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Admiral Collingwood was Nelson's second in command at Trafalgar, and led the second division of ships of the line on HMS Royal Sovereign.  Because this was the Age of Sail and because the wind was so light, HMS Sovereign was under fire for an hour as it approached the French/Spanish battle line.  But the day ended as Collingwood had predicted to his officers earlier.  Now, gentlemen, let us do something today which the world may talk of hereafter. 

As we are today.

The news is that the Union Jack flag flown from the Royal Sovereign was purchased at auction last year by a foreign buyer and was set to leave the country.  As one of only three surviving flags from the battle, historic preservation laws were invoked by the UK Ministry of Culture and the export was suspended to allow local UK organizations to match the purchase price.

Well, that has been done, and the flag will be displayed at the Discovery Museum at Newcastle-on-Tyne, Collingwood's home town*.

Bravo Zulu to the donors for preserving part of Britain's Royal Navy heritage.

* And not just Collingwood - many of Royal Sovereign's crew came from Newcastle as well.

Police said officers detained the shooter, whom they identified as a uniformed security guard contracted by QuikTrip.

Investigators say the man who was shot pulled a gun during a confrontation, and the guard fired in response.

The guard was later released, and the man who died has not been identified as the investigation continues.

More Here

EPD says both victims stated they did not know who had shot them, or why. Officers say the victim who had been shot in the chest did admit to shooting back as they were being shot at. Both victims’ injuries are listed as non-life threatening.

More here 

Reading of his [Pius X] defense of cigars as not being a vice, I was reminded of a story that a cigar smoking priest of the Diocese of Tulsa, who is now in training for the Vatican diplomatic corps, told me. When he was a seminarian in Rome, he learned that Pius X, who was the pope from 1903 to 1914, called a bishop onto the carpet to reprimand him for his scandalous misbehavior with wine, women and song, and to correct his wrongs patiently.

The pope offered the errant bishop a cigar from the papal humidor on his desk. The bishop declined the offer with the protestation, “I do not have that vice, Your Holiness,” to which His Holiness replied, “If cigars were a vice, I would not offer you one, for you have quite enough vices already.”

Apparently, some of Clancy's defenders are relying on this. What is it?

Forensic astrology is a specialized branch of astrology that applies astrological techniques to investigate past events, solve crimes, locate missing persons, and profile suspects.  It utilizes event charts, horary charts, and natal charts to analyze planetary alignments and zodiacal degrees for clues, rather than predicting the future.

Key aspects of this practice include:

• Chart Analysis: Practitioners examine specific houses, such as the 7th house for perpetrators or the 8th house for death and transformation, to determine motives and outcomes. 

• Techniques: Methods include analyzing angular planets, mutual receptions, and fixed stars like those in the Via Combusta zone to identify danger or violence. 

• Applications: It is used to map disappearance points, trace timelines for missing persons, and interpret crime scene data, often appearing in crime fiction and true-crime analysis. 

• Resources: Notable texts include Forensic Astrology for Everyone by Caroline J. Luley and Exploring Forensic Astrology by B.D. Salerno, which detail methods for amateur and professional astrologers. 

 8/20/26 CNN:

FBI raids former Rep. Eric Swalwell’s home, seizes devices in probe tied to sexual assault claims

The clarification in the article got us out of naughty land:

Federal agents seized electronic devices from former Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell at the San Francisco airport on Saturday and then raided his home in Washington, DC, the next day as part of an ongoing probe connected to sexual assault allegations, sources familiar with the investigation told CNN.[emphasis added]

 Earlier this year, I blogged about Lindsay Clancy's suit against her doctors for failure to properly treat her for postpartum depression. So far, my mass murder research has found 112 mass murders that were clearly postpartum depression and 261 that were likely caused by postpartum depression. This is just stupid. She is not a victim. She is not disputing that she killed her children. There is nothing inappropriate about trying her. She has a very strong case for not guilty by reason of insanity.

We can grieve for the father and the deranged mother. But wearing pink, a politically charged color?

At our Caldwell house, we had purchased a home warranty plan from American Home Shield. We were not impressed. When the dishwasher failed, it was not a crisis so several days for them to get a technician out was okay. The replacement went okay.

The second incident disappointed us muchly. The well pump failed and we could not seem to impress upon the Third World support team that this was a serious matter. For all we knew, they may have assumed we could just go to the village well. (Okay, I am being sarcastic; more likely, what they pay third parties to take a look left them with few vendors.) 

After several days of flushing toilets with irrigation canal water and using bottled water for drinking, cooking and washing dishes, they agreed to let us hire our own well company. We had already made the appointment. Then we discovered that well pumps were limited to $1500. That will get you a very dedicated illegal with a long straw.

It was only $5000 to replace the well pump. The technician from Burgess Pump & Well (who I can highly recommend), explained that it was too small a pump for the motor, which they ran at too high a voltage to overcome this. While it let them come in below responsible well drillers, it meant less than three years of life. American Home Shield sent us a $1400 check ($1500-deductible).

For this house we picked the well-rated First American Home Warranty. The HVAC technician found frost at the compressor, which usually indicates a Freon leak in the system. As this unfreezes, the system starts working again. This explains why it started working again many hours later. 

She also explained the repair process. First American has them check for a Freon leak. If that solves it, great. Only afterwards will they look at replacing the compressor. She indicated previous owners may have suffered this same problem and an HVAC tech told them the compressor needed replacing. They would, of course, have not spent that much money.

 Cougars  (catamount, panthers, whatever) are in lots of places where the Wildlife Weenies don't seem to want to admit that they have cougars.  Like in Michigan for example. Good for Michigan for admitting what landowners and hunters have known for years.

When I lived in Natchitoches Parish in the early 80s, I had panthers on my property.  i would hear then occasionally and saw them twice.  Ours were dark brown, almost chocolate and would appear black in certain light conditions.  The neighbors would talk about sightings, but the wildlife weenies would not admit that we had then in the area.  okay, fine. In 2002 I wrote about it on Castbullet.

If you want to stir up some crap around a campfire, tell then that there is no such thing as a black panther.  In certain low-light conditions a brown panther will look black. That is what people see and that is what they report.  If you go back to the little video linked above, one of the photos looks black.

I'm just glad that they are out there.

A preliminary investigation indicated that four unidentified men robbed the victim's cousin of a Rolex watch reportedly valued at $25,000, police said.

An additional suspect approached the 25-year-old man on a bicycle and pointed a handgun at him, according to investigators.

Police said the man, who is licensed to carry a gun, drew his weapon to defend himself and his cousin. His firearm malfunctioned, however, and he was shot.

The suspects fled eastbound on Juniata Street. Police recovered the victim's gun at the scene.

More Here

By Lee Williams SAF Investigative Journalism Project There was initially a lot of talk about releasing Patrick “Tate” Adamiak from federal custody after President Donald Trump won his second term. One senior government official actually said Adamiak would be “home by Christmas” of last year, which thrilled Adamiak’s family. After all, to this day they […]

The post Tate Adamiak Has Been in Prison Longer Under President Trump than Under Biden appeared first on Liberty Park Press.

Dataless:

You should backup your data. You should have multiple backups of your data. You should have multiple rotating or rolling backups of your data. You should have multiple rotating or rolling backups of your data saved to different types of backup media. Ideally, you should have multiple rolling or rotating backups of your data saved to different types of backup media including off-site backups.

Evidently, a PBS station didn’t follow any of these rules. Instead they handed their data to a third-party, said “Here, we’ll pay you to store it for us,” and now they’re screwed because the company went defunct.

Le sigh.  Lawrence brings the hammer down on their IT organization:

Nor can this PBS station plead poverty: “2022 their gross income was [about] $13.5 million expenses 12.8 million. Their net was 3/4 of a million. So the net that is what they got to keep after paying all the employee salaries, after paying the directors 700,000 bucks.” Yeah, they could afford a local backup solution. 

 And quite frankly, so can you.  ASM826 and I wrote at length about this a decade ago.

 On this 19th day of August we are officially in the dog days of summer.  The local weather weenies tell us that our afternoon temps will flirt with triple digits, if not surpass it. As we approach the typical peak of the hurricane season, the tropics are unusually quiet. Thus far we have had only three named storms, and I had to verify that  It is quiet.

The national weather weenies tell us that fall teps are just around the corner.  That is well and good for the rest of you, but I am aware that I live in Deep South Louisiana and.  We are two months away from taking out the flannel shirts.

This is the first day in a while that Belle and I have nothing scheduled.  No appointments, no obligations. the only problem with doing nothing is that you are never sure when you have finished. As such, I pulled some fish from the freezer, and it is thawing in the sink.  I'll make a run up to the Dollar Store in a bit to pick up some french fries.

The post MG51: When the Swiss Make an MG42 first appeared on Forgotten Weapons.

The first finally had an answer, 50 years later. 

Boone, N.C. (1972)

02/05/1972: The mother called a relative to report three intruders in her home. When police arrived, mother, father, and son had been strangled with nylon cord “while their heads were held under water in the bathtub.” The sheriff told a reporter that “the identities of the three suspects were known.” Fifty years later, police identified four men (three already dead, the fourth already serving life for other offenses), members of the “Dixie Mafia,” who were hired to do this. The son of the surviving murderer told police of his father’s confession. They did not identify who hired them.

Category: family non-resident

Suicide: no

Cause: other

Weapon: strangle, drown[1]

Portage, Ind. (1972)

02/07/1972: Three partners in a correspondence school, named Biederman, Tobias, and Foley, took out $40,000 life insurance policies payable to the school. They then all disappeared. A prospective buyer of an abandoned motel found Biederman and Tobias shot to death outside. Police found Foley shot to death in Biederman’s car in Gary. “Authorities said the murders looked like the work of professionals.”

Category: public

Suicide: no

Cause: unknown

Weapon: firearm[1]

HCSO Sgt. Sofia Silva told ABC13 that around 2:30 p.m., deputies were dispatched to a shooting call. She said a man called 911 and told them a man was trying to break into his girlfriend's apartment.

The woman was not home at the time, but the caller was inside, according to law enforcement.

HCSO said while on the phone with 911, gunshots could be heard.

When deputies arrived, they said they found a man dead inside. The caller told deputies where he was inside the unit, according to HCSO.

More Here

What we know:

The shooting happened at 3:30 p.m. on Misty Glenn Court, located near Interstate 30 and East Loop 820.

According to Fort Worth police, a resident returned home to find an intruder inside the house. A physical fight broke out between the two men, and both drew firearms and shot at each other. Both men were struck during the gunfire.

The intruder died at the scene. The Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office has identified him as 29-year-old Darius Levy.

More Here

• Naval Estimates, a browser-based game of warship design in the Dreadnought Era. Looks like big nerdy fun!


• Tales of crossing the Russian border in the Current Era.


• Run by slavers, manned by captives, the internet scam compounds are moving deeper into Myanmar, adopting AI tools.

They keep saying this every year, and I keep saying what I say every year.  First, what they say:

July was “a wild weather month,” setting a record as the warmest month ever for the contiguous United States, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday.

Temperatures last month averaged 76.9 degrees Fahrenheit as above-average warmth blanketed the U.S., and several locations in Idaho, Utah, Wyoming and Montana saw all-time high temperature records since NOAA started keeping track in 1895.

Last month was 0.1 to 0.2 degrees warmer than July 1936 and July 2012, according to the agency. July also broke the record for the average low temperature, at 64.2 degrees, surpassing July 2022 by 0.7 degrees. 

 Notice how slippery this report is: several locations in Idaho, Utah, Wyoming and Montana saw all-time high temperature records.  So what about the State high temperature records for those locations?  And this is where I say what I've been saying for like a decade or more:

You want to see a real heat wave?  Look at July 1936.  Eleven States set high temperature records that stand to this day.  That Wikipedia page is a little shifty on this, trying to hide the decline in record temperatures.  You'll see an asterisk next to South Dakota, which the Wiki page says means Also on earlier date or dates in that state.  So what was that earlier date for South Dakota?  July 1936.

Oh, and three more States set high temperature records the next month, August 1936.  That makes 14 out of the 50 States suffered record high temperatures in the summer of 1936.  That's almost 30% of the States.

The reported warming trend appears to be driven mainly by rising nighttime low temperatures. Because climate “averages” combine daytime highs and nighttime lows, warmer nights can make the overall average look higher even when daytime high temperatures do not show the same increase.

...

NOAA adjusts older weather-station records to account for non-climate changes, such as stations moving, equipment changing, or observers recording temperatures at different times of day. Its Pairwise Homogenization Algorithm (PHA) compares a station with nearby stations to identify and correct apparent breaks in the record. 

Remember, they adjust the measured ("raw") temperatures, but they don't adjust the record temperatures (because that would be way too shifty).  So (as I've been posting for years), how much of the 20th Century's warming is from adjustments?  It's 80%: 

An interesting question is how much of the 20th Century's warming came from adjustments, rather than from raw data? A picture is worth a thousand words:
What you're looking at is the annual adjustment made to the raw temperature, for each year in the 20th Century. You'll notice that almost no adjustments are made to years up to 1960, and then a very interesting shape appears in the graph.

A hockey Stick.

And what Science®-denying Tea-Bagging place did I get that?  From the Fed.Gov's weathermen, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

So the data are fiddled to the point that over 80% of the reported warming cannot be found in the data as recorded.  Its in the adjustments to the data after the fact.

And so we're left with three observations:

1. The reported data are fiddled and are untrustworthy.
2. The record data are not fiddled and are trustworthy.
3. It's summer.  It's hot, hot, hot ...

Hey, Bustah!

 I took my Honda to the dealer today to get it serviced. It's a 2020 Odyssey with ~60K miles.  It needed an oil change and a tire rotation.  when the dealer finished and we were settling up, she told me that my vehicle has two safety recalls.  One for the rearview camera and one for an air bag. The only problem is that they don't have the parts for the recall.

For one of the recalls (I forget which) they will order the part and it will be in by next Tuesday, when we'll do the recall work.  Thor the other, the dealer can only order one (1) per day, and they have thousands of customers on that list.

I recently realized that I had lost the appointment for my primary care doc.  I called the office, but that was a no-go, so while I was in town today, I went to the doc's office to check. It's next month.  While I was there, I registered a complaint on behalf of Belle's brother who is in the hospital.  It seems that the coms lines between the hospital and the primary care doc are inop.  No message traffic.  One hand has no clue what the other is doing.  That is the nature of medical practice today.