[Hat Tip: dhmosquito]
******
That movie still holds up after 50 years.
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I have no idea whether this guy is a thug, or an angel, or a stone-cold killer. And I don't care. We have an inalienable right to talk shit about public officials, and they have to smile and say, "Thank you sir, may I have another."
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Seven dogs stolen from their owners have gone viral after escaping from an illegal transport truck and making their way home.
They traveled around 17 km together, led by a corgi across highways and fields, now safely back with their respective owners..🐶🐾🥺❤️ pic.twitter.com/H5VB9BQkGB
A group of seven dogs bravely returned home to their owners in a near-ten-mile trek after being stolen, Dextero reports.
A viral video shows the pack, which includes Golden Retrievers, German Shepherds and Corgis, walking along the Changchun Highway in the province of Changchun, Jilin in China. According to South China Morning Post, the video has been viewed more than 230 million times, and shows the dogs fleeing along the busy road. The pets were allegedly stolen by thieves working at a dog meat shop.
On March 16, a witness, named Lu, recorded the pack and tried to lead them to safety, but was ignored. The dogs, including one who had an injured leg, were shown following a Corgi, who occasionally looked back to ensure that no one went astray.
"They resemble a band of little brothers in distress, moving in unison -- nothing like stray dogs," Lu told Dahe Daily.
Sounds cute, but in addition to AI slop, one kind of fake story I see on Twitter is where they take real video but just completely invent a fake but poignant narrative to go along with it. Like a video will say "He saved this baby turtle, and later, it saved his life," and then they just assemble bits and pieces of different videos about different turtles culminating with the turtle calling 911. And they don't show the turtle dialing 911. They just tell you this happened.
Do I believe this viral story from a foreign outlet I've never heard of? Let's just say that around the holidays I allow myself to entertain the possibility of Santa.
Single Whoopi Goldberg reveals she goes bar-hopping to fulfill her sexual needs
Whoopi Goldberg cheerfully confessed she bar hops as a way to fulfill her sexual needs.
On Wednesday's episode of "The View," Goldberg noted, "A woman wrote an article in Cosmopolitan, admitting that she fantasizes about being single even though she's in a very happy longterm relationship."
"She writes that sometimes, she finds herself missing the days of casual flings and bar-hopping," Goldberg continued as the audience giggled.
The "Ghost" actress then turned to her co-hosts for a reaction, to which Joy Behar responded, "Do you miss those days?"
Goldberg quipped, "I am single," adding, "Yeah, I bar hop, I go hang! And I do hit and runs when I need it."
I envision her working off her crusty undies with e Dremel tool and a chain-cutter.
Why post something from last month? Gen Z has been annoying me too.
The generation born between 1997 and 2010 is the very first generation who did worse in school than the generation before them, according to a top neuroscientist.
And shockingly, they are proud of it.
"They're the first generation in modern history to score lower on standardized academic tests than the one before it," Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, 43, told The Post. "And to make matters worse, most of these young people are overconfident about how smart they are. The smarter people think they are, the dumber they actually are.
No way!
"They underperformed on basically every cognitive measure, from basic attention, memory, literacy, numeracy, executive function and general IQ."
Horvath recently testified to the sad facts before Congress, telling a panel of lawmakers that Generation Zers, who followed the Millenial generation, blew up humanity's proud academic record -- the wrong way.
So what happened that caused an entire age group to bomb test scores?
What caused them to become a generation of retards?
Well, the left's covid school shutdowns was part of it.
The other part of it is what's making us all stupid: Constant low-cognitive-demand/high-domamine-spiking scrolling on phones.
Horvath, who studied reams of data from standardized academic tests, told Congress that Z's struggles stem from the fact that they're the first generation to grow up with constant screen time. And it's no substitute for real learning.
"More than half of the time a teenager is awake, half of it is spent staring at a screen," said Horvath, who's taught at universities around the world, including Harvard and the University of Melbourne in Australia. "Humans are biologically programmed to learn from other humans and from deep study, not flipping through screens for bullet point summaries."
...
And it's not just happening in the US.
"Across 80 countries, if you look at the data, once countries adopt digital technology widely in schools, performance goes down significantly," said Horvath, who is also founder of LME Global, a Arizona-based group that bridges research and classroom practices to improve academic outcomes.
The Failure of the Sussex: Meghan Markle will soon be unemployed.
So, the same as she is now. Only now she won't be getting megamillion dollar paychecks from Netflix to be unemployed.
From State of the Day, which uses this fact as a jumping off point to discuss how AI is going to put a lot of people out of work, but especially women in corporate make-work jobs.
State records show 89 hospice companies at one Los Angeles office plaza. We went to look for ourselves.
The Merabi Professional Medical Plaza, a three-story, 32,000 square foot stucco and glass office building in Los Angeles, is home to a salon, a law office, a modeling agency, a realty corporation and, also, 89 licensed hospice companies.
Patient advocate Sheila Clark, who has worked to expose allegations of widespread Medicare fraud in the hospice industry, calls this building "ground zero" for the issue.
"This particular building I noticed, I'm like, 'dang, how can there be that many licensed and certified hospices in this tiny little building?,'" Clark said.
The building is among the most extreme cases of what's known as "clustering" to turn up in a sweeping CBS News investigation -- a grouping of large numbers of hospice offices that state auditors consider a major red flag for potential fraud.
The Van Nuys address for Merabi Plaza appears dozens of times in state records for licensed hospice companies. Inside the building's entry hall, a directory lists numerous hospice agencies that line the long tiled hallways, although the building's owner claims many are no longer there.
Clark said it makes "no sense" to find so many licensed and certified hospice company offices operating inside a single building. Auditors said the clustering of so many firms raised concerns because it suggests that "the number of agencies in these areas likely exceeds the number of patients who need services."
Concerns about clustering appear in a 2022 California State Auditor's report, which found that Los Angeles County had experienced a 1,500% increase in hospice companies countywide since 2010. That's six times more hospice providers than the national average, relative to the county's elderly population.
Auditors said other warning signs for potential fraud included multiple hospices in one building, geographic clustering, low patient counts, high rates of terminally ill patients later discharged alive, excessive billing and staff shared across multiple companies.
CBS News found that 72 of the 89 registered hospices in Merabi Plaza have at least three of those six potential warning signs.
15 hospices incorporated in a single day, in a single suite in Van Nuys
'It's not normal. None of this is normal,' said the CEO of a hospice trade association who has warned of fraud risks in LA for years
A group operating out of a Friar Street office building in Van Nuys that advertises "virtual offices" incorporated 22 hospices and home care agencies in one year, including 15 hospices registered in one day to a single suite, according to an investigation by the Southern California News Group.
The 15 hospices, all formed in "Suite 205" at 14545 Friar St., later collected $12.3 million from Medicare and Medi-Cal billings in 2023 and 2024, records showed.
Each had the equivalent of one full-time employee at the time.
While operating out of the same building is permitted, hospices cannot use the same office, according to Sheila Clark, the president and CEO of California Hospice and Palliative Care Association.
"You cannot co-locate with another provider," she said.
However, these hospices seemingly bypassed that limitation by appending letters from "A" to "P" onto the suite number in official documentation. Suites in the building, however, have only one to three rooms and leases specifically prohibit subdivision of those spaces, according to the property owner, Kambiz Merabi.
Yet Merabi's website advertises "virtual offices" that give you a "physical business address and office number for your business cards, website, email and registering a new company." Mentions of that service were scrubbed from his Instagram page as of Friday, but remained on other accounts.
One post specifically advertised to industries needing an address to "obtain licenses."
"For just $99 per month, you receive 2 hours of private office or conference room usage each month; a professional office address with an actual suite number -- not a P.O. Box; mail and package reception; your business listed on our digital directory and within the building's directory," the post read. "For industries needing a California or Los Angeles presence to obtain licenses, a suite at the prestigious Merabi Professional Medical Plaza Building provides more than just an address -- it offers a full-service business center hub with many perks and services for businesses like yours."
This is how the daycare fraud works: - “You watch my kid, I’ll watch yours” - Enroll these kids into “daycares” - Collect money from the government - You and your family then get to live off government subsidies
Here's a little good news: A foreign pirate who was imprudently granted citizenship, and then defrauded the people of the US for millions, has been denaturalized.
Let him be the first of millions.
Oh, I had not heard about this at all. It happened a couple of days ago, and what a development.
This began as a COVID-era fraud case, but what it ended up as should strike fear in the heart of every Somali Learing Center hustler and every Armenian hospice provider.
That naturalized citizenship is not the shield of steel one might have thought it was, or that it used to be back when no one paid attention to such things.
For the year between April 2020 and the next May, 25-year-old Joff Stenn Wroy Philossaint of Fort Lauderdale, FL, had himself a schweet little scheme going with COVID loan applications and all the various businesses he had registered in his name.
He and his partners in crime came into some serious cha-ching, courtesy of those very forgiving loan programs.
This is where it gets really interesting. Thanks to a quirk in immigration law, if you are in the middle of criminal activity when you apply for your citizenship, you can also be charged with submitting a fraudulent application.
ANYONE COME IMMEDIATELY TO MIND?
Haitian-born Philossaint was definitely up to no good in 2020 when he dropped his citizenship application papers, and, when the feds collared him in 2022 for the loans conspiracy charges, guess what else they hung on him?
Philossaint pled out on the conspiracy charges, and a federal jury nailed him on the fraudulent citizenship application.
...
That would have been the end of the story in most administrations, but not in this one. In February of this year, the Justice Department petitioned the court for an order revoking Philossaint's citizenship, and it was formally stripped yesterday.
The Supreme Court 's conservative majority on Monday sounded skeptical of state laws that allow the counting of late-arriving mail ballots, a persistent target of President Donald Trump.
A ruling, likely to come by late June, that bars counting ballots arriving after Election Day would send officials scrambling in 14 states and the District of Columbia, just a few months before the 2026 midterm congressional elections to change their ballot rules.
An additional 15 states that have more forgiving deadlines for ballots from military and overseas voters also could be affected.
The legal challenge is part of Trump's broader attack on most mail balloting, which he has said breeds fraud despite strong evidence to the contrary and years of experience in numerous states.
Unbelievable bias. This is the AP, of course.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that his loss to Joe Biden in 2020 resulted from fraud even though more than 60 court decisions and his own attorney general said that argument had no merit.
1, that's all false, and 2, this has nothing to do with the actual legal question at hand, which is: When the Constitution speaks of an (singular) Election Day, do they mean it or were they just joshing?
It's amazing how leftwing communists routinely invent words and penumbras that don't appear in the Constitution, but, when faced with the Constitution's actual words, claim "Oh that doesn't matter, that's like 100 years old, man."
The court heard arguments in a case from Mississippi pitting the state against Trump's Republican administration and the Republican and Libertarian parties. At issue is whether federal law sets a single Election Day that requires ballots to be both cast by voters and received by state officials.
While there was no explicit reference to the 2020 election, several conservative justices gave voice to some of Trump's complaints. Justice Samuel Alito wondered about the appearance of fraud in situations where "a big stash of ballots" that arrive late "radically flipped" an election.
...
The court's liberal justices indicated they would uphold state laws with post-Election Day deadlines.
Of course the AP doesn't think that's at all politically motivated.
...
Paul Clement, representing the political parties, played on fears of fraud by invoking Democrat-dominated Chicago, infamous for election shenanigans. Voting ends at 8 p.m. in Chicago, Clement said, but state law allows ballots postmarked by Election Day to be received later.
A voter paying close attention to the election returns could in theory try to swing the election by submitting a mailed ballot to the post office after the polls were closed, he said.
"I am not here to say there could ever be voting fraud in Chicago," Clement said to laughter in the courtroom.
🚨 BREAKING: SCOTUS Justice Sam Alito just DROPPED THE MIC on liberals who want us to receive endless mail-in ballots after election *day*
"We have LOTS of phrases that involve two words, the last of which, the second of which is DAY. Labor DAY, Memorial DAY, George Washington's… pic.twitter.com/rA7gKMPafz
Laughter erupts in the Supreme Court when the attorney arguing against mail-in balloting suggests there could NEVER be voter fraud in Chicago. pic.twitter.com/7lCN8JZDSQ
Sonia Sotomayor thinks she's got a real zinger, telling a @GOP lawyer: "Maybe we should have another president now" because Florida's military ballots came after election day in the 2000 Bush v. Gore fight
They're really all retards. They pretend they don't see any difference between a US servicemember, forced to serve overseas by the government itself and reliant upon the military's postal service, and some jackass left-winger who stuffs the mailboxes with fake ballots after the election.
This is all perfectly normal and legal:
WOAH 🚨 38,000 ballots arrived at 3:45 a.m. after Election Day in Michigan during the 2020 election
- OVER 100% VOTER TURNOUT - 40,000 voters registered to vote 2 DAYS BEFORE the election - Over 100,000 votes “mismatched” in poll books - NONE of the names on processed ballots… pic.twitter.com/v05cMKNpaV
Surprise! "Objective Journalist" Who Assails Bari Weiss's Normie Liberalism as Being Far Right Wing Quits CBS to Join a... Left-Wing Pro-Biden Propaganda PAC
—Disinformation Expert Ace
It's weird how these people who all swore for years that they were nonpartisan straight shooters keep joining hard-left organizations.
He's joining a left-wing propaganda twitter account called "MeidasTouch." (You can tell it's a first-rate journalistic operation by the "punny" name.) I wish I could tell you more about them. They just post clickbait/ragebait headlines all day. I had no idea had any pretensions of being an actual news site. They just re-state whatever the cult meme of the day is.
McFarlane was "disillusioned" by the editorial direction Bari Weiss was taking CBS but he's very happy now to be working for Temu Jezebel.
CBS Alum Scott McFarlane Joining Left-Wing MediasTouch as Chief Washington Correspondent
Former CBS News correspondent Scott MacFarlane joins left-leaning outlet MeidasTouch as Chief Washington Correspondent and will anchor a daily program, Scott McFarlane Reports.
Former CBS News correspondent Scott MacFarlane revealed Monday that he will join the left-leaning outlet MeidasTouch, just weeks after abrupt exit from the network amid reports he had grown "disillusioned" under editor-in-chief Bari Weiss's leadership.
In a video posted Monday to X, MacFarlane confirmed the "good news" that MeidasTouch had brought him onto the platform as chief Washington correspondent and added that he will soon anchor a daily program, Scott McFarlane Reports, positioning himself at the center of the network's political coverage.
MacFarlane framed the move as a shift toward stripped-back reporting, saying MeidasTouch shares his approach of delivering news "straight to the point" and avoiding "production theater and the useless bells and whistles."
Yes, "straight to the point."
It's explicitly a propaganda organ of the Democrat Party, formed by allies of Joe Biden to pump out regime propaganda.
Brent Scher
@BrentScher
No, you don't get it. I'm not saying Meidas Touch is openly partisan -- it is literally a PAC. It was founded as a political operation during COVID to help Joe Biden.
Back to the article:
He stressed: "I'm not an opinionist, I'm an editorialist, I'm far from a politician. I'm an enterprise reporter and have been for a quarter of a century."
"This moment of unique political toxicity and unique political danger," MacFarlane continued, adding that he and the network share a commitment that "you don't platform lies, you don't platform conspiracy theories, and you don't allow for the whitewashing of history."
CNN is letting Tapper doing his show live from his office today and it is truly one of the weirdest live news broadcasts I’ve seen in a long time pic.twitter.com/5YekegUcIN
Anderson Cooper indulged his greatest passion -- home makeovers!!! -- and redecorated his set to look like a podcaster's basement studio, using the oversized standing mics popular with podcasters.
This is so sad and desperate it's making my hormones go crazy. My breasts feel full and on the verge of "expressing."
They're really desperate to capture Candace Owens' and Tucker Carlson's "audience."
Police just uncovered a YouTube 'view farm' after a sting operation, phones mounted to the ceiling running nonstop for fake views. pic.twitter.com/MiFwOPRUkv
Meanwhile: Another sob story from a hard-left "journalist."
Former Reuters bureau chief who lost his job and is now struggling to survive as a taxi driver:
"In my previous jobs, I interviewed prime ministers and CEOs (...) We are all improvising, all one broken transmission or missed paycheck away from something even worse (...) in the… https://t.co/JbTqGde8Ji
The fact this former journalist is publishing this lament in the hard-left Nation magazine helps explain the role he himself may have played in destroying the industry that once employed him. https://t.co/9xIt4FuRu0
Far-left activists stay in 5-star Cuban hotel as island suffers total blackout
Cuba suffered mass power outages throughout the weekend as activists filmed for social media
Far-left activist groups and personalities flocked to Havana, Cuba, this week in an effort to protest the economic sanctions imposed on the country by President Donald Trump's administration.
The far-left group CodePink sponsored flights to the communist-led island, and the group was joined by Isra Hirsi, the daughter of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and left-wing Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, an ally of democratic socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The group has faced heavy backlash for staying in expensive hotels to meet with government officials even as Cuban residents go without electricity.
Some delegates in the "Nuestra America Convoy," including Piker, were staying at the 5-star Gran Hotel Bristol Meliá Collection and similar resorts. Piker defended the move on social media, saying U.S. law required that they stay at the ritzy hotels.
LOL, sure.
"The American government makes it illegal for Americans to stay wherever they want when they're in Cuba," Piker told his followers. "They have to stay in what they've declared as 5-star hotels."
The claim received swift pushback on social media, with an X Community Note saying that U.S. law only prevents Americans from staying at venues owned by the Cuban government or its officials.
CodePink says it delivered thousands of pounds of aid to Cuba as part of the trip, which was organized by Cuban politician Mariela Castro and a nonprofit called Progressive International, according to the New York Post.
"Thousands of pounds of aid" = thousands of pounds of water and rice with a total value of a couple thousand dollars.
The group's arrival to Cuba, and subsequent flood of social media videos, came the same weekend that The Cuban Electric Union announced a total blackout across the island on Saturday.
It would be a real shame if this plane crashed on the way home.
Now, on to the Suddenly Sensible decrepit old madwoman Taylor Lorenz.
She is angry that the comminfluencers visited the tropical country... without wearing the requisite face-masks.
In 2026.
She says we are in "year six" of the pandemic.
It’s really so easy to not infect and kill ppl around you. No one is saying u have to be perfect, but if you respond to disabled ppl asking you not to kill/maim them and other vulnerable folks by having a meltdown instead of showing basic solidarity, you are not a serious person
I'm sure they'll be guests on Tucker Carlson this week.
As far-left American activists flood Cuba to support its flailing communist regime, U.S. officials have opened a sprawling investigation into an anti-America, pro-China nonprofit network forged during a wedding celebration in late February 2017, off Runaway Bay on Jamaica's northern coast.
There, beneath a canopy of palm trees, an elite cadre of activists, intellectuals, celebrities, political organizers and comrades in a global Marxist-Leninist-Maoist movement assembled to celebrate the "Revolutionary Love" of two luminaries, both 62 at the time: Neville Roy Singham, an American-born tech tycoon living in Shanghai, and Jodie Evans, a red-haired veteran activist and co-founder of CodePink Women for Peace.
Like the opening scene of "The Godfather," where powerful families consolidate power, the wedding celebration was about much more than the union of two people.
Over four days of dancing, lectures and late-night conversations in venues from the Flavor Beach Bar to Sharkey's Seafood, celebrating the bond of "Roy and Jodie," alliances were formed that would shape protests, unrest and political agitation over the next decade, from the fiery 2020 scenes in Minneapolis to demonstrations today supporting the regimes in Cuba and Iran.
That weekend, Vijay Prashad, an academic described in the official wedding itinerary as a "Marxist intellectual," spoke on a panel, "The Future of the Left." Medea Benjamin, Evans' friend and CodePink co-founder, danced barefoot at the wedding in a bright Indian outfit.
According to sources, the wedding attendees invoked the teachings of Mao Zedong, the 20th century Chinese Communist Party leader who ruled China with an iron fist, inspired by Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, and they discussed how to mobilize the masses to wage a Maoist "People's War."
"The revolutionary war is a war of the masses," Mao said in 1934.
Many were themselves relics of the Cold War, growing up before the Soviet Union was dismantled in 1989.
A monthslong Fox News Digital investigation pinpoints the Jamaica wedding as a starting point for launching a network of organizations that is today waging a new "People's War" on America, aligned with the Chinese Communist Party's geopolitical ambitions to eclipse the U.S. as a superpower through economic programs like the "Belt and Road" initiative, realizing the vision of China's ideological godfather, Mao, through trade partnerships, economic deals and pro-China propaganda.
National security experts call it cognitive warfare.
Over almost a decade, Fox News Digital has learned, Singham and Evans have activated a global network that now numbers an estimated 2,000 hard-left organizations that parrot anti-U.S. propaganda supporting autocratic regimes leading China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela and Gaza. Within activist circles, far-left critics refer to leftists who align with authoritarian regimes as "tankies." Many groups and leaders from Singham's network, including Evans and Benjamin, are part of the pro-communist convoy now in Cuba.
Fox News Digital has established a documented $278 million that flowed from Singham into organizations that "sow discord" in the U.S. as House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith put it recently at a hearing on foreign malign influence in the nonprofit industry.
According to the data, Singham created a base from which the U.S. is now one of the world's most prolific exporters of radical pro-China communist ideology. Singham and Evans didn't respond to requests for comment.
The Party of Illegal Alien Gangsters and Third World Pirates Claims Another Innocent Life
—Disinformation Expert Ace
An illegal alien who was repeatedly let out of jail for crimes by Democrats, and who was never deported due to Obama-Biden open borders policies, murdered an innocent 18-year-old college student.
Bill Melugin
@BillMelugin_
23h
BREAKING: DHS confirms that the suspect in custody for murdering Loyola University student Sheridan Gorman in Chicago is a Venezuelan illegal alien who was caught & released at the border by the Biden administration in May 2023. DHS says he was also released from local custody after a shoplifting arrest in the sanctuary city of Chicago on June 19, 2023.
DHS identifies the suspect as Venezuelan national Jose Medina-Medina. Medina-Medina is accused of approaching Gorman while she was walking in a park with friends early Thursday morning.
DHS says Medina-Medina came up to her while wearing a mask and armed with a gun. As she attempted to flee, he fired his gun and shot her. Gorman was shot and pronounced dead at the scene.
DHS statement:
"Sheridan Gorman had her whole life ahead of her before this cold-blooded killer decided to end her life. She was failed by open border policies and sanctuary politicians who RELEASED this illegal alien TWICE before he went on to commit this heinous murder," said Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis. "We are calling on Governor Pritzker and Chicago's sanctuary politicians to commit to not releasing this criminal illegal alien from jail back into American neighborhoods."
Chicago's mayor and Illinois' governor have not agreed to turn him over to ICE this time.
Homeland Security
@DHSgov
20h
We have lodged an arrest detainer requesting sanctuary politicians NOT release Jose Medina-Medina, a Venezuelan criminal illegal alien arrested for killing 18-year-old Sheridan Gorman in Chicago, Illinois.
Medina-Medina shot and killed Gorman Thursday morning while she was walking in a park with friends. Medina-Medina approached her while wearing a mask and armed with a gun. As she attempted to flee, he fired his gun and shot her. Gorman was pronounced dead at the scene.
Medina-Medina should have never been in our country, but was RELEASED into our communities by the Biden administration. He was then released AGAIN following an arrest for shoplifting in Chicago, Illinois.
Illinois sanctuary politicians and Governor Pritzker must work with us to ensure this public safety threat is NEVER released back into our neighborhoods again.
End Wokeness
@EndWokeness
Sheridan Gorman was kiIIed 4 days ago by a Venezuelan illegal in Chicago
0 [comment or mention] from Chicago Mayor Johnson
0 from Illinois Governor JB Pritzker
0 from Illinois Lt. Governor Stratton
0 from Illinois House Speaker Welch
0 from Illinois Attorney General Raoul
0 from Illinois Senate President Harmon
Because it happened in 2023 when the Biden administration policy was that a shoplifting charge wouldn’t be an enforcement priority for ICE. Nor would sanctuary Chicago have notified ICE they had him:
See, it was the victim who was in the "wrong place at the wrong time," not the criminal illegal alien who should have been deported the hell out of our country years ago:
Meet Chicago Democrat and 49th Ward Alderwoman Maria Hadden, who pretty much blamed Sheridan Gorman for her own murder:
“The kids were out doing normal things people do in the neighborhood. And it sounds like this might have been a wrong-place, wrong-time situation, running into… pic.twitter.com/QkJnRGqIaG
The victim's family says they will fight for their slain daughter and refuse to go along with the left-wing narrative that this was just a "wrong place wrong time" situation.
It was a completely-preventable murder, but for the insane and deadly political choices made by the country's mentally-ill pary.
Even though this is a terrorist attack plotted and executed by a cell of the terrorist organization the Revolutionary Guards, pants-pissing cowardly British government officials are refusing, as usual, to call terror what it is, euphemizing the terror attack as an "incident," a "fire-bombing" or a "hate" attack.
A conquered people must learn the language of its conquerors. The British learned French, now they'll learn Arabic and Islamese.
Counter-terror police are leading the investigation into an anti-Semitic firebomb attack feared to have been orchestrated by Iran.
Scotland Yard confirmed that officers with "specialist expertise" were investigating the arson, in which four ambulances were set on fire outside a synagogue in Golders Green, London, on Monday morning.
Israeli embassy sources told The Telegraph that the firebombing had the hallmarks of an Iran-backed attack.
A video claiming responsibility for the firebombing has emerged on social media and is believed to be by a group linked to Tehran.
The arson, which is being treated as a hate crime, will raise concerns that Iran is mounting a concerted campaign of attacks across Europe following similar incidents in recent weeks.
Similar "incidents."
Two Iranian immigrants were charged last week with spying on Jews in London for Tehran. A separate Iranian man will appear in court on Monday after he and an accomplice allegedly tried to enter Britain's most important nuclear base.
Det Ch Supt Luke Williams, of the Metropolitan Police, said the force was looking into three suspects seen approaching the ambulances on Highfield Road at around 1.45am on Monday.
He said: "CCTV footage appears to show three people in hoods pouring an accelerant on to the vehicles before igniting them and fleeing.
"While this has not been declared a terrorist incident at this stage, the investigation is now being led by counter-terrorism policing with all the specialist expertise they bring, and all lines of enquiry remain open.
"We are aware of an online claim from a group taking responsibility for this attack. Establishing the authenticity and accuracy of this claim will be a priority for the investigation team, but it is not something we can confirm at this point."
A Shi'ite group linked to Iranian terror networks has allegedly claimed responsibility for the attack online. The video, apparently shared by Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiaf on Telegram, showed footage of the arson along with a statement in English, Hebrew and Arabic.
It described the Machzike Hadath synagogue, near where the attack took place, as "one of the most important centres of Orthodox Judaism" and "one of the main bastions of support for Israel in Britain".
An IRGC terror group in the UK, called Ashab al-Yamin takes responsibility for torching 4 ambulances belonging to a Jewish volunteer EMT services in Golders Green, London last night.
A video purpotedly by Ashab al-Yamin has emerged on social networks linked to the Iran-led Islamic Resistance claiming responsibility for the arson attack in Golders Green, London on Monday morning. The group claims it attacked the Machzike Hadath Synagogue because of its ties to… pic.twitter.com/UUsN6RmIad
Here was their video claiming responsibility for a bombing at a bank in Amsterdam:
In its first publication since detonating an explosive at the Bank of New York Mellon in Amsterdam on Monday, Ashab al-Yamin published a video claiming that Bank of America in France is a major financial actor supporting Israel and Zionist initiatives.
Slavery is Part of China, Inc’s Business Model; Slaves Were Even Brought to Brazil for a Chinese EV Plant
—Buck Throckmorton
Slavery is thriving in Chinese manufacturing, both in China proper, and at Chinese plants built in other countries. “Free traders” and others who blanch at the thought of corporations paying any labor expense have green-lit the aggressive renaissance of chattel labor in the 21st century. They are willfully blind to slave labor being the linchpin of the “China, Inc.” business model, because it gets labor expense as close to $0 as possible.
Meanwhile, libertarians and free traders say it’s all cool because consumers get lower prices. While I like to mock their buzzphrase “Tariffs are a tax on consumers,” they have effectively adopted a corollary phrase, “Abolishing slavery is a tax on consumers.” Sen. James Hammond of South Carolina made pretty much that exact argument in the 1850s when defending slavery in America.
The embrace of 21st century slavery as part of the globalist economic system is an abomination that I keep returning to, because slavery is as offensive now as it was 165 years ago. In a recent piece at The American Spectator titled “The War on Labor Expense is Renormalizing Slavery, Just in a 21st Century Form” I wrote, “So, despite America’s hangover from 19th-century slavery, many 21st-century libertarians still condone its practice overseas. If this type of slave labor offends our sensibilities when it occurs in Georgia, why is it acceptable for manufacturing that is outsourced to China to use the same labor system? The acceptance of slave labor anywhere in our supply chain makes the domestic acceptance of slavery possible.”
The Washington Post performed some important journalism recently in covering the horror of slaves being brought from China to the Americas to work at an electric vehicle plant in Brazil. It’s important to remember that if Chinese companies are brazen enough to use slave labor on foreign soil, think about how pernicious the use of slave labor is in China itself.
As weeks passed, Oliveira’s curiosity deepened. [The 56 Chinese laborers’] food was prepared in an improvised kitchen in the garage, amid industrial detritus and vermin, and they never seemed to do anything for fun. All they did was work. “Seven days a week,” Oliveira, 35, recalled. “Sunday to Sunday. I never saw any one taking a day off.” They departed every morning at dawn and didn’t return until dusk. The hours in between were spent helping to build Latin America’s largest electric car factory for the world’s biggest electric automaker, China’s BYD.
Brazil welcomed the BYD electric vehicle operation because the intent was to provide manufacturing jobs for Brazilians. The intent was not to bring in foreign labor, and certainly not to import slaves. Perhaps because Brazil was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery (in 1888) it is very sensitive to those trying to find a workaround to bring it back. When word of slavery being used at the factory filtered up, the government investigated. It found hungry Chinese nationals living in squalor, and working all-day, seven days a week.
Chinese men were inhabiting practically every square inch. Most slept without mattresses. Trash lay everywhere. Food was stored on the ground. In one of the buildings, 31 laborers shared a single bathroom; it was coated with an “excess of sludge,” government inspectors reported. This went far beyond labor violations, the inspectors concluded. The workers enlisted by BYD to build its keystone factory in the Americas had been forced, they wrote, into conditions that recalled slavery.
Much like sex traffickers luring girls into prostitution with promises of a modeling career, BYD and its subcontractors lured poor Chinese men into slavery by promising them a high-paying, overseas job. Once in Brazil, their passports were confiscated, and the promised pay was withheld. Armed security patrolled their sleeping spaces to ensure they couldn’t escape.
As is often the case with modern-day slavery, there are layers of contractors and sub-contractors to muddy the issue of whom the slaves work for, and who is accountable.
But instead, BYD turned to a Rolodex of Chinese construction firms. The list included its longtime business partner, Jinjiang Construction Group, which BYD had hired more than a dozen times since 2017 to help build electric car plants, renewable battery factories and BYD monorails in dozens of locations across China, according to statements from both companies and Chinese state media.
Laborers in China have sued Jinjiang repeatedly, court records show, alleging unsafe working conditions and unpaid wages. Many have lost, not because they couldn’t produce evidence — but because they couldn’t prove they worked for Jinjiang. The use of nebulous subcontractors is common across China’s construction industry, labor advocates say, shielding businesses from accountability.
Jinjiang argued that the situation in Brazil was due to “cultural differences,” and it put out a statement reading, “The claims that Jinjiang’s workers were treated as ‘slaves’ and were ‘rescued’ are completely inconsistent with the facts.”
The same opaque system of “employment” was used by BYD and Jinjiang in Hungary.
“Many workers don’t even know who their legal employer is,” said Li Qiang, founder of the New York-based nonprofit China Labor Watch. His team recently interviewed 50 Jinjiang laborers working on the BYD factory in Hungary. In a letter to local authorities shared with The Post, the organization alleged “clear indicators of forced labor,” including 12-hour workdays and granting rest only when it rained.
Subcontracted slavery is still slavery. All the politicians, free traders, and EV fanboys who are excited about the promise of cheap Chinese EVs taking over the global auto market need to understand that they are active participants in the re-normalization of “the peculiar institution.”
Slavery is clearly not considered a problem in China. It’s policy. Slavery is a fundamental component of the business model for Chinese manufacturing. Those “free traders” who advocate for the use of Chinese manufacturing in the American supply chain are arguing in favor of slavery just as emphatically as John Calhoun or any other southern politician did in the antebellum era.
*****
Climate Realism Rising
Just a reminder - The Heartland Institute is holding its 16th International Conference on Climate Change next month, featuring a who’s who of the leading scientists and climate realists who have been educating the public on the reality of the climate hoax.
As a proud “climate denier” I will once again be attending and reporting on the conference. It is at the Hotel Washington in Washington DC on April 8th and 9th. I met several Ace of Spades readers at the previous climate conference in 2023 and I know that some of y’all will be in attendance this year. If so, I’d be delighted to shake your hand.
Climate communism seemed like an unstoppable force just a few years ago. The scientists who pushed back against media censors and government agencies pushing “net zero” are brave people who risked their reputations and livelihoods. They are heroes to me, like all the brave souls who have fought authoritarians and communists throughout the ages.
Here is a link with more information if you are considering attending. I’d be delighted to see you there.
I normally dislike this sort of pretend art, but the scribbles across Foucault are a perfect representation of his chaotic ideas. He was the darling of the post-modernists, but he was a flaccid thinker who covered up his shallowness with linguistic nonsense.
On Saturday, March 21, President Donald Trump delivered a 48-hour ultimatum to the Iranian regime to stop terrorizing the strategic Strait of Hormuz or face devastating consequences. The Iranian Islamic regime has defied the ultimatum and promised to shut down the strait altogether.. . .It is hardly surprising that the Iranian regime is doubling down, considering that it is run by fundamentalist Muslim fanatics who truly believe Allah has given them a mission to fight the “great Satan” America to the death. This defiance does, however, illustrate clearly to the world why the joint U.S.-Israel Operation Epic Fury is necessary and how fully justified Trump is in carrying through on his ultimatum.
Trump had warned, “If Iran doesn’t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
It is a shame that the long-suffering Persian people are going to suffer even more because of the intransigence and belligerence of the Mullahs who are hell bent on bringing about Armageddon as the precursor to global Shiite Islamic conquest.
The position taken by Obama, Democrats, the media and, more recently, Tucker Carlson, is that we should accept Iran’s claims about its military capabilities, whether it comes to its nuclear weapons or its ballistic missiles. After all, a bunch of Islamic terrorists would never lie to us. Would they? . .
. . . Iran launched ballistic missiles at the joint US-UK military base in Diego Garcia on Friday, demonstrating a weapons capability that goes beyond what Tehran was known to have possessed.
The base, a strategic airfield that can host B-2 stealth bombers located nearly 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) away from Iran, suffered no damage, according to a person familiar with the matter speaking on condition of anonymity.
The media is now busy pretending that we had no idea that Iran had that kind of capabilities despite repeated warnings, including the Obama Iran Deal, that Iran had missiles capable of hitting European capitals. . . Netanyahu said in an interview with right-wing podcaster Ben Shapiro on Monday that Iran is developing intercontinental ballistic missiles with a range of about 8,000 kilometers, warning that Tehran’s expanding weapons program could threaten major American cities. The Iranian missiles could “put New York City, Boston, Washington or Miami under their atomic guns,” the Israeli prime minister said.
So many people inside the United States believe the left’s narrative about the United States today, the question becomes very real: can the nation survive the presence within it of a large and growing population of people who hate it and wish to see it destroyed?
For the left, the truth doesn’t matter as much as the narrative. And if the narrative is incendiary enough, and they can convince enough people to believe it, it could indeed be destructive, and even bring the whole nation down, with incalculable effects for the world at large. The narrative that the left is pushing hard right now is a variation on a theme it has harped upon repeatedly since the war in Vietnam and even before that, from the time of the beginning of the Cold War. . . And so we come to one Joe Iosbaker, a 67-year-old leader of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), which describes itself as “a national organization of revolutionaries fighting for socialism in the United States. Our home is in the working class.” FRSO’s rhetoric is pure 1930s-era Marxist agitprop, as if the Stalinist purges, the gulags, the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the Khmer Rouge killing fields had never existed: “We are organizing the united front against monopoly capitalism — with the strategic alliance of the multinational working class and oppressed nationality movements at its core. This is our general strategy for revolution in the U.S.”
The transformation of El Salvador dramatically illustrates a point made by Friedrich Nietzsche, one that’s often missed. In The Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche set himself the task of revealing the non-moral origins of various institutions, including morality itself. One of his main targets was the state and the notion of a primitive “social contract.” Far from originating in a friendly handshake and an agreement among equals, the state was birthed in blood. Before the state was the state, it was ravaging barbarians—the blonde beasts—who descended on less warlike peoples and subjugated them. Over time, through great violence, these pitiless lords shaped and molded their captives into citizens, self-regulating creatures that could live together, act responsibly, and obey commands. . .
The broader point—that great violence is an inescapable part of the civilizing process—is obviously true. Historians of medieval Europe have shown that, generation after generation, something like 1 percent of the male population was put to death in the name of law and order. The peaceful, high-trust societies that European governments are now destroying through mass immigration—societies where murder was no longer a valid social strategy, only the rare product of intoxication or sexual jealousy—existed because the most violent people were systematically put to death until their genes were expunged for good. . .
Predictions make fools of us all, they say. Bukele may prove a lone exception in the Americas: a leader of unusual will and a ruthless pragmatism who is prepared to assert the rights of the peaceful majority against those of the small minority of murderers, rapists, drug dealers, and pimps who once acted with impunity.
Have a great day!
And lastly, a quick shout-out and a huge thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know.
ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY LINKS
Two pilots dead, LaGuardia closed as flight, emergency vehicle collide: sources AIRPORT COLLISION
This deployment raises the possibility that Operation Epic Fury, the U.S.-Israeli operation against Iran, may escalate to involve a ground component, such as an amphibious assault on Kharg Island. Trump Orders Even More Warships, Marines to Middle East.
“Iran’s civilian infrastructure belongs to the Iranian people and to the future of a free Iran,” Pahlavi declared. “The Islamic Republic’s infrastructure is the machinery of repression and terror used to keep that future from becoming reality. Iran must be protected. The regime must be dismantled.” He then addressed the leaders of the U.S. and Israel: “I ask President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu to continue targeting the regime and its apparatus of repression, while sparing the civilian infrastructure Iranians will need to rebuild our country. With the support of the US and Israel, and above all the sacrifice of Iranian patriots, the hour of Iran’s freedom is at hand. Long live Iran!” Crown Prince Pahlavi: ‘Iran Is Not the Islamic Republic’
In a joint statement released on Saturday morning, the nations of Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Republic of Korea, Romania, Slovenia, Sweden, United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom condemned in the “strongest terms” the recent attacks by Iran against unarmed, civilian shipping vessels, its attacks on oil and gas infrastructure throughout the Gulf, and its move to shut down traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. Over 20 Nations Announce Readiness to Help Open Strait of Hormuz
The Warthog didn't just show up; it stayed, loitered, and delivered precise firepower where it mattered, when it mattered. Fast jets hit and leave, while the Warthog sticks around to make sure the job's finished. Ugly, Cheap, and Deadly: The A-10 Proves Itself Again Over the Red Sea
Washington cannot maintain strength and credibility if it allows militias to continue escalating attacks against the U.S. embassy and other U.S.-affiliated sites. America Must Destroy Iran’s Militias in Iraq
Radicals like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are still hard at work scapegoating the software, which, during the Trump 2.0 affordability rebound, has even recommended lower rental prices. Pass the 21st Century America Housing Act!
After decades of drift, the troubled city has a chance to restore public order and competitiveness. Can St. Louis Make a Comeback?
WE-ALL-SLAM-FOR-I-SLAM
British institutions are relentlessly embracing Islam, attacking classic British culture, and turning a blind eye to Islamic crime and antisemitism. The Islamization of Britain is Almost Complete
Mueller, who became the director of the FBI in September 2001, served under “presidents of both political parties.” While at the FBI, “Mueller set about almost immediately overhauling the bureau’s mission to meet the law enforcement needs of the 21st century”: Robert Mueller, Former FBI Director, Special Counsel For Russiagate Hoax, Dies at 81
FBI surveillance powers meant for foreign threats were turned inward—targeting Trump advisers, hiding exculpatory evidence, and leaving innocent Americans financially and reputationally wrecked. FBI Misled Court to Spy on Second Trump Campaign Adviser
FIRST AMENDMENT ISSUES, CENSORSHIP, FAKE NEWS, MEDIA, BIG BROTHER TECH
As legacy media wage partisan war on Trump under the guise of reporting, the real danger lies in losing both trust in journalism and commitment to First Amendment principles. The War Over the War
No one really knows what triggers obsessions. Tucker Carlson’s obsession with Jews and Israel is no exception. Tucker’s Obsession
Oil prices have climbed since Operation Epic Fury began, with WTI crude futures closing at $98.32 on Friday, up more than $30 from $67.02 on Feb. 27 — the day before the conflict with Iran began — according to Investing.com. Analysts claim effects from Iran’s efforts to close the Strait of Hormuz on the prices of multiple commodities could linger beyond the moment active hostilities cease, according to Axios. Economic Shocks Will Permeate Long After Iran Strikes Stop, Analysts Predict
Pensions are causing a fiscal calamity most US taxpayers are not even aware of. There is a way to fix them, but it will take courage. The Public Pension Death Spiral
Efforts underway in several states to abolish the tax could lead to heavy-handed, anti-growth government. Here’s how to reform it instead. Ending Property Taxes Would Be a Mistake
CRIME & PUNISHMENT, NON-DOSTOYEVSKY
Borne was booked on 40 counts of possession of child sexual abuse material and one count of possession, trafficking, or importing a child sex doll, with significant legal penalties if convicted. ‘Roblox’ Programmer Faces 40 Child Porn Charges.
RED-GREENS, CLIMATE CHANGE HOAX, DEMOCRAT-LEFT WAR ON FOSSIL FUELS,
THE 2020 and SUBSEQUENT ELECTION HEISTS , SHENANIGANS/FRAUD and AFTERMATH
County elections officials have disputed the claims by Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, called Bianco’s move unprecedented and says it is designed to sow distrust in elections. Bianco held a news conference Friday saying his office had launched the investigation after receiving a complaint from a local citizens group about the ballot count from a November 2025 special election on redistricting. In the special election, voters approved a measure to redraw congressional district lines to favor Democrats in the upcoming midterm election. The measure passed in the county by a margin of more than 80,000 votes. California sheriff running for governor seizes more than a half million ballots from 2025 election
DEMOCRAT/LEFTIST AND RINO SCANDALS, MESHUGAS, CHUTZPOCRISY, INSANITY
The governor, who is known to have a strained relationship with President Donald Trump, reportedly selected oil and gas executive Alan Armstrong to succeed Mullin, the junior Republican senator of the Sooner State the president nominated to replace Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem, pending Senate confirmation. NOTUS first reported the news late Saturday, citing three anonymous sources. Oklahoma state law stipulates Stitt’s pick can only serve until the end of Mullin’s term in January 2027, after which the winner of the state’s November Senate election — in which Trump-endorsed Republican Rep. Kevin Hern is the heavy favorite — will take office. Oklahoma Governor’s Reported Replacement For Sen Mullen Is A Virtual Unknown Who Gave Money To Trump Foe
The revelation, the result of an exclusive look at federal campaign records by the New York Post, shows the Bronx lawmaker hired Boston-based Dr. Bryan Boyle, chief psychiatric officer at a chain of clinics called Stella that focus on “innovative” or alternate treatment protocols that have emerged in recent years. Titty-Caca AOC’s Campaign Spent Nearly $19K on Psychiatrist Known for Hallucinogenic Therapy
The state-run Cuban Electric Union attributed the failure to an unexpected breakdown at the Nuevitas thermoelectric plant in Camagüey province, the Associated Press reported. The malfunction triggered a chain reaction that knocked offline every generator connected to the grid. Officials activated isolated backup circuits to keep hospitals, water systems and other critical facilities running. Cuba’s Power Grid Flickers Out For Third Time This Month
“These approaches have stanched the bleeding for some liberal parties...The world has not yet known a liberal Europe that has no Uncle Sam to lean on...The connection between migration and Russia...has become surprisingly clear...Today, the stronger future project belongs to the populist right.” The Age of Fortress Liberalism
The orbital tug startup Exlabs has signed up a second payload customer to fly on its private ApophisExL mission to rendezvous with the potentially dangerous asteroid Apophis when it makes its April 13, 2029 close fly-by of the Earth. The missions to potentially dangerous asteroid Apophis
Right now, however, our map [of the solar system] is comparable to that of the New World in the half century after Columbus, filled with blank spots and guesses. We simply don’t know very much. Worse, it appears to me we often think we know more than we do. Uranus: one glimpse and that was forty years ago
FEMINAZISM, TRANSGENDER PSYCHOSIS, HOMOSEXUALIZATION, WAR ON MASCULINITY/NORMALCY
Paul Ehrlich didn’t inherit Malthus—he distorted him, trading flawed theory for a far darker creed that justified coercion, control, and contempt for human ingenuity. In Defense of Thomas Malthus
ALSO: The Morning Report cross-posts at CutJibNewsletter.com usually within an hour or so of posting here, if you want to continue the conversation all day.
Primarily it will be producing local AI chips for robots - vision processing and similar systems, and large scale general purpose AI chips for orbital datacenters.
This is the 21st century I asked for. Certainly more so than anything OpenAI has delivered.
Howdy Hordelings! Thanks for stopping by the Sunday ONT. Spring has sprung! I was out enjoying the amazing weather today - playing some mediocre golf. What were you up to today? Hopefully something enjoyable. Join us in the comments. What's on YOUR mind tonight?
Some U.S. towns and cities have roads that have been given names that are clearly technology-related. Redditor MorgothTheBauglir is the latest to surface this fact, recalling their recent surprise of exploring their new neighborhood and happening upon two intersecting roads: Tape Drive and Disk Drive. These are in the Louisville/Broomfield area, north of Denver, Colorado. But, as you will read below, they aren’t the only computer tech-related street names, even in Colorado.
The reason for the existence of these two particular roads is now lost in time. According to the Redditor’s tale, the roads are “in the middle of a dirt field like forgotten monuments to the golden age of physical backups.” A bit of Google Maps exploring shows they do indeed look rather neglected. However, they were created when Storage Technology Corporation (better known as StorageTek or STK) used to maintain a 400-acre campus there, with thousands of employees, and it was so expansive that it had its own road network.
Formed in 1969 by a quartet of ex-IBM engineers, STK thrived off the back of its enterprise storage business. It was bought by Sun Microsystems in 2005 for a considerable outlay ($4.1bn), but its operations and employees were integrated into another Sun Micro location. A company called ConocoPhillips would eventually buy up and demolish the STK facilities for redevelopment into a renewable energy facility. That didn’t materialize, though, and the space has been left unused.
Check out the full story. Kinda cool throwback idea.
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The price of diesel fuel has risen - These guys had an idea!
Several arrests have now been made in connection to an organized diesel fuel theft scheme spanning multiple counties in Northwest Florida.
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Agricultural investigators say four of the individuals in a Santa Rosa County case used strong magnets to manipulate fuel pump components. The magnets are a common method used for stealing fuel.
Investigators say the defendants placed the magnet on the fuel pump, overriding a component -- in turn, allowing the fuel to flow freely and bypass the payment system.
The individuals were reportedly caught on surveillance footage filling up multiple semi trucks with diesel fuel.
What did they plan to do with it?
Captain Brad Brady with the Office of Agricultural Law Enforcement says sometimes it's just for personal gain.
"Based off our experience with this, people that are engaging this type of fuel theft, they're either selling the fuel on the black market or it could be associated with some other somewhat legitimate business," he said. "So a trucking business, if you have an owner operator, one of his most expensive line item overheads is fuel."
Nice try, Florida Men!
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Math on the blog? Sorta kinda
He rolled dice 10,000 times over 17+ hours and documented the results, an almost perfect normal distribution. pic.twitter.com/rfriMq9CA9
— Dudes Posting Their W’s (@DudespostingWs) March 18, 2026
It's that time of the week - when we turn the ONT over to our good friend Piper for a bit. Here's this week's fashion pr0n.
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Timeless Icons: Legendary Hollywood Gowns
In the golden age of Hollywood, the right gown didn’t just dress a star—it created legends. Costume designers turned fabric into fantasy, amplifying glamour, drama, and unforgettable moments on screen. These iconic looks from classic films still inspire runways, auctions, and pop culture today. Here’s a spotlight on a few famous gowns, with the brilliant designers behind them, plus a little fun trivia that makes them even more magical.
Marilyn Monroe’s Pink Satin Showstopper in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)
William “Billy” Travilla designed this shocking-pink strapless satin gown with its dramatic oversized bow for Monroe’s iconic “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” number. He backed the peau d’ange silk with green billiard felt for perfect structure using just two side seams. Travilla’s first sketch was far more revealing and burlesque-inspired, but studio execs demanded it be toned down, resulting in this version that still oozed sex appeal.
Audrey Hepburn’s Little Black Dress in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)
Hubert de Givenchy created this elegant full-length black satin sheath (with hem adjustments by Edith Head) for Hepburn’s opening scene as Holly Golightly. The bateau neckline, back cutouts, and pearl necklace made it the ultimate LBD. Givenchy produced three versions; one sold at Christie’s in 2006 for £467,200 (then the highest price ever for a film costume). Hepburn called Givenchy her “best friend,” and their decades-long collaboration helped popularize the little black dress for everyday elegance.
Vivien Leigh’s Bold Burgundy Velvet Gown in Gone with the Wind (1939)
Walter Plunkett designed this striking red silk velvet gown, adorned with glass beads and ostrich feathers, for Scarlett O’Hara’s defiant party look. The low-cut, feathered drama was far more 1930s-glam than historically accurate Civil War fashion. The vibrant red (sometimes called her “dress of shame”) was a deliberate film choice to contrast the famous green curtain dress and symbolize Scarlett’s fiery rebellion. Plunkett created over 5,000 costumes for the epic film.
Jean Harlow’s White Satin Bias-Cut Gown in Dinner at Eight (1933)
MGM’s legendary Adrian crafted this slinky, backless white satin masterpiece that perfectly embodied 1930s Art Deco glamour. The bias cut hugged Harlow’s figure so tightly she literally couldn’t sit down between takes. MGM built her a custom “reclining board” to rest on! It remains one of the most influential screen gowns of the decade.
Ava Gardner’s Slinky Black Satin Gown in The Killers (1946)
Vera West (Universal’s head costume designer) created this seductive one-shoulder black satin evening gown, paired with long gloves, for Gardner’s femme-fatale turn as Kitty Collins. She wears it while leaning against a piano in a hypnotic scene. The look has influenced modern designers like Dior and Donna Karan. It was a breakout for Gardner and perfectly captured film-noir danger, complete with custom Salvatore Ferragamo sandals.
Marilyn Monroe’s White Halter Dress in The Seven Year Itch (1955)
Travilla (again!) designed this pleated white rayon-acetate crepe halter cocktail dress that billowed dramatically over the subway grate. The fabric was specially chosen to swing perfectly yet drape naturally. Filming on a New York street drew huge crowds (and reportedly upset husband Joe DiMaggio); Monroe wore two pairs of underwear for modesty under the lights. Travilla called it “that silly little dress,” yet the original later sold for millions and remains one of cinema’s most parodied images.
Marlene Dietrich’s Mysterious Feathered Ensemble in Shanghai Express (1932)
Travis Banton designed the lavish black crepe bias-cut gown exploding with coq (fighting cock) feathers, complete with veil, pearls, and skull cap. Banton and director Josef von Sternberg chose the specific black feathers for how they photographed under dramatic lighting. Dietrich famously demanded, “Feathers, Travis!”creating an aura of exotic mystery that defined her screen persona forever. In other trivia, my brother’s name is Travis.
These gowns prove that in Hollywood, the dress can be the real star. From auction-house records to endless homages, their glamour endures. Which one steals your heart?
Howdy, Y'all! Welcome to the wondrously fabulous Gun Thread! As always, I want to thank all of our regulars for being here week in and week out, and also offer a bigly Gun Thread welcome to any newcomers who may be joining us tonight. Howdy and thank you for stopping by! I hope you find our wacky conversation on the subject of guns 'n shooting both enjoyable and informative. You are always welcome to lurk in the shadows of shame, but I'd like to invite you to jump into the conversation, say howdy, and tell us what kind of shooting you like to do!
Holy Shitballs! How in the ever-loving hell did it get to be the Fourth Edition O' March? Hmmm?
With that, step into the dojo and let's get to the gun stuff below, shall we?
A proper setup is key to good fundamentals, and in rifle shooting with an optic, a critical element is having proper eye relief.
Q: Weasel, what the heck is eye relief?
A: Hold your eyeball too close to the ocular end of a rifle scope, pull the trigger, and you will find out in a hurry.
Once the bleeding stops and the swelling goes down, you will be able to accurately describe eye relief as the distance between your eye and the ocular end of the scope. You will also then be highly qualified to describe proper eye relief as a distance sufficient to protect your face from the recoiling scope, while allowing a clear and unobstructed view through the optic.
Anyhoo, proper eye relief varies by person and is something that must be fixed when mounting a scope to a rifle. In order to properly set eye relief, we must first understand the natural point of aim.
Natural point of aim is not a difficult concept, but many overlook or disregard it altogether. You should be relaxed and comfortable, not scrunching yourself up or straining your neck to get the proper eye relief behind the scope. Adjust your gear to YOU, not the other way around, finding the point where you are naturally aligned with the target. Without looking down range, close your eyes and settle into your natural shooting position, then open your eyes. Repeat the process until you are naturally and comfortably aligned with the target. Do not strain to adapt to an awkward position or use large muscles. With practice and repetition, you will condition your brain and body to assume something pretty close to natural point of aim as you assume your shooting position.
The key here is to find a repeatable cheek position on the stock which allows a full and clear view through the scope, and provides sufficient space (typically a few inches) so you don't get whacked in the face when the gun recoils.
When I am setting up a scope, I place the rings in an approximate position so they're evenly spaced along the scope tube with enough room to allow for small adjustments. Tighten them so they're just snug at this point in case repositioning is later necessary. Place the scope loosely into the rings, get behind the gun and find your natural point of aim. Look through the scope and adjust it forward and back without moving your head until you have a clear image that fills the field of view without vignetting, the dark/black donut that sometimes appears at the edges. You can make a light pencil mark on the scope against the ring(s) to save the position. Try it a few times to make certain you're satisfied, then torque everything down.
For our visual learners, I'm including the video below.
Show of hands - how many of you have learned this the hard way?
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The K-22
About as much fun as we should be allowed to have (while shooting)!
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Woodworking
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Why You Shouldn't Drop Your Firearm
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Our Pal Fluid Coupling
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Highway Patrol!
This week's episode: Nitro!
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The Crawling Eye a.k.a. The Trollenberg Terror!
Holy Crap!! Recognize any names or faces?
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Cigar Stuff
Here are some different online cigar vendors. You will find they not only carry different brands and different lines from those brands, but also varying selections of vitolas (sizes/shapes) of given lines. It's good to have options, especially if you're looking for a specific cigar.
A note about sources. The brick & mortar/online divide exists with cigars, as with guns, and most consumer products, with respect to price. As with guns - since both are "persecuted industries", basically - I make a conscious effort to source at least some of my cigars from my local store(s). It's a small thing, but the brick & mortar segment for both guns and tobacco are precious, and worth supporting where you can. And if you're lucky enough to have a good cigar store/lounge available, they're often a good social event with many dangerous people of the sort who own scary gunz, or read smart military blogs like this one. -rhomboid
Please note the new and improved protonmail account gunthread at protonmail dot com. An informal Gun Thread archive can be found HERE. Future expansion plans are in the works for the site Weasel Gun Thread. If you have a question you would like to ask Gun Thread Staff offline, just send us a note and we'll do our best to answer. If you care to share the story of your favorite firearm, send a picture with your nic and tell us what you sadly lost in the tragic canoe accident. If you would like to remain completely anonymous, just say so. Lurkers are always welcome!
That's it for this week - have you been to the range?
Food and drink pomposity is a real thing, especially among the nomenklatura and their hangers-on in Park Slope and Hyde Park and Tribeca and Austin. Sure, we all have our little foibles about food (shaken Manhattans are a creation of the Devil), but most people just try to make and eat what they like, and don't trouble themselves too much about appearances when it comes to what is on the plate in front of them.
And that is as it should be!
If you want to eat microwave frozen burritos while standing over the sink, or fast food while hunched over the steering wheel? Have at it! I have done both, and have enjoyed those meals. If you want to eat at a fancy restaurant with 19 forks, knives, spoons, and three unidentified utensils, while being served nine courses over four hours? Go for it! I have done that and it's a hoot!
One of my most memorable meals was a chunk of Safeway Cheddar, half a Galileo salami, several chunks of sourdough bread, and three bottles of Henry Weinhard's Private Reserve beer. Granted, it was a glorious Northern California day, on the beach at Fort Ross after a particularly successful abalone dive, and that might beat the kitchen sink scenario, but still...
What were some of your memorable meals? Extra credit for interesting locations.
Am I crossing the streams? Grammar pedantry meets Food Thread!
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There is a certain coblogger whose name rhymes with Hisanthropic Mumanitarian. On the surface he seems like an amiable and pleasant fellow, but beneath that friendly Midwestern exterior lurks the heart of a cruel and dark man. He seems to get some perverse amusement out of sending me recipes for classic dishes that have been butchered by maniacs who are hell-bent on putting their own stamp on the classics, and taste be damned!
French Onion Casserole? Really? What the hell is wrong with French Onion Soup? It's a perfect dish, so stop trying to improve it!
Mis Hum is cackling with glee as I twitch and convulse with revulsion.
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I saw that bottle at my local liquor store and was intrigued. It is distilled in Missouri, which makes it interesting, has some bottle age, and is bottled in bond, which puts it at a very nice alcohol level.
It was also $50, so it wasn't an impulse buy, but I tasted it last night and am quite pleased. I like the wheated bourbon taste profile, and this bottle didn't disappoint. It had a hint of sweetness, balanced the alcohol very nicely, and wasn't out of balance at all. Not too much oak or vanilla, which is a big problem with many bourbons.
Oh, that glass is called a glencairn, after the company that popularized it. I think it adds to the enjoyment of some bourbons, although it is absolutely not essential. I drink most of my bourbon in a low-ball glass or old square scotch glasses I got in a gift pack about 35 years ago.
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Chicken thighs are where it's at, and no amount of tenderness and quick cooking will convince me that chicken breasts are superior in any dish.
So I decided to try Chicken Piccata with chicken thighs, realizing that I would have to modify the recipe a bit to cook the thighs to the appropriate temperature. And boy oh boy...that was simple! All I did was follow the recipe with one change...after I sautéed the thighs, I popped them into a 300 degree oven for about 30 minutes. They came out perfectly, and I then continued with the recipe.
Delicious!
Oh...I linked to a good recipe for no particular reason, but there are thousands of them all over the internet.
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[Hat Tip: TC]
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Well, the garlic is out in the sunshine, probably soon to be eaten by those vile rodents with bushy tails and a penchant for damaging my home. But if they survive the squirrel apocalypse, and actually grow into something edible, I will be in garlic heaven! In case it doesn't, send all of your excellent home-grown garlic to: cbd dot aoshq at gmail dot com.
Rumor has it that the Bourbon Bubble is bursting. I have seen no evidence of decreasing prices, but maybe the bursting started somewhere else! I think the sweet spot is $40-$60 for excellent and interesting bottles, and bumping that to $100 gets you an incremental improvement in quality, but nothing mind-blowing. More than that and I think you are paying for hype and rarity, which may look good in your liquor cabinet, but doesn't translate to more quality in the bottle.
The problem...or the solution...is to buy lots of bourbon, take tasting notes, and eventually arrive at your favorites! It should take forty or fifty years, but it is worth it!
Steam heating systems are robust...they last forever, in part because they are so simple. But they also need some maintenance, and bleeding the air out of the system is one of those things that needs to be done.
Unless your bleed valve looks like mine! One side of the system (it's split into two parts) gurgles like a drunken hobo guzzling Mad Dog 20-20. And it's not the noise that's the worst part; obviously it isn't heating as efficiently, and since I am a cheap bastard, every gurgle is a reminder that my obscenely expensive heating costs (thanks to the leftists in NJ state government) will be just a bit more.
And to top it off, the radiator is behind a decorative panel with an access opening designed for someone with petite hands who can see in the dark.
My best option is probably to rip out the steam system, rip up the floors, install radiant heat, and install new hardwood floors. Or maybe do it the other way...rip out the ceilings and install radiant from underneath.
Or...of course...just burn it down and start over!
Forgotten 80s Mystery Click
One day I'm gonna write a poem in a letter
One day I'm gonna get that faculty together
Remember that everybody has to wait in line
Oh, [Song Title], look out world, oh, you know I've got mine
“robert mueller just died,” trump wrote in a truth social post on march 21. “good, i’m glad he’s dead. he can no longer hurt innocent people! president donald j. trump.”
[A]n asshole is somebody who looks at a painting of two toddlers doing something totally normal for toddlers and decides that it represents homosexuality and then thinks that publicly saying that is somehow edgy and clever. Instead it is doing what we accuse the Left of, that is sexualizing young children. If that describes you, own it.
Reports: The A-10 Thunderbolt, better known as The Warthog, has been unleashed on Iran It's a heavily armored (the pilot sits in a titanim bathtub) slow-and-low loitering plane with a massive minigun firing depleted uranium rounds. The capability it brings is the ability to just fly big circles over the country waiting for a target to present itself. This is a weapons platform for eliminating vehicles and personnel. Its first task might be strafing the seas, clearing out any remaining attack boats and minelayers.
Update: My ballpark estimate for a reasonable cost for a wildlife overpass (suitably padded to sate the thirst of Democrat grifters) was $15 million. Turns out, that was a good estimate. That's how much it cost Denver to build one.
Podcast: CBD and Sefton discuss the obvious incompatibility of Islam with free societies, John Bolton is a disloyal sleaze, The SAVE Act is in the muck of Senate RINOs, the crappy quality of anti-American propaganda, and more!
Some people liked Candace Owens because she was a black woman who told hard truths about BLM and black criminality. But this was always a grift. She started out as a race hustler for a grift, then hustled race the other way to grift conservatives, and now she's back to being a race-hustler for the left again. Specifically, she is now claiming that people pointing out that she is legitimately low-IQ and can't pronounce half the words her AI-generated teleprompter script points out to her is racist and just Ben Shapiro's way of saying the n-word without quite saying it. You see, you can only say that black people are smart, and if you see a dumb one that doesn't know how to pronounce simple words while she poses as an investigatory journalist, you have to pretend she's actually smart or you're a racist. Weird, that doesn't sound very conservative, let alone "#Based," to me. To prove how much she hates racism, she then says that Ben Shapiro's Jew ancestors were masters of the slave trade.
