Cage Free

 

Bullet Points:

** The Most Glorious Leader in the world…according to the Norks. Stay thirsty. (They believe their own propaganda in Norkland)

** (Strategypage/h/t Claudio) October 14, 2025: The American military is seeking to upgrade its Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities to match the levels of China, Russia, and allies like Israel. The U.S. has been collaborating with the Israeli military, which has made substantial progress in adapting AI software to integrate with their combat control systems, utilizing new drone warfare weapons and techniques, and gathering intelligence on enemy identities, locations, and capabilities. Amid these advancements, the new system, called Refaim, can coordinate attacks on detected targets across army, air force, and naval units.

This has put pressure on the United States to develop AI technology its military can use for propaganda and influence operations against enemy troops and populations. Current AI technology enables mimicking the voices of enemy officers to send confusing radio messages to their subordinates. As a result, enemy forces may move in the wrong direction or fire artillery at incorrect targets, including their own troops.

** The Kremlin is attempting to use all available informational avenues to convince the United States, Europe, and Ukraine to acquiesce to the Kremlin’s demands by convincing them that a Russian victory in Ukraine is certain when it is anything but. Kremlin officials are attempting to present Ukraine as the obstacle to peace to obfuscate how Putin himself has been impeding the process by insisting that Ukraine cede more territory than Russian forces currently occupy.

** Are No Kings demonstrations a good way to bond?

** How long will the government shut down last? Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) said that he thinks it will last through Thanksgiving. Will it last through the first of the year? What do YOU think? Do you care?

** Louvre Heist – The head of security at the Louvre was a diversity hire chosen for her characteristics rather than “competence,” it was claimed. Within just seven minutes they had broken into the building. They left with a selection of France’s Crown Jewels, including emerald and sapphire earrings, necklaces, and tiaras from the Marie-Louise, Queen Marie-Amélie, Queen Hortense, and Empress Eugénie collections.

** The most DEI person in the world.

** Democrats want $1.5 billion to fund Chicago mass transit. Most of these taxes would be paid by everyone in the state of Illinois.

** Fight the way you train. Train the way you fight.

** Dems wrote Obamacare. They passed Obamacare without a single GOP vote. They created the Obamacare COVID credits without a single GOP vote, and they extended those credits AND chose a 2025 expiration date with no GOP votes. If Dems want to discuss their Obamacare failures and making health care more affordable, we welcome the conversation… after they end the Schumer Shutdown. – Sen. Mullin.

 

Optimism

At the dawn of the 20th century, America was a nation deeply entwined with the earth. Its identity was literally and figuratively rooted in the soil, where the vast majority of citizens drew their sustenance and purpose from the land.

In 1900, nearly half of the nation’s labor force, around 40 to 45 percent, worked in agriculture, encompassing over 11 million people in a population of just 76 million. Tens of millions of Americans rose with the sun, their lives dictated by the unyielding rhythm of the seasons. The hopeful toil of spring planting, the sweat-drenched vigilance of summer cultivation, the bountiful yet exhausting autumn harvest, and the quiet reflection of winter repairs. They were farmers, ranchers, dairymen, and field hands, their fortunes tethered to unpredictable weather, fickle markets, and the sheer physical demands of manual labor.

Communities were forged in barns and at church suppers, bound by mutual dependence, neighbors sharing tools, knowledge, and aid during floods or droughts.

The family farm wasn’t merely an economic unit. It was the bedrock of American society, embodying ideals of self-reliance, resilience, and a profound connection to nature that had defined human existence for millennia. Yet, this idyllic yet grueling way of life was not immune to the winds of change. As the century unfolded, technological breakthroughs in mechanization sparked both awe and apprehension.

The introduction of the gasoline-powered tractor in the early 1900s, followed by innovations like the combine harvester and mechanized planters, promised to revolutionize farming. These machines could plow fields in hours that once took days, harvest crops with precision that reduced waste, and amplify a single worker’s output by factors of 50 to 100. But such progress didn’t come without resistance.

Farmers and laborers feared the obsolescence of their skills, the loss of jobs, and the erosion of traditional communities. Echoing the Luddite rebellions of 19th-century England, where textile workers smashed looms in protest against automation, American agrarians voiced concerns that machines would displace human hands, leading to widespread unemployment and social upheaval. Newspapers and politicians decried the “dehumanizing” effects of industrialization, warning of a soulless future where man was subservient to metal.

Despite these fears, rooted in the very real disruptions of livelihoods and cultural norms, the march of progress proved unstoppable, driven by the undeniable benefits of efficiency and abundance. In the space of just a few generations, the United States underwent one of the most profound and peaceful social revolutions in human history. It wasn’t sparked by gunfire or political upheaval, but by the hum of engines and the whir of gears. Mechanization freed millions from the backbreaking drudgery of subsistence farming, where a bad season could mean starvation or ruin. Fields that once required crews of dozens could now be managed by a handful, yielding surplus food that fed growing cities and fueled exports.

But this liberation came at a cost. It uprooted an ancient way of life, scattering families from rural homesteads to urban horizons. The soil that had sustained the majority of Americans became the foundation for an entirely new economy, one built on factories, railroads, and mass production.

What followed was the Great Migration, a tidal wave of humanity flowing from the plow to the pavement. Between 1910 and 1970, over six million African Americans alone left Southern farms for Northern cities, joining waves of white rural migrants seeking opportunity. Former farmhands traded hoes for hammers, becoming assembly-line workers in Detroit’s auto plants or steel mills in Pittsburgh. Sons and daughters of sharecroppers evolved into machinists, clerks, and supervisors, channeling the discipline honed in the fields into the precision of manufacturing.

This shift not only powered America’s industrial might, propelling it to global dominance during two world wars, but also elevated living standards, with access to electricity, education, and consumer goods that were once unimaginable luxuries.

As the 20th century progressed, the revolution accelerated, carrying workers further from the land. The grandchildren of those original farmers traded the factory floor for the office cubicle, the lunch pail for the briefcase, and callused hands for college diplomas. Post-war prosperity, fueled by technologies like the transistor and early computers, birthed the service economy, where knowledge and innovation supplanted raw muscle.

Yet again, each leap forward ignited fresh waves of fear and resistance. The rise of automation in the 1950s and 1960s prompted unions to strike against “job-killing” robots, while pundits lamented the loss of “honest work.” In the 1980s, the personal computer era stirred anxieties about deskilling and mass layoffs, with visions of a dystopian future where machines rendered humans redundant. These apprehensions were not unfounded, dislocations were real, communities hollowed out, and inequalities widened.

But history shows a pattern: initial resistance gives way to adaptation, as new jobs emerge in unforeseen sectors, from software engineering to logistics management. Now, in the 21st century, the transformation has vaulted into the digital frontier, where the descendants of those who once coaxed crops from stubborn soil now cultivate vast networks of data and code. Silicon Valley servers hum where silos once stood, and algorithms optimize yields in ways that dwarf the tractor’s impact.

Artificial intelligence, blockchain, and quantum computing are the new pistons driving progress, automating not just physical tasks but cognitive ones, analyzing patterns, predicting outcomes, and creating art. Predictably, these breakthroughs have unleashed familiar choruses of alarm: fears of widespread job loss, ethical dilemmas over AI decision-making, and resistance from those who see technology as a threat to human creativity and agency.

Workers in fields like journalism, law, and even art worry about being “replaced,” much as farmhands once did. Policymakers debate regulations to curb “uncontrolled” innovation, echoing the regulatory battles over early automobiles or electricity. But here’s the enduring truth: while technological breakthroughs invariably generate fear and resistance, stirring visions of lost jobs, disrupted societies, and eroded humanity, we never truly want to turn back the clock.

Who among us would relinquish the abundance of modern supermarkets for the uncertainties of subsistence farming? The convenience of global communication for isolated rural life? The medical miracles enabled by digital research for the high infant mortality of yesteryear? Each era’s innovations have not destroyed us but elevated us, creating more opportunities than they eliminate.

The spirit of those early farmers, their ingenuity, adaptability, and relentless pursuit of betterment, lives on in today’s coders and entrepreneurs. From family farms to silicon servers, the American journey traces a single, unbroken arc, the embrace of progress that turns potential peril into prosperity. The story of modern America is, at its core, the triumph of what became of the people who once lived by the plow, and how their legacy of labor and invention continues to build a brighter, more interconnected world.

 

Made in China

(h/t Claudio and Ken) This Year’s Nobel Laureate Just Destroyed Xi’s ‘Made in China 2025’ Dream. The louder a government brags about its “grand vision,” the faster that slogan disappears when reality kicks in. Remember “Made in China 2025”? The crown jewel of Xi Jinping’s industrial revolution, where China would dominate chips, AI, robotics, and biotech. In essence, it transforms itself into the next Silicon Valley…but run by bureaucrats instead of dreamers.

This year’s Nobel laureate in economics, Joel Mokyr, just nuked that dream — without even naming China because his life’s work explains why you can’t plan innovation in a culture that fears dissent.

When I worked in Beijing, “Made in China 2025” was everywhere. It was the gospel of the future.
You’d hear executives declare, with absolute faith: “This isn’t just a plan — it’s destiny.” I remember leaving one meeting in Zhongguancun — Beijing’s “Silicon Valley” — thinking: “They really believe they can program a Renaissance.”

Ten industries. Five-year goals. One man’s vision. But today, search that slogan on Chinese state media — and it’s vanished like a bad IPO. Replaced with soft phrases like “high-quality development” and “innovation-driven growth.” Because deep down, Even Beijing knows: You can’t manufacture a Renaissance under a dictatorship.

So who is Joel Mokyr, and why does his Nobel sting so hard? He’s not just an economist — he’s a historian of ideas. He spent decades asking one question: Why did the Industrial Revolution happen in Europe — not in China? His answer: culture. Europe built something China never did — a culture of progress. And that culture rested on three pillars:

1. Knowledge as power. The belief that discovery improves life — and that people have the freedom to pursue it.
2. Competition of ideas. Europe was messy — rival states, universities, and thinkers. If one prince banned you, another funded you.
3. Institutional tolerance. Galileo challenged authority — and lived to tell the tale. That tolerance became the oxygen of innovation.

Mokyr called it the Republic of Letters — a world where ideas could travel freely, clash, and evolve. Now hold that mirror up to Xi Jinping’s China. One Party. One ideology. One narrative. Beijing can build chips — but it can’t build a Galileo. Because Galileo wouldn’t survive a CCP “ideological review.”
You get human capital without heterodoxy — smart people trained to obey. Competence without curiosity. Innovation replaced by imitation.

That’s not a culture of growth. That’s a culture of survival. And that’s why “Made in China 2025” died.
Not from U.S. sanctions or chip wars — but from a system allergic to free thought. You can fund innovation. You can’t command it. You can build laboratories — but not curiosity. Progress doesn’t come from control. It comes from curiosity. And until China rediscovers that, every “grand vision” will end the same way — deleted, forgotten, denied.

 

Drugs and War

(h/t CDRSAL)

This, of course, does not include the deaths caused in the drug trade, the murder, torture, kidnapping, random violence and associated companion criminal enterprises both inside and outside the USA by those who feed the demand for drugs.

So far this century, over 1 million Americans have died from drug overdoses.

As has been true for decades, the primary source for the drugs that feeds America’s habit comes from the south.

While cocaine trafficking remains the primary source of revenue for many criminal networks, the production and trafficking of methamphetamine in Central America and the Caribbean has increased in the last two years. The reports note that Costa Rica seized a record 580,000 doses of methamphetamine in 2023, while authorities in Trinidad and Tobago dismantled a methamphetamine production lab that same year. Meanwhile, El Salvador has reported a rise in methamphetamine shipments from Guatemala over the past four years.

Although not all countries provided standardized and reliable drug consumption data, the available information suggests that methamphetamine use is rising across the continent

CDRSAL continues to make his case, and you can read about it here.

And then we get to war by other means, conducted by Communist China. You can argue (if you’d like) that the American drug market is a consumer-driven problem, and I won’t argue. When the communists market synthetic opioids in the US as a matter of statecraft, the argument changes. Is the USA at war with Communist China? Things are changing, but clearly, up until recently, we were not. Are they at war with us? For decades, they have been, and we have largely ignored it.

President Trump has finally made a war on drugs a WAR ON DRUGS, and the American left is outraged.

 

Identify the Aircraft

1

It’s an experimental aircraft, but you have a tail number to work with.

 

2

 

3

 

4 & 5

 

Parting Shot

 

Abrams, sometimes referred to as the ‘ghetto manatee’ for her ugly face and ample frame, is one of the more despicable characters on the national scene.

 

 

 

End