Beware of an old man in a profession where men die young.
Identify the Night Fighter
The Common Good
Since all the evils of the Twentieth Century, the Century of Woe, were visited upon the world in the name of sacrificing individual rights to the public good, it need not be emphasized that the abuse of the public good to erect a tyranny is greatly to be feared.
This is the whole excuse and justification of Marxism: hatred in the name of common good , mass- torture in the name of common good , scientifically organized censorship, falsehood, deception and self-deception in the name of common good , mass-starvation in the name of common good , sadism in the name of common good , atheism, genocide, and the suicide of civilization in the name of common good , and infinite evil in the name of the common good, it requires no further warning from me to caution men not to trust uncritically those things done in the name of the common good.
Ayn Rand’s contempt for claims made about her life and soul in the name of the common good is completely understandable. I do not see how one can fail to sympathize with her, considering what Marx, the foremost idolater of the common good, that is communism,
We are hardly in any danger of having our civilization drown from an excess of liberty, except, of course, for liberty in the area of sexual liberation, which has permitted a cult of sodomites, child molesters, fetishists, and child-castrators to arise in our midst, and seat themselves in the gates of government, censor our speech, rewrite our movies, topple our statues, outlaw honor, and groom our children. But these are merely totalitarians and god-haters like any others, using liberty as an excuse for evil, even as their fathers used altruism.
Bullet Points:
** Cameron on the Titan (h/t Claudio) – “I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship, and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night. And many people died as a result,” Cameron told ABC News. “And for a very similar tragedy, where warnings went unheeded, to take place at the same exact site, with all the diving that’s going on all around the world, I think it’s just astonishing.”
** Damon Lawner, the founder of Snctm, has been banned from the high-end sex club after he publicly identified Hunter Biden as a former member. The claim about President Biden’s son was included in a Times profile of Lawner published Tuesday.
** Japanese I-52 traveled 3 months from Japan to Europe to deliver goods to support the Reich’s war effort. It was intercepted mid-Atlantic and attacked by a TBF Avenger from the escort carrier Bogue. The TBF deployed sonobuoys, depth bombs, and ultimately an Mk-24 acoustic homing torpedo, Fido. The torpedo struck and sank I-52 will all 109 hands. Details of the attack are unpacked and the underwater sonobuoy sounds are described. This submarine was one of 998 Axis subs that were sunk in WWII.
** From the Bee. Admiral Richard (Dick) Levine is its Man of the Year.
Red Mist – a Novel by Larry B. Lambert and Jules Smith
Legends endure for a reason. Sometimes they survive to impel our cultural hubris. Occasionally they endure because they instill a sense of focus on what was and perhaps. a vision of what will be. They are always a reminder. When they come. back to haunt us, things start to get interesting.
A couple in Iceland, very much in love, visit a historic site and suddenly he throws himself into a volcano, burning to a crisp in front of her eyes, and thereafter, it’s always raining.
The dwindling North Sea Oil supply is suddenly rejuvenated with a new discovery, a huge oil field of light, sweet, crude worth billions. Exploration, drilling, and pumping begin to breathe life into a faltering industry, and just as things seem to be going well, the oil is polluted with radioactive thorium.
US Army Special Forces operators in Iceland on an exercise are drawn into a crisis and as NASA withdraws, they boldly face the challenge. All but one are rendered insane and the memory of Red Mist turns into a quest for answers–that the CIA already has.
In Texas, a political fixer is called on to deal with a situation and finds himself completely out of his depth.
In England, a psychologist’s life is turned upside down as a skald makes a disturbing prophecy.
In China, aggressive experiments into neutrino research create a completely unforeseen disaster and portend a global cataclysm of Biblical proportions.
Just when you’re sure that you have all the answers and are confident that the science is settled, it isn’t.
Buy it in digital Kindle or paperback formats here.
If you’ve read the book and haven’t commented on Amazon, please take a moment and do so. Thank you.
From the Days of Fighting Sail
The Cosh
Royal Navy Press Gang cosh with a concealed blade from HMS Ajax, 1798-1807
A cosh was much feared by men in the 18th and 19th centuries as it was used by the Royal Navy more specifically by a press gang to force men to join the navy. If the situation got nasty, which happened quite often, the knife was used to defend oneself.
It was often used in “night fighting.”
Personal Note:
245 Gonzales Sap (American cosh)
I carried the 245 Gonzales Sap for years. Photo below. Specifications: 26oz of lead, has a flat rounded body; lead shot filled and is covered in black plain leather. Measures, 11 ¼”. The original 245 Gonzales has a leather thong that is threaded through a hole in the laminated leather handle/body of the weapon. The current model is available from Tex Shoemaker and has a different retention strap. That strap runs parallel with the body of the sap, much like the old beaver tail saps did (see photo below).
It’s a good night fighting weapon and doesn’t include a blade. Frankly, from personal experience and personal use, a knife is not necessary. 26 ounces of spring-loaded lead is quite sufficient.
Gonzales made a 187 Sap – longer and heavier – but I always thought it was overkill.
Heinkel He 219 Owl
In the 70s I had Revell models of it and the Black Widow P-61.
👍🏻
IDA:
Heinkel He 219 (“Eagle-Owl”)
Identify the Night Fighter:
Heinkel He 219
Pretty sure the Heinkel He 219 was the first aircraft to have ejection seats for the pilots.
the media claims there’s night fighting going on in russia. wagner group got pissed the russ air farce bombed them, again, so they pulled back. idk, maybe they are trying a coup? more likely the media trying to goad putin.
I have a feeling this is going to be more like Hannibal’s march on Rome. Unless Pergosion can recruit tired, bitter, Russian soldiers in Ukraine to fight on his behalf he’s going to have a hard time marching into Moscow.
The media is using it because it detracts from all the crap thrown at Pedo Joe and his offspring.
Yes, of course, on the He-219
Following up on my last comment I forgot to mention that he will also have to grease the wheels of the Kremlin and some of the other oligarchs in Moscow to help him pull this off. Also where are the tactical nukes that were supposed to be in Belarus??? And what about the cooling towers in Zapharizia? (Sure I spelled that wrong). And lastly could this just be just what they Biden crime family needs? They would have to wash their money as fast as possible in Ukraine, but I’m sure if this coup were to take place and be successful the administration would take full credit and I fear it would lead to them claiming victory and another 4 years because of it. 😖
The Common Good, or as I like to use once I figured out the game “regulators” play, Anything for health and safety, which has bred all manner of invasive “chip away at personal freedoms” measures, mostly to garner “revenues” (aka takings) in order to prop up the offending agencies.
The economy thrived when PDJT reduced 2 Reg’s for every new one added. Now look. It’s beyond TCG, it’s tyranny plain and simple.
…a well placed meteor (yup, I’m a broken record)
Ps 54 Save me, O God, by thy name, and judge me by thy strength.
2 Hear my prayer, O God; give ear to the words of my mouth.
3 For strangers are risen up against me, and oppressors seek after my soul: they have not set God before them. Selah.
4 Behold, God is mine helper: the Lord is with them that uphold my soul.
5 He shall reward evil unto mine enemies: cut them off in thy truth.
6 I will freely sacrifice unto thee: I will praise thy name, O Lord; for it is good.
7 For he hath delivered me out of all trouble: and mine eye hath seen his desire upon mine enemies.
x2
x3 Thanks for that Ed.
Must have hit send at the same time Paul.
X4
X3
The wife of OceanGate’s CEO is descended from a famous couple who died on the Titanic.
https://www.npr.org/2023/06/22/1183704775/oceangate-stockton-rush-wife-titanic-movie-couple
Truth is stranger than fiction.
Cameron weighed in, interesting take coming off his Titanic work.
The self-named Ayn Rand is not the opposite of Marx, rather, she was the other side of the same coin. The linked essay below says it far better than I’m prepared to do sitting here in a restaurant tapping away on my phone.
https://web.archive.org/web/20080307075258/http://home.att.net/~bob.wallace/rand1.html
I will say that Rand was an objectively (heh) terrible human being. She was not merely an adulteress, but one who flaunted it not only in the face of her husband*, but also in the face of the wife of her greatest disciple, Nathaniel Branden. (Incidentally, Nathaniel Branden was born Nathan Blumenthal. Branden is an anagram of “Ben Rand” which adds an incestuous touch to the sordid affair (pun not exactly intended), seeing as both were of Russian Jewish ancestry.)
Now Rand was not wrong about everything, but personally she was an appalling mess of nicotine, speed (“diet pills”), envy (particularly of beautiful women), bitterness, and resentment. She was dead wrong that one’s own wants (not even needs, wants) are the pinnacle of value. Humans are social creatures by nature (evolution if you like) and of necessity. We operate and function best when we have something greater than ourselves to look to, be that God, family, clan, the men next to you in the line of battle, take your pick. (“The ashes of his fathers and the temples of his gods” and all that.)
In full disclosure, from about age 15 to 18 I was all in on Rand. (This is not uncommon: high IQ kid from a middle class or better background, growing up in a secure environment full of mostly intelligent people. You think that utopian bullshit is possible for the real world. It ain’t.) Then I went to college and attended Objectivist and Libertarian Party meetings. Christ what a bunch of high-IQ and even more highly dysfunctional misfits. Most of whom were losers with incredibly rigid personalities. (A lot of the CPUSA types were the same: idealistic high-IQ weirdos and losers. For those calling bullshit, I acknowledge my sample was skewed because it was a big-time college town.) So take this rant as the rage of an apostate, if you choose (though it isn’t). I still think that Anthem is a beautiful work, an allegory in prose-poetry. But Atlas Shrugged is a tale of monsters. There are no heroes, no good guys. The characters are all vile bastards.
Admittedly, Ayn’s escape from the Soviet system would pretty much be a huge part of the reason she was bat-poop crazy.
She painted her characters in broad strokes, which was good for what it was. Very shallow comic-book like characters.
But, yeah, bat-poop crazy. Doesn’t make her wrong, jut an odious piece of dogsqueeze.
Now do Melville, or HG Wells. Talk about bat-poop crazy and odious.
How dare you! Attacking Saint Ayn.
Thank you.
I tire of adulation of her.
One Summer when working for my uncle, who was an English major and huge reader, he told me to read The Fountainhead…being a budding architect myself. Right away I felt Rand’s muse was Frank Lloyd Wright, also a “difficult” person yet brilliant architect, a somewhat parallel to Rand’s own lousy persona coupled to genius in their respective fields.
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Rand was a cult leader. Objectivism and Rand are not libertarianism, and pointing out Rand’s flaws does not disprove any piece of libertarian policy analysis. “What have libertarians ever liberated?” is a far better tack. I score that answer to date as ‘the profession of computer programming’, and the proliferation of home machine shop capabilities. Due to diminishing returns, tech progress aids the small group more than the large. Today we have disposably cheap remote controlled flying robots, and I’m sure no one will ever think to use them in war.
Das Kiddy-Boot (the Oceanview sub)? Seems a lot of big-name people looked to take a ride on it and most of them went, “Whoa, this thing is about as sketchy as using a pickup for a boat, maybe sketchier.”
As to the WWII boats sunk? Looks like we (the Allies) did a good job. Could have sunk a few more.
Now the real tragedy is that the feckless turd FDR didn’t order blackouts along the coast, making shipping leaving US ports backlit and easy targets. Feckless turd.
On many levels.
Titan Passengers- Boron put forth a wild yet plausible other option in reply to BRM’s post on the subject of this failed mission, that maybe it wasn’t a failed mission but successful in providing cover for the billionaire passenger’s “escape” into obscurity.
His thought was these guys can hire serious risk management analysis yet chose to get into a somewhat used CF vessel that was sketchy at best….to do what, go below its lowest test depth to peer through a small bubble or computer screens at the Titanic wreck? Doesn’t entirely scan.
And who would do that, risking their life is such a manner?
Maybe a bored foolish billionaire just for bragging rights…because it wasn’t an expedition for exploration, it was a sightseeing tour.
And the Minnow, it was lost.
It had a millionaire on board.
It’s possible that the Titan fiasco is a scam, but Occam’s Razor says no, it was just a bunch of rich assholes who failed either to do due diligence, or did so and said, “Nah, it’ll be fine.”
I read Peter Grant’s post about how people shouldn’t be engaged in schadenfreude over the deaths of the Titan passengers. Fair enough. But I’m with the commentor calling him or herself “Murder Kitty” though maybe not for exactly the same reasons (I don’t remember MK’s list).
1. Titanic is the tomb of around 1500 souls. It’s plain ghoulish and in bad taste to go rubbernecking as a misery-porn tourist.
2. If you’re all “save the planet” and all that other happy horseshit, then your $250k USD ticket to death would have been far better spent on childhood vaccines, or care for the elderly, planting some damn trees, or whatever. And if you just watched some professionally filmed YouTube videos on the Titanic wreck you’d have had a much better viewing experience than out the non-depth-rated viewport right over the shitter of an amateur-hour carbon fiber tube. For free and in the safety of your own home.
3. I seem to have heard that a Pakistani father and 19-yo son were among the decedents (I can’t be arsed to look it up). If so, they (the father at least) were likely terrible people. The majority of the ultra rich in Pakistan didn’t get there by inventing something brilliant or some equally meritorious accomplishment; they most likely got rich through deeply shady means. (And I’m not anti-Pakistani. That’s just how it is. I just happen to have dealt with dozens from the top 1 or 2% of the country so I have a decent sample to extrapolate from.)
Spot on.
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Oh yeah, Damon “Father Damon” Lawner, AKA “Sex Jesus”.
Of course he is. I’m beyond disappointment at this point, and it genuinely makes me sad.
“in the name of sacrificing individual rights to the public good”
And all in the name of personal freedom. The tyrannical, insane, degeneracy of the Liberal project is jaw-dropping.