Between October and December 2024, the airline did not have a single passenger involuntarily denied boarding, according to statistics published by the Department of Transportation.

In comparison, Ameican Airlines involuntarily bumped more than 3,200 people from its flights during the same period.

While European schools returned to teaching children in person, American schools and teachers' unions were demanding remote teaching and, once back in school, physical barriers between each student and HEPA filters in every classroom. Was there data backing up these demands? No, but there was a "source”: a 14-year-old girl. The daughter of a man named Robert Glass produced a 2007 computer “model” that claimed that in the event of a pandemic:

'closing schools and keeping students at home during a pandemic would remove the transmission potention... and would be effective at thwarting its spread within a community'.

The CDC was eager to adopt the Glass model as a standard. The CDC produced two policy reports using Laura Glass’s school project as a basis for closing America down. Using a dearth of hard data, the Glasses concluded that schools “form the backbone” of viral spread in an epidemic. Robert Glass claimed that by closing schools, businesses could stay open. Was this based on data? No, but the CDC used it anyway in two reports.

Contained in the CDC report(s) was a footnote. Zweig dove into the footnote rabbit hole. Six links later, he found the wellspring. The claim was based on nonsense:

“Our assumption is the 37% of transmission occurs in the contexts, with the within-school transmission coefficient being twice that of the within-workplace coefficient. However this choice is arbitrary” (page 25) //

Zweig also blames TDS. He notes that at one point, the American Academy of Pediatrics forcefully recommended that schools reopen. When Trump recommended the same thing, the Academy changed direction – U-turning soon thereafter (with the help of teachers' unions). It became a binary choice. If Trump recommended something or agreed with doctors, it must be “bad” (pages 147-149).

“An Abundance of Caution” is worth the time, but only if you are willing to read about a year-long trainwreck and how “experts” ruined lives.

Can't run Windows 11? Don't want to? There are surprisingly legal options

Windows 7 - updated to Jan 2020, Jan 2021, Jan 2022, or Jan 2023

Scheduled future adoptions:

Windows 10 v22H2 - Scheduled for adoption in October 2025

O&O Syspectr is a simple cloud application that lets you remotely connect and manage your IT! As soon as there is an issue with your PC or an update available, O&O Syspectr lets you know or automatically acts!

To register, all you need is an email address. In less than 5 minutes, you are all set-up – it’s that easy! You can manage your PCs remotely from any internet capable device, including cell phones and tablets!

O&O ShutUp10++ means you have full control over which comfort functions under Windows 10 and Windows 11 you wish to use, and you decide when the passing on of your data goes too far. Using a very simple interface, you decide how Windows 10 and Windows 11 should respect your privacy by deciding which unwanted functions should be deactivated.

O&O ShutUp10++ is entirely free and does not have to be installed – it can be simply run directly and immediately on your PC. And it will not install or download retrospectively unwanted or unnecessary software, like so many other programs do these days!

The case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, revolved around Muslim, Christian, and Jewish parents from Montgomery County, Maryland. The county school board would not allow these parents to remove their elementary school children from portions of class actively advocating for things like gay marriage, trans-identifying children, pride parades, and the idea that a child can change his “gender identity” at any given moment.

Attorneys for the county board are claiming the purpose of the instruction was to simply engender “inclusivity,” and that the children who were being exposed to the material, ranging from pre-kindergarten to sixth grade, were only being shown that gay “marriages” exist. But that narrative was swiftly cut down by questioning from Justice Samuel Alito to parents’ attorney Eric Baxter, senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. //

The books and instruction materials themselves are incredibly controversial, particularly for the exclusively young and captive audience they are meant for in Montgomery County, and Justices Alito and Brett Kavanaugh were both perplexed as to how it became unfeasible for the schools to allow an opt-out choice for parents.

The county offers opt-outs for “virtually everything else under the sun,” said Principal Deputy Solicitor General Sarah Harris, who is representing the Trump administration on the side of the parents. But when it comes to force-feeding children gay and trans propaganda, the opt-out is “not administrable,” according to Schoenfeld. //

Justice Amy Coney Barrett took a different route, noting how Montgomery County’s policy is not one that simply exposes children to a concept, but rather relays a point of view as an unquestionable fact.

“It’s saying: ‘This is the right view of the world,’” Barrett said. “This is how we think about things. This is how you should think about things. This is like, 2+2 is 4.”

The school board also claims that there is no religious hostility in the requirement, but Justice Neil Gorsuch pointed to instances where board members said students were repeating their parents’ religious “dogma,” and expressing anger that the issue has some Muslim parents joining forces with others who they described as white supremacists and xenophobes.

Many conservatives have bought into this common notion that, while pornography is immoral, nudity in high art is permissible. Often, these arguments tie into the concept that truth, beauty, and goodness are interconnected. Because art conveys truth and beauty, it must also be good, even when it contains nudity.

Or so the narrative goes.

In What is Art?, Leo Tolstoy presents an alternative view. He addresses the common assumptions about nudity in art by questioning the truth, beauty, and goodness framework.

Is Art Good because it is True and Beautiful?
Tolstoy dismantles the Western assumption that truth, beauty, and goodness are inherently interconnected, an idea that stems from ancient Greek philosophy. Why, he asks, do we so willingly accept ideas about morality from the ancient Greeks? As he points out, they were far from a moral people.

Before we accuse Tolstoy of committing the genetic fallacy, it’s worth considering the pitfalls of conflating the three. In The Great Good Thing, Andrew Klavan remarks how humans often confuse symbols with the things they symbolize. For example, we love the actors because of the characters they portray and are tantalized by sex rather than the love it embodies. Likewise, beauty isn’t intrinsically good, but can be a symbol for goodness.

This is important to remember when evaluating art. Too often, we make the mistake of thinking that because an artwork is beautiful, it must therefore be good. Goodness naturally creates beauty, but not all beautiful things are good by default. Beauty can be imitated and used for evil as well as good. //

Tolstoy notes that the naked body is “precisely what one never sees and what a man occupied with real art hardly ever has to portray.” Even if art’s purpose is to imitate life, it is peculiar how overrepresented nudity is. There is more bare skin in a single art exhibit than most normal people will ever see in a lifetime. //

I’m not suggesting we take a sledgehammer to Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s masterpieces or erase every living memory of them off the internet. However, as we create art, we need to reevaluate our long-held ideas and assumptions. The fact that celebrated works from the past contain nudity doesn’t justify us including it in our films, literature, and other mediums. It’s time to reassess giving art a free pass just because it’s art.

economist and fiscal policy guru Daniel J. Mitchell has crunched the numbers. https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2025/04/21/improved-data-on-ronald-reagans-fiscal-performance/

In 2020, I crunched numbers from OMB’s Historical Tables to rank the fiscal performance of nine recent presidents, going all the way back to LBJ.

I was especially interested to see which presidents did best and worst when looking on overall domestic spending (entitlements plus discretionary).

The numbers showed that Ronald Reagan easily was the most fiscally prudent while Richard Nixon was the worst of the worst (though there’s an argument that LBJ was even worse when looking at the long-run impact of his policies). //

Mr. Mitchell also notes:

You have to go back to Harding and Coolidge to find presidents who were analogous to Reagan.

And there's a name I was not surprised to see: Silent Cal Coolidge. We could use a little Silent Cal today.

If you're on X, you've probably seen videos similar to this one scroll across your feed randomly. It's usually not original content, being fed to you through an account that often posts things like it. The person posting it is often just as outraged as you, but in truth, it's all in an effort to get you mad.

The goal is to make you furious, cause you to interact, possibly repost it, and get the engagement for that post to skyrocket.

Your goal is not to buy it. Don't interact. Don't engage. Don't get baited.

The underlying issue here is that in order for this engagement bait to work, they have to get you to believe that the world is truly that awful. While evil does occur, and humanity is clearly capable of doing horrific things, these engagement baiters are trying to trigger your will to fight for goodness and morality in an effort to stop their depravity from spreading.

What they don't want you to figure out is that the way to defeat it is not to play their game. //

To be clear, this is a fallen world with evil in it, but the internet is an exaggeration machine, and it increasingly exaggerates for profit. Even supposed defenders of morality and goodness use outrage to bait you into interaction on platforms like X, Instagram, or TikTok, all of which can reward high engagement with big bucks.

There are plenty of real things to be angry about and take action on, but these social media rage-baiters are a waste of time and paint the world as a far darker place than it actually is.

Bottom line: If it seems so vile as to be cartoonishly evil... it's fake. If it feels overtly sexual to a point where you're wondering what the goal of broadcasting that depravity is... it's fake.

A good rule of thumb: If it's a viral video on the internet that evokes some kind of excitement or stirs your will to react... it's likely fake.

Hegseth is potentially a transformational SecDef. Recruiting is on the upswing because the nation can sense the change of purpose in DOD. Pride of the military, not the gay variety, is returning to the Armed Forces. Hegseth is not beholden to any corporate interest and is making changes for the benefit of the nation. That makes him a very dangerous man to the failing status quo.

It's really fast and only requires a few lines of shell scripting. You won't need to run systemd inside of WSL 2 either.

This step-by-step guide will help you get started developing with remote containers by setting up Docker Desktop for Windows with WSL 2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux, version 2).

Docker Desktop for Windows provides a development environment for building, shipping, and running dockerized apps. By enabling the WSL 2 based engine, you can run both Linux and Windows containers in Docker Desktop on the same machine.

MikroWizard is designed to help MikroTik users monitor and manage their routers from an IT administrator's viewpoint. Beyond being merely a monitoring and management tool, it functions as a complete management solution that offers PAM-like capabilities specifically for MikroTik devices.

Before developing MikroWizard, which originated from a customer request, I explored existing central management software for MikroTik devices. While "Dude" and other free or commercial tools are available, they didn’t meet my requirements. Many commercial options looked promising but posed security concerns, as trusting a cloud provider to access our network—or relying on the internet for server access—was not an acceptable risk, also they are not offering what I actually looking for.

Here’s what I was searching for MikroTik Managment:
✔ The ability to manage all users who access MikroTik devices, including coworkers, admins, support center staff, customers, and even IT administrators themselves.
✔ A logging system to track all actions performed by admins, customers, and support operators on the router, with historical data showing who made changes and when—similar to the logs provided in PAM solutions.
✔ Centralized creation and editing of system users and groups.
✔ Scheduled firmware updates without requiring internet access on MikroTik routers.
✔ A syslog grabbing and storage feature with filtering and search capabilities.
✔ A centralized, reliable backup solution with differential backups and scheduling options.

To avoid having to deal with further issues relating to RSA keys, I've decided to migrate all my SSH keys to Ed25519.

Potential issues with RSA keys

• Key length growth: Will gradually require more bits to stay secure as compute capacity advances (Current minimum: 2048 bits)
• Not future proof: Potentially vulnerable to breaking by quantum computers
  Advantages of Ed25519 (EdDSA) keys:
• Performance: Ed25519 is the fastest performing algorithm across all metrics
• Security: EdDSA provides the highest security level as compared to other algorithms with the same key length (Source)
• Dummy proof: No need to specify number of bits when generating keys
• Shorter public keys: No wrangling with unwieldily long public key strings like in RSA 4096-bit

For context, 253 bits EdDSA is equivalent in strength to RSA ~3000 bits. As you can see, Ed25519 blows all other cryptographic algorithms out the water in terms of performance.

America’s education system wasn’t designed to unlock the genius in every child. It was designed to produce compliance. Efficiency. Predictability. In short—factory workers, not thinkers.

This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s a matter of historical record.

The Industrial Blueprint

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, as the U.S. surged into the Industrial Revolution, it looked a lot like today’s China—a manufacturing behemoth. Industrialists like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller understood that in order to fuel mass production, they didn’t need philosophers or inventors. They needed disciplined laborers who could follow instructions, show up on time, and never question authority.

So the school system was modeled on the factory floor:

• Rows of desks like assembly lines
• Bells to simulate shift changes
• Subjects taught in isolation, with minimal cross-disciplinary thought
• One-size-fits-all learning geared toward standardization, not inspiration

Horace Mann and John Dewey—often celebrated as pioneers—helped usher in this system. Dewey even said: “The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and assist him in properly responding to these influences.” In other words, social conditioning, not personal discovery. //

It’s time to unplug the conveyor belt.

Let’s stop pretending our schools are sacred. Let’s start building a system that grows free minds, not gray-suited cogs.

Because our children aren’t factory products.

They’re image-bearers of God—capable of wonder, wisdom, and greatness. If we don’t fight for their minds, someone else will program them.

Many Jewish students are disgusted with the university’s behavior:

Harvard students and alumni are speaking out after the university announced it is suing the Trump administration rather than comply with its demands to address antisemitism on its campus.

"The government withheld funds from racist schools that refused to integrate. The Obama administration repeatedly threatened to withhold federal funds to sexist schools that refused to combat sexual assault. The Trump Administration's efforts are in no way an unprecedented threat on higher education. Should Harvard still like to enjoy American taxpayer money, they can simply choose to comply with federal law at any point," Harvard student Shabbos Kestenbaum told Fox News Digital. //

Jews Fight Back 🇺🇸🇮🇱 @JewsFightBack
·
Every time someone says “as a Jew” right before minimizing Jew-hatred or covering for institutions that enable it, antisemites everywhere breathe a collective sigh of relief.

Alan Garber isn’t speaking as a Jew.
He’s speaking as a coward.
11:24 AM · Apr 22, 2025. //

anon-u7cz
8 minutes ago
Beth Israel Hospital in Boston was founded in 1916 by the city’s Jewish community to address significant barriers faced by Jewish immigrants and Jewish medical professionals during an era marked by religious separatism and widespread anti-Semitism. At the time, Jewish patients and physicians often encountered discrimination at other hospitals, which limited both access to care and professional opportunities.

Why do shockwaves extend past the body that created them? As seen in this photo, the shock doesn’t stop in the air the plane is effecting, but continues on. I always assumed it was high pressure air from the shock extending out, but now I’m not too sure. //

Shocks are not because of the pressure. Shocks happen because of the turning -- the pressure jump is a result of the shock. – Rob McDonald Mar 14, 2024 at 17:27

A shock wave generated at 30,000 feet at Mach 1 cannot be heard on the ground for precisely the reason you surmise in your comment.

The US Air Force has conducted tests with supersonic aircraft and has this to say:

Under standard atmospheric conditions, air temperature decreases with increased altitude. For example, when sea-level temperature is 58 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature at 30,000 feet drops to minus 49 degrees Fahrenheit. This temperature gradient helps bend the sound waves upward. Therefore, for a boom to reach the ground, the aircraft speed relative to the ground must be greater than the speed of sound at the ground. For example, the speed of sound at 30,000 feet is about 670 miles per hour, but an aircraft must travel at least 750 miles per hour (Mach 1.12, where Mach 1 equals the speed of sound) for a boom to be heard on the ground.

Is he a "Maryland father?" No, he's an illegal alien who's lived in the U.S. for years and has never made any attempt to become a citizen. Is he an American citizen who was unlawfully deported? No, he’s in this country illegally and had a valid deportation order issued against him. (It is true that he wasn’t supposed to be deported to El Salvador because he was fearful of opposing gangs, but he is not and never was an American citizen. //

CNN and MSNBC referred to Kilmar Abrego Garcia as a “Maryland man” or similar terminology a total of 506 times in three weeks.

Garcia was described as being from Maryland nearly five times more often than he was described as being from El Salvador.

Only 10% of the 318 reports about Garcia on both networks included any mention that he was in the U.S. illegally.

Talking heads on MSNBC were almost twice as likely to misrepresent Garcia’s immigration status as they were to describe it correctly.