I was doing research today and cool stuff came up

Toroidal electromagnetic pulses

Quote:Toroidal electromagnetic pulses can be generated using a device known as a horn microwave antenna. This electromagnetic “vortex cannon” produces skyrmion topological structures that might be employed for information encoding or for probing the dynamics of light–matter interactions, according to its developers in China, Singapore and the UK.

Examples of toroidal or doughnut-like topology abound in physics – in objects such as Mobius strips and Klein bottles, for example. It is also seen in simpler structures like smoke rings in air and vortex rings in water, as well as in nuclear currents. Until now, however, no one had succeeded in directly generating this topology in electromagnetic waves.

Quote:Topological electromagnetic fields exhibit vast potential applications in information and energy transmission12,13,14,15,16,17,18 and super-resolution metrology or microscopy19,20,21,22,23,24, thereby offering a potential avenue for achieving precise 3D positioning based on a single transmission antenna in free space. In 1996, Hellwarth and Nouchi introduced toroidal pulses, an exact solution to Maxwell’s equations25, which possess complex non-transverse skyrmion topological structures26,27,28,29, space-time nonseparability 30,31,32,33, and strong interactions with matter34,35. Recently, electromagnetic toroidal pulses have been successfully generated in the optics, terahertz, and microwave36,37,38, laying the foundation for their practical applications. However, to the best of our knowledge, there have been no reports of successful experimental implementations of toroidal pulses until now.

Quote:Recent developments in nanophotonics and structured light have led to the creation of similar topological particle-like textures in optical fields, known as optical skyrmions. In contrast to topological spin textures embedded in matter, optical skyrmions can propagate in free space, enabling long-distance information transfer. Creating and controlling free-space topological textures with structured light is an emerging field that will drive conceptual revolutions from solid-state data storage to dynamic long-range information transfer

Quote:The flow over a delta wing at high angles of attack is characterized by the presence of two large-scale primary vortices on the leeward side of the wing. These vortices contribute substantially to lift production at high angles of attack. Therefore, vortex breakdown, which can be induced by unfavorable pressure gradients or freestream disturbances,...

Quote:The B-2 had already shown its ability to fly halfway around the world and back—a 37-hour, 29,000-nautical-mile return flight from Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, to Guam in the Pacific with several air-to-air refuelings en route. With gravity shielding—if such a thing could be moved from the laboratory to a fully fledged aircraft program— either its range could be extended or the number of midair refuelings cut. Either of these would make the technology a powerful draw

Quote:LaViolette had written an elegant thesis about the B-2 and its antigravitational properties soon after the publication of a revelatory article
in Aviation Week, the "bible" of the U.S. aerospace industry, in which
a number of black-world engineers had whistle-blown to the author,
the magazine's West Coast editor, Bill Scott, about a host of amazing
new technologies supposedly being developed in the deeply classified
environment. One of these related to "electrostatic field-generating
techniques" in the B-2's wing leading edge with a view to reducing the
giant Stealth Bomber's radar cross section.

Quote:I have stood upon the cliff overlooking the Pacific where Japanese women, kids, and a few remaining soldiers jumped to their death rather surrender to U.S. forces as Guam was being retaken.

If you understand what the Japanese had been told about America and American soldiers then you might understand the "WHY" of their actions.

Polar opposites of how Japanese POWs were treated verses American POWs.. One things that helped immensely after Japan's surrendered was the word of mouth the returning Japanese prisoners revealed  about their treatment by the Yanks.

Ukraine is using the same humane treatment of Russian POWs as a calling card to get Russian soldiers to defect and surrender instead of die for the motherland.

Looks like, as mentioned before, a possible wing contamination due to ice pellets. Ice pellets will give a wing ice warts disrupting lift and airflow. I actually returned to the gate for another de-icing (corporate aircraft trying to get out of Vail Colorado) due to ice pellets and some low visibility snow/ice ... I do not remember how much the de-icing cost but it was not cheap.

Quote:Change is the most paradoxical constant of human existence. We resist it, fear it, and pretend we can outsmart it — yet the moment it appears utterly impossible, it begins gathering its unstoppable force.

The phrase, “When change looks impossible, it becomes inevitable,” captures an historical, psychological, and even spiritual truth: transformation does not arise from comfort or consent, but from tension and exhaustion. Systems — whether political, social, or personal — do not collapse because they are weak; they collapse because they have become too rigid to bend.

Every entrenched order insists it will last forever. Pharaohs built pyramids to defy time; emperors carved their names in stone; corporations and governments surround themselves with bureaucracy and rhetoric to simulate permanence. Yet the very structures built to prevent change become the incubators of it. When an institution spends all its energy defending itself from evolution, it hollows out from within. The appearance of stability becomes the mask of decay.
History teaches this repeatedly. The French monarchy before 1789 appeared unshakeable, supported by divine right, noble privilege, and military might. Yet it was precisely at the point, when reform seemed impossible, that revolution became inevitable.

The same pattern holds in every age: when dialogue and adaptation are refused, change no longer negotiates — it erupts. John F. Kennedy understood this when he warned, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, will make violent revolution inevitable.” The energy that might have gone into gradual improvement transforms into the energy of collapse.

On a personal level, the impossibility of change often marks the turning point of transformation. A person trapped in addiction, stagnation, or despair rarely changes when things are tolerable. Change occurs when one reaches what the ancients called metanoia — the long, dark tea time of the soul, as Douglas Adams called it.

At that moment, the illusion of control disintegrates, and something new is forced into being. The caterpillar’s transformation into a butterfly is often romanticized, but in truth, it is a violent, liquefying process. What looks like death from the outside is, in fact, the birth of flight.

Psychologists call this the threshold effect: change seems impossible until the old structure can no longer sustain itself. People cling to unhealthy relationships, failing careers, or destructive habits not because they want pain, but because familiarity feels safer than the unknown.

The impossible becomes inevitable only when the cost of staying the same exceeds the terror of transformation.

Civilizations follow a similar arc. The historian Arnold Toynbee observed that societies rise, not because of their wealth or power, but because of their creative response to challenge. When creativity gives way to conformity, decline sets in. The Roman Empire, Victorian Britain, and Soviet Union all fell into the same trap — mistaking temporary dominance for eternal truth. When they could no longer imagine alternatives, they made collapse their only remaining option.

In our own age, technological acceleration and environmental strain suggest that we stand on the edge of another such inflection point. Political polarization, economic inequality, and ecological collapse seem to form an immovable wall.

Yet history whispers the same lesson: when a society declares that meaningful change is impossible, it has already planted the seeds of its own transformation. The question is not if change will come, but how — through wisdom or through crisis.

There is a quiet but crucial moment before every transformation, when everything feels stuck — a psychological or historical stillness that feels eternal. Artists call it the creative void; mystics call it the dark night of the soul; revolutionaries call it the silence before the storm.

This stillness is deceptive. Beneath it, the old order is already dissolving. Victor Hugo’s observation, “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come,” captures this perfectly. The world resists the new idea with all its might, not because it is weak, but because it senses the end of its reign.

This moment can also be the most hopeful. When change looks impossible, it is often because we are still using the old vocabulary to describe a new reality. We demand that transformation look like improvement, when it actually looks like destruction. The crumbling of certainty is not the end of progress; it is the beginning of clarity.

Nature, unlike human institutions, never fears change. Forests burn so that new ecosystems can grow; rivers shift course to renew their vitality. In this light, human resistance to change looks like an act of arrogance — the refusal to participate in the same cycle that governs all life.

The wise cultures of the past understood this. The Stoics called it amor fati — love of fate — the willingness to embrace whatever comes, knowing that life itself is transformation.

When change seems impossible, it is not because the world has run out of possibilities, but because our imagination has. And imagination, once cornered, will always find a way out. History, psychology, and nature agree: the moment we declare “nothing can change” is the moment everything begins to.

And so it goes on a monsoon afternoon.

=====
I am torn over today’s cinematic theme, since there are some brilliant films on topic. Ultimately, I’ve chosen Koyaanisqatsi (1982), a true masterpiece of visual art, spanning eons and emotions without dialogue or narration. The unique and unforgettable score by Philip Glass runs the gamut from soaring exhilaration to utter despair in 7/8 time. This film sticks with you for decades. The perfect companion piece, for those double-feature nights, is 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Nuff sed about that one.

I never heard this theory/hypothesis on those ancient handbags, but I'm onboard with it. Very interesting, thought provoking presentation!!

Quote:According to several dating methods, many petroglyphs were created around 12,000 years ago during the Younger Dryas, roughly a thousand-year period when the climate of half the Earth suddenly cooled.

In context, petroglyphs are substantial proof that the Younger Dryas was a plasma storm event. As is the geology and the condition of frozen remains of animals caught in the maelstrom. Megafauna were nearly wiped-out. The landscape made desolate, raised by fire and flood.

Some humans who survived the cataclysm did so in Anatolia, Turkey at one of the earliest constructions of an organized society discovered so far, Göbekli Tepe—dated to 9,700 BC at the end of the Younger Dryas. New sites continue to be uncovered with earlier dates, indicating some of them were occupied even prior to the Younger Dryas event.

Plasma storms shook the Earth and erupted the guts out of it by raising it’s internal potential, while cyclones formed at the feet of giant columns of auroral light. The visions they saw are what is recorded in myths, glyphs, columns and statues.

Author and engineer Andrew Hall considers the repeating forms of Nature as the rule, not the exception—because Nature is circuitry. Our bodies and every plant and animal on Earth work on circuitry. Our planet’s electric bubble lives inside the Sun’s electric bubble, called the heliosphere. Nested spheres of circuitry repeat at the galactic and cosmic scales. Everything is electric.

Quote:We present the finale of the “Eye of the Storm” series. In his concluding episode, author and Thunderbolts colleague Andrew Hall brings to light the handbag depicted all over the world in ancient stonework. The earliest know depictions are in petroglyphs that can’t all be dated, but are believed to be from before 9,000 BC. These figures just might symbolically commemorate the most Earth-shattering event known to man.

Finally, if there is one thing evident from the "Eye of the Storm" series, it’s that Earth is an electric circuit driven by whatever is in its core. We don’t know what the “core” is. It’s not a spinning ball of iron. The surface effects we experience outside of the crust are driven from within as a result of how the core reacts with the solar system. The surface effects are a capacitive reaction to changing energy levels in the core, because Earth is a spherical capacitor.

By now, I presume most of us have seen the various angles in the latest ICE related shooting in Minneapolis. A male emergency room nurse was shot by ICE agents while apparently unarmed, although he was armed when entering the protest zone.

From all the video I've seen so far, it appears that the deceased was disarmed by an ICE agent a split second before the shots rang out which ended his life. This is, of course a tragedy, but one that was supremely avoidable, which makes it all the worse.

The US government higher-ups are scrambling now to cover their asses by making statements that seem to me to be ludicrous - they should have at least the same information I have, and probably more, to base their statements upon, yet they insist on going off on tangents in the mad scramble to CYA. The latest such statement is to paint an assumption of guilt because the deceased "had two loaded magazines". None of them have specified if those two magazines were in addition to the one in the firearm, or if the two magazines included the one in the firearm (i.e. a single additional magazine), but that really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

Two additional magazines are pretty much standard. My current every day carry shoulder rig came with two spare magazine pouches as standard. They ride under my right arm, and balance out the weight of the firearm riding under my left arm pretty well, whether they are ever needed or not... and in a gunfight, too many bullets are always preferable to too few bullets.

When I carried a gun for a living, two spare magazines were also the standard. Nearly all of the magazine pouches sold for my duty belt held two spares as standard. Some guys carried two of those pouches for a total of 4 spares, but I only ever carried one two magazine pouch, leaving space on the duty belt for other things I felt necessary. It was rare to find anyone with just one spare magazine. So, two is the standard.

Therefore, there is nothing unusual about carrying two spares plus the one in the gun. The government should know better than to insinuate otherwise. I would be willing to bet that every single one of those ICE agents had, at the very least, two spare magazines. Using the government's logic, that would mean they are going in there with the intent to massacre people rather than just do their jobs and go home... which is a conclusion that is ridiculous on the face of it. So, if it's ridiculous the make that assumption on the part of the ICE agents, it's equally ridiculous to apply that assumption to a civilian. Foolish assumptions are foolish assumptions, regardless of the direction they are flying in.

Another argument the government is putting forth is the ludicrous notion that one is not allowed to be armed at protests. That is a ridiculous notion - both are rights guaranteed by the US Constitution. In no other cases are the assertion made that any Right in the Bill of Rights cancels out any other right enshrined therein. For example, you do not give up your 4th Amendment right against unlawful search and seizure when you exercise your 1st Amendment Right to speak out. You do not give up your 5th Amendment Right against self incrimination when you exercise your 1st Amendment Right to attend a church service. So, the government, of all people, should be extremely aware that exercising one Right does not cancel any other right.

What appears to me to have happened in this case was at the very least a lapse in judgement that tragically cost a man his life. Probably several lapses in judgement on both sides.

To me, it makes no sense to interfere with law enforcement engaged in their sworn lawful duties, which is what these Minnesota "protests" have devolved into on a mass scale. And that makes no sense to me regardless of whether one is armed or unarmed. That was the first lapse in judgement. It's smarter to avoid these protests altogether, knowing that they are all devolving into violent action, but if you simply must go, then you should go armed, also because they always devolve into violence. Better to stay away from insurrections unless your purpose is to engage in insurrection.

Now in the Renee Good case, I believe that was a clearly righteous shooting. From the video evidence, they were certainly interfering in ICE operations they had no business interfering in, and Ms. Good's actions of trying to mow down an ICE officer - while her "wife" cheered her on chanting "drive, baby, drive!" was pretty clearly an act of insurrection. In this recent case, the waters are quite a bit murkier.

All of the video I've seen so far starts with the action of an ICE officer knocking the deceased on his ass. There has been no footage presented so far that shows what preceded that - nothing that shows WHY the ICE officer knocked him on his ass, or even if there was any justification for that action at all. That may be by design - propaganda of omission is every bit as powerful as propaganda of commission. What really started this ball rolling downhill? Anything?

Then, after the deceased is knocked on his ass, Feds dogpile on him, and the actions become murky. We can see what appears to be an ICE agent reaching into the dogp[ile and drawing his hand back out with a pistol from the area of the deceased's waist band... which, if that is the case, would tend to indicate that the deceased had not drawn his weapon at all, and that it was still holstered, meaning there was no imminent threat.

A split second after the deceased appears to have been disarmed, the fatal shots ring out, and it sounds like they came from at least two different guns. If we are to give the benefit of doubt, as in "innocent until proven guilty", we would have to presume that the first officer to shoot saw an empty holster without knowing that another agent was in control of the gun due to the dogpiling, and assumed the deceased had drawn his weapon himself, and in a split second decision fired to protect himself and other officers from what he perceived to be an imminent threat. The second officer shooting probably then would have engaged in what is known as "sympathetic fire" - that is where one person hears the shots ring out, immediately assumes that the shooter saw a threat to fire upon, and starts shooting in a support role thinking the first shooter must have been justified.

That would, at the very least,be a case of manslaughter vs. murder. You have to be sure that your target is an actual threat, rather than assuming so... but Monday morning quarterbacking is easy when you're not having to make a split second decision in the middle of the deep shit.

But we don't really know what the initial interaction was that led up to the shooting. That will unfold n the course of the investigation, and government officials should not be trying to cover their own asses with hearsay and made-up bullshit. That makes them look like they are grasping at straws, and nonexistent straws to boot. That's a bad look.

The bottom line, really, is that it was poor judgement to engage in a protest that a reasonable person would know is going to turn violent, as these Minneapolis [protests almost always do...  and poor judgement has killed many a person. Reality does not care what your intent was, it only cares whether there are consequences for your actions or not. It is often impartial in levying those consequences.

It's also poor judgement to interfere with armed men doing their jobs.. but we do not yet know if any such interference on the part of the deceased actually occurred, or if he was simply knocked on his ass and dogpiled for being in the wrong place at the wrong time... which again argues for not being there and continuing to breathe freely after you were not there.

If it happened, it's also poor judgement to randomly knock onlookers on their ass, and it's poor judgement to dogpile that onlooker simply for observing. It is poor judgement to shoot a target that you don't absolutely know is a threat.

So the entire thing MAY have been a series of faulty judgements that led to a man losing his life. Poor judgements on both side of the equation...

BUT, what government officials are claiming in spite of the evidence to the contrary is a poor judgement compounding all of the other poor judgements possibly made. we'll have to wait to see what the incident investigation reveals.

And the government should have waited, too, before yapping out bullshit.

This gent is a former law enforcement officer giving his opinion on the government ass-covering claims:



.

So here's another confused (?) memory.

People of a certain age will recall the disinfection products that were called Mercurochrome and Merthiolate.

My parents used both of them on me and my siblings to disinfect cuts.

Now, I distinctly recall that Mercurochrome was quite mild in how it felt when applied.  Merthiolate, on the other hand, burned like someone had put a match to one's skin.  And of course, Dad loved Merthiolate, believing the burning sensation meant it actually 'worked' and that Mercurochrome was simply colored water.

But now I see on the babblenet articles claiming that Merthiolate was the mild product.

Anyone here ever use these products and have memories as to how they felt when applied ?

On the face of it more sabre rattling or perhaps gunboat diplomacy from the US but should it go further it seems to me Putin is losing allies quite quickly these days.

Quote:Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA – As he was returning to the US from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, US President Donald Trump told the press aboard Air Force One that an American “armada” is heading toward Iran. That armada is a US carrier strike group led by the USS Abraham Lincoln, which was reported on January 20 as having departed its previously assigned patrol area and was steaming towards the Middle East.

Deploying the carrier has come as a reaction to the rising death toll from the Iranian clerical regime’s crackdown on a nationwide wave of demonstrations. The death toll from that revolt has, according to official government admissions by the government in Tehran, risen to at least 5,000 unarmed protestors having been killed by the security forces, activists said.

However, the actual number of those killed is now suspected of being as high as 20,000 or more. Internal sources in Iran have cited previous estimates in that range. Still, they have usually been aggregate totals extrapolated from information provided by hospitals and medical workers in major cities, then passed on by activists leading the demonstrations.

On Friday, Tehran dismissed as “completely false” Trump’s assertion that his threats of using military force had halted the mullahs’ planned executions of more than 800 protesters that had previously been arrested. Trump had stated that any such killings would be a red line that would force him to launch military action.
“I said, ‘If you hang those people, you’re going to be hit harder than you’ve ever been hit,'” the US president told reporters in the Air Force One press contingent as he returned from the Davos forum. “And an hour before this horrible event, they canceled the hangings, he said. “That was a good sign.”
“I stopped 837 hangings on Thursday, would have been dead, every one of them, mostly young men,” he said on Air Force One.
Referring to the carrier strike group scheduled to be on station today, Trump added, “Maybe we won’t have to use it.” The United States has “a big force going to Iran. I’d rather not see anything happen,” he added, but “we have a lot of ships going that direction just in case.”
In addition to the carrier and its flotilla of support vessels, the US has also dispatched additional aircraft and land-based air defense systems, per statements from Pentagon officials. For its part, the UK said it would send RAF Eurofighter Typhoon jets from 12 Squadron to Qatar, at Doha’s request.

https://www.19fortyfive.com/2026/01/the-...-backyard/

Interesting discussion on some of the wars we the west were ready to fight....Kinda !!

in case you hadn't heard; US ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has been conducting operations tracing and taking into custody illegal aliens in the Minneapolis area.

these operations have been met with major resistance.  The resisters call themselves 'protesters' but it would be more accurate to call them rioters.  They have been blocking streets, blowing whistles, setting off fireworks, throwing projectiles (like frozen water bottles) and other interference.

its unclear how many of these interferers are native to the twin cities area, and how many are outsiders, even 'professional agitators'.

public officials, including the Governor of Minnesota and the Mayor of Minneapolis, have taken the unprecedented step of encouraging the interference.
personally, I have never heard of government officials interfering with government law enforcement operations.

last week, on January 18, a group stormed into a Christian church, shouting and otherwise interfering with the service.

the US government has arrested three of the individuals responsible.

I'm glad they did.  Churches are open to the public, but they are NOT open forums.  only selected individuals may speak.
this church disruption was totally illegal and immoral.