Mythical beast on the rood loft at Sheringham Church, Norfolk pic.twitter.com/jvEUnrRIsg

— johnevigar (@johnevigar) June 7, 2025

I know my bestiary critters generally, but not this one.

Suitswon painted the infamous Greenpoint Skull during the Fall of 2017. He was exploring the area while walking his dog, looking for spots to paint. “I was like, ‘that thing just needs a jaw and nose and it will look like a skull.’”

—————————–

I hate taking the time to sit, captive, through long videos and podcasts, but this one is special. Watching this is like watching the Wright Brothers fly for the first time. One can see that a whole new level of human capability is just beginning that will change everything.

The Road to Making Life Multiplanetary: an update from @elonmusk on SpaceX's plan to reach Mars pic.twitter.com/d2cnsVKK80

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 29, 2025

HT: Karen L. Myers.

Shot taken by Ukrainian drone.

Red State has the details:

The targets were:

Olenya Air Base in the Murmansk Region
Belaya Air Base in the Irkutsk Region
Ivanovo Air Base in the Ivanovo Region
Dyagilevo Air Base in the Ryazan Region
Severomorsk (Main Administrative Base of the Russian Northern Fleet) in the Murmansk Region

The airbases are the home to Russia’s fleet of Tu-22, Tu-95M, and Tu-160 nuclear-capable strategic bombers as well as AS-50 battle management aircraft. They were located from the Siberian Far East to the Arctic Circle. The furthest target, Belaya Airbase in Irkutsk, is over 2700 miles from Ukraine.

Reports indicate that at least 41 aircraft were hit. The unofficial tally indicates 24 Tu-22, 8 Tu-95MS, and 5 Tu-16 were hit. MiG-31 fighters and Il-76 transports were also hit. To put this in context, open-source data says Russia’s bomber inventory is about 58 Tu-22, 47 Tu-95MS, and 15 Tu-160. These planes are the ones used to launch most of the missiles fired at Ukrainian cities.

By any standard, this was a devastating attack. Nearly half of the Tu-22, a quarter of the Tu-95MS, and a third of the Tu-160 fleet, representing just over 30 percent of Russia’s strategic bomber force, were damaged or destroyed in one attack. When you consider the operational readiness rate, Russia probably has less than 50 aircraft capable of flying…on the bright side, they have plenty of aircraft to cannibalize for parts. The Tu-22 and Tu-95MS production lines are closed, and the Tu-160 production is one, yes, one per year. For all intents and purposes, this represents a permanent decrease in the size of the Russian strategic bomber fleet.

RTWT

——————————-

Don’t blame Donald Trump or the USA. We had nothing to do with it. We didn’t even know it was going to happen! as the Independent reports.

Donald Trump was not given a heads-up about Ukraine’s unprecedented drone strikes that took out a huge fleet of Russian planes on Sunday, according to reports.

Ukraine’s “large-scale” drone attack launched deep into Russian territory wiped out 40 military bombers and targeted five bases, Ukrainian security sources told CBS News.

The attack took over a year and a half to plan and was personally supervised by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the sources added.

Ukrainian officials did not give the Trump administration advance notice of the attack, both Ukrainian and U.S. officials told Axios.

BREAKING: Democrats have engaged Olivia Julianna as part of their strategy to bring young men to the Democratic Party. pic.twitter.com/c3JXlFgErG

— Leading Report (@LeadingReport) May 29, 2025

Who is she? See Wikipedia.

All of my grandparents’ sons and one daughter, now all departed, served.

Joseph Zincavage (1907-1998) Navy
(No wartime photograph available, but he’s sitting on a Henderson Motorcycle in this one.)

William Zincavage (1914-1997) Marine Corps

Edward Zincavage (1917-2002) Marine Corps

Eleanor Zincavage Cichetti (1922-2003) Marine Corps.

My father (on the left, wearing jacket & tie, holding the large envelope), aged 26, was the oldest in this group of Marine Corps volunteers from Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, September 1942, so he was put in charge.

————————————

William G. Zincavage, Fall 1942, after graduating Marine Corps Boot Camp

————————————

Military Police, North Carolina, Fall 1942
He was only 5′ 6″, but he was so tough that they made him an MP.

————————————

Third Marine Division

I Marine Amphibious Corps

First Amphibious Corps, Third Marine Division, Special Troops:
Solomon Islands Consolidation (Guadalcanal), Winter-Spring 1943
New Georgia Group Operation (Vella LaVella, Rendova), Summer 1943
“The Special Troops drew the first blood.” — Third Divisional History.

“We never saw them but they were running away.” — William G. Zincavage

————————————

III Marine Amphibious Corps

Third Amphibious Corps, Third Marine Division, Special Troops:
Marianas Operation (Guam), Summer 1944

————————————

V Marine Amphibious Corps

Fifth Amphibious Corps, Third Marine Division, Special Troops:
Iwo Jima Operation, February-March 1945

————————————

Navy Unit Commendation (Iwo Jima)
Good Conduct Medal
North American Campaign Medal
Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with Four Bronze Stars

——————————————————–

While recovering from malaria after the Battle of Iwo Jima, he looked 70 years old.

But he was back to normal in December of 1945, when this photo was taken shortly before he received his discharge.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was a Second Lieutenant in the 20th Massachusetts Regiment during the Civil War.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. gave a famous speech at Soldiers Field on Memorial Day 1895, in honor of Harvard University’s Civil War dead. It’s a particularly appropriate read at this time of year.

Behind every scheme to make the world over, lies the question: What kind of world do you want? The ideals of the past for men have been drawn from war, as those for women have been drawn from motherhood. For all our prophecies, I doubt if we are ready to give up our inheritance. Who is there who would not like to be thought a gentleman? Yet what has that name been built on but the soldier’s choice of honor rather than life? To be a soldier or descended from soldiers, in time of peace to be ready to give one’s life rather than suffer disgrace, that is what the word has meant; and if we try to claim it at less cost than a splendid carelessness for life, we are trying to steal the good will without the responsibilities of the place. We will not dispute about tastes. The man of the future may want something different. But who of us could endure a world, although cut up into five acre lots, and having no man upon it who was not well fed and well housed, without the divine folly of honor, without the senseless passion for knowledge outreaching the flaming bounds of the possible, without ideals the essence of which is that they can never be achieved? I do not know what is true. I do not know the meaning of the universe. But in the midst of doubt, in the collapse of creeds, there is one thing I do not doubt, that no man who lives in the same world with most of us can doubt, and that is that the faith is true and adorable which leads a soldier to throw away his life in obedience to a blindly accepted duty, in a cause which he little understands, in a plan of campaign of which he has little notion, under tactics of which he does not see the use.

Most men who know battle know the cynic force with which the thoughts of common sense will assail them in times of stress; but they know that in their greatest moments faith has trampled those thoughts underfoot. If you wait in line, suppose on Tremont Street Mall, ordered simply to wait and do nothing, and have watched the enemy bring their guns to bear upon you down a gentle slope like that of Beacon Street, have seen the puff of the firing, have felt the burst of the spherical case-shot as it came toward you, have heard and seen the shrieking fragments go tearing through your company, and have known that the next or the next shot carries your fate; if you have advanced in line and have seen ahead of you the spot you must pass where the rifle bullets are striking; if you have ridden at night at a walk toward the blue line of fire at the dead angle of Spotsylvania, where for twenty-four hours the soldiers were fighting on the two sides of an earthwork, and in the morning the dead and dying lay piled in a row six deep, and as you rode you heard the bullets splashing in the mud and earth about you; if you have been in the picket line at night in a black and unknown wood, have heard the splat of the bullets upon the trees, and as you moved have felt your foot slip upon a dead man’s body; if you have had a blind fierce gallop against the enemy, with your blood up and a pace that left no time for fear—if, in short, as some, I hope many, who hear me, have known, you have known the vicissitudes of terror and triumph in war; you know that there is such a thing as the faith I spoke of. You know your own weakness and are modest; but you know that man has in him that unspeakable somewhat which makes him capable of miracle, able to lift himself by the might of his own soul, unaided, able to face annihilation for a blind belief.

RTWT

Main Street, Shenandoah, Pennsylvania in the old days.

Daryl Ponicsan 1938-, screenwriter and novelist best known for The Last Detail (1970), wrote a hilarious, only slightly exaggerated, portrait of his, and my, hometown, titled Andoshen (1973). He changed the name to “Andoshen” to protect the guilty.

The anecdote below is a true story (well known in Shendo) and Shakey the cop is, like many of his characters, based on a real local character.

A place was reserved for the squad car on the corner of Main and Center. The slot was across the street from the Majestic [a pool hall on the west side of South Main] and up a few doors, hidden from the vision of approaching cars because the squad car was parked parallel to the sidewalk while all the other cars behind it were parked diagonally. Likewise, a car headed north on Center Street could not see it until it was too late.

“Yeah,” said the driver, “Pittsburgh.” “Then how come youse got a Pennsylvania license plate?” said Shakey the Cop, straightening up triumphantly and putting his fists on his hips.

1/ The @Harvard foreign student ban is the clearest indication that America is in the midst of a serious revolution right now – easily comparable to the end of USSR. But our preconceptions – political and intellectual – prevent us from seeing this reality. pic.twitter.com/Zozqroil1z

— Philip Pilkington (@philippilk) May 24, 2025

————————–

Philip Pilkington contends (in a series of 15 tweets on X, starting above) that we are at the beginning of a genuinely revolutionary moment and that the America and the American Order created by the New Deal are about to be swept away.
Read the rest of this entry »

Quondam conservative Andrew Sullivan podcast interviews Sam Tanenhaus whose new Buckley bio will be released June 3rd.