Found on a bulletin board in the Yale Physics Department fifty-odd years ago.

Wyoming news:

The U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command has paused the use of a handgun following the death of a Security Forces airman at a base in Wyoming.

The use of the M18 pistol, a variant of another gun that has been the target of lawsuits over unintentional discharge allegations, was paused Monday “until further notice” following the “tragic incident” Sunday at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, the command said in a statement. Security Forces airmen at all command bases “will conduct 100% inspections of the M18 handguns to identify any immediate safety concerns,” it said.

The airman killed was Brayden Lovan, 21, of the 90th Security Forces Squadron, 90th Missile Wing at the base, where he began his first active-duty assignment in November 2023, base officials said Thursday.

Details of what happened are not being released pending an investigation, said Lt. Raegan Lockhart, public affairs officer for the 90th Missile Wing. How long the investigation might take isn’t known, Lockhart added. …

The gun is made by New Hampshire-based manufacturer Sig Sauer, which is defending itself against multiple lawsuits alleging that its popular related gun, the P320 pistol, can go off without the trigger being pulled. Sig Sauer denies the claims, saying the P320 is safe and the problem is user error. It has prevailed in some cases.

“Our hearts are with the service members and families impacted by the recent reported event at the F.E. Warren Air Force Base,” Sig Sauer said Wednesday in a statement posted on Facebook.

The P320 was adopted by the U.S. military as M17 and M18 pistols, and the M18 is now the official sidearm of all branches of the U.S. military, Sig Sauer says on its website. In 2019, Sig Sauer announced it had delivered its 100,000th M17 and M18s to the U.S. military.

The pause is so far limited to the Global Strike Command, which includes more than 33,700 airmen and civilians. The rest of the Air Force and the other armed services have not announced any orders to avoid using the pistols. …

The P320 was introduced in 2014. Sig Sauer offered a “voluntary upgrade” in 2017 to reduce the weight of the trigger, among other features. Lawyers for people who have sued the gunmaker, many of them law enforcement officers, say the upgrade did not stop unintentional discharges.

Earlier this year, Sig Sauer appealed a ban of the P320, M17 and M18 pistols by the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission, arguing that it appears to be based on inaccurate and incomplete information. The commission banned the weapons after a recruit said his P320 discharged while he was drawing it, even though his finger was not on the trigger.

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“More than a hundred uncommanded discharges reported.”

Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord 1754-1838

À la mort de Talleyrand, le comte Pozzo di Borgo dit à Guizot:

– Talleyrand a fait une entrée triomphale aux Enfers. Satan lui a rendu de grands honneurs mais en lui faisant remarquer : « Prince, vous avez un peu dépassé mes instructions. »

Upon Talleyrand’s death, Count Pozzo di Borgo told Guizot:

“Talleyrand made a triumphant entrance into Hell. Satan paid him great honors, but remarked: ‘Prince, you have gone a little beyond my instructions.”

The Honorable Edward Montagu-Stuart-Wortley, CB, CMG, DSO, MVO (31 July 1857 – 19 March 1934)

Although he received greater and more formal rewards for his services, perhaps he set as much store by a signed photograph of the old slaver, Zubeir Pasha, which was accompanied by the following address in Arabic: “This has been presented as a token of remembrance and regard by Zubeir Rahma Pasha, the Abbaside, to his honoured friend His Excellency the Mighty Officer Stuart-Wortley, who commanded the military division on the eastern bank which took part in the conquest of Omdurman, the rout of Abdullah el Taisha and the destruction of his armies with the help and by the powers of this zealous hero. Moreover, at this action there was in his company my son, Misara, to whom His Excellency vouchsafed high thanks and noble commendation.” Wortley personified all that was engagingly paraxodical about the late Victorian and Edwardian upper classes. Unhindered by complexes and accepting privilege as a right, he and his kind could “walk with kings nor lose the common touch”. He was as much at home around a camp fire with the Bedouin camel drivers as in a great society drawing-room; as Military Attaché in Paris, or on a diplomatic mission to the Grande Porte, he blended as easily with the rich and powerful, of whom he was one, as with the wild Jaalin irregulars before Omdurman. Resolute yet easily bored, reliable yet casual, brave to the point of recklessness yet shrewd and resourceful, he had more than his share of luck and in a lifetime of campaigning was never once wounded. Warfare to him was an attack on a zariba sword in hand, a charge of heavy cavalry or a night journey in a leaky rowing-boat with the enemy on both banks, not the organized slaughter of the Great War. His world perished on the fields of Flanders and the heights of Gallipoli. If he did not quite fulfil his early promise perhaps it was because he could not be bothered. He retired in 1919 as a Major-General and died in 1934. If he is in Paradise, how dull he must find it! Unless, of course, he is allowed an occasional donkey race along the corridors of some celestial Shepheard’s Hotel or a long camel ride across an ethereal desert with a few pint bottles of ‘fizz’ clinking in his saddle-bag.

— Henry Keown-Boyd, A Good Dusting: The Sudan Campaigns, 1883–1899, 1986

Wikipedia

Two Democrat Socialists walk into a bar. The bartender asks them what they are drinking. They each order the most expensive drink. When the bartender asks for the money for their drinks, they tell the bartender to charge it to everyone else in the bar.

— General™️ (@TheGeneral_0) July 16, 2025