Cold Steel Big Bore .625 Blowgun – 5FT
June 1st, 2025One of my sons is heavily into bushcraft and hunting with a variety of weapons (not just firearms). Besides rifles, he uses bows, crossbows, slingshots, spears… and now, a blowgun.
He has killed four possums over two nights so far with his new Cold Steel Big Bore .625 Blowgun (Amazon affiliate link).
In case you have any doubts about how serious of a weapon a blowgun can be:
What You Should Know About FUTO Keyboard
June 1st, 2025I think I’ve posted about this a couple of times already, but…
Your keyboard shouldn’t connect to the internet.
Via: FUTO:
Precision Clock Mk IV
May 31st, 2025Via: mitxela.com:
Sloppy Security Resulted in Details of Russia’s Strategic Nuclear Weapon Modernization Program Being Publicly Accessible
May 30th, 2025Via: Danwatch:
Now Danwatch, in collaboration with German Der Spiegel, can for the first time reveal previously unknown details about the enormous upgrade of the military infrastructure at Russia’s most protected facilities.
Together we have analyzed more than two million documents relating to Russian military procurement that Danwatch systematically retrieved from a public database over a period of many months. The Russian authorities have gradually restricted access to the database, but we managed to circumvent these restrictions by using a veriety of digital techniques, including a network of servers located in Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus.
The documents reveal how numerous new facilities have been built across all of Russia: Entire bases have been almost leveled and rebuilt from the ground up; hundreds of new barracks, watchtowers, control centers and storage buildings have been erected; and several kilometers of underground tunnels have been excavated.
The level of detail in the material is now causing several experts to raise alarms about a Russian security breach that could potentially make the large new nuclear weapons bases vulnerable to attack.
Among the millions of documents, Danwatch has found hundreds of original blueprints of the Strategic Missile Forces’ bases near the small town of Yasny, that have since 2019 been equipped with the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle – one of Russia’s new nuclear delivery systems that plays a central role in President Putin’s ambitions to put Russian in front in an arms race against the West.
In collaboration with Der Spiegel, we can now tell how the documents reveal highly sensitive details about some of the world’s most sensitive facilities.
Newly Identified Cosmic Object Sends Out Blast of Radio Waves and X-Rays Every 44 Minutes
May 30th, 2025Via: Study Finds:
Something deep in the Milky Way is pulsing like clockwork, and no one knows what it is. Every 44 minutes, a mysterious space object nearly 15,000 light-years away sends out a blast of radio waves and high-energy X-rays, defying everything astronomers thought they knew about how stars behave. It’s not a pulsar, not a black hole, and not quite like anything we’ve ever seen before. Now, scientists say this bizarre cosmic beacon might be rewriting the rulebook on extreme stellar physics.
For the first time, astronomers from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) have found what’s known as a long-period radio transient that also emits X-rays — something that had never been observed before and wasn’t predicted by existing models. This discovery of ASKAP J1832?0911, published in Nature, introduces a new class of celestial object and calls into question long-standing assumptions in astrophysics.
More: Astronomers find startling pulsing object in Milky Way: ‘Unlike anything we have seen’
“Trump Taps Palantir to Compile Data on Americans”
May 30th, 2025Via: New York Times:
In March, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the federal government to share data across agencies, raising questions over whether he might compile a master list of personal information on Americans that could give him untold surveillance power.
Mr. Trump has not publicly talked about the effort since. But behind the scenes, officials have quietly put technological building blocks into place to enable his plan. In particular, they have turned to one company: Palantir, the data analysis and technology firm.
The Trump administration has expanded Palantir’s work across the federal government in recent months. The company has received more than $113 million in federal government spending since Mr. Trump took office, according to public records, including additional funds from existing contracts as well as new contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. (This does not include a $795 million contract that the Department of Defense awarded the company last week, which has not been spent.)
Flashback: Vance is Thiel’s creature… That means, of course, that Vance is Palantir’s creature.
And Now… Bongino Vows Jail Video Release Showing “No One Was There But” Epstein, “We Are Working On Cleaning It Up”
May 30th, 2025“There’s video clear as day,” says Bongino.
Mmm hmm.
Via: The Hill:
FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino vowed to release a video showing that no one was around disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein when he died by suicide in a prison cell in 2019.
“I just want to be crystal clear on this. I am not asking anyone to believe me. I’m telling you what’s there and what isn’t, right,” Bongino told Fox News on Thursday morning. “There is nothing in the file at this point on the Epstein case, and there is going to be a disclosure on this coming shortly.”
The agency is reviewing the footage that will be released to the public, he added.
“Fox & Friends” co-host Lawrence Jones then asked, “There’s video of [Epstein] killing himself?”
“No, no, not the actual act, but the entire MCC [Metropolitan Correctional Center] bay. It was only one camera. There’s video that, when you look at the video — and we will release, that’s what’s taken a while on this,” Bongino explained. “We are working on cleaning it up to make sure you have an enhanced, and we’re going to give the original so you don’t think there were any shenanigans.”
“You’re going to see there’s no one there but him,” the deputy FBI director added.
His remarks come less than two weeks after he and FBI Director Kash Patel dismissed long-held conspiracy theories surrounding Epstein’s death, bluntly telling Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo that “he killed himself.”
Appeals Court Allows Tariffs to Stay in Effect After Trade Court Rebuke
May 29th, 2025Via: YahooFinance:
A federal appeals court allowed President Trump’s sweeping tariffs to temporarily stay in effect, a day after the US Court of International Trade blocked their implementation after deeming the method used to enact them “unlawful.”
That means Trump’s tariff agenda remains intact, if in flux, in the latest twist in the unfolding legal saga.
Late Wednesday, the trade court voted to block many of Trump’s tariffs, including the flat-rate “reciprocal” tariffs aimed at US trade partners, as well as key China-focused duties. The decision left some levies intact, specifically those covering steel, aluminum, and certain Chinese goods.
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which oversees the International Trade Court, granted the Trump administration’s request for a temporary administrative stay. This gives the court time to review legal arguments and filings. The administration must submit its briefings by June 9, after which the court will determine the next steps.
The White House had vowed Thursday to take its appeal to the Supreme Court if necessary.
“Anduril and Meta Team Up to Transform XR for the American Military”
May 29th, 2025Oh my…
— Anduril Industries (@anduriltech) May 29, 2025
Via: Anduril:
Anduril and Meta are partnering to design, build, and field a range of integrated XR products that provide warfighters with enhanced perception and enable intuitive control of autonomous platforms on the battlefield. The capabilities enabled by the partnership will draw on more than a decade of investment by both companies in advanced hardware, software, and artificial intelligence. The effort has been funded through private capital, without taxpayer support, and is designed to save the U.S. military billions of dollars by utilizing high-performance components and technology originally built for commercial use.
“Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College”
May 29th, 2025These videos from Truthstream Media could have gotten the point across much more effectively if they were about 90% shorter. However, if you want a sort of hysterical, cathartic release, that goes on and on, they have you covered.
In summary: AI is going to rot the brains of young people who use it before they develop critical thinking skills and other cognitive abilities, or atrophy these abilities in older people. AI can then be used to fill these smooth brained meat sacks with whatever nonsense the corporate overlords desire.
So it goes…
Via: New York Magazine:
Whenever Wendy uses AI to write an essay (which is to say, whenever she writes an essay), she follows three steps. Step one: “I say, ‘I’m a first-year college student. I’m taking this English class.’” Otherwise, Wendy said, “it will give you a very advanced, very complicated writing style, and you don’t want that.” Step two: Wendy provides some background on the class she’s taking before copy-and-pasting her professor’s instructions into the chatbot. Step three: “Then I ask, ‘According to the prompt, can you please provide me an outline or an organization to give me a structure so that I can follow and write my essay?’ It then gives me an outline, introduction, topic sentences, paragraph one, paragraph two, paragraph three.” Sometimes, Wendy asks for a bullet list of ideas to support or refute a given argument: “I have difficulty with organization, and this makes it really easy for me to follow.”
Once the chatbot had outlined Wendy’s essay, providing her with a list of topic sentences and bullet points of ideas, all she had to do was fill it in. Wendy delivered a tidy five-page paper at an acceptably tardy 10:17 a.m. When I asked her how she did on the assignment, she said she got a good grade. “I really like writing,” she said, sounding strangely nostalgic for her high-school English class — the last time she wrote an essay unassisted. “Honestly,” she continued, “I think there is beauty in trying to plan your essay. You learn a lot. You have to think, Oh, what can I write in this paragraph? Or What should my thesis be??” But she’d rather get good grades. “An essay with ChatGPT, it’s like it just gives you straight up what you have to follow. You just don’t really have to think that much.”
Related: “I’m Getting a Bit Worried About AI”
