75 years is a long time. Popular mechanics:

In a surprise move, the U.S. Army is asking industry for ideas for a new submachine gun. The last time the Army adopted a submachine gun was in 1943. It’s not clear why the Army wants a new subgun but it likely has to do with the service’s eventual adoption of a new rifle caliber and new assault rifle.

Submachine guns were developed during the World War I as an alternative to bulky, slow-firing bolt action rifles. Short and firing pistol caliber ammunition, they were ideal weapons for assault troops clearing narrow trenches of enemy troops. The U.S. Army went into World War II with the M1928A1 Thompson submachine gun, which fired the same .45 ACP round as the M1911A1 pistol. Towards the end of the war the Thompson was supplemented by the M3 “Grease Gun”, also in .45 ACP.
M3 “Grease Gun”
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Submachine guns were eventually replaced in many armies by shortened assault rifles, which used heavier assault rifle rounds while still physically compact. In the U.S. Army, the M3 was used up through the 1991 the Gulf War by vehicle and by Delta Force.

According to The Firearm Blog, the U.S. Army has posted a Request for Information from the defense industry for a new submachine gun. The RFI is for a Sub Compact Weapon (SCW) that will fire 9×19-millimeter (9mm Luger) ammunition, have full automatic capability, a Picatinny rail for attaching lights, optics, and other accessories, and mentions the capability to mount a suppressor.

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YouTube premiered its first hit on May 8th: “Cobra Kai” — a ten-episode sequel to “The Karate Kid” (1984) which takes up the story of Danny LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence 34 long years later. Season 2 has already been commissioned.

Rolling Stone describes how the new show got started.

When his Yale professors rejected the topic of his thesis – Communist influences on American writers, 1928–1942 – Wolfe showed his versatility in a letter to a friend dated June 9, 1956:

These stupid fucks have turned down namely my dissertation, meaning I will have to stay here about a month longer to delete all the offensive passages and retype the sumitch. They called my brilliant manuscript ‘journalistic’ and ‘reactionary,’ which means I must go through with a blue pencil and strike out all the laughs and anti-Red passages and slip in a little liberal merde, so to speak, just to sweeten it. I’ll discuss with you how stupid all these stupid fucks are when I see you.”

Molliter Ossa Cubent. [“May the earth lay lightly on his bones.” — Ovid, Heroides, VII, 162.]

HT: Vanderleun.

Peaceful Palestinian Demonstrators.

Dan Greenfield offers helpful advice to non-violent protestors which could save their lives.

The following is intended to serve as a useful guide to various activists, protesters and other completely non-violent folk who happen to be packing knives, guns, rocks and grenades. You will encounter various law enforcement and military personnel– this is how not to get shot by them.

First of all it’s important to remember that if you attack an armed man in a uniform, he will very probably shoot you.

Even given the most restrictive Rules of Engagement in the world which forbid him from opening fire unless he is outnumbered 600 to 1, and only when he has been given specific authorization by the UN to use deadly force– there will still come a time when he will open fire on you. This will occur when he feels that he or his comrades are in danger. At this point there will be bullets headed your way, and no matter what you learned at your Madrassa or in Protest Studies at Evergreen State High University, you are not bulletproof. Really, you’re not.

The good news is that there is a very easy way not to get shot.

Step 1. Don’t attack soldiers.

Step 2. When in doubt, see Step 1.

That means not trying to disembowel them with your peaceful knife and not throwing rocks at their head. Because while you might think that legal activism includes attempted murder, the men in uniform think that attempted murder should result in sudden death. And when that happens you will realize that fanatical passion for your poorly thought out cause and a medieval weapon are no match for trained soldiers who have guns and know how to use them.

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Loads of Western movie heroes defend the Alamo against Starship Troopers bugs in this very cool mashup by Fabrice Mathieu.

Kuriositas has the answer.

Let’s take the bell symbol, as a starting point. You might imagine – and it’s a good guess – that as church bells are rung by the winning side at the end of a war, that they are a symbol of victory.

In fact, in the 1800s the first three-reel slot machine game was invented by a Charles Frey and the name he gave it was the Liberty Bell – no guessing what the winning line was. This first design was duplicated by many in the game’s development and the bell was retained in those new designs and is still with us today.

The bar symbol is a little less obvious. We might think that they represent bars of gold but strangely enough they represent a pack of chewing gum! It was the logo of the Bell-Fruit Gum Company. So why on earth would this symbol appear on a slot machine?

The answer lies in the gambling laws in some US states in the late 1800s where betting was prohibited altogether. Even normal vending machines were regarded with some suspicion by some law-makers. If cash prizes were given then the manufacturers of the machines (not to mention those who rented them for use in their establishments) would be liable to prosecution. So they decided that the prize would be… chewing gum!

This not only explains the presence of the bar symbol on slot machines but also the addition of fruit which appeared at the same time. You may have already guessed that the cherry, melon and other fruit that appeared on the reels were indicative of the flavour of gum the winner would receive in recompense for the penny they had placed in the machine.

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Major General Sterling Price, C.S.A.

Andy Adams, “The Log of a Cowboy: A Narrative of the Old Trail Days” (1903):

Another vivid recollection of those boyhood days in Georgia was the return of my father from the Army. The notice of Lee’s surrender had reached us, and all of us watched for his coming. Though he was long-delayed, when at last he did come riding home on a swallow-marked brown mule, he was a conquering hero to us children. We had never owned a horse, and he assured us that the animal was his own, and by turns set us on the tired mule’s back. He explained to mother and us children how, though he was an infantryman, he came into possession of the animal. Now, however, with my mature years and knowledge of brands, I regret to state that the mule had not been condemned and was in the “U.S.” brand. A story which Priest, “The Rebel,” once told me throws some light on the matter; he asserted that all good soldiers would steal. “Can you take the city of St. Louis?” was asked to General Price. “I don’t know as I can take it,” replied the general to his consulting superiors, “but if you give me Louisiana troops, I’ll agree to steal it.”

Louisiana Tiger Zoauves.

HT: Karen L. Myers.

Luke “Milky” Moore

Esquire has a real life story out of Oz that could have been written by O. Henry.

The greatest adventures happen when you least expect them. And on July 15, 2010, Luke “Milky” Moore never thought one of the greatest in recent memory was about to start for him. …

Though he grew up comfortably—his father, Brett, was a bank executive, and his mother, Annette, a child-care supervisor—he’d been employed since thirteen, bagging groceries, mowing lawns, selling insurance. He was a bright student, but he opted to forgo college for work. “I always thought I’d be a millionaire one day,” he says in his thick Australian accent. While his mates were out drunkenly hunting wild boar, Milky was investing in hedge funds, and at nineteen he bought his own home, for himself and his high school sweetheart, Megan.

But then, in the fall of 2008, the life he’d worked so hard to achieve took a series of tragic turns. It started with the stock-market crash, which depleted his $50,000 life savings. With Goulburn’s economy in turmoil, he lost his job as a forklift driver. A few months later, he was driving in the early-morning darkness to paint happy birthday on a boulder near town to surprise Megan when he fell asleep at the wheel of his white Mitsubishi pickup—and drifted right into the path of an 18-wheeler, which plowed over his truck.

He awoke hanging out his shattered window covered in purple and black paint—but, miraculously, alive. “It was incredible that he survived,” recalls his father. Milky had a broken collarbone, arm, and ribs, and a ruptured spleen—but the scars ran deeper. He fell into a crippling depression, barely able to drag himself from bed or hold on to the job his father had helped him get as a teller at his bank. Adding to the pressure, his mother was suffering from a debilitating degenerative back disease, sometimes unable to get out of bed herself—leaving Milky to care for his year-old brother, Noah. It wasn’t long before his relationship with Megan ended under the strain, and Milky assumed the blame. By mid-2010, he was broke, alone, unemployed, and on the brink of foreclosure.

And that’s just when life suddenly gave him the equivalent of a royal flush on the pokies. It happened on July 15, the day his biweekly mortgage payment was due. With no money in the bank, Milky was bracing himself for the beginning of the end. But then something strange happened. The automatic debit—500 Australian dollars—went from his savings account at his bank, St. George, into his mortgage account. Two weeks later, it happened again. When he checked his balance, he could see that he had racked up the corresponding debt, and interest, under his name. Once he hit the limit, he assumed, the overdrafts would surely stop.

But they didn’t. Fortnight after fortnight, his mortgage got paid. Thinking this crazy, he put in a request for $5,000 to be transferred to his mortgage account. A couple days later, he called his bank to check on the transfer—figuring, at worst, he had reached his limit. “Did that go through?” he asked the teller, who told him casually, “Yes, that’s all paid.” A few days after that, on a lark, he called St. George and asked the bank to transfer $50,000 to his mortgage account. “I was literally thinking that I’ll just wing it and see if it works,” he recalls. And sure enough, it did. The $50,000 deficit was charged on his savings account, but the bank didn’t seem to notice, or, if it did, it didn’t care. It was like getting a free, unlimited loan. “I probably had a bit of a smile on my face then,” he says. “Not smiling because I was thinking I was scamming the bank, but smiling because I was like, ‘This is my fresh start.’”

By the time he sold his home a year later, he’d paid down his mortgage so much from the overdrafts that he cleared $150,000 (US$115,000).

Though he’d been quiet about this so far, he finally confided in a friend. “What do you reckon I do?” Milky asked him. What do you do, in other words, when you’re single, twenty-four, and just got a pile of free money from the bank? No-brainer, his friend replied. “Let’s party!”

Milky was going to Paradise. …

Milky’s rock-star lifestyle became routine. Sleep late, hit the gym, buy memorabilia online, slap the pokies, cocktails at the strip joint, then dancing all night in the clubs. On the nights he didn’t pick up, he sought the ready alternative: the many legal brothels in town. “Especially with girls,” he says bashfully, “you’ve got to make the most of every opportunity, because you might turn around and that’ll be gone.” One week, he threw down $40,000 and rented out an entire brothel to himself for four days. And so it was that, one day in November 2012, he barely registered what happened when he went to pay for repairs on his Alfa Romeo. He was standing there in the car shop, hungover and bronzed, when he saw a message he’d never seen before come up on the credit-card machine. “Call bank security,” it read.

Milky blinked a few times, trying to digest the moment he’d feared for the past two years. Fuck, he thought. Well, that’s done. He went back to his apartment in a daze. How could this just end? There was no old life. There was only this one, and the hole he had dug for himself. So he did the only thing he could think to do. He grabbed as many stacks of cash as he could find around his penthouse, drove to the airport, and booked the next flight to Phuket.

RTWT for the happy ending.

Hallig Habel, a farm in northern Germany on the North Sea, an area of low flatlands and mudflats. This photo was taken during an extreme high tide. Photo by Hans Joachim Kürtz.