Psyche is located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, the orbit of 2, 5.3, 3 AU from the sun.

Source:

WASHINGTON — An independent review of problems that delayed the launch of NASA’s Psyche asteroid mission uncovered institutional issues at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that led the agency to delay the launch of another mission being developed there.

NASA released Nov. 4 the report by an independent review board commissioned by NASA after the Psyche mission missed its launch window earlier this year. The mission, to the metallic main belt asteroid of the same name, suffered delays in development and testing of its flight software, and is now scheduled for launch in October 2023.

[…]

The report highlighted challenges in hiring and retaining skilled engineers, as JPL competes with aerospace companies that offer higher salaries, particularly in engineering and software development. “Thus, there is a perfect storm, with outside competitive pressures and inside demand pressures affecting the availability of these critical resources,” the report stated.

Competition is a good thing. There are other very competent US and foreign Space Design teams. If JPL is no longer viable, then it should be shut down. Certainly, NASA is nothing but a woke jobs program and should be terminated immediately. The problem is that government can only layer on more management and bureaucracy while throwing good money after bad. Once the rot in government appears, it never gets fixed. Time to move on.

Via Instapundit.

He seems nice:

Former Senior Intelligence Service officer at the CIA, Marc Polymeropoulos published a Sunday piece declaring that that techniques once used to fight radical Islam should be turned against the against the right-wing in America.

Polymeropoulos’ piece for NBC News Think warned that propagandists, whether Islamic terrorists or Republicans, should be subject to counterterrorism and counterradicalization techniques.

“I worked in counterterrorism operations for nearly my entire career at the CIA before retiring in 2019. The battle we engaged in with international terrorist groups like Al Qaeda wasn’t just with their legions of foot soldiers but with their highly effective propaganda arms as well,” he wrote. “The U.S. and our allies considered those propagandists fundamental cogs in a terror group’s machinery, and just as culpable as any other terrorist. So we held them accountable when innocent civilians were killed.”

Polymeropoulos suggested that the attack of Paul Pelosi was evidence that the American government needs to take a firmer approach to its own citizenry.

“Lone wolves are a thorn for domestic U.S. law enforcement as well, as we saw last week when a man not affiliated with any known group but immersed in right-wing propaganda attacked Paul Pelosi, the husband of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,” he wrote. “While the authorities have taken appropriate action against him, there are few signs that the government is taking the big-picture approach needed to combat the violence-inducing propaganda behind his crime.”

He appeared to lament that the U.S. Constitution gives American citizens more rights than foreign enemies.

“The Constitution confers certain free-speech protections for extremist propaganda in the U.S. that prevent authorities from exactly replicating our foreign counterterrorism strategy here at home. But there are important lessons we can and should apply,” he said. “For one thing, we can exercise free speech to proclaim that the normalization of violence against politicians is dangerous and unacceptable. Some violent rhetoric might not be illegal, but it is all morally repugnant.”

Polymeropoulos also seemed to equivocate demonizing an opposing politician with calling for violence against them.

“To start with, we need to clearly identify what crosses the line into the realm of dangerous rhetoric. That means calling out those in the right-wing ecosphere who for years have demonized, and at times even promoted and encouraged, attacks on Pelosi,” he claimed.

There are more bizarre, rambling, semi-coherent, partially partisan political ravings at the source. He seems to have spent just a little too much time inside the intel machine. All a hammer sees, after all, are nails.

Via WoG.

Part of the thrust behind Social Media was to break the barrier of number 36 (below), which every American used to have.  Imagine creating the world’s largest intelligence collection system and then convincing people to surrender their critical information to it for free. Nobody teaches their children to keep household matters private anymore, and because of social media, the natural discernment to be private about family is gone.

Keep your mouth shut, appear the least out of place in situations, and observe more than divulge. The only thing that should make you stand out is that you fit in well.

Keeping your mouth shut and eyes & ears open, this election cycle should once again prove to be an excellent opportunity to collect free intel on enemies, foreign and domestic. The election “results” are largely inconsequential. Observe carefully what all groups say for certain, but more so what groups and individuals do over the next several weeks and months. Local intel matters most.

Speaking of which, there’s a new billboard, in the most Lefty part of town, for the upcoming holiday season Gun Show. We’ve been warning for a while now that it isn’t only the right that’s buying all the guns.

Numbers 12 and 13 are big. The throw-away society is like an infection that spreads into the mindset, crippling long-term thinking, and planning. The value proposition for especially people, but also equipment and other things, is being degraded wholesale. It’s easier to train somebody you know than to find other people you can trust.

What is Self-Sufficiency?

Depends on who you ask. Does that sound like a cop-out?

Well, die-hard doomsday day preppers would likely say that self-sufficiency is providing for all of one’s needs without any outside help or resources; there is no need to buy food, clothing, water, power, sanitation, medicine, etc. This would be the most literal interpretation of “off-grid.” That’s at one end of the spectrum.

Others take a more balanced approach to the idea of being self-sufficient. For them, self-sufficiency is about how well you can provide for the needs of yourself and your loved ones for the long haul. For example, you grow a percentage of what you eat, or you have a backup power source for outage situations. Perhaps it’s about having a bartering agreement with someone wherein you exchange eggs for honey, bringing community in as an element of independence and control in taking care of yourself.

However, let’s take a broader view of what it means to be self-sufficient. Let’s think about it as a mindset. In that vein, I offer these principles of self-sufficiency from Don McIlvaney.

McIlvaney’s Principles of Self-Sufficiency

1. Change the way you look at everything. Rethink your entire lifestyle.

2. Develop discernment about people.

3. When you invest, invest first in the right people.

4. Look at yourself honestly. What are your strengths and weaknesses?

5. Seek the counsel of others you trust.

6. Find like-minded people who can be part of a mutual support group and who you can cooperate with.

7. Find alternate methods for doing everything.

8. Develop an instinct for what doesn’t feel right. No matter how good something looks or sounds on the surface, go with your gut feeling, your instinct, and your intuition.

9. Eliminate non-essentials from your life. Eliminate all time wasters and money wasters, and things you don’t need, i.e., clothes, furniture, junk, etc. Eliminate television from your life.

10. Simplify your lifestyle. Learn to say no to things and activities that don’t make you self-sufficient.

11. Develop physical, mental, and spiritual discipline.

12. Learn to treat everything as if it were irreplaceable.

13. Buy things that will last, even if they cost more.

14. Acquire tools that do not depend on electric power.

15. Learn to spend time alone with yourself in total silence. Think, reflect, reminisce, and plan (or strategize) in silence.

16. Learn to spend time with your family without any superficial entertainment and distractions.

17. Make sure your trust is in the Lord and not your own preparedness. Pattern your preparedness according to the guidance of the Lord. Listen to what He puts in your heart. Don’t use only your reasoning power.

18. Learn something from every situation you are in. Everything you hear, see, touch or feel has a lesson in it. Learn a principle from every mistake you make and from everyday life situations.

19. Store up memories for times of isolation or separation from your loved ones.

20. Learn to enjoy simple pleasures from the smallest things. Have a measure of joy and happiness that doesn’t come from creature comforts or entertainment.

21. Establish priorities for all areas of your life, including relationships and current and future needs. Set goals for areas to become proficient or self-sufficient. Set a schedule or a timeline to reach those goals based on the money and available time.

22. Examine the concept of civil disobedience from Bible times throughout history. At what point should the people of Egypt have said No to killing the male babies in Moses’ day? At what point should the people of colonial America have said No to King George? At what point should the people of Germany have said No to Hitler? At what point do we say No to the despots of our day when they take over our money, property, guns, our children, and our freedom? Decide what is your choke point. When do you move toward civil disobedience? For many throughout history, it was when evil leaders handed down edicts that were directly contrary to God’s Word or commands. Don’t set your choke point too early or too quickly, too late or never. Think through and calculate a strategy. Then never look back.

23. Learn to ask the right questions in every situation.

24. Bring orderliness into your life. If you live in disorder, it will pull you down and break your focus. Think focus vs. distraction.  Eliminate the distractions from your life.

25. Self-sufficiency or survival principles are learned on a day-to-day basis and must be practical.

26. Always have more than one way to escape, more than one way to do something. Have a plan B and a plan C.

27. Everyday life, and especially life during a crisis, requires up-front systems and backup systems if the first line of defense, or the up-front system, fails.

28. Real education only takes place when change occurs in our attitudes, actions, and way of life.

29. Wisdom is making practical applications of what you know. It is not enough to know everything you need to know. It will only serve you and others if practical application is made of that knowledge.

30. Fix in your own mind the truth about your capabilities. In a crisis situation, this will keep you from being too cocky and will provide you with confidence.

31. Decide ahead of time, before a crisis arrives, how you will react in a given situation so that you are not swayed by the circumstances, the situation, or your emotions.

32. Beware of being spread too thin in your life. Decide on the few things in life that you must do and then do them well. Think focus versus distraction. Make sure that unimportant, non-essential distractions don’t keep you from achieving your important objectives.

33. Learn to quit wasting things. Be a good steward of all that God provides.

34. Buy an extra of everything you use regularly and set that extra one aside for the time when such items may be difficult or impossible to obtain.

35. In every situation, train yourself to look for what doesn’t fit, what’s out of place, and what doesn’t look right.

36. Teach your children, and learn this yourself, that you are not obligated to give information to strangers. You don’t have to answer questions that are none of their business, not even to government officials.

37. Sell or give away things you don’t use or need. Consider giving away or selling half of your stuff, the non-essentials. Simplify and streamline your life, lifestyle, and possessions.

38. Find someone who lived through the Great Depression and learn from them. Find out how they became self-sufficient, how they made do with very little, and how they found joy and contentment amid hard times.

“In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began”

Source:

It’s up to you:

In my one and only visit to Hawaii (to Maui), I quickly got accustomed to feral chickens running around everywhere.  Story has it from everyone there that chickens were brought to the Islands and hurricanes blew fences down and released them to the wild, and ever since then they have run around the Island untamed, uncaged and uncontrolled.  They seem to take some sort of pleasure in knowing that they had chickens running loose.  I took less pleasure when the Roosters crowed in the morning if I wanted to sleep.  But the Roosters crow all the time, even at night.  It’s a non-stop thing there.

The problem has gotten worse.

In Hawaii, feral chickens are choosing to leave the country life and make their home in the densely populated areas of Honolulu.

The state notoriously has an ongoing problem with feral chickens, largely blamed on hurricanes setting them loose, tourists feeding them and even on cock fighting operations. The growing populations are a known nuisance in the suburbs and rural areas of the different Hawaiian Islands, but now the wild fowl are infiltrating the concrete jungles of Honolulu in greater numbers.

This is hilarious and I couldn’t be happier for the state of Hawaii.  No one deserves it more.

Note the comedic failures here.  They caught the chickens, and then released them elsewhere, doing nothing whatsoever to address the problem.

In fact, they are told not to by the state.  Apparently, the state wants to capture them, and then presumably send them to Veterinarians to be euthanized.  I also presume that the state would agree to pay for the Vet services every time a new chicken came into the clinic.

So far they are spending $100 per bird.  Perhaps if they increase this amount to several hundred million dollars they might have a bit of success.  Also, perhaps they could prepare a chicken sanctuary for the captures birds rather than eat them.  They could pick one of the Islands and devote it entirely to chickens.  Yea, that would do the job.  If they could catch them all.  Then they could erect a statue to the chicken god at the entrance to the island sanctuary.  Entrance would require falling down and worshipping the chicken god and all of his ancestors.

We can’t have men running around with shotguns to handle the problem.  If any killing is to be done, I assume it will be a massively expensive operation performed by SWAT snipers, all hidden away so that people don’t see the bloodshed.

Hilarious.  And ridiculous.

I guess it wouldn’t be a good idea to invite Hawaiians on hunting trips then?

I sort of naturally assume that when local law enforcement confiscates firearms, even if nothing illegal has occurred, the firearms will either never be returned, or if they are, will be rusted, and that most of the time at least some of the firearms end up as gifts to extended family members.  This is the whole point of civil asset forfeiture, it’s just that when the ATF or local LEOs confiscate firearms it might be on a smaller scale.  Idiot Jeff Sessions approved of and defended civil asset forfeiture, as you will recall.  Trump left him in office for nearly two years before appointing Barr, the defender of Lon Horiuchi.

And if that’s true of local law enforcement, it’s true in the superlative of the ATF.  If they take possession of firearms, you should expect never to see them again, even if you’ve done nothing wrong.

And yet, God declared theft to be a sin, and hasn’t changed His mind.

Kyle Rittenhouse

Source:

You would be wrong if you figured Kyle Rittenhouse’s legal battle ended when a court acquitted him of murder and other charges for justifiably shooting 3 men in self defense. This is yet another example of why, if possible, avoiding conflict is always the wisest action.

[…]

The Civil Suit Against Rittenhouse—

The father of an adult who attacked Rittenhouse with a skateboard wants money. No doubt he grieves for his son. Any decent father would. But the arguments in this civil suit against Rittenhouse are nonsensical and proven false in the criminal trial.

The Deceased Attacker is actually a Hero—

For example, in the suit, the father claims his son was a “hero” and was trying to disarm Rittenhouse. The claim in the criminal trial was that somehow the 3 men were ‘good samaritans’ who thought Rittenhouse was an active shooter, and they needed to stop him. A claim that prosecutors couldn’t substantiate with evidence, witness statements or ‘victim’ testimony. The complaint filed by the man’s father reads:

After Anthony was shot, Gage Grosskreutz approached Defendant Rittenhouse with his hands up, pleading with him to stop his shooting rampage. Without provocation or any legal justification, Defendant Rittenhouse shot at Grosskreutz from point-blank range, hitting him in the arm. Thankfully, Grosskreutz survived.

Yeah, this description of events is complete fantasy when compared to all the evidence presented at trial.

Rittenhouse is an alt-right Nazi—

The complaint also attempts to use the same failed approach prosecutors used in the criminal trial—frame Rittenhouse as a racist. The ‘you’re a racist’ argument works on social media. But the same question that the prosecutors couldn’t provide an answer to in the criminal trial lingers. If Rittenhouse is so blinded by racial hatred, why did he only shoot people of his same race? The answer is clear, because he only shot people who he reasonably believed were going to cause him death or serious bodily harm, period.

The court rules and procedures for civil suits are much more lenient. There was supposed to be a law against double indemnity, but that was in a bygone era in a free country that no longer exists.

CCW Liability Insurance Carriers Compared

Insurance is primarily a wealth preservation tool. Insurance, in all cases, is a minor cost to cover what would be a major cost if an infrequent, yet very expensive, particular event were to happen. If you have something to lose, the cost of insurance may be a wise choice. This applies to all types of insurance. CCW insurance is no different.

Source:

It remains the only proven technology capable of serving the energy needs of de-carbonized modern society.

[…]

The energy demands of an industrialized society require an abundant source of uninterrupted power. However, the “green power” (primarily wind and solar) intended to replace fossil fuels is, by its nature, intermittent and subject to fluctuations in the weather. While that limitation could be eased somewhat with the augmentation of back-up batteries, the land-consumption requirements for a wholesale shift to renewables would be prohibitive.

The author is making the classic Conservative mistake. He’s assuming the Left, and particularly the Global Oligarchs, desire you to have a prosperous and growing future instead of wanting ninety percent of the population dead. His base assumption is wrong. The information in the article is interesting, but the left doesn’t want to debate the facts of what a healthy modern country needs for its energy purposes. The projections of Conservatives will get themselves killed.

Unlike fossil-fuel energy and nuclear power, the energy from solar and wind is widely dispersed, requiring large tracts of land to “collect and harness” it for power generation. Fossil fuels can produce 500 to 10,000 watts per square meter and nuclear can produce 500 to 1,000 watts per square meter. Solar power, on the other hand, can only produce five to 20 watts per square meter. Wind can produce just one or two.

The current installed power from all energy sources in the US is 1.2 terawatts (one million megawatts). Converting all that energy to wind and solar (assuming an average land use requirement of 10 watts per square meter), would require a tract of land larger than the size of Texas and California combined, making the comprehensive transition to green infeasible. So, if fossil fuels are removed from the commercial power mix, then nuclear is the only viable source of power available to meet the energy needs of an industrialized nation.

“Green energy” is often described as “clean energy” because it comes from natural sources (wind, sun, and water) that produce no environmental pollutants or greenhouse gases. But that is only true if analysis of the process is limited to green energy production—that is, the actual conversion of wind, solar, and hydro energy into electricity.

However, when the total life cycle of mining, manufacturing, production, and disposal is considered, green energy is revealed to be anything but “clean.” As an AP investigation recently revealed:

The birds no longer sing, and the herbs no longer grow. The fish no longer swim in rivers that have turned a murky brown … cows are sometimes found dead. … Water is no longer drinkable, and endangered species such as tigers, pangolins and red pandas have fled the area.

That’s not a description of the Flint River region in Michigan, the Fukushima environs in Japan, the Love Canal community in upstate New York, nor of the dystopian wasteland in an apocalyptic novel. It’s the condition of northern Myanmar on China’s south-west border—the result of the unrestrained mining of rare earth minerals. These materials are essential to the manufacture of green energy products like electric vehicles and wind turbines.

Years of unregulated mining have turned whole regions in Myanmar and other parts of the undeveloped world into “sacrifice zones”—areas where the health and welfare of local residents are sacrificed for the “greater good,” which, in this instance, is global de-carbonization. As the push for green energy continues, the demand for these minerals will keep pace, along with environmental hazards not limited to mining.

Irrespective of the energy source, the machinery (e.g., batteries, wind turbines, solar panels, dams) needed to convert it into useable power are manufactured from materials that must be not only mined, but also processed and ultimately disposed of. According to a 2020 paper produced by the Manhattan Institute, “compared with hydrocarbons, green machines entail, on average, a 10-fold increase in the quantities of materials extracted and processed to produce the same amount of energy.” For example:

A single electric car battery weighing 1,000 pounds requires extracting and processing some 500,000 pounds of materials. Averaged over a battery’s life, each mile of driving an electric car ‘consumes’ five pounds of earth. Using an internal combustion engine consumes about 0.2 pounds of liquids per mile.

Eventually, all that material becomes waste requiring disposal:

By 2050, with current plans, the quantity of worn-out solar panels—much of it nonrecyclable—will constitute double the tonnage of all today’s global plastic waste, along with over 3 million tons per year of unrecyclable plastics from worn-out wind turbine blades. By 2030, more than 10 million tons per year of batteries will become garbage.

Of course, a 10-fold increase in green energy materials will require a commensurate increase in the fossil fuels (primarily, diesel) needed for their extraction, processing, and disposal by excavators, trucks, and other heavy equipment. In other words, green energy is anything but “carbon-neutral.”

He goes on to discuss how China owns the global rare earth minerals market. As long as 20 years ago, folks were alarmed at the investments China was making in Australia, Africa, and South and Central America. Those investments are paying off monetarily and strategically for China. America hasn’t invested in minerals and mineral rights in decades, and now we’re dependent on foreign powers for just about everything from raw materials to production and especially manufacturing. We’ll lose the R&D edge shortly.

Why is this in dispute?  There is nothing sacrilegious at all to me about putting a scope on a lever action rifle.  I’m in favor of whatever makes it easier for me to hit my intended target.

But I will remark that the prices of scopes seems to be going up, up, up, up and up.

This is a SFP fixed-parallax scope, albeit a good sized objective lens for letting light in, that’s going for $600.

This video is apparently a well-watched video.  I don’t usually like to embed video that I don’t really think is worth the viewing time it will take to go through it all, and I especially don’t like stream of consciousness presentations that could be done more efficiently, any more than I like watching other men scratch their beards.

However, I wanted to ask these questions of readers.  What adult needs to be told that manufacturers are out to sell things and take your money?  What adult needs to be told that there is a difference between what you want and what you need?

Exclude the category of collectors, which as far as I’m concerned, is a legitimate category and limited only by the size of your bank account.  And also exclude investors – guns can be a legitimate investment as well.

If a man can only afford a single rifle, or in other words, he must make the decision to eat or buy another rifle, what mature adult is going to go hungry or let his family go hungry so he can buy another rifle because some video tells him to?

He does make some interesting points about the monetary transaction necessary to get your product “reviewed” or get it good press.  I had always assumed that.  And the great majority of the time for me, I do an awful lot of research before I buy any product, be in rifle or refrigerator.  But I’m just not that impressionable from videos and popular reviewers telling me anything at all.

Whether rifles, refrigerators or truck tires, I do my research and I buy what I want if I have the financial resources to do so.  If I don’t, I settle for second best.

This is how most mature men do things.  And I don’t have thermal scopes, ballistic helmets, NODs or night vision.