Category Archive 'Disasters'
26 Jul 2025

“Uncommanded Discharges”

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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.”

06 Jul 2025

Rivers Can Rise Fast in Texas

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HT: Karen L. Myers.

01 Feb 2025

Woke Disney Sets an All-Time Trailer Dislike Record: 96%

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26 Nov 2024

We’re From the Government; We’re Here to Help

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22 Oct 2024

Electric Vehicles Are the Future!

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02 Mar 2024

Fine Example of Engineer-Speak

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“During this burn, several engines began shutting down before one engine failed energetically, quickly cascading to a rapid unscheduled disassembly of the booster,” SpaceX said.

HT: Arstechnica.com via Karen L. Myers.

17 Dec 2022

Bad News

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World’s Largest Cylindrical Aquarium Bursts With 1,500 Tropical Fish Inside. link

A 50-foot tall, 264,000-gallon aquarium containing around 1,500 tropical fish burst in the German hotel in the capital of Berlin on Friday, sending fish and water through the lobby and onto the street, along with all sorts of hotel debris – from bellhop trolleys to twisted lamps.

According to police, the aquarium – known as the AquaDom, exploded early in the morning. Two people injured by glass shards were taken to a local hospital. Around 100 firefighters arrived on scene, which is currently under investigation.

Firefighters? Should they have called the coast guard?

The incident caused “incredible maritime damage,” according to the police, who noted that the aquarium held around 100 species of tropical fish.

15 Nov 2022

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

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The NY Post profiles the FTX founder/genius.

Biden’s second-biggest donor, cryptocurrency billionaire wunderkind Sam Bankman-Fried, a k a SBF, saw his business file for bankruptcy days after the election, but not before pumping $40 million into the Democratic Party to spend on “get-out-the-vote” and other shadowy ballot-harvesting mechanics for the midterms.

The shambolic 30-year-old whiz kid, once said to have been worth $16 billion, had spent $10 million helping get Biden elected in 2020.

SBF’s mother, Stanford law professor Barbara Fried, also is co-founder of left-wing political action committee Mind The Gap, which has raised a reported $140 million to help Democrats win elections through the same “get-out-the-vote” grift.

A more unlikely billionaire you could not find — and of course his money was built on thin air. A math genius with poor social skills, SBF reportedly lived in a “polycule” — a polyamorous relationship with multiple people — in a luxury penthouse with about 10 co-workers in the tax haven of the Bahamas, where his collapsed crypto exchange FTX was headquartered.

Otherwise, he was sleeping on beanbags in his office, eating vegan fries and, according to his own Twitter feed, popping amphetamines and sleeping pills to regulate his chaotic sleeping habits.

Now Reuters is reporting that between $1 billion and $2 billion of customer funds have vanished from FTX, conveniently after the Democrats safely spent his money.

At last report, SBF and his mysterious co-founder, Gary Wang, were being held “under supervision” by Bahamian authorities after reportedly planning to flee to Dubai, according to fintech publication Cointelegraph.

It is a stunning fall to earth. The financial media and big investors have feted the young billionaire as a saint who shunned earthly pleasures like Lamborghinis and Rolexes, but lived only to give away all his money and make the world a better place.

He was the most famous millennial adherent of a cult known as “Effective Altruism,” which originated at Oxford University, found fertile ground in Silicon Valley — and now has gone down in flames along with him.

EA is a disguised form of socialism, because all the “good” that is done just happens to match up perfectly with the left’s obsessions, whether climate change, social justice, equity, banning meat or his favorite, “pandemic preparedness.”

In a Nas Daily online video, an awkward Bankman-Fried was featured this year as a role model of altruism for young people: “Sam is not a traditional billionaire because he believes in the concept of ‘earn to give’ … Next decade he will probably give away more than $10 million … He wants to get rich in order to impact the world and change it.”

RTWT

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Caroline Ellison, Ellison, the close business associate and confirmed ex-girlfriend of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, tweeted last year:

09 Nov 2022

That Sucked!

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Andrew Bloody Sullivan actually came out for Republicans this time. And did it help?

Ha! The democrats nominated a drooling tattooed skinhead with a billy goat beard who campaigned in a hoodie for the Senate in my home state, and he won. I feel like Job.

Jim Geraghty sums up the debacle pretty well.

Well, that was awful. The much-touted red wave felt more like a red splash in a kiddie pool.

Don’t Let Anyone Tell You It Was an Okay Night for Republicans

No excuses, Republicans. Everyone thought you had just about the ideal issue environment for a midterm election, and the exit polls verified it. Seven in ten voters said they were “dissatisfied” or “angry” with the state of the country. Around three-quarters of voters nationally characterized the state of the economy as “poor” or “not good,” and the same amount said that inflation has caused them severe or moderate hardship. About two-thirds said that gas prices have been causing them hardship. You had parents livid about the learning loss in schools because of the long closures for Covid-19 and inappropriate materials in the curriculum. You had an unpopular president, who was such a liability that Democrats couldn’t let him go anywhere near a swing state.

And the nation, deeply dissatisfied with the way the Democrats were running things, looked at what the GOP offered as the alternative and concluded, “Nope, I’ll stick with what the Democrats are giving me” in a lot of key places.

RTWT

07 Feb 2022

It Couldn’t Happen to a Better Network

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Emerald Robinson is unsympathetic, looking on as CNN craters.

here have been so many scandals recently at America’s least favorite cable news network CNN that it’s hard to remember them all — they’ve multiplied like the ex-husbands of the Kardashian clan. Who can keep up with all the jokes now? Just take the most recent one: the forced resignation of CNN’s president Jeff Zucker. The first scandal is that not one, but two women were interested in being romantically involved with Jeff Zucker — who could be described, generously, as the least attractive man in the Eastern Seaboard. (I’ve been unable to confirm whether both women were legally blind when they met Zucker.)

The second scandal is that the woman who was romantically linked with Jeff Zucker, Allison Gollust, was not only romantically involved with Zucker for a decade but that the pair were personally involved in PR crisis management for New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. This included “calling him to do news segments with his brother Chris Cuomo and even coaching him on what to say during his infamous COVID briefings” according to the New York Post.

Why was the top executive of a cable news network coaching an elected official? Perhaps because his girlfriend had previously been the communications director for Governor Cuomo? Perhaps because Governor Cuomo’s brother hosted a nightly news program for CNN? Perhaps because CNN has always operated as the cable news wing of the Democrat Party under Zucker’s direction? In terms of ethical violations at CNN, we are spoiled for choice.

Let’s not forget the scale of the scandal that Zucker and Gollust were aiding and abetting Andrew Cuomo to escape: he had ordered that COVID patients should be placed into New York nursing homes. (There’s absolutely no reason to do that unless you want to spread the disease to the elderly.) Then Cuomo and his team intentionally withheld nursing home death data during the Trump Administration. In other words, Zucker and Gollust helped Governor Cuomo’s cover-up of COVID-19 nursing home deaths while ostensibly employed by CNN to inform the public of such cover-ups. It’s hard to imagine a more serious ethical breach at a media outlet.

What was the reaction, you ask, of CNN’s staff to Jeff Zucker’s resignation and the serious ethical breaches behind it? They all got together for a staff meeting and defended Zucker of course. (We know this because most of them leaked details to other media outlets like the New York Times.) This might be surprising to anyone who thought people like Brian Stelter and Jake Tapper and Don Lemon were actually journalists and not just a motley crew of misfits that were hired by Zucker over the years. Did anyone really trust these people to give them information anymore? Since CNN has lost 90% of its audience, the answer to that question is a resounding no.

RTWT

26 Aug 2021

Surrenderer-in-Chief

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17 Aug 2021

Unsuccessful Escape

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