As we get into the colder fall weatherI dust off my "fall/winter" comfort food recipes. When you wake up and it's in the 30's, you don't look forward to salad for dinner.
If you are like me you probably have a collection of ground meat in the freezer, beef, veal, pork, venison.
Moosellaneous? Easy to thaw and serve, but you can only do meatloaf so many times on these increasingly colder days.
How about a walk on the Canadian side.
Pâté chinois is a French Canadian dish similar to English Cottage Pie, Shepherds Pie or the French hachis Parmentier. Something I learned to cook from a family member, as, there is a Montreal branch of the Range clan through marriage. I'd posted the recipe on the sidebar, and a quick link a while back, but not all of you may have seen it.
I can also teach you some common French Canadian sayings (which I picked up with the cooking and could be useful in both cooking AND in today's election)
Va pèter dans le trèfle.
‘go fart in the clover’.
Baise-moué l’ailKiss my garlic
Il lui manque des bardeaux.
'He’s missing a few tiles'.
Reçu comme un chien dans un jeu de quilles.
'Welcome as a dog in a bowling alley.’
La rondelle ne roule pas pour lui.
'The puck isn’t going his way'.
Grosse Corvette, p’tite quéquette
‘big car, little uh. . . (euphemism here)
Avoir mal aux cheveux
'To be so sodden with booze and hung-over on the morning after that you are having a ‘hair ache’.
J’ai vu neiger.
I’m not just off the boat.
Ah, but back to the intent of this post.
DINNER!
Pâté chinois
I make this several times a year, especially when I have quite a bit of leftover mashed potatoes. It's a wonderful, easy meal for a chilly, overcast day.
To make from scratch: Boil chunks of 5-6 peeled potatoes and mash with a little butter and milk Just regular mashed potatoes, make your favorite recipe but you're looking for enough to serve 4-6.
Next, chop and saute a large sweet onion in a little olive oil until just starting to soften and caramelize. Add in a pound and a half of ground meat and three to four roasted and chopped cloves of garlic (or about 1 full Tablespoon of the jarred minced garlic) and cook. I used ground sirloin as I was out of venison. If you are using cheap cuts of beef, drain off any large amounts of extra fat.
In the last few minutes of cooking, add in 2 pinches (roughly 1/4 teaspoon) of cinnamon (yes, cinnamon), the same amount of black pepper, a dash of white pepper (if you have it), and a few shakes of salt and one small squirt of Srirachi (or Ketchup for the meek). Heat on low/medium for a few minutes as it finishes cooking. Spread the meat in a deep casserole or a pan that's 13 x 9, or the next size smaller.
Then, spread over the top of the meat, about 3 cups of corn mixed together (I used 1 cup of creamed corn and 2 of regular corn). Spread on the meat. Cover with the mashed potatoes and sprinkle generously with Smoked Hungarian Paprika. Bake at 375 F for 35-40 minutes, until bubbly.
I'm not sure how the name was coined as the French version of "Chinese pie", but one popular theory is that it was introduced to Chinese railway workers by Canadian cooks during the building of the North American railroads in the late 19th century. These cooks made it under instruction from the railway bosses (who were mostly of English descent) as a cheap and easy to make version of the popular cottage pie with the sauce in the tinned creamed-corn serving as a substitute for the gravy.
click on pictures to enlarge, if you dare.
Allegedly, The French Canadian railway workers became fond of it and brought the recipe back with them to their home communities
However the name was derived, it's good. It's often served with ketchup on the side and maybe some pickled beets and a maple cookie. Or just plain.
Either way, it's comfort on a plate. And memories of the good kind of family, whether related by blood, marriage or simply by being a long time friend-- those people you just like and admire.
The US Air Force has undertaken some limited testing of what appears to be the MCK EVO from CAA as the Isolated Personnel Lethality Optimization, or IPLO, device. A USAF release reported that nine Airmen from various Air Force units tested the IPLO system at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawai‘i.
In this featured post from The Survival Mom, she explains how to be more frightening than Count Dracula on a moonlit evening, all in less than 5 seconds.
Quote of the Day Republicans lead Democrats by 31 points among Jewish voters on the congressional ballot, according to a McLaughlin & Associates poll that points to a potential shift among a group that has long favored Democrats. The poll …
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Troopers were called to the 700 block of Walnut Hill Road in Georges Township around 1 p.m. for a reported domestic incident and shooting.
They found a man who’d been shot down on the floor of a home. He died on his way to the hospital.
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Later on, during the same night, Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026, at 3 a.m., Ashe County 911 Center received a call from a female stating a male subject kicked down the door to their Airbnb, and she had shot the suspect when he entered the home.
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And, I guess, that would include most muslims. And if they are Somalis, they are doubly untrustworthy. So put them together and we have a Somali muslim who is also in a position of power in a Maine school district. Abdullahi Ahmed, the Somali-born assistant superintendent for student, family and community partnerships at Portland Public […]
Another anthem worth reading and listening to. Not precisely or exactly about liberty, but closely connected. As readers probably know, Amelia is a goth, purple-haired, mini-skirt-wearing AI avatar originally created by a British NGO (with lots of G [government] involvement, …
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How do you defeat enemies with level IV body armor? This is the question the Canadian Armed Forces have wrestled with when tackling the replacement of their venerable C7 and C8 rifles. It’s a question that many major armies will have to find an answer for as they come to replace their current generation of small arms. The US Army has opted for power and penetration with the Next Generation Squad Weapons program and the new 6.8x51mm round. Earlier this month, at a range day in Copenhagen, Colt Canada explained their answer to the question.
If the Vikings had access to AR-15s, things might have gone a little differently. Judging by these images from Viking Brutality 2026 , they would also have needed a good pair of running shoes. Among the competitors at this year's event was a Viking-inspired shooter carrying an axe in one hand and an AR-15 in the other. Somewhere between a historical reenactment, a modern shooting match, and a fever dream after watching too much Vikings, this look managed to steal the show.
At CANCON West 2026, Russell Phagan set up a miniature FAST stage at the Boulder Rifle & Pistol Club in Boulder City, Nevada, so attendees could get a taste of what his Firearms Action Shooting Trials matches throw at competitors. I stopped by the stage to talk with Russell about what he packed into the scaled-down version and what shooters can expect at a full match.
Every AR-15 since the original has relied on a pair of takedown pins to hold the upper and lower together. The X-Ordnance X1-15 drops them entirely. Its patented quick-release system lets the rifle be fully assembled or taken apart in seconds, with no traditional takedown pins to push out or get stuck.
One of the quietest pistols of the Vietnam era had a trick that had nothing to do with the suppressor: the slide could be locked shut, so the action did not make a sound. It was nicknamed the Hush Puppy, and the idea has mostly lived in history books and collector displays. Shark Coast Tactical has now put it on a modern carry pistol and named the result the Shark Puppy.
Hurricane season has reached the firearms industry, and it is carrying a US Palm logo. Long known for AK pistol grips, magazines and soft goods, US Palm is now entering the rifle and suppressor markets with a two-part launch: the CAT 4 Storm series of rifles and the EOS series of suppressors. Both debuted at SHOT Show 2026 in Las Vegas, and both are now available.
At CANCON West 2026, @BallisticAviation talked with Justus Hall of BOE Suppression about the company’s IncoLite line. BOE is the suppressor brand of C Products Defense, the company behind Duramag magazines. Its first can, the Mod 1, pairs a printed core with a serialized outer sleeve. The IncoLite series is fully 3D printed from Inconel 718, with geometry that adds strength where it’s needed and cuts weight where it isn’t. The lineup has three 9mm models, all 1.5 inches in diameter and threaded for 1.375" HUB/Bravo mounts.
Glock 17 Gen 6 owners who wanted a compensated, threadless barrel have been waiting while Radian started with other models. The Afterburner + Ramjet system launched first for the G19 and G45, with a G17 variant to follow, and that G17 version is now official. It comes in three colorways, including black, grey (below) and bronze (above).
At CANCON West 2026, @BallisticAviation talks with Jesse of Wraith Metalworks about the Wraith Modular Suppression System, which builds suppressors as configurable platforms instead of sealed, fixed units. Its interchangeable baffles fit across three tube diameters: the 1.88-inch Sentinel, 1.575-inch Ambush, and 1.45-inch Raider. Users can combine tube lengths, extensions, baffle stacks, and end caps to tune for sound, gas blowback, recoil, flash, length, or weight on a given host. Even Wraith’s pre-configured models can be broken down and rebuilt into a different setup.
I was drifting off to sleep last night and I felt something odd on my belly. A little itchy lump like a small scab except it would not scratch off. Yes, a tick. We put in a plastic bag. From the pictures, it appeared to be a deer tick and a rash was beginning to bulls eye around it, so we ran off the an ER about 10:30. There was no waiting get in. They confirmed it was a deer tick. The doctor said Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever are pretty rare here from ticks (he has never seen either) but to be sure, I was given two doxycyclines and a tetanus shot. He used some lidocaine and a scalpel to remove the head which was still in my flesh. I had taken all my evening medications just before getting into bed so I was on the edge of sleep the entire time.
Truthfully, IMO, the SuperBowl half time shows have completely sucked since 2019. Not coincidentally, that’s when the NFL gave Mr. Beyonce aka JayZ’s company, Roc Nation, control over the content. Let’s revisit, shall we? 2026: Bad Bunny 2025: Kendrick Lamar 2024: Usher with Ludacris, Lil Jon, Jermaine Dupri, will.i.am, Alicia Keys, & H.E.R 2023: Rihanna […]
The legal firearm inside an Echelon weighs 3 oz (85 g) and measures 4.3 x 1.9 in (10.9 x 4.8 cm). Springfield Armory is now selling that piece on its own, which means you can buy the serialized heart of the pistol and build everything around it yourself.
Quote of the Day It takes a special kind of arrogance to ignore a court order and continue enforcing a law that has been ruled to be unconstitutional, yet here we are. The state is doing nothing more than wasting …
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Jackie Richardson's shelter pup, Duke, loves the freedom to run on her 10 acre property in the country. Jackie discovered a solution for keeping him safe from the surrounding livestock and busy road: the PetSafe Guardian GPS Dog Fence.
NEW from Benelli comes a freshly redesigned shotgun gas system on the M2 platform. How does it stand up to the other Benelli Tactical shotguns?
The homeowner told officers he was awakened by an unusual noise coming from his living room and, when he went to investigate, encountered an unknown male inside the home. Police said the homeowner fired, striking the individual.
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While deputies were en route, the caller reported that Creekmore had forced entry into the home. Harris said a woman inside, whose name is being withheld, fired the shots that killed Creekmore. Deputies arrived and found him deceased from an apparent gunshot wound.
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By Dave Workman A recently-released analysis of childhood fatalities upends a long-standing assertion by the gun prohibition lobby that firearms are the leading cause of death among children. Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, California-based attorney Kostas Moros, SAF director of Legal Research and Education, posted a Fact Sheet which, among […]
The post New SAF Analysis of CDC Data Upends ‘Child Death’ Mantra appeared first on Liberty Park Press.
Daga faces up to 40 years in state prison.
On October 25, 1415, the Battle of Agincourt (aka Azincourt): Henry V‘s forces defeated a larger French army as the longbow overcame the French armored knights. — October 26, 1774: Minutemen were organized in US colonies. — October 26, 1881: Perhaps the most famous shootout in the history of America’s Wild West took place at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. On the one side stood the so-called forces of law and order: Wyatt Earp, his brothers Virgil and Morgan, and Doc Holliday. By reputation these were power-hungry and ruthless men. Opposing them were the outlaws Billy and Ike Clanton, …
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A voluntary association begins when two or more people agree to pursue a common purpose together. That arrangement can be remarkably simple. People who already buy many of the same necessities, possess different skills, or have resources that complement one another, can decide to cooperate rather than approach every need as an entirely separate and individual household problem. The significance of that decision is economic as much as organizational. When individual households combine a predictable demand, they can sometimes obtain purchasing opportunities or services that would be difficult to obtain separately. If the resulting savings are retained rather than immediately …
The post Voluntary Associations – Shopping for Survival, by W.T. appeared first on SurvivalBlog.com.
During the summer of 2025, I was enjoying a picnic in a park with my wife, “Kari” and my youngest daughter “Rivka.” Part way through the meal, Rivka commented, “Wow, the cicadas certainly are deafening. My immediate response was: “What cicadas?” In the days of my youth, we had access to earmuff style hearing protection. The problem was that they were dumb muffs. They prevented the wearer from hearing both what he wanted to hear and what he did not want to hear. Therefore, I didn’t wear hearing protection whenever there might be something that I wanted to hear. I …
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Today’s graphic is a map that shows every license plate reader volunteers have mapped in the US: 144,000+, 81% of them are Flock cameras. Note the dearth of ALPR cameras in the American Redoubt, in most of Nevada, and in the Dakotas. (Graphic courtesy of Reddit.) The thumbnail image below is click-expandable. Notes on the available data: OpenStreetMap via DeFlock (mapped by volunteers, so it’s a floor, not a census). An interactive version with city/county/state breakdowns: https://takip.dev/country/united-states/flock-cameras The densest big city per person is Sandy Springs, GA (~193 per 100k); the most in absolute terms is Houston …
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In Economics & Investing Media of the Week we feature photos, charts, graphs, maps, video links, and news items of interest to preppers. The thumbnail below is click-expandable. (Graphic courtesy of Reddit.) Economics & Investing Links of Interest Housing Starts Collapse Near COVID Lows As Homebuilder Confidence Crashes. US pending home sales tumble to record low in September. Zillow: United States Housing Market update. Streaming Now Costs $144 a Month. That’s More Than Cable Cost When You Cut It. JWR’s Comment: This ties in to my recent article: Endless Expenses: Modern Life in The Subscription Model. Feds Say Bank Of …
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SurvivalBlog presents another edition of The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods. This column is a collection of news bits and pieces that are relevant to the modern survivalist and prepper from JWR. Our goal is to educate our readers, to help them to recognize emerging threats, and to be better prepared for both disasters and negative societal trends. You can’t mitigate a risk if you haven’t first identified a risk. In today’s column, some more technological risks. Sleepwalking Into World War III? Are we sleepwalking into World War III? Riots are Spreading Across Western Europe Reader D.S.V. suggested this New York …
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Our weekly Snippets column is a collection of short items: responses to posted articles, practical self-sufficiency items, how-tos, lessons learned, tips and tricks, and news items — both from readers and from SurvivalBlog’s editors. Note that we may select some long e-mails for posting as separate letters. — Ukraine carries out first ever aerial drone evacuation of a wounded soldier from the frontline. JWR’s Comment: Drone medevac may soon become the norm for all but the most severe trauma cases. o o o A practical essay by our friend Patrice Lewis: The power of repurposing. o o o Reader Tim …
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REDOUBT NEWS LINKS This weekly column features media from around the American Redoubt region. (Idaho, Montana, eastern Oregon, eastern Washington, and Wyoming.) Much of the region is also more commonly known as The Inland Northwest. Oregon Father Tracks, Kills School Shooter in Bend. (Kaylub Giamanco is pictured above.) Note that this is the second time in four months that armed citizens in The American Redoubt have stepped up to save lives when psychopaths opened fire on innocents. – JWR) Video: Interview: Bend father who fatally shot teenage school shooter. And in related news, D.S.V. sent this: Parent Who Stopped Oregon School …
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To be prepared for a crisis, every Prepper must establish goals and make both long-term and short-term plans. In this column, the SurvivalBlog editors review their week’s prep activities and planned prep activities for the coming week. These range from healthcare and gear purchases to gardening, ranch improvements, bug-out bag fine-tuning, and food storage. This is something akin to our Retreat Owner Profiles, but written incrementally and in detail, throughout the year. We always welcome you to share your own successes and wisdom in your e-mailed letters. We post many of those — or excerpts thereof — in the Odds …
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The latest meme created by JWR: Meme Text: There Is Artificial Intelligence… And Then There Is Genuine Stupidity Notes From JWR: Do you have a meme idea? Just e-mail me the concept, and I’ll try to assemble it. And if it is posted then I’ll give you credit. Thanks! Permission to repost memes that I’ve created is granted, provided that credit to SurvivalBlog.com is included.
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“The relative freedom which we enjoy depends on public opinion. The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.” – George Orwell
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Ruger is one of the world’s premier firearms manufacturers, and certainly one of the USA’s – and it has been much in the news today. First, the allegations that Italy’s Beretta was trying to take over this quintessentially American company, and second, the sudden discontinuance of some of Ruger’s most classic models.As to the latter, […]
Went up to theBeta Site yesterday to go hunting. How’d I do? Didn’t see a thing, and enjoyed every moment of it. Why wouldn’t I? Im doing what I want, how I want, where I want, and every single thing …
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The Second Amendment Foundation put all their infographics on a single web page: Just the Facts – Second Amendment Foundation
Government-run, tax-funded schools are the “standard” – even today, most people who home-school their children, or even who use private schools (including parochial ones) are looked on as being abnormal. While there are many problems with the GRTF schools, here …
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I can’t say this without aging myself, but the MP5 started it all for me when I first saw Charlie Sheen’s portrayal of the insubordinate Lt. Dale Hawkins in the 1990 movie Navy SEALs . Nothing in the world seemed cooler at the time than waking up hungover on a beach, jumping out of a moving Jeep off a bridge into the waterway below, crashing through the doorway with a suppressed submachine gun, smoking a few bad guys, heading home to play a round of golf with the boys to the tune of The Boys Are Back in Town, and saving my vehicle from being impounded via a daring bicycle rescue from a moving tow truck.
Colin Chapman built Lotus around one stubborn rule: simplify, then add lightness. Somewhere in Herstal, Belgium, the engineers behind the FN EVOLYS clearly got the memo - just some 70 years later. Belt-fed firepower has always come with a bill, paid in kilograms and sore shoulders. The EVOLYS was developed to shrink it.
Savage’s hiatus from the lever gun scene lasted about 25 years. Their last model made in the 90s, the Model 99 , was hailed as both a commercial and technical success, with many calling it “The Jeep of the Gun World” or sometimes “The King of Lever Guns.” Now, more than 25 years later, the company is three models deep in its rimfire lever comeback, and the newest one is one I think has been long overdue in the rimfire industry. The Revel Tactical was announced on October 8th, and it replaces the walnut of the Revel Classic and DLX with an MDT synthetic stock, a factory Picatinny rail, and functional M-LOK slots. After a handful of range sessions and several bulk boxes of ammo through the rifle in this month alone, I can say Savage got most of the fundamentals, and the requests we’ve all had right. So let's dig into Savage’s new tiny tactical lever gun.
It was also the day of discovery for broken parts, fortunately none optical. The amount of force involved in the moving truck guillotine our dining room table. It is no surprise other parts experienced unreasonable forces.
The upper cage of Big Bertha has a diagonal mirror assembly that reflects the light from the primary mirror into the eyepiece focuser. There are four screws at the top of the cage. Three are collimation screws for making very subtle adjustments of diagonal mirror position. Like half a turn of a 32 threads per inch screw (.031" per turn). There is also a center screw that positions the whole diagonal mirror holder fore and after in the tube. This has an adjustment knurled nut. The screw was bent about 60 degrees. One I extracted it from the diagonal holder, I put it in the vise wrapped.in rubber and clamped it in two axes until straight again. To my surprise, it all worked perfectly.
At the stern, there were several weights to improve balance, held in a 1/4-20 thumbscrew which was hideously bent. If i had another of these unusually long brass thumbscrews, i would have just replaced it. It is a weird size and i picked brass to avoid chewing up thr aluminum mirror cell into which yhis screws.This time I both straightened it rethreaded it by first two axis squeezing in a vise wrapped in rubber sheeting, then holding it by the thumb end in the vise and turning a steel hex nut down its length until any thread discrepancies were turned out. (I thought i took a picture of this. )
Another disappointment was that the 5" refractor got banged hard enough through all the foam rubber for the diagonal and focus knob to get shoved into the tailpiece (thr human end of the tube) so hard that the thumb locking screw that prevents the diagonal from falling out was so hopelessly bent that the focus knobs would not move the focus tube out. When I tried to usei pliers to unscrew the locking screw it broke off where it turned into the focuse tube. Oh no
The tailpiece is held in the tube by three machine screws. I removed them expecting that the broken locking screw could be removed with a screw extractor, which I hate to use. To my pleasure, just enough of the thread body was proud of the tube to get my fingernails on and unscrew it. Now the focuser tube comes out. The hideously expensive and clever Ukrainian chromatic aberration corrector was not damaged; it cost more than the rest of the refractor and made it equivalent in optical quality to some that cost $3000
Problem solved, right? No. The rack and pinion assembly was also beaten up. Once I opened it, the shaft on which the pinion gear sits was bent as was the metal plate that holds the pinion gear at the right tension to the rack.
Back to the vise to straighten the shaft and bend the metal plate back to the original shape. It looks right but it does not turn as smooth as it should.
I had thought a while back of replacing the focuser with a dual speed focuser. These have different speeds on the ends of the shaft and are really nice for getting very sharp focus. Instead I replaced one of the focus knobs with one I turned in aluminum twice the diameter. This almost the same result because you can make very tiny movements of that bigger knob to get almost the same result.
I guess i now have a reason to do that upgrade. The GSO dual focus tailpiece has a 112.5mm outer diameter flange. The interior tube diameter is 125mm. I just need to turn a piece 112.6mm ID and 124.9mm OD to adapt it.
The final fun of the day was putting the 8" mirror back in its tube. This is hard for several reasons.
1. The cell is perhaps 1/8" smaller diameter than the tube ID. If you are not exactly square going in. It will get stuck.
2.The holes into which the machine screws turn that hold the cell in the tube are not easy to find once the cell is approximately the right position.
3. When I drilled these holes in the 1990s, I had no terribly precise way to get holes exactly 120 degrees apart. I used a tape measure and I am very close. You still need to remember not to tighten down any screws until all are started.
This is always a pain to do but Rhonda has the patience to help me do these hard tasks.
The day was not over. Big Berrha is a half-Surrier truss Dobsonian. There is an upper csge with eyepiece and diagonal and a lower cage holding thr mirror. They are held at the right distance by 6 1" diameter aluminum poles forming three triangles for light stiffness. Unless you are eight feet tall, putting the upper cage on top of those poles is difficult especially poo especially because those six poles look like you are wrestling a confused insect.
Rhonda has much better spatial reasoning than me so she figured out that it made more sense to put the upper cage on the poles and lower the poles into their lower cage receivers.
Big Bertha is reassembled; she collimated more easily than I expected. Tomorrow i will collimate the 8". I am hoping the concrete pad where the telescopes will roll in front of the shop will be done setting by Wednesday.
Best known as Pavel Chekov on the original Star Trek, Walter Koenig also did a stint as the sinister Bester, a Psi-Cop on Babylon 5. He was 90 years old.
The Vickers Machine Gun is one of the weapons we instantly associate with the World War One but did you know it was in service with the British Army for 56 years? Well, this was the recent focus of the Vickers MG Collection & Research Association’s first major exhibition.
At the beginning of 2026, the UK took a fresh approach to equipping its armed officers. The Metropolitan Police ran the Police Primary Carbine System Framework , which selected 6 carbines which could be procured directly by other UK police forces.
ZeroTech Optics USA has introduced the Thrive HD Reflex Sight 3 MOA, a compact 1x optic designed for compatible pistol, rifle and shotgun mounts. The sight uses an RMR mounting footprint and ships with both low and high Picatinny bases in the box.
In case ya aren’t familiar with the M&P FPC 22, Smith & Wesson brought it to market in the summer of 2025. It offers plenty of tactical features—it’s suppressor-ready, it has a forend covered with a generous slathering of MLOK slots as well as a Picatinny rail on top, it ships with three 20-round magazines—and it folds in half to make it compact for transportation or storage.
MDT has expanded its JAE-G5 for the right-hand Remington 700 long action CIP, bringing the chassis to magnum-length builds that run CIP-length magazines.
Wowzahs! Take a look at Syren USA’s new YouTube channel, featuring pro-staffers Grace Callahan and Kate Ahnstrom. Syren also comes out of the box, both barrels blazing with an announcement about shooting clinics for 2027 across the nation.
Quote of the Day Aside from such obvious risks and liabilities, the in-development Wi-Fi system raises all kinds of privacy and legal exposure concerns. Because the absence of metal detectors or visible cameras notwithstanding, this is hardly, as the report …
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Gone to drop trou and found a gun in a public lavatory? Here's the ins and out of safely addressing the situation.
So the Cornell thing has completely fallen off the news cycle. The last we heard was that one person was taken off her lawsuit because he wasn’t the president of the frat at the time that the, from accounts from Jane et al, consensual group sex activity happened. The NY Times tried a last gasp […]
Even though I keep an accurate inventory of my cigars, things do get forgotten or overlooked. Recently, I added some additional Spanish cedar trays to my humidor in an effort to make organization easier. Doing so meant removing the cigars before placing them back in the trays. Not surprisingly, I picked up more than one cigar and thought, “I should smoke that.”
One such cigar was the Rocky Patel Grand Reserve. I still had a few Robustos left from a purchase back in August 2024.
The Grand Reserve was first released in 2018 for distribution in Europe. It proved to be very popular and was subsequently released in the U.S. in the summer of 2020. Rocky Patel does not officially disclose the tobaccos used in the blend, although the company does note that the cigars are manufactured in Honduras and incorporate aged tobaccos.
The cigar starts off with a creamy, leathery note. A mix of peanuts and toasted almonds joins in as the cigar warms. As I smoked, the flavor shifted toward an enjoyable blend of sweetness and spice, with caramel and cedar in the background. The medium-bodied smoke was never heavy or dark, maintaining a flavorful balance throughout.
I paired the Rocky Patel with an Old Fashioned made with J. H. Bards Skipper’s Select Toasted Barrel Bourbon. The bourbon has a very light toasted note when sipped neat, though that note was less apparent in the cocktail. The Old Fashioned proved to be a good complement to the cigar on a pleasant fall evening.
While enjoying the Rocky Patel Grand Reserve, I found myself thinking about other cigars I hadn’t smoked in a long time. Rearranging the humidor had brought some of them back to my attention. I may have trouble locating specific cigars in their new locations for a while, but I’ve also rediscovered plenty of overlooked cigars that I look forward to getting reacquainted with.
Cheers!
10/26/26 Guardian:
The unintended actions flagged by Anthropic included a model submitting a fake tip about an unsolved murder to the Philadelphia police department. The US state department also revealed this month that Anthropic model had filed 19 visa applications in August.
So did Claude also request naturalization for its agents? Or does birthright citizenship apply to clankers, too?
I am doing rebuttals of expert declarations again. One of the declarations make a claim about the absence of firearms in U.S. military hospitals in the Framing Era. This is not intrinsically absurd but the expert claims to have read James Thacher's Military Journal and found evidence contradicting her claim. It is 600 pages. I need to read it myself rather than rely on AI to characterize its contents.
Requiring a historian to read a contemporaneous, often eye-witness account of the American Revolution is rather like being paid to taste test every pizza joint in your town.
Judging by the wheels, windshield and lack of a CHMSL ("center high-mounted stop lamp", aka the third brake light) this Guards Red Porsche 944 is a 1985 model, I think.
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At 10:25 a.m. in the 3100 block of West Cermak Road, a 23-year-old man was outside at the above l when two people approached on foot. Police said a fight ensued, at which time the 23-year-old male, who is a valid CCL and FOID cardholder, produced a firearm and fired shots toward the individuals. One of the individuals was shot in the body and was taken to Mt. Sinai Hospital in critical condition.
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Detectives said other surveillance video shows McIntosh returning and throwing a cup of hot coffee in West’s face before charging at him multiple times and punching him.
Police said the altercation escalated when McIntosh knocked West to the ground and used a firearm magazine that had fallen from the guard’s vest to repeatedly strike him in the head. McIntosh also threatened to kill West, according to police.
The two continued struggling around a car, along with a second security guard. McIntosh broke away from the altercation, with West then firing three shots at him.
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I had an unusual experience on my afternoon walk today. Let me set the stage… I live in a very upscale outer suburb of Austin, Texas. There are tons of city and neighborhood parks nearby. The area is extremely safe with a responsive police force and a really low crime rate. Violent crime […]
The Dayattherange rimfire suppressor accuracy database continues to grow. Rather than starting over every time another suppressor becomes available, I want to continue putting new suppressors through the same Vudoo 360/Lapua Midas+ accuracy test and adding those results to the existing data. This time we added three more: the Anechoic Pip Squeak, Thunder Beast Takedown […]
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Next, chop and saute a large sweet onion in a little olive oil until just starting to soften and caramelize. Add in a pound and a half of ground meat and three to four roasted and chopped cloves of garlic (or about 1 full Tablespoon of the jarred minced garlic) and cook. I used ground sirloin as I was out of venison. If you are using cheap cuts of beef, drain off any large amounts of extra fat.
I'm not sure how the name was coined as the French version of "Chinese pie", but one popular theory is that it was introduced to Chinese railway workers by Canadian cooks during the building of the North American railroads in the late 19th century. These cooks made it under instruction from the railway bosses (who were mostly of English descent) as a cheap and easy to make version of the popular cottage pie with the sauce in the tinned creamed-corn serving as a substitute for the gravy.
Allegedly, The French Canadian railway workers became fond of it and brought the recipe back with them to their home communities
