Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

Death From Above: Drones Are Changing the Landscape of War

On the third floor of an abandoned factory in Bakhmut, in eastern Ukraine, 39-year-old “Rem” struggles to light a cigarette while holding the remote control of his Chinese-made drone. He swears. Several feet behind him, clad in a bulletproof vest and helmet, a soldier known as “Duke” is surveying a map of the eastern approach to the city on his tablet. A dozen Russian positions have been marked with red crosses, bearing such evocative names as “mattress,” “putin,” and “machine gun.”

The ping of a notification coming from Duke’s phone finally breaks the silence. “Fire,” says Duke in Ukrainian, staring intently at the screen of his tablet. A loud bang rattles the walls and windows, followed by a whizzing sound rapidly rising above the building, getting fainter, and then stopping. A couple of seconds later, the live feed from the drone’s camera shows the shell landing right on a Russian position. “That’s perfect,” exclaims Rem, also in Ukrainian. “Exactly where we needed it.” The two men rejoice. Thanks to their store-bought DJI Matrice drone, the accurate fire from a Polish-made Krab self-propelled howitzer has silenced a Russian automatic grenade launcher.

Both from the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro, Rem and Duke have been serving in the Skala intelligence battalion since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Created and led by Iurii Skala, a veteran of the Donbas war, this battalion is made up of mostly inexperienced volunteers like Rem, who was a car dealer prior to the invasion. 

For three weeks, he and Duke have been surveying enemy movements and directing artillery fire from their position, somewhere in the center of Bakhmut. This small salt-mining town of roughly 70,000 inhabitants has been devastated by months of shelling and gruesome trench warfare that has prompted comparisons to the First World War and the battles of Verdun or Passchendaele. But even as exhausted soldiers shoot at the enemy from mud-filled trenches and men perish by the dozens every day from unending artillery fire, the ever-growing use of drones has revolutionized the nature of the fighting in Bakhmut — and in Ukraine at large.

In the basement of a residential building located a few blocks from their position, a portly officer is bent over a table, listening intently to a walkie-talkie. Facing him is a flat screen television that transmits live footage from a drone circling above the city. The air is thick with anticipation. When word of a successful strike finally comes through, the officer triumphantly throws his fist in the air before slumping back in his chair. “Now we can move easily,” he says, grinning. Guided by one of the Skala battalion’s drones, artillery fire has silenced a Russian position.

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Riddle solved: Why was Roman concrete so durable?

The ancient Romans were masters of engineering, constructing vast networks of roads, aqueducts, ports, and massive buildings, whose remains have survived for two millennia. Many of these structures were built with concrete: Rome’s famed Pantheon, which has the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome and was dedicated in A.D. 128, is still intact, and some ancient Roman aqueducts still deliver water to Rome today. Meanwhile, many modern concrete structures have crumbled after a few decades.

Researchers have spent decades trying to figure out the secret of this ultradurable ancient construction material, particularly in structures that endured especially harsh conditions, such as docks, sewers, and seawalls, or those constructed in seismically active locations.

Now, a team of investigators from MIT, Harvard University, and laboratories in Italy and Switzerland, has made progress in this field, discovering ancient concrete-manufacturing strategies that incorporated several key self-healing functionalities. The findings are published today in the journal Science Advances, in a paper by MIT professor of civil and environmental engineering Admir Masic, former doctoral student Linda Seymour ’14, PhD ’21, and four others.

For many years, researchers have assumed that the key to the ancient concrete’s durability was based on one ingredient: pozzolanic material such as volcanic ash from the area of Pozzuoli, on the Bay of Naples. This specific kind of ash was even shipped all across the vast Roman empire to be used in construction, and was described as a key ingredient for concrete in accounts by architects and historians at the time.

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Russia Says It Shot Down a UFO

Amystery object described by one local news outlet as a “UFO” has been shot down in the southern Russian region of Rostov.

Vasily Golubev, the governor of Rostov oblast, wrote on Telegram that a “small-size object in the shape of a ball” had been discovered flying “in the wind” at an altitude of around one and a half miles on January 3. With the object spotted above the village of Sultan Sala in the region’s Myasnikovsky district, Golubev said “the decision was taken to liquidate it.”

“I urge everyone to remain calm. To ensure security, all forces and means are involved. The sky is covered with anti-aircraft defenses,” he added, without specifying what the object was.

In reporting his comments, local news outlet Pivyet Rostov carried a headline that said “a UFO in the form of a ball was shot down in the sky.”

Telegram channels that night described how air defense systems in Rostov had been operating. The channel Ostorozhna, Novosti (Caution, News) published a video showing a shining object flying and then exploding in the sky.

“Look, another one has gone,” someone is heard saying in the clip, which was captioned, “another video of the work of Rostov regional air defenses.” A witness told the channel how “there was a very strong explosion” and that “everything in the house shook. We realized that the air defenses were in operation.”

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Comet Not Seen Since The Stone Age Will Fly Through The Sky In ‘Once-In-A-Civilization’ Event

A comet not seen since the Stone Age will streak across the night sky this month in a “once-in-a-civilization” sight, providing observers are lucky enough to catch a glimpse.

Initially believed to be an asteroid, the comet was first detected by astronomers Frank Masci and Bryce Bolin at the Palomar Observatory in Southern California in March 2022, according to Space.com.  Later observations however showed the “asteroid” had a “very tightly condensed coma” – an indicator of a comet –  traveling approximately 399 million miles away from the sun, near the orbit of Jupiter, the outlet reported.

After further observation, astronomers were able to determine that the comet, dubbed C/2022 E3, had an orbit that lasted approximately 50,000 years, placing its previous journey through our solar system during the Old Stone Age, Space.com reported.

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J6 committee released docs ‘inadvertently’ containing SSNs, those affected reportedly not alerted

As the final days of the blatantly biased House Jan. 6 committee wound down, it posted online the rotten fruits of its labor — hundreds of documents gathered as part of its quest to quest to end former President Donald Trump’s political career.

According to a new report, included among the “massive cache” of materials were the Social Security numbers of nearly 2,000 high-profile people who visited the White House in December 2020.

On Friday, the second anniversary of the fateful events at the Capitol, The Washington Post reported that the “inadvertently” doxxed individuals include “at least three members of Trump’s Cabinet, a few Republican governors and numerous Trump allies.”

Many of the Social Security numbers listed in the logs were redacted, but The Post reports that roughly 1,900 of them were revealed, including those of South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R), her husband, and her three children.

A spokesperson for Noem, Ian Fury, said the Government Publishing Office (GPO), the original publisher of the file, did not even bother to give Noem a heads-up about the massive breach of privacy.

“To my knowledge, we were not notified,” Fury said. “The governor was not notified.”

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Who Determines What’s ‘Disinformation’?

Why are we being bombarded by fact-checks and “anti-disinformation” efforts in our timeline scrolls? When reading the news, we too often find that so-called experts are behind whatever claim media professionals make, no matter how outlandish or disconnected from reality such claims may be.

Through his concept and exploration of spectacle, a totalizing, negating force over our lives that results in what is really “unlife,” French Philosopher Guy Debord’s famous Society of the Spectacle (1967) and his follow-up booklet, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (1988), provide insights into these and related phenomena. 

When it comes to “fact-checks” and “experts,” Debord is clear: in a society subjugated by the economy, where “everything that was once directly lived has faded into representation,” such professionals do not exist to provide us the truth — they exist to serve the state and media through lies and distortions spun into what appears as true. If the “experts” lose influence, it will be because the public learns and articulates that their job is to systematically lie.

“Disinformation” appears as one of the biggest bogeymen in today’s increasingly online world. Governments warn of the dangers it apparently poses to society and democracy, and mainstream media organizations in turn direct resources to counter-disinformation and to fact-checking. In the name of “being informed,” people cannot often go online without being bombarded by fact-checks or warnings about what content to consume and share with their social and professional networks.

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A Top HHS Official Blocked Release of Long-Delayed Fluoride Toxicity Review, Internal Emails Reveal

Newly released emails reveal that leadership within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) acted to prevent the release of long-delayed review of fluoride’s toxicity by the National Toxicology Program (NTP).

The emails specifically claim that Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine intervened to stop the release of the NTP review, also known internally as a monograph.

An email dated June 3, 2022, shows Nicole Johnson, associate director for policy, partnerships and strategic communication in CDC’s Oral Health Division contacting Jennifer Greaser, a senior public health policy analyst in CDC’s Washington office.

Johnson states:

“The latest we heard (yesterday) is that ASH Levine has put the report on hold until further notice.”

ASH Levine refers to the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Health, Rachel Levine.

The emails were released as part of the ongoing legal dispute between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and plaintiffs Food & Water Watch, the Fluoride Action Network and others who are seeking an end to water fluoridation.

Throughout the historic lawsuit, the plaintiffs have argued that the practice violates the EPA’s Toxic Substances Abuse Act.

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America’s Systemic Racism Problem Is Mostly In Woke, Anti-Asian Education Bureaucracies

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin began 2023 by asking the state’s Attorney General Jason Miyares to investigate the allegation that officials at Thomas Jefferson High School (TJ) intentionally withheld notifications of National Merit awards from the school’s students and families (most of them are Asians) in the name of “equity” and “inclusion.”

Asra Q. Nomani, a human rights activist and a proud mom of a TJ graduate, broke the latest scandal at the school right before Christmas. According to Nomani, the scandal was initially uncovered by another TJ mom, Shawna Yashar, whose son took the PSAT test. He was recognized by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation “as a Commended Student in the top 3 percent nationwide — one of about 50,000 students earning that distinction.” It was the kind of honor that would have helped his applications for colleges and scholarships last fall had the TJ officials not withheld his award announcement. When the TJ officials eventually notified him of his award, the deadline for his college applications had already passed, which rendered the award useless. 

Nomani learned that her son, a graduate of TJ’s class of 2021, was never told by school officials that he was a “Commended Student” in 2020. Even more infuriating is that these two young men’s experiences were not the result of some honest one-time mistake.

Nomani discovered that “the principal, Ann Bonitatibus, and the director of student services, Brandon Kosatka, have been withholding this information from families and the public for years, affecting the lives of at least 1,200 students over the principal’s tenure of five years.” These officials’ actions (or inactions) disproportionally hurt Asian students because the majority of the school’s student body is Asian. By intentionally withholding awards and eventually delivering them late and in a low-key way, these officials robbed the students and their families of chances to celebrate hard-earned achievements. 

In addition, these officials caused undue harm to these students’ college applications and scholarships. For some first-generation immigrants with no other financial resources to fall back on, the damage caused by these school officials’ actions could have a lifetime effect, with some students having to settle for less prestigious colleges or be forced to take out more student loans. 

After Nomani broke the story, TJ’s director of student services, Brandon Kosatka, justified her action by insisting, “We want to recognize students for who they are as individuals, not focus on their achievements.” Does she understand that celebrating someone’s achievement and acknowledging someone’s effort is an important part of recognizing students as individuals? 

Meanwhile, Bonitatibus “still hasn’t publicly recognized the students or told parents from earlier years that their students won the awards. And she hasn’t yet delivered the missing certificates.”

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