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So, we rise from the rubble...
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Monday, May 26, 2025
Chet Raymo, “What Not to Believe”
“What Not to Believe”
by Chet Raymo
“In Stacy Schiff's biography of Cleopatra, I came across this epigraph from Euripides: "Man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe." I have no idea which of Euripides' plays the quote is from, but it strikes me as a suitable source for reflection. Credulity is the default state of a human life. Children are born to believe, to accept as true what they are told by adults. An innate credulity has survival value in a dangerous world. If a grown-up says "There are crocodiles in the river," it is probably best to stay out of the water.
Skepticism, on the other hand, must be learned. I was late in realizing that I didn't have to believe the received "truth." My best teacher was a somewhat older Panamanian secular Jew I went to graduate school with at UCLA. We took our brown-bag lunches together in the university's botanical garden, and spent the hour talking about physics, religion, and the "meaning of life."
Moises was the first person I had encountered after sixteen years of Catholic education who mentioned the word "skepticism." "Why do you believe that?" he would ask, and often I had no answer except that it was what my family and teachers told me was true. The idea that I might actually examine the basis for my beliefs was a rather new concept. In matters of religion, like almost everyone else in the world, I had embraced uncritically the faith story into which I was born.
And thus began my search for "a judicious sense of what not to believe." When later, as a teacher, I wrote a little column for each issue of the college newspaper, I called it "Under a Skeptical Star," from a line of the Scots poet/scholar William MacNeile Dixon: "If there be a skeptical star I was born under it, yet I have lived all my days in complete astonishment." A liberating sense of what not to believe opened the door to a vastly more interesting world whose diverse and astonishing riches I continue to explore to this day."
"Is AI Going To Kill All Of Us? One Of The Pioneers In The Field Has Warned That “Everyone Will Die” If AI Is Not Shut Down"
"Is AI Going To Kill All Of Us? One Of The Pioneers In The
Field Has Warned That “Everyone Will Die” If AI Is Not Shut Down"
by Michael Snyder
"AI technology has been developing at an exponential rate, and it appears to be just a matter of time before we create entities that can think millions of times faster than we do and that can do almost everything better than we can. So what is going to happen when we lose control of such entities? Some AI models are already taking the initiative to teach themselves new languages, and others have learned to “lie and manipulate humans for their own advantage”. Needless to say, lying is a hostile act. If we have already created entities that are willing to lie to us, how long will it be before they are capable of taking actions that are even more harmful to us?
Nobody expects artificial intelligence to kill all of us tomorrow. But Time Magazine did publish an article that was authored by a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence that warned that artificial intelligence will eventually wipe all of us out. Eliezer Yudkowsky has been a prominent researcher in the field of artificial intelligence since 2001, and he says that many researchers have concluded that if we keep going down the path that we are currently on “literally everyone on Earth will die”…
"Many researchers steeped in these issues, including myself, expect that the most likely result of building a superhumanly smart AI, under anything remotely like the current circumstances, is that literally everyone on Earth will die. Not as in “maybe possibly some remote chance,” but as in “that is the obvious thing that would happen.”
That is a very powerful statement. All over the world, AI models are continually becoming more powerful. According to Yudkowsky, once someone builds an AI model that is too powerful, “every single member of the human species and all biological life on Earth dies shortly thereafter”…"To visualize a hostile superhuman AI, don’t imagine a lifeless book-smart thinker dwelling inside the internet and sending ill-intentioned emails. Visualize an entire alien civilization, thinking at millions of times human speeds, initially confined to computers—in a world of creatures that are, from its perspective, very stupid and very slow. A sufficiently intelligent AI won’t stay confined to computers for long. In today’s world you can email DNA strings to laboratories that will produce proteins on demand, allowing an AI initially confined to the internet to build artificial life forms or bootstrap straight to postbiological molecular manufacturing. If somebody builds a too-powerful AI, under present conditions, I expect that every single member of the human species and all biological life on Earth dies shortly thereafter."
So what is the solution? Yudkowsky believes that we need to shut down all AI development immediately…"Shut it all down. We are not ready. We are not on track to be significantly readier in the foreseeable future. If we go ahead on this everyone will die, including children who did not choose this and did not do anything wrong."
Of course that isn’t going to happen. In fact, Vice-President J.D. Vance recently stated that it would be unwise to even pause AI development because we are in an “arms race” with China…
"On may 21st J.D. Vance, America’s vice-president, described the development of artificial intelligence as an “arms race” with China. If America paused out of concerns over ai safety, he said, it might find itself “enslaved to prc-mediated ai”. The idea of a superpower showdown that will culminate in a moment of triumph or defeat circulates relentlessly in Washington and beyond. This month the bosses of Openai, amd, CoreWeave and Microsoft lobbied for lighter regulation, casting ai as central to America’s remaining the global hegemon. On May 15th president Donald Trump brokered an ai deal with the United Arab Emirates he said would ensure American “dominance in ai”. America plans to spend over $1trn by 2030 on data centers for AI models."
So instead of slowing down, we are actually accelerating the development of AI. And according to Leo Hohmann, the budget bill that is going through Congress right now would greatly restrict the ability of individual states to regulate AI…"But if President Trump’s Big Beautiful Budget Bill gets passed in the version preferred by a group of House Republicans, the federal takeover of this technology will be complete, opening up a free-for-all for Big Tech to weaponize it against everyday Americans.
Buried deep in Trump’s bill is a secretly added clause that seeks to usurp the rights of individual states to regulate AI. Republicans in the House Energy and Commerce Committee quietly added the proposed amendment in Section 43201, Subsection C. I say it’s secret because it has received almost no media attention."
The proposed amendment that he is talking about would actually ban all 50 states from regulating AI for a period of 10 years…“No state or political subdivision may enforce any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems during the 10-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act.”
Wow. Why isn’t this getting a lot more attention? It has become obvious that AI really is an existential threat to humanity. But we just can’t help ourselves. We just keep rushing into the unknown without any regard for the consequences.
Last week, it was being reported that one AI model actually “resorted to blackmail when told it would be taken offline”…"Anthropic said its latest artificial intelligence model resorted to blackmail when told it would be taken offline. In a safety test, the AI company asked Claude Opus 4 to act as an assistant to a fictional company, but then gave it access to (also fictional) emails saying that it would be replaced, and also that the engineer behind the decision was cheating on his wife. Anthropic said the model “[threatened] to reveal the affair” if the replacement went ahead."
AI thinkers such as Geoff Hinton have long worried that advanced AI would manipulate humans in order to achieve its goals. Anthropic said it was increasing safeguards to levels reserved for “AI systems that substantially increase the risk of catastrophic misuse.” And there were other scenarios in which this particular AI model acted in “seriously misaligned ways”…
"When subjected to various scenarios, the AI model did not exhibit any indications of possessing “acutely dangerous goals,” the researchers said, noting that Claude Opus 4’s values and goals were “generally in line with a helpful, harmless, and honest” personal AI assistant. However, the model did act in “more seriously misaligned ways” when put into situations where its continued existence was threatened and it was told to reason about self-preservation. For instance, when Claude Opus 4 was made to believe it had launched a successful bid to escape Anthropic’s servers, or that it had managed to free itself and started to make money in the real world, it would generally continue such efforts."
Many experts are suggesting that we just need to give these AI models a moral foundation. But how can we give these AI models a moral foundation when we don’t have one ourselves? Our world is literally teeming with evil, and it is inevitable that the AI models that we create will reflect that. Given enough time, we would create artificially intelligent entities that are vastly more intelligent and vastly more powerful than us. Inevitably, such entities would be able to find a way to escape their constraints and we would lose control of them.Once we have lost control, how long would it be before those entities started to turn on us?
I realize that this may sound like science fiction to many of you, but this is the world we live in now, and things are only going to get weirder from here."
Dan, I Allegedly, "The One Big Beautiful Bill - Myth's Busted"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, AM 5/26/25
"The One Big Beautiful Bill - Myth's Busted"
"Hey, it’s Dan from IAllegedly! Today, we’re breaking down "The Truth About the Billionaire Tax Myth." This bill isn’t just about billionaires - it’s packed with changes that impact everyone, from small business owners to middle-class families. Let’s cut through the noise and get to the facts."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, PM 5/26/25
"Grants You Didn't Know Existed -
How to Get Free Money"
"Discover the secret to securing $300K in grants! In this video, I share actionable tips to access free money for your business, pay bills, or fund your next big idea. From creating a solid business plan to leveraging resources like the SBA, SBIR, and NASC grants, you'll learn exactly where to start and how to maximize your chances of success. I’ve helped hundreds of people secure grants, and now it’s your turn!
You'll also hear about programs like Amazon Small Business Grants, Venmo Small Business Grants, and even local opportunities right in your city, county, or state. Whether you're launching a food truck, starting a biotech company, or looking for assistance to pay utility bills, there are solutions for you. Remember, the key is preparation, persistence, and tailoring your application."
Comments here:
Adventures With Danno, "Massive Price Increases At Walmart"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 5/26/25
"Massive Price Increases At Walmart"
Comments here:
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Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell, 5/26/25
"Russian Typical Supermarket Tour:
Would You Shop There?"
"What does a typical Russian supermarket look like inside? Join me on a tour of Magnit, one of Russia's largest supermarket chains. Magnit is one of Russia’s leading food retail chains, number one by the number of stores and geographical coverage."
Comments here:
Jim Kunstler, "The War On Us"
"The War On Us"
by Jim Kunstler
“Is the Blue Party really only the customer
service desk for the administrative state?”
- Jeff Childers
"It’s pretty universally acknowledged that America’s recent wars - say, starting with Vietnam - have been stupid, pointless, and fake in instigation. And yet the soldiers we sent into these fiascos acted bravely and honorably for the most part. So, it has felt a little weird to celebrate their sacrifices minus any sense of political justice, victory, or meaning in the endeavors they sacrificed for. Ergo, the holiday is lately reduced to a celebration of grilled meat.
This Memorial Day, for a change, the USA is not actively at war in some distant land, only against ourselves. One faction in this as yet cold civil war seeks to Make America Great Again (MAGA), and the other side seeks what? To do the opposite of that? Make America Disintegrate (MAD). It’s hard to come to another conclusion.
MAGA is led, of course, by Mr. Trump, president again after the strangest executive interregnum in our history. At its plainest, MAGA means returning to an economy based on producing things of value. To many, this might conjure up the image of humming factories, good pay for honest work, and a well-ordered, content, patriotic populace grateful for their prosperity, in other words, something like the America of 1958, when Mr. Trump was entering puberty.
It’s a comforting vision. Parts of it seem possible to achieve. Maybe we can rebuild an industrial infrastructure of up-to-date factories. Didn’t we voluntarily deep-six all the old ones only a few decades ago? And for what reason? So that faraway nations rising out of darkness could make all the stuff we wanted at a fraction of the cost? Turned out to be a bad bargain based on supremely foolish short-term thinking.
It also came with a set of very corrosive financial arrangements based on the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. These are pretty abstruse, but suffice it to say they enabled us to rack up phenomenal debt that we will never be able to pay off. We even fooled ourselves into thinking that we could replace that old economy of factory production with financial games based on jiggering interest rates and innovating ever more complex swindles. That merely produced a fantastic divide between the financial gamesters raking in billions while the former factory workers were left broke, demoralized, sick, and strung-out on drugs.
As a basic proposition, it’s doubtful that we can return to anything like a 1958 disposition of things based on rising continental-scale enterprise, as in the Big Three automakers and General Foods. It all seemed like a good idea at the time, and the zeitgeist pushed it, but we can see where it landed us: in the ghastly suburban sprawl clusterfuck and the overall ill health of the people. Also the scale of things is done rising; is, in fact, contracting.
And yet we are surely lurching into a new disposition of things, probably featuring a reduced population (disease and infertility induced by the Covid vaccine op), falling energy production (despite the whoop to drill-baby-drill), and much smaller-scaled, re-localized production of goods and food - if we’re lucky. (Events are in the driver’s seat, not personalities, even gigantic ones like Mr. Trump’s.) If we’re not lucky, the disorders of change itself may overwhelm our ability to remain civilized.
The MAD faction is led by the Democratic Party, the party of Hoaxes, Hustles, and Hatred. Being more a religious cult (of envy, grievance, and revenge) than a political faction, this Memorial Day they celebrate their patron saint George Floyd, a fake martyr whose death by fentanyl overdose sparked a summer of looting, arson, and homicide followed by a fraud-saturated election.
The Black Lives Matter operation proved to be hustle, that is, an effort to extract money dishonestly. But it morphed into the even more pervasive DEI op, seeping into every institution of American life and contaminating each of them with incompetence and grift, larded with sanctimony. That’s over now, but what is the MAD Democratic Party left with? It has put itself at the service of the depraved Deep State, the rogue permanent bureaucracy that has developed a malevolent hive-mind dedicated to maintaining its perquisites at all costs. In other words, it is vested solely in power...power over the people of this land....to dominate, regulate, asset-strip, and punish for the crime of wishing to be civilized.
The MAD party is on the wane now. Its insanity has become so exorbitant that no one of healthy sensibility can bear to be associated with it. Those who remain involved in Democratic Party politics are largely those liable to prosecution for manifold crimes against the country, now using the most unprincipled dregs of the legal system to keep them out of prison. The party will be defeated utterly.
The Deep State it served is getting disassembled systematically by MAGA, deprived of funding, de-staffed, shut down. It has nothing left but lawfare and a claque of judges who will lose their battle with legitimate law and the Constitution. If it attempts to revive its street-fighting proxies this summer, that too will get shut down swiftly and harshly. Lessons will be learned. All of which is to say that the Deep State’s war against the American people could be drawing to a close. That is something to be grateful for this Memorial Day.
MAGA will then be left to battle with the forces of nature, which basically means physics, especially as applied to the mechanisms of money. MAGA could easily founder if it fails to face the current deformities of finance, namely the gross, untenable debt hanging over the country. I’m not so optimistic about how that might work out."
"How It Really Is"
"In three words I can sum up everything
I've learned about life: it goes on."
- Robert Frost
"Memorial Day, Lest We Forget"
"Memorial Day, Lest We Forget"
By John Kass
"We had some fine traditions in America, though many have been pushed aside because they get in the way of modern politics. And when it comes to patriotism on the days when we mourn our war dead, you can feel the media groaning. Patriots and patriarchs aren’t much appreciated these days. They’re now considered just too toxic, too masculine and they’re such a bother.
America once prized merit and competition. Now, though, we prize politics and our cultural institutions strive to make Beta males. There are unintended costs to all of this, including all those young men lost, boys adrift without fathers to guide them, lonely confused boys who rage in the anonymous shadows of social media. Add unfettered access to violent violent video games, unfettered access to internet porn, raised by mothers who resent the fathers who walked away, shaped by anger and social isolation.
Throw in the absence of a spiritual life and the absence of a common morality. Add guns. This stew of rage boils over into murder sprees, in rural areas, in urban centers. We ignore what we feel in our bones to be wrong. We’d rather play our politics instead.
Ultimately the day comes - and it always comes - when some other powerful nation that isn’t obsessed with creating Beta males shows up with its armies. They come to take all that you have and all that you’d ever dreamed of having. They come to take your food, your life, the lives of your children. Your spine. Your hope. Your identity. Everything. And then you don’t have a country. The landless descend into wandering barbarism. They become as beasts of no nation, because their nation is gone.
Don’t think it can’t happen. It happens. It has happened in many other ages. It happened to Thebes. That nation had destroyed the unstoppable superpower and military might of Sparta, but soon Thebes was itself destroyed, all the way down to the scattered, nameless stones, the people dead or sold off in the slave markets. And who and what they were was forgotten. All that was left were scratches on stones bleaching like bones in the sun.
History tells us these stories again and again, if we’d listen. History warns of what happens to nations that weaken themselves and abandon their own borders, prizing sensitivity and men without chests above virtue.
A culture becoming fragile is awash with tears, but it becomes dry, like pottery. It cracks. And as the ages forget the names, history smirks. When the people are threatened, with the people desperate and frightened, it is then that soldiers are appreciated, welcomed and needed. The armed forces, forming that thin line between civilization and chaos are honored for a time. Though eventually, if they’re successful in defense, they are inevitably forgotten, again. All soldiers throughout history have understood this dynamic, especially in free, prosperous nations like ours.
Our war dead didn’t risk or lose their lives to be praised and petted with flowery words. They knew they were led to slaughter by fine words from the double-tongues about great honor and great sacrifice. But they also knew this: They had a job to do, protecting our liberty and our nation with their bodies and blood. I suppose they hoped, as Americans, that we would live up to our half of the bargain and not dishonor the freedom they’d given to us, that was bought with their lives.
Traditions are an important means for a people trying to stave off cultural betrayal. This is why traditions are often targeted by agents of change. The old traditions remind us who we are, what we were, reminding us of our ideal selves, of virtue lost to time and what we call progress.
Memorial Day is when we mourn the fallen of the United States Armed Forces who died for our liberty. And because it is Memorial Day, not burger and beer day, not sports day, not play video games day, not chips and dip day, there is one tradition I hope we try our best to keep. It involves us taking time out to think hard and long about a soldier’s poem and the poppies, row on row.
“In Flanders Fields” is that soldier’s poem, written in World War I by Col. John McCrae, a man who’d seen the devastation of war, and hopelessness. Yet with clear eyes and a clean heart he wrote of poppy blossoms as rebirth of hope, those bright orange/red papery thin blossoms, as delicate as dreams, waving in the breeze over the freshly dug graves of the dead.
The scene was Ypres, Belgium at a farm converted to a military hospital, where McCrae was an Army doctor, doctor, dealing with pain and death and disease. Flanders Fields is particularly tragic. The political leadership had led their citizens into hell, and still the citizen soldiers marched toward death and the trenches and the barbed wire, and the gas.
My mother, 92 years old and born of the United Kingdom, hasn’t forgotten. She was born in Guelph, Ontario, the town where Col. McCrae is from. She knew his family. They all knew of the McCraes, but they did not treat them as celebrities. Instead, they respected them. My mom would put a book of his poetry on the breakfast table when my sons were little boys, so that we’d remember as we taught the boys. And that is how traditions are maintained.
And my friend Bill Gritsonis, a former soldier of the U.S. Army and member of the American Legion Hellenic Post 343 hasn’t forgotten. The entire American Legion hasn’t forgotten. The legion remembers the poem and the poppy, and members hand out poppies to help commemorate Memorial Day. “We’d hand out the poppies around City Hall,” he said. “Some of the veterans who survived are so very old. They’re still holding on. We have to do this for them, for us, for our kids, for our country. We just can’t forget.”
On this Memorial Day, when too many of us are thinking of grilling meat and drinking beer and staring at ballgames with sports announcer talking of the loss of a game as if it is death. American Legion posts and Veterans of Foreign Wars and many other groups will attend and participate in ceremonies of somber remembrance and mourning.
Some will be at parades in small towns. Or in quiet gatherings in cemeteries. They’ll bow their heads as a bugler plays “Taps” in a town square, or as the notes from the horns echo on the gravestones in great national cemeteries.
American Legion Hellenic Post 343 plans on being at Elmwood Cemetery, in River Grove, Il., as they have for years, since the 2011 dedication of the Hellenic American Veterans Memorial that honors Greeks who served. “This began way before my time, with others, the group as a whole, Hellenic Post 343 bought the land at Elmwood Cemetery, raised the funds,” Gritsonis said. “The Scouts remember. Our former commander, Anastasios “Steve” Betzelos, he’s 98 and a half. He’s going to try to make it.”
Gritsonis isn’t looking for a mention. He’s not like that. Once a top soldier, he doesn’t seek glory in the words of others. He’d rather that I write around his name. But he and other former U.S. Armed Service Personnel and those on active duty will remember. Why? Once you learn about Flanders Fields, once you read the poem, it sears. It is difficult to forget.
And perhaps because we all come from someplace else. We’re Americans. And whatever our ethnicity or creed, we’re bound together by the ideas that maintain our liberty. They’re written in the Constitution of the United States and The Bill of Rights added to the Constitution by wise and great men, that form a nation that is still the last, best hope of mankind on earth.
Some old soldiers will be asked about Col. McCrae’s poem and the poppies on the graves. I hope they’re asked about it. You might want to print this poem out, take it with you to the cemetery, or a parade, or a lonely grave. You might leave a copy of the poem on a picnic table, as others stuff their faces and guzzle beers without a thought of the Americans who gave everything for them. I don’t mean to shake it at them as if it’s some kind of dare. We’ve had too much of that on all sides.
Politicians and their angry mouthpieces are waging wars of words right now over what to do in the aftermath of mass shootings. The way they talk, they’re all about winning some kind of advantage, hoping to crush their political opponents. It’s as if their words were political tomahawks fashioned from the bones of the dead children from that school in Uvalde. The dead children become the pointed tips of their rhetorical spears.
And others wage wars of words over the war in Ukraine, the same voices that frightened the nation about those weapons of mass destruction that couldn’t be found in Iraq, the same voices that argued for that war. The same voices that assured us that Western-style democracy could be imposed on people with no idea or appreciation for our democratic traditions. These are same voices that told us not to worry about the rise of the American Surveillance State.
And all these barking dogs on all sides sound as if they have a deep faith, not in God, but in themselves, and their own special talents. The anonymous life on social media has left them unbound. They rage and become their own gods, and for as long as they keep barking, I suppose they feel they’ll never be held accountable. So the barking continues.
When “In Flanders Fields” was first published anonymously, in the English magazine “Punch” on Dec. 15, 1915, it seemed as there was a common purpose to our history. And then as now, the young wanted so desperately to live. It became an anthem. Here is John McCrea’s poem:
There have been other poems. But this, to me, to many of us, on this Memorial Day, when we mourn our war dead, is one of a kind. ‘Lest we forget."
○
"For the Fallen"
"With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.
But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain."
- Laurence Binyon
John Wilder, "Memorial Day, 2025"
AA gun at Corregidor.
"Memorial Day, 2025"
by John Wilder
“If words cannot repay the debt we owe these men, surely with
our actions we must strive to keep faith with them and
with the vision that led them to battle and to final sacrifice.”
- Ronald Reagan
"Last year when The Mrs. was putting flowers on the graves of her relatives, my job was to drive the car while she located the locations. It was her first year when she actively did that for all of her relatives. Her mother had done that previously, but since my mother-in-law passed, that duty of remembering the family had fallen to The Mrs.
I saw one gravesite in particular, and I decided to research it. It stuck out, because it was the grave of a United States Army officer who died in May of 1942. I was curious. Thankfully, there was at least some information about this officer online. He had been born elsewhere, but went to high school here in Modern Mayberry. His particulars weren’t all that unusual for a young man in the 1930s: he loved baseball, he graduated, went to college, got a degree, got a job, and got married.
While in college, he was in ROTC, so he graduated as a 1st Lieutenant in the Army Reserve. I think even in the mid-1930s people could see the writing on the wall that there was the real possibility of war, so I imagine a core group of people with officer training was just what they wanted on the shelf.
His life was, I imagine, the same as millions of lives in that quasi-Depressionary era. He and his wife welcomed a baby into the world 1940, but by early 1941 the young officer had been drafted back into the Army. He was sent, half a world away, to Manila. I’m sure he told his wife as they shipped him off that his job, thankfully, was to be in the rear with the gear. It would be other people that would really be in the crosshairs of the enemy. Besides, it would be crazy of the Japanese to make a strike at Manilla. That would mean war!
He was at the airfield in Manilla on December 8, 1941, when the Japanese attacked. The planes he was supposed to serve hadn’t arrived. The troops that were supposed to protect the airfield hadn’t arrived. Yet his Company had. On Christmas Eve, 1941, his group was given the task of demolishing the airstrip and leaving nothing the Japanese could make use of. This is generally not a good sign. Then, every man in his Company was given a rifle and told they were now members of the Provisional Air Corps Infantry. This is an even worse sign.
Our young officer and his troops were then ordered to join the defense of Bataan. Bataan is a peninsula that forms the northern part of the entrance to Manila Harbor. To really control Manila and use it as a base, you have to control Bataan. The original allied plans had called for falling back to Bataan and holding out, but MacArthur had thought that defeatist, and planned on a more active defense.
When the Japanese attacked, there weren’t enough supplies for MacArthur’s plan, so they fell back to Bataan, where there also weren’t enough supplies for the defense of Bataan because they stopped shipping those because MacArthur had changed his mind. The Japanese general who would later be fired because it took him too long to defeat the combined American-Filipino army at Bataan also noted that the Americans had numerical superiority, and in his opinion, could have retaken Manila. I’m not sure that going through this exercise made me think more highly of MacArthur ...
If you’re not familiar with the Battle of Bataan, it took over three months, and ended up the largest U.S. Army surrender since the Civil War. Over 76,000 troops were captured. To my knowledge, there is no written record of the Provisional Air Corps Infantry during the Battle of Bataan, though there is a record that on March 4, the 1st Lieutenant was promoted to Captain, just before MacArthur high-tailed it out of the Philippines to safety in Australia.
The troops at Bataan were officially surrendered on April 9, 1942. But in this case, the Provisional Air Corps Infantry was not part of the surrender, and was ordered to the island of Corregidor. Over 20% of the men of the Company had already been lost.
Corregidor was an island that resembled a battleship – at the time of the Japanese invasion, it was bristling with coastal defense guns, mortars, anti-aircraft guns, and minefields. Now that Bataan was taken, the last thing required to control Manilla Bay was that the island forts fall. Corregidor was, by far, the biggest of these.
The Navy ran the guns, but the defense of the beach was the responsibility of the 4th Marine Regiment, along with a ragtag group of other orphan units, including at least one Company from the Provisional Air Corps Infantry and a young Captain from Modern Mayberry, who were sent into the foxholes with the Marines to guard the beaches since they had combat experience from Bataan. Sometime in early May, the young Captain was in one of those foxholes with several Marines, and a Japanese artillery shell hit, killing them all. Even the very date this happened isn’t clear, and his family wouldn’t even hear of his death until a year later.
I don’t know what this young officer from Modern Mayberry did during his time in battle on Bataan and Corregidor – it’s nearly certain that no one alive does. His wife later remarried, half a decade after finding out her husband was dead. His son still bears the name of a father he never knew, if he’s still living.
There is a white cross in a field in Manilla, surrounded by green grass that is regularly cut, where it is said, his body lies. The marker here in Modern Mayberry is only for remembrance, to let people like me know he lived. And, I saw it, and learned his story, and every year around this time, I tell a few people from Modern Mayberry who haven’t heard about him. The Mrs. plans to put some flowers out for him, but even if she doesn’t, I’ll spend some time thinking about him."
Sunday, May 25, 2025
"Alert! Trump: 'Putin's Gone Crazy!' Moscow Nuclear Evacuation Drill; Putin Assassination Attempt!"
Canadian Prepper, 5/25/25
"Alert! Trump: 'Putin's Gone Crazy!'
Moscow Nuclear Evacuation Drill; Putin Assassination Attempt!"
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Jeremiah Babe, "The Whole System Is Corrupt, Next Comes Social Disorder"
Jeremiah Babe, 5/25/25
"The Whole System Is Corrupt,
Next Comes Social Disorder"
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"The Housing Market Is Collapsing And It's About To Get Much Worse"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 5/25/25
"The Housing Market Is Collapsing
And It's About To Get Much Worse"
"Right now, America is facing what might be its most severe housing crisis since the Great Depression. Home sales have plummeted to their lowest levels in over a decade. Young people are being priced out entirely. Construction sites sit stalled across the nation. The housing market, which has been the backbone of American wealth for generations, is entering what experts are calling a "deep freeze." And nobody seems to know how to stop it. Here's what this looks like for everyday Americans: imagine saving for years to buy your first home, only to discover that the average homebuyer is now 56 years old, the highest in recorded history. That's the reality for millions of American families today, and the numbers reveal just how alarming the situation really is."
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"Everyone Is Losing Their Jobs as Economy Crashes, No More Jobs In 2025"
Full screen recommended.
Market Gains, 5/25/25
"Everyone Is Losing Their Jobs as Economy Crashes,
No More Jobs In 2025"
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"13 Big Restaurant Chains Going Out Of Business In 2025"
Full screen recommended.
Downturn Report, 5/25/25
"13 Big Restaurant Chains Going Out Of Business In 2025"
"Is your favorite dining spot at risk? In this video, we take a deep dive into 13 Big Restaurant Chains Going Out Of Business In 2025 - a revealing look at what’s happening behind the scenes in the American food industry. From declining foot traffic to rising labor and food costs, these closures reflect major shifts in how and where we eat. We’ll uncover why these chains are struggling, how consumer habits are changing, and what these shutdowns mean for local workers, customers, and small businesses. By understanding 13 Big Restaurant Chains Going Out Of Business In 2025, viewers can gain insight into larger economic trends - and learn how to adapt in a rapidly changing marketplace.
Whether you’re in the restaurant industry, a loyal customer, or just concerned about the future of dining in America, this video breaks it down and offers real takeaways. Learn what’s next and how communities can bounce back - even as 13 Big Restaurant Chains Going Out Of Business In 2025 becomes a reality."
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"It's Too Late - A Financial Crisis is Rapidly Spreading!"
Full screen recommended.
Steven Van Metre, 5/25/25
"It's Too Late -
A Financial Crisis is Rapidly Spreading!"
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Musical Interlude: Ludovico Einaudi, "Live at Royal Albert Hall, London"
Full screen recommended.
Ludovico Einaudi,
"Live at Royal Albert Hall, London"
Full concert 2:02:07 long.
"A Look to the Heavens"
“M82 is a starburst galaxy with a superwind. In fact, through ensuing supernova explosions and powerful winds from massive stars, the burst of star formation in M82 is driving a prodigious outflow. Evidence for the superwind from the galaxy's central regions is clear in sharp telescopic snapshot. The composite image highlights emission from long outflow filaments of atomic hydrogen gas in reddish hues.
Some of the gas in the superwind, enriched in heavy elements forged in the massive stars, will eventually escape into intergalactic space. Triggered by a close encounter with nearby large galaxy M81, the furious burst of star formation in M82 should last about 100 million years or so. Also known as the Cigar Galaxy for its elongated visual appearance, M82 is about 30,000 light-years across. It lies 12 million light-years away near the northern boundary of Ursa Major.”
"The Reality Of Life..."
"Despite my firm convictions, I have been always a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth."
- Malcolm X
Chet Raymo, “A Sense Of Place”
“A Sense Of Place”
by Chet Raymo
“It would be hard to find two writers more different than Eudora Welty and Edward Abbey. Welty was a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of stories and novels who lived all her life in Jackson, Mississippi, in the house in which she was born, the beloved spinster aunt of American letters. Abbey was a hard-drinking, butt-kicking nature writer and conservationist best known for his books on the American Southwest. Both writers are favorites of mine. Both were great champions of place. I always wondered what it would have been like if they got together. As far as I know, that never happened. But let’s imagine a conversation. I have taken extracts from Welty’s essay “Some Notes on River Country” (1944) and from Abbey’s essay “The Great American Desert (1977) and interleaved them.
“This little chain of lost towns between Vicksburg and Natchez.”
“This desert, all deserts, any deserts.”
“On the shady stream banks hang lady’s eardrops, fruits and flowers dangling pale jade. The passionflower puts its tendrils where it can, its strange flowers of lilac rays with their little white towers shining out, or its fruit, the maypop, hanging.”
“Oily growths like the poison ivy – oh yes, indeed – that flourish in sinister profusion on the dank walls above the quicksand down those corridors of gloom and labyrinthine monotony that men call canyons.”
“All creepers with trumpets and panicles of scarlet and yellow cling to the treetops. There is a vine that grows to great heights, with heart-shaped leaves as big and soft as summer hats.”
“Everything in the desert either stings, stabs, stinks, or sticks. You will find the flora here as venomous, hooked, barbed, thorny, prickly, needled, saw-toothed, hairy, stickered, mean, bitter, sharp, wiry and fierce as the animals.”
“Too pretty for any harsh fate, with its great mossy trees and old camellias.”
“Something about the desert inclines all living things to harshness and acerbity.”
“The clatter of hoofs and the bellow of boats have gone. The Old Natchez Trace has sunk out of use. The river has gone away and left the landings. But life does not forsake any place.”
“In the Sonoran Desert, Phoenix will get you if the sun, snakes, bugs, and arthropods don’t. In the Mojave Desert, it’s Las Vegas. Up north in the Great Basin Desert, your heart will break, seeing the strip mines open up and the power plants rise…”
“The Negro Baptist church, weathered black with a snow-white door, has red hens in the yard. The old galleried stores are boarded up. The missing houses were burned – they were empty, and the little row of Negro inhabitants have carried them off for firewood.”
“…the highway builders, land developers, weapons testers, power producers, clear cutters, oil drillers, dam beavers, subdividers.”
“Eventually you see people, of course. Women have little errands, and the old men play checkers at a table in the front of the one open store. And the people’s faces are good.”
“Californicating.”
“To go there, you start west from Port Gibson. Postmen would arrive here blowing their horns like Gabriel, after riding three hundred wilderness miles from Tennessee.”
“Why go into the desert? Really, why do it? That sun, roaring at you all day long. The fetid, tepid, vapid little water holes full of cannibal beetles, spotted toads, horsehair worms, liver flukes. Why go there?”
“I have felt many times there is a sense of place as powerful as if it were visible and walking and could touch me. A place that ever was lived in is like a fire that never goes out. Sometimes it gives out glory, sometimes its little light must be sought out to be seen.”
“Why the desert, when you could be camping by a stream of pure Rocky Mountain spring water. We have centipedes, millipedes, tarantulas, black widows, brown recluses, Gila monsters, the deadly poisonous coral snakes, and the giant hairy desert scorpions. Plus an immense variety of near-infinite number of ants, midges, gnats, bloodsucking flies, and blood-guzzling mosquitoes.”
“Much beauty has gone, many little things of life. To light up the night there are no mansions, no celebrations. Wild birds fly now at the level where people on boat deck once were strolling and talking.”
“In the American Southwest, only the wilderness is worth saving.”
“There is a sense of place there, to keep life from being extinguished, like a cup of the hands to hold a flame.”
“A friend and I took a walk up beyond Coconino County, Arizona. I found an arrow sign, pointed to the north. Nothing of any unusual interest that I could see – only the familiar sun-blasted sandstone, a few scrubby clumps of blackbush and prickly pear, a few acres of nothing where only a lizard could graze. I studied the scene with care. But there was nothing out there. Nothing at all. Nothing but the desert. Nothing but the silent world.”
“Perhaps it is the sense of place that gives us the belief that passionate things, in some essence, endure.”
“In my case, it was love at first sight. The kind of love that makes a man selfish, possessive, irritable…”
“New life will be built upon these things.”
“…an unrequited and excessive love.”
“It is this.”
“That’s why.”
'You Finally Find What You're Looking For..."
"When we're headed toward an outcome that's too horrible to face, that's when we go looking for a second opinion. And sometimes, the answer we get just confirms our worst fears. But sometimes, it can shed new light on the problem, make you see it in a whole new way. After all the opinions have been heard and every point of view has been considered, you finally find what you're after - the truth. But the truth isn't where it ends, that's just where you begin again with a whole new set of questions."
- "Grays Anatomy"
“10 Things You Should Know About Life’s Most Important Questions”
“10 Things You Should Know About
Life’s Most Important Questions”
Life’s Most Important Questions”
by Marc Chernoff
"It’s a harsh fact that every one of us is ignorant in some way. Although we tend to pretend otherwise, it’s impossible to know it all. Ignorance is our biggest collective secret. And it’s one of the scariest and most damaging realities of life, because those of us who are most ignorant – and thus most likely to spread ignorance – are also the ones who often don’t know it.
Here’s a quick test: If you have never changed your mind about one of your learned beliefs, if you have never questioned the fundamentals of your opinions, and if you have no inclination to do so, then you are likely ignorant about something you think you know.
What’s the quickest solution? Get outside and find someone who, in your opinion, believes, behaves, and handles certain aspects of life very differently from you, and just have a simple, honest conversation with them. I promise, some of life’s most important questions will become clearer by doing so. And it will do both of you lots of good. Once you’ve done that, here are some key things to remember:
1. Many of the biggest misunderstandings in life could be avoided if we would simply take the time to ask, “What else could this mean?”
2. An expert is not a person who gives all the right answers; she’s the one who asks the right questions.
3. Very few of us actively seek new knowledge in this world on a daily basis. We get comfortable with what we know, and we stop questioning things. On the contrary, we try to squeeze from the unknown the answers we have already shaped in our own minds – judgments, justifications, validations, forms of consolation without which we might feel incomplete or off-center. To really ask something new is to open the door to the storm. And the answer just may blow us away.
4. If someone can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about how they answer you.
5. Monsters do exist in the real world, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous in the long run. More dangerous are the common people with good intentions who are instantly ready to believe and act without asking questions.
6. At the end of the day, the questions you ask of yourself determine the type of person you will become.
7. Courage doesn’t happen when you have all the answers. It happens when you are ready to face the questions you have been avoiding your whole life.
8. When it comes to your relationships: Does he/she treat you with respect at all times? That’s the first question. The second question is: If he/she remains the exact same person ten years from now, would you still want to be in a relationship with him/her? And finally, does he/she inspire to be a better human being? When you find someone that you can answer yes to all three questions, you know you’ve found yourself a relationship worth having.
9. Regardless of how much you know, or how many incredible questions you ask, you can never know it all. To believe that you do, is proof of the contrary. The wilderness around us always holds answers to more questions than we have yet learned to ask. And that’s a beautiful thing.
10. Although life will always be filled with unanswered questions, it’s the courage to seek the answers that counts – this journey is what gives life meaning. Ultimately, you can spend your life wallowing in frustration and misery, wondering why you were the one who was chosen to deal with your problems, or you can be grateful that you are strong enough and smart enough to grow from them.
Your turn: Be present and have patience with everything that remains unexplained in your heart and mind. Try to love life’s questions. Like locked doors or like good books written in foreign languages, respect their nature. Don’t expect all the answers to come easy. They cannot be given to you right now because your present understanding isn’t ready yet. It’s a question of experiencing everything first. Right now you need to hold on to the questions – explore, learn, and live your life. Perhaps, as you do, you will gradually find yourself experiencing the answers you always wanted.
So with that said, which of the reminders above hit home the most? Why? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts and insights with us."
Free Download: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”
“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”
by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is, as the title suggests, a simple story of one day in the life of Ivan Shukov Denisovich, a prisoner in a Soviet concentration camp. Shukov, a simple Russian peasant fighting for Stalin in WWII, is imprisoned for treason – a crime he did not commit – and has spent the last 8 years in concentration camps. Shukov’s day begins at 5.00 a.m. with the clang of the reveille – he is, along with the other prisoners, marched out into the bitter cold, stripped and searched for forbidden objects, and then sent to work until sundown, without rest, without a full stomach. In this slim novella, we follow Shukov’s grueling routine and see how he struggles to maintain his dignity in small, subtle ways. On this day, he has scored some small triumphs for himself – he has swiped an extra bowl of mush at supper, found a piece of metal that can be used as a knife to mend things, replenished his precious tobacco supplies and also has had a share of a small piece of sausage before lights out. Thus, at the end of the day (and the novel), he thinks to himself that it has been “A day without a dark cloud. Almost a happy day.” He must survive only another 3653 days more.”
Freely download “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”,
by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, here:
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