Show them the money
As a means to control national voter fraud, this could work. The same states that worship voter fraud also really like to suck up federal money, and in the competition between the two ignoble impulses, my bet's on the money.
March or Die
The French Foreign Legion has that as their unofficial motto, so I am told. They do not admit women into their ranks.
MJ calls what happened to her in Zion national park “small ‘T’ trauma”. She knows women have experienced worse from their partners. But she still feels the anger of being left behind on a hike by her now ex. “It brings up stuff in my body that maybe I have not cleared out yet,” she said.
This article was brought to my attention by a hiking buddy; we once did 50 miles together in the Great Smoky Mountains, over some very tough terrain and during weather that threatened hypothermia. On the march up the mountain that used to be called Clingman's Dome, third highest in the eastern United States, we separated just this way. I don't remember who got to the top first or last, nor does he; it didn't cause either of us any trauma at all. It was just the natural thing to do to separate given unequal aerobic capability.
Many of the women described having some level of dependence on their partner in nature. They may not have been carrying the right supplies or enough water, or were not familiar with the terrain, making them feel vulnerable.... One woman described a 12-hour journey out of the Grand Canyon after her boyfriend ditched her, during which she was assisted by a “very nice man from Norway” who carried her backpack.... A man walking 100ft ahead of his girlfriend because he cannot be bothered to wait for her is bad manners. But failing to properly care for someone in an environment they’re not prepared to handle alone can cause real harm.
Speaking as a certified Wilderness rescue technician, don't go to the mountains if you aren't up to it. I'll come help you if I can, as will many others who have volunteered their time to train for that mission. Nevertheless, you really should be sensible about what your limits are. If you need someone else to carry your backpack, pack lighter. If you don't know what you're doing, study and train first. It's not that hard, but it also isn't trivial.
Nazgul shrieks
The sound alone from this laser weapon would be enough to demoralize me. It's like something out of War of the Worlds.
Justification
Instapundit posted a link to an analysis of all the lies told in just three paragraphs by the author of the Virginia gun bans. But really, you don't need to know that. You only need to know this:
Virginia voters are shocked to find out that Virginia Democrats are voting to exempt themselves from the new gun control measures they are imposing.“The provision of this section shall not apply to any member of the General Assembly.”
That suffices.
Therefore: the right of the people to keep and bear arms is a right that no government, this nor any other, can infringe upon without a basic denial of human dignity. Such a denial itself entails a right of self-defense against such a government; and the everlasting potential for such a denial therefore entails an everlasting, permanent, and basic right to arms.
Volume of Fire
This phase of the war will be over soon. After that, we will see: it depends upon how they employ the Marines they’re sending.
The Paradox of Enjoying Tragedy
I told Grim I'd post a few of Corb Lund's darker pieces but then got to wondering why I enjoy them. And why do any of us enjoy tragic stories? They've been around since the beginning of storytelling, so there must be some attraction.
It turns out, David Hume has some thoughts on this. The SEP quotes him thus:
It seems an unaccountable pleasure, which the spectators of a well-written tragedy receive from sorrow, terror, anxiety, and other passions, that are in themselves disagreeable and uneasy. The more they are touched and affected, the more are they delighted with the spectacle; and as soon as the uneasy passions cease to operate, the piece is at an end.
One answer is that tragedies refine or clarify our emotions in a kind of catharsis, which seems to have been suggested by Aristotle in his Poetics. There are a number of other answers in the SEP article if you are interested, but this one seems the most interesting to me. The SEP describes it like this:
... a plausible construction of the idea is that we come to learn about some of our emotions when their expression is elicited by highly affecting works of art, in the case of tragedies specifically by the “release” of the negative emotions of fear and pity that comes with the narrative resolution of the plot. There, the expression of our emotions does not leave them unchanged; rather, they are exposed, fine-tuned, and given a salient form when arising in conformity to a work of tragedy’s prescriptions for how to feel.
A further development of this idea suggests that part of this catharsis allows us a kind of "enlightenment about the nature of suffering."
Whatever the reason we enjoy tragic stories, here are half a dozen or so of Corb Lund's tragedies for you.
UN Security Council Condemns Iran
So you know how the UN is useless because its resolutions are not binding except for Security Council resolutions, but those never happen because the US or Russia or China vetoes it? Not this time.
I know. Curious, isn’t it?
Re-engineering evolution
At the age of 92, William Shatner has shattered his shoulder upon being thrown from his horse. It's bad enough that he reports his doctors are recommending a "reverse shoulder replacement."
Apparently some bright soul noticed that the arrangement of the ball and socket in the shoulder is a vestigial design that is not the strongest option for an upright biped with a three-dimensional range of motion. If the shoulder is really toast and has to be replaced, it makes more sense for the new joint to have the ball on the torso and the socket on the top of the armbone.
In the new configuration, the center of rotation is moved downward (inferiorly) and inward (medially). The deltoid muscle (the large muscle covering the shoulder) gains a longer lever arm and better mechanical advantage in lifting the arm, while bypassing the often ruined (and irreplaceable) rotator cuff. The ball acts as a mechanical stop to prevent the humerus from sliding upward, converting the deltoid's pull into rotation and elevation rather than just shear forces. This makes for better overhead motion.
For now, at least, the improvement wouldn't be worth the trauma for someone suffering from garden-variety rotator cuff or arthritic trouble. Maybe someday, though, aspiring major-league pitchers will opt for it as a prophylactic upgrade.
Corb Lund's Outlaws
The characters in Corb's songs are a wild variety. Here's three of his outlaws. The first song is about a tragic criminal and one of the darkest songs I know. The second isn't as dark and features a good lesson about how to treat wait staff appropriately, and the third is rather light-hearted for a song about outlaws.
Poker Card Shootout
It occurred to me that it's been several years since I posted any evidence that I could hit anything with a revolver myself. Going on a decade, in fact, and it's a perishable skill. I definitely don't shoot as much as I used to way back when, and I'm not as good as I used to be as you can see by comparing this poker card with the one from 2017.
The comparison is imperfect in several respects, since I was using a Vaquero-style fixed-sight Ruger Single Six rather than whatever the Assistant Attorney General was using, but hers probably suffered under greater recoil; and I don't know quite what rules she was shooting under. Tom guessed it was two shot groups, so I fired those. All six on paper, only one really good group and it was a little high. Group two was the closest to dead center; the first of those two got pretty close. Group three drifted a bit.
Ah, well. Sic transit gloria mundi and all that. Not a total embarrassment, at least.
The Progress in Iran
In spite of the fact that the American news has decided to act as the propaganda arm of the Iranian Islamic Republic, there has been substantial progress in the campaign. My old comrades at The Long War Journal are doing some good work right now capturing the movement.
Another good source is Richard Fernandez, who blogs less now but runs both an X and Facebook page under his byline "Wretchard the Cat." He noticed what I think is a key development in the shift from an air war to preparation to assist the Iranians in overthrowing their government:
Israeli drones carried out attacks on several Tehran neighborhoods... Fars says the drones flew over southern and northern districts of Tehran, adding that “several members of the security force and the (volunteer) Basij force stationed at checkpoints were martyred.”
Notice it wasn't attacks on "neighborhoods," as the opening paragraph framed it; it was tightly targeted drone attacks on police and security 'checkpoints,' i.e., the places from which regime loyalists planned to shoot any protesters who emerged as they did in the earlier parts of the winter.
That's the missing piece in all of this. The Kurds are going to break away in the northwest; the Balochi in the southeast; probably the Azeri. The armored units that the military and IRGC planned to use to suppress such actions will be destroyed if they try to move to engage; they will also be destroyed if they try to stay put. The navy is being sunk; the minelayers are sitting ducks for air power. What remains is a plan to allow the central population in the larger cities to move against the regime.
Accomplishing that means showing those people that they won't just be shot down like the thousands the regime murdered over the winter protests. This is a good first step at demonstrating that even small checkpoints of regime loyalists are subject to strike, and on small scales that don't risk the lives of innocents who might be gathered to protest them.
UPDATE: Overnight, the IDF started allowing Iranian citizens to call in air strikes on Basij positions. There is some risk to this, given that the situation is fluid, but it effectively provides air support to any revolutionary effort.
I saw something similar in Iraq only once. One time a “Concerned Local Citizen”/Sons of Iraq checkpoint came under attack by insurgent forces, including a technical that had parked in a shallow ditch to provide itself with cover. Under machine gun fire, they called us on a cell phone. In the Division Operations Center, the duty officers realized that they had an accurate map with a ten-digit grid of the location of the ditch. So, we hit it with indirect fire — mortars, I believe it was. Our fire was effective, allowing what was essentially a local tribal militia to survive and win against a coordinated assault with heavy weapons’ support.
If Only You'd Inform on Your Neighbors, Asheville Edition
Not so very long ago during the wild days of 2020 and BLM the Asheville City Council was denying the police department money for body armor. Now, after three unrelated shootings downtown, the mayor and the chief of police issue a joint statement begging the citizenry to please start turning each other in.
Clearly they have mended fences. Asheville began addressing its public order concerns after the post-2020 era got really out of control downtown; then the 2024 hurricane washed away much of what was left of the homeless community there, giving them a chance to catch up. The activists who had so much sway over the council during the BLM moment are quite dismayed to see this new level of cooperation, but the city is a nicer place to visit than once -- especially for women and children. Even my rather fearsome wife found the place unsettling during the days of high disorder.
Still, there's surely a balance even in urban areas between defunding the police and trying to encourage Stasi-like programs to spy into the private lives of citizens. Part of the reason Americans have fled to suburban and rural areas is that you can live much more decently without so many other people around, and without the mechanisms of control that 'public order' entails. Even in the city, there has to be a better way.
Range Day for Ladies
Specifically, Harmeet K. Dhillon and some of her comrades from DOJ. The target shows some fliers at 30 feet; but Dhillon isn't a professional shooter. DOJ has designated shooters. Harmeet Dhillon is Assistant Attorney General. Nobody expects her to have to fire a pistol except under extreme circumstances of self-defense; there are plenty of people whose job is shooting at that department, and in every court where she'll be engaged in litigation.
"Not everyone was meant to be a soldier."
A lot of people decided to be highly critical. Kerry Slone (of women-focused Second Amendment group called We the Female, which focuses on arming women for self-defense) has strong words for such people, but that's to be expected. What I think she gets to that's central is this point:
So how do we start to combat this First, is understanding that men and women are naturally biologically and psychologically different. In relation to firearms, when a man is mocked, it does not typically have the same result that it does for a woman when it comes to firearms. Negative comments towards men when learning how to use a firearm typically makes them want to train more. When a woman is mocked, it makes her even more intimidated and insecure and can lead to her to not continue to grow in capability.
A couple of framing points first. One, Harmeet is not a fragile flower. I don't know how much she cares about mouthy idiots on social media.
Two, using a firearm or other weapon effectively is generally more central to mens' self-image than womens'. The fact that mockery of that ability drives men to train harder doesn't mean they aren't as hurt or as embarrassed; it means that they are so embarrassed and hurt by looking foolish in front of the others that they redouble their efforts to get good enough to be respectable. The mockery is meant to encourage this reaction; if a man was really thought too weak or incompetent to improve, the reaction would be much gentler rhetorically but more devastating because it would be a reaction of pity. The humiliation of this is much worse.
"Not everyone was meant to be a soldier."
That said, I think Ms. Slone is basically correct. As we learned from reading Aristotle, 'equality' rarely means 'exactly the same' when we are talking about ethics or politics. It doesn't have to for the I.3 reason we kept mentioning: equality as a term of mathematics, like a proof from strict logic, doesn't belong in ethics or politics. All the terms in ethics and politics are analogies. The reasoning is analogical, not logical. Treatment doesn't have to be exactly equal, and often shouldn't be, but it does need to be proportionate to be fair.
With rare exceptions like our own Texan99, who genuinely seems to want to be held to exactly and only the standards men ask of each other, most women don't want 'equal treatment' in the sense of 'exactly the same treatment.' Most women I know would prefer that you were encouraging; that you demonstrate that you care about them and are proud of them; and if you help them improve, you do so in a practical way that highlights that you, too, once were a beginner who had to learn as everyone does.
If you provide them with that, they will be happier and feel more engaged. However, sometimes we have the same problem as Leonidas: the unit is sometimes more important than the individual.
Not this time. Harmeet is hell on wheels at her actual job. She can get as good at range day as she cares to bother doing, but where she's really doing good for all of us -- especially in the Second Amendment community -- is her real job. I have no doubt that she'll accomplish more over the next few years on this front than I will be able to, to the benefit of us all.
Canada Cowboys
Tom's Corb Lund post, below, reminds me that though we think of "Country" music as associated with Tennessee or Texas, and "Western" music as associated with the American West, Canada has actually produced a few good musicians in those genres recently. Corb has an upbeat sense of humor that a lot of people like; he's also done some more somber pieces, like "Horse Soldier," of course, but in general he conveys a strong mental health buoyed by that aforementioned good humor.
I like Colter's music as music more than Corb's. There's no doubt, however, that Corb's speaks of a vibrantly healthy mind that one needn't worry about too much. It's an enviable quality; whether or not it is an imitable one is I suppose the focus and business of psychology. Best of luck to Colter Wall in pursuing that project.
Another of these Canadian Cowboys, Colter Wall, has just announced that he is taking an indefinite leave from touring to deal with his mental health. He should be praised for taking that kind of thing seriously. It is a matter that has claimed far too many musical talents at too young ages.
It won't be a surprise, however, if you listen to his music. It has a notably darker tone even where it is playful.
I like Colter's music as music more than Corb's. There's no doubt, however, that Corb's speaks of a vibrantly healthy mind that one needn't worry about too much. It's an enviable quality; whether or not it is an imitable one is I suppose the focus and business of psychology. Best of luck to Colter Wall in pursuing that project.
Argle-bargle in a good cause
My father told me a story once about a Dutch mathematician working in the Netherlands under the Nazi occupation. He was constructing a large Cartesian grid of the complex primes, a project without any known practical applications. Nevertheless, he told his captors that his work somehow had nearly magical military value, so they left him alone to work on it in safety and comfort throughout the war. Afterwards, he supposedly admired the pretty pattern of the grid and had it printed up as a tablecloth. Later, a Rice University mathematician who owned one of the tablecloths built a home in West University (Houston) and commissioned a black and white tile floor in the house in an area where a central column was surrounded on all four sides by a kitchen and open living area. (He also supposedly commissioned a screen door with a graphical proof of the 4-color theorem built into its frame.) The mathematician was said to have taken infinite pains with the tile-workers, who were skeptical that the precise random-looking scatter-pattern was meaningful, and were therefore irritated when their client proofread the work every night and forced them to make corrections.
It was a charming story that, as far as I can tell today, had no basis in fact. There was indeed a Dutch mathematician, Balthasar van der Pol (1889–1959), who made a Cartesian grid of the Gaussian primes and had it printed up as a tablecloth, a novelty item that was sold at the 1954 International Congress of Mathematicians. Surviving examples are held in museum collections such as the Museum Boerhaave in Leiden. Although van der Pol had held a prominent position at the Philips laboratories in Eindhoven throughout the Nazi occupation, where his work in radio/electronics and relaxation oscillations was considered an essential industry, there is no record of his work during that period involving the complex primes grid, or of his persuading the Nazis that it had abstruse military applications. The tablecloth project itself was post-liberation, tied to the 1954 ICM. So darn it, that was a nice story that I wish were true. The West U. house with the interesting tile floor and screen door may have existed, but there’s no record of it.
I was reminded of this story, which my father may have invented himself, or may have passed along as an amusing story heard from someone else, when I saw breathless reports on X this evening about a breakthrough physics paper that would unlock unlimited power from vacuum and render moot all the current quarreling over fossil fuels, including the current military action in Iran. The abstract reads like a Sokal hoax, packed with buzzwords:
Emergent quantization from a dynamic vacuum, Harold White, Jerry Vera, Andre Sylvester, and Leonard Dudzinski, 2025, Physical Review Research 8, 013264 (2026). We show that adding quadratic temporal dispersion to a dynamic-vacuum acoustic model yields a fully analytic, exactly isospectral mapping to the hydrogenic Coulomb problem. In the regime [formula], a proton-imprinted constitutive profile produces an inverse sound speed [formula] and hence a time-harmonic operator [formula] that is Coulombic at each bound eigenfrequency. . . .But what do I know? I’m about as well-versed in quantum theory as the man in the moon. Grok maintains that it is a real paper, in a reputable journal, not currently being outed as a hoax. On the other hand, Grok also reports:
The hype you’re seeing on X, Reddit, and sites like stardrive.org (“Power from zero point energy!”) is not coming from the paper. It’s people (and sometimes White’s company) connecting dots that aren’t there. Harold White runs Casimir, Inc., which separately claims to be building tiny nano-scale “Casimir cavities” (asymmetric vacuum structures with nanopillars) that supposedly let electrons tunnel one way and produce a trickle of DC power—on the order of microwatts (e.g., 1.5 V at ~25 µA per chip in their promotional descriptions). They’re framing this new paper as theoretical support for their “dynamic vacuum” ideas, but:So don’t sell all your fossil-fuel stocks yet.Those claims are not in the Physical Review Research article. The outputs are minuscule—enough for maybe a sensor or IoT tag that “never needs charging,” not your house, car, or grid. Independent verification is essentially nonexistent; mainstream physics views continuous net power from the quantum vacuum as incompatible with thermodynamics (you can’t extract usable work from equilibrium fluctuations without violating detailed balance). In short: this paper is fascinating math for people who like fluid analogs of quantum mechanics, but it gives no more practical power-generation advice than a paper on black-hole analogs tells you how to build a starship. The “revolution” narrative is classic over-extrapolation from a speculative theory paper + a company’s early-stage promotional claims.
Some Statistics on the Hall
According to a machine I have been running the archives through, over 4.3 million words have been written in posts here at Grim's Hall.
Of the 20,664 posts (including this one!), 5,589 -- 27% -- have been authored by my co-bloggers, a very substantial contribution! Of these Tex contributed 3,793, Tom 853, and Eric 414.
That doesn't include the comments section, where many grand discussions as well as many playful ones have occurred over the decades.
Thank you all for contributing to the community and discussion all these years.
"The Way a Man Views Tofu Reflects How They View Women"
I had actually managed half a century on earth without conceptually connecting women and tofu, aside from the fact that no one I know eats tofu except a few women. Not most women I know, however! It's an outlier even among them. One woman I know did once bring some kind of fake-meat to a cookout; she asked me to cook the real burgers first and then cook hers in the meat grease, please. I was glad to comply; after all, she was my friend and I wanted her to be happy. If I could minimize her self-imposed torture, why wouldn't I want to do so?
From this article on meat pizza toppings being offensive to a certain kind of young woman seeking dates with whatever sort of young man would put up with them. Probably when we were young women had similar sorts of conversations, but before social media they were contained within their friend group and didn't have to be encountered by everyone else. Eventually the young grow up enough to realize that trivia like this is not important; loyalty and honor, trust and respect, these are the foundations of love between successful spouses. You can always order half-and-half pizza.
The Winner
If your back isn't broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can bend, if both eyes can see, if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why?
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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