"Curated and vetted" news sources

AI generated video content

"We live on the cusp of history" sounds overly dramatic, but I believe it is warranted with regard to the overwhelming amounts of "fabricated" video content polluting streaming platforms.

Who benefits?

Potentially, the legacy media outlets benefit because they can market themselves as only broadcasting "curated, vetted content". The problem with that is that the legacy networks have a history of creating (i.e. "fabricating") stories either for sensationalism or to forward an agenda.

One of the earliest documented cases involved a "hit-piece" on General Motors pickup trucks in 1992. Unlike earlier victims of hit-journalism, GM had the will and the resources to "push back".

The morning after the piece ran to a national audience, GM Legal called NBC and demanded to know where the pickup truck was so they could run their own forensic analysis. NBC told them "It has already been crushed."

That answer seemed too pat and too quick, so GM sent a team of crash investigators to the location where the "test" had been run and started visiting scrap-yards. The found the "crushed" pickup in one of the scrapyards about five miles away. It had not been crushed. They purchased the vehicle, put it on a flat-bed and transported it back to the GM Tech Center in Warren, Michigan.

They found out that the gas cap was not the factory-original cap but was some random, undersized cap that almost fit. It is not know if the producers had replaced the factory cap with one that guaranteed spillage. Regardless, that event is one of the reasons why gas-caps are now tethered to the vehicle. You cannot accidentally drive away from the gas station without it.

The cheap ink used to print information on the outside of the rocket cases had transferred to the modeling clay used to hold them in place. The printing was still legible.

The found evidence that three Estes Rocket Motors had been affixed to the frame of the pickup with modeling clay and duct-tape. The rocket motors had been ignited shortly before the collision to ensure that any gas that spilled was ignited.

The producers of the segment over-filled the gas tank, literally filling it until gas was spilling out of the filler tube. 

Finally, GM obtained video footage from the fire department that had been hired to perform Safety Over-watch during the taping of the event. I assume that the over-watch was required by the film crew's insurance carrier.

The fire department recording, when played at full speed showed that the entire flame-event lasting for five seconds with the big fire-ball lasting about 1.5 seconds. If you watched the NBC footage, you might have noticed that they went to slow-motion to prolong the fireball and then cut the feed as it started to die down. Then they kept replaying the short-lived gout of flame from other angles leading the viewer to believe that the fire lasted much, much longer than it did.

The Mainstream Media coverage of the January 6 demonstration ("insurrection") used the same video techniques to make the entry of the demonstrators into the Capital look like Santa Anna's 6000 Mexican soldiers storming the Alamo. 

Not just NBC

It isn't just second-rate news sources like NBC that have been "nipped".

No less than National Geographic and BBC have been implicated in "pressuring" characters in the reality series "Life Below Zero" to perform dangerous stunts to increase viewership. Sue Aiken has been the most vocal about the pressure but Glen Villeneuve was also goaded into potentially life threatening situations. For example, Villeneuve was "coached" to swim a snow-melt fed river from inside-of-bend to outside-of-bend for drama. He almost didn't make it. 

For those who are not in-the-know, find a wide spot in the river on a straight stretch. Wide means shallow. WADE across the river keeping your core body dry. Outsides of bends are treacherous for three reasons. The current will pull your lower body down due to the fluid dynamics, the bottom and shore are usually very steep AND finally, there are often tree roots and trash sticking out of the bottom that will snag your clothing or legs.

Summary

History suggests that the legacy media will not neutrally "curate and vet" content. They have their own biases and their profit incentives are not transparent.

For those of you in the Northeast who are digging out AGAIN...

 

 

According to some of the people who live in places where "snow machines" are a necessity, they all use "sleds" as multiplier in terms of cargo and they say modern, entry-level machines are "more than plenty". My contacts thought the two-stroke, air-cooled engines with 400cc were the sweet-spot in terms of low-maintenance and plenty of low-end grunt. Of course, they were not trying to go 120mph on their sleds, so there is that.

Sadly, the air-cooled motors seem to be extinct although you can still find machines with two-stroke Rotax engines.

Wood: Cleaning up the mess I made

There is not a lot to report today.

I spent a couple of hours yesterday in the woods. Most of the time was spent cutting "usable" sized chunks of firewood out of the Black Locust I dropped earlier this year. Due to how they leaned, most of the canopies fell into the pasture. Then I carried the chunks and tossed them into pile for later transport.

I will bend over to pick up and carry a stick that weighs 5 pounds. I am reluctant to pick up and carry a log weighing seventy pounds over rough ground. 96" poles between 3" and 5" diameter make good fence posts. Hence the color coding of the table.

Approximate weights of "logs" @ 60lb/cubic-foot.

I want to get the brush dragged back into the "woods" and re-erect the fence. Pastures that are not used revert back to brush.

I also dropped four more Black Locust trees but these were on the back-corner of the property.

Rain is expected all day today and high winds are expected tomorrow so I will not be back out into the woods until Tuesday. 

The load I brought in on Christmas day. The largest chunk is 8" diameter and most are in the 6-1/2" class.

I also brought in four poles that are suitable for fence posts. I did not cut those into 4' long bolts but leaned them up against a tree to dry and to keep them out of the way.

My firearms are LGB, Polyamorous and BIFOC

 

My weapons are breech-loaders that joyfully accept many types of ammunition and have blued-steel.

Geography is destiny

Frequent commenter Michael commented that the supply chain is vulnerable to cities-as-choke-points.

While I am not going to dispute that point, I want to demonstrate that the funnel or choke-point effect is highly dependent on geography.

First, some maps

Columbus, Ohio is in the middle of Ohio and the topography is relatively flat. I-70 is a major artery for commerce and it runs pretty much through the center of Columbus from East-to-West.

Later build-out of the Interstate plan has a "ring" around Columbus with a minimum "radius" to downtown of five miles. Then, minor Interstates and state highways act as spokes radiating out from the downtown area.

From a logistical and supply-chain perspective, this looks pretty robust to me.

This is another map of Columbus and it shows the location of all of the Walmarts. Most of them are located close to an intersection of a "spoke" and the ring-Interstate. You can trash-talk Walmart all you want, but they are really sharp when it comes to logistics.

A map of Indianapolis, Indiana. It is not as busy as Columbus but it follows the same general plan. You might notice that the ring is lopsided. If civil disorder snips the ring at the closest point (five miles from downtown) then they would have to project their force almost four times farther to snip it at the northernmost stretch.

St Louis, Missouri is a little more complicated. The Mississippi and Missouri rivers come into play but there is still a generous ring around the core-city.

Even small cities with relatively little strategic importance like Lansing, Michigan have this "ring" structure. Traffic from Chicago-to-Canada bypasses Lansing by taking the west, then northern legs around the city.

One thing that all of these cities share is that they sit on relatively flat land.

Blue line approximates I-70. Green line approximates I-76. Plum-colored lines approximate other Interstates

That all falls apart when you get to hilly terrain. Pittsburgh was built in hilly terrain at a time when water transportation was strategically significant.

While the Pittsburgh area is laced with many roads, the wrinkles and folds of the landscape makes them a nightmare to bypass. That kind of landscape favors the resistance and potentially handicaps the wheels of commerce.

Topography of southern New England and eastern New York

Many of the "classic" cities in New England and New York are compressed in the east-west direction because they are shoe-horned into the Connecticut and Hudson river valleys due to water power and transportation. That makes the lazy-ring + bicycle spoke arrangement uneconomical.

Springfield, Massachusetts. Blue lines approximate interstates. 5-mile measurement bar added for scale.

 

A sobering assessment of land warfare

The rise of long-range strike, drones, and cyber means that the old (safe) rear area is no more. Supply lines are now a front-line fight from start to finish. (Factories) Supply depots, railheads, ports, repair facilities, and fuel infrastructure are all high-priority targets. If an enemy cannot stop forward brigades, it will attempt to starve them. Analyses of modern logistics under fire emphasize that industrial capacity and resilient supply networks—not efficiency—determine strategic endurance.

An army for the future must be able to fight under conditions of intermittent resupply, contested and damaged infrastructure, disrupted and overloaded communications, and near-constant threats to supply lines. Planning and organization must prioritize resilience, redundancy, and regeneration rather than peacetime efficiency and timeliness.

Land warfare (now) favors armies that can fight dispersed but connected, decentralized but coordinated. Small units must be able to operate at will even when isolated or cut off. Junior leaders must be able to act without micromanagement. Commanders must know their communications will be lost and they must be able to exercise control while that loss is happening. Contemporary doctrinal analysis underscores exactly this requirement for decentralized command in contested environments.

This is a question of more than new radios or drones. It is...a cultural issue. The instinct for centralization, risk aversion, and procedural control stems from the experience of peacekeeping and counterinsurgency missions, not from the needs of a high-tech, fully contested battlespace.   -Source 

The way I read this is that when the US goes into its next "hot" war, the battlefield will extend from the front-lines to the transformer sitting on the power-pole outside your house or apartment block.

It will extend to the bridges crossing our rivers and the pipelines and refineries that refine and move oil and natural gas. The cell and fiber-optic networks will come under attack. Our marine ports and air transportation systems will come under attack.

Car-bombs and drive-by shootings will happen on a daily basis as high-value human targets are identified and "taken out". D.C. and Silicon Valley and Houston will become Moscow on steroids.

Today, if you don't know how to turn nutrient-dense ingredients like flour, lard, sugar, dried spaghetti rice and beans into edible food, you still have time to learn. When the supply chain takes a beating, among of the first things to fall off the back of the wagon will be bags-of-air (Doritos, potato chip, popped popcorn, breakfast cereals) and highly processed foods like hot-pockets, frozen pizzas and Jimmy Dean's sausage-egg croissants. I would also plan on bottled water imported from out-of-town soda-pop and iceberg lettuce to become rare/expensive. Plan accordingly.

Christmas: A Season of Bravery

If you are a believer, then you probably believe that Mary and Joseph were devout Jews who practiced their religion with correctness.

I want to look at what they risked by agreeing to be the parents of Jesus.

Mary

Mary risked being rejected by Joseph, the man she was engaged to. Joseph knew that they had not had intercourse so Mary knew that there was a very high probability that Joseph would terminate the engagement and expose her as a fornicator. There was even the potential that Mary could have been stoned for committing the act of adultery.

At another level, Mary's family was very highly regarded. Her brother-in-law was one of the priests allowed into the sanctuary of the temple. Being pregnant before she was supposed to be would bring dishonor upon her whole family. Likely, she would have been disowned. 

Joseph

Joseph was a tradesman. Traditionally, his profession has been translated as "carpenter" but some scholars think it he could have been a brick maker or a potter or some other building trade. Their reasoning is that wood is scarce in the Holy Land and having one person working solely with wood seemed unlikely in a village.

It is almost a certainty that the crones would count the months from when Joseph took Mary into his house and when Jesus was born. They would look at his size when he was born and they would quickly figure out that Mary had conceived before they were married.

This will seem like a very, very small thing to many modern people...but it was a very big deal not so long ago.

The people in the village (many of them family members) would conclude that Joseph did not follow the rules, that he cut corners and "cheated". Not a very good look for a tradesman whose reputation pays his wages.

That would have been a cruel, hard blow to an upright man who took pride in his strict compliance to Mosaic Law. 

Flight to Egypt

Shortly after Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Joseph, Mary and Jesus fled to Egypt to evade King Herrod's massacre of the infants. In some ways this is a repeat of the Jews fleeing to Egypt to evade the famine during the time of Joseph, son of Jacob.

In this case, Mary's time with Elizabeth, Jesus's birth in Bethlehem (not Nazareth) and the subsequent flight to Egypt stymied the old hags who would have counted the months and then wagged their tongues.

The message for us in 2025/26

Mary and Joseph followed the mission that God gave them. They knew the risks and did the right thing anyway. They had no way of knowing that other things would happen that would short-circuit the likely outcomes.

To me it is a message of "Do the right thing. Be merciful. Pray. Let the chips fall where they may." Don't be enslaved by the bad decisions we may have made in the past. This is what we signed-on for.

"The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law."  Luke 12:53 KJV