tmitsss

Robert Smalls should be in Statuary Hall

Slavery is not evil because it is racist, slavery is evil because it is slavery. Slavery is also ancient. It provided renewable, sustainable,biodegradable energyfor the elites for millennia. Interracial slavery did not become commonplace until a leap in transportation technology in the 16th Century allowed slaves sold by Africans to be transported to the Americas to provide sustainable renewable energy for the elites. Technological improvements in energy production later made it possible to eliminate slavery in the West. Within approximately 100 years of the Watt-Wilkinson collaboration that produced an efficient fossil fueled steam engine, slavery was abolished in the West. Slavery reappeared in Germany during the fossil fuel shortage of the first half of the 1940s. (Audrey Hepburn’s half-brother along with many other Belgians, Dutch, French and other Europeans were enslaved to ameliorate the fossil fuel shortage) Slavery did not become obsolete because mankind became better. It became obsolete because fossil fueled power is more efficient.

@nypost Why do those of us who have never owned slaves and have never been slaves have to keep accepting this excuse for refusing to celebrate America? I don’t bear responsibility for the actions of people who lived 160 years ago. Just no.

Brianna Turner says WNBA should not wear 'USA 250' patches due to history of slavery: 'Be so serious' trib.al/SzUsHCu

@TedRall Why is individual health insurance not tax deductible?

I'd rather have healthcare

@AndrewHWestern You told us for years that bending a knee is the symbol of solidarity So go ahead, I’ll wait as you all bend a knee for Henry.

I could go on but I'll conclude today's intro with a notable mechanical D-Day veteran: "That's All, Brother," a Douglas C-47 Skytrain. This was the tip of the D-Day spear, the first US aircraft over the English channel on June 6, dropping paratroopers behind German lines. It fell into neglect after the war, but was rediscovered in 2006. A long careful restoration by the Commemorative Air Force ensued, and in 2018 I got to see my old Chicagoland hot rod buddy Chad Hill put the cherry on top: repainting its nose art and war stripes. No cheap cheesty vinyl decals; nose art painted with 1-Shot sign paint, just as it would have been done in 1944. And war stripes painted hastily with a roller brush, just as they would have on the eve of D-Day. After the restoration it repeated its mission on the 75th anniversary of D-Day, dropping paratroopers into France. And has made that journey a few more times since. When it's not on tour you can see it at the CAF in San Marcos Texas. By the way "That's All, Brother" comes from the title of a Mae West song, sort of a FU to Hitler. That's all pal. Ixnay, amscray, get lost.

@sunnyright That’s how wannabe Slave Masters think.

A reminder that the only thing stopping the left from seizing your property is a Supreme Court they attack as illegitimate for not letting them just do stuff

Imagine being the sniveling moron who wrote this post only to have the project completed three weeks later. Actually finishing projects is a foreign concept for California Democrats.

I bucked all advice from my friends (and resisted my conservative bias) and decided to fully trust the Times journalists. As they left my home they asked that I not talk to any other outlets and I insisted then and repeatedly over the following weeks that I would keep my word and only share this story with them. But then the weeks dragged on. They kept coming back to us saying the editors needed more. I needed to go on the record (okay). We need more screenshots (okay). I met every bench mark they set, eager to provide more sources or evidence as needed. After the story went up I began to ask them … wait, where are the stories from the other women? Where are their accusations of sexual assault? Why am I the focus? Why are there 11 paragraphs dedicated to detailing my work history (more than has been published about Graham’s by far)? Why does it say “nobody could corroborate” when I offered them sources that COULD corroborate? Why did they include an out of context quote from a friend joking “do not call Graham” after I called off my wedding? (Because she knew I would never). Where were the screenshots they’d said they would use? Or the mention that I’d supported local democrats and that most of my family (and husband) are liberal? The editors said it was too much, they explained. The Times also failed to include any mention that I DID confide in multiple friends through the years that Graham had been abusive — long before he was running for office. Those friends confirm they told the Times so. It dawned on me that this really was a set up all along. The journalists I trusted who convinced me to share a story I never wanted to tell methodically delayed and twisted this into a gift to the Platner campaign. Violating the trust of his victims. Shattering the trust I placed in them with the most vulnerable story of my life. And at the end of my call with them I reluctantly accepted their insistence that this was still a powerful story and that I had done a brave thing. And I thanked them for all the hard work they had put into it. Still fawning after all these years.

@BatSefarad @FloppingAces I chose my words carefully. It became obsolete in The West

@tmitsss @FloppingAces It did not become obsolete. x.com/daveatherton/s…

One of the more striking features of the current slavery conversation is how much of the actual historical record has to be edited out before the preferred story can feel coherent. You can tell the approved version because it begins in 1619 and ends with a present-day invoice. Everything before that ... thousands of years of the same practice across every inhabited continent ... gets treated as background noise or, more often, simply left off the page. The attributes now presented as uniquely American (hereditary status, people treated as collateral, children born into ownership) turn out to be standard features of slave systems from Babylon onward. The ancient Greeks had philosophers calmly explaining why some humans were naturally suited to be property. The Romans built an entire entertainment industry around the disposal of the enslaved. None of this is hidden information; it just isn’t useful to the narrative that requires American slavery to stand alone as a singular moral catastrophe. What also tends to disappear is any discussion of how slave societies actually performed once you move past individual fortunes. The regions that leaned most heavily into the institution were rarely the ones that developed broad prosperity or dynamic economies. Free labor regions tended to pull ahead. This pattern shows up repeatedly when you stop treating slavery as an American invention and start treating it as the widespread, long-running human default that it was. The selective focus serves a purpose. Once the story is narrowed to one country and one era, the political conclusion becomes much easier to reach: the wealth that exists today must be the direct result of that earlier exploitation, and therefore permanently transferable. Broader history makes that conclusion harder to sustain, which is probably why broader history receives so little airtime. The version that survives is the one that keeps the moral ledger simple and the bill collector busy. (article below)

@UNEP The last time the weather was perfect was before The Serpent appeared in The Garden

Our planet is sending us signals.   Too wet. Too dry. Too hot.   But listen, listen again.    Do you hear something else?   This #WorldEnvironmentDay, we turn the volume up on the urgent signals the Earth is sending and how, together, we can act #NowForClimate.  📽 Open Planet

@VigilantFox By great great Gand mother born in 1791 had 8 children and lived to be 95

Neil deGrasse Tyson: “Whatever [the next outbreak] is, we ain’t ready for it. We still have anti-vaxxers running around.” “I don’t trust scientists. I saw a YouTube video, so I’m not going to take it.” (mocking) “I don’t want you to ever forget this story.” “20,000 years ago, we’re in the cave. Do you know what the life expectancy was?” Shannon Sharpe: “10 years? 15 years?” Neil deGrasse Tyson: “30. Half of everyone born was dead before they were 30.” Shannon Sharpe: “Wow!!!” Neil deGrasse Tyson: “Fast forward to 1840… everyone born in the world was dead by the age of 35. We gained five years of life expectancy. And every one of them ate organic, breathed clean air… Science matters here.” “We’ve doubled the life expectancy with antibiotics, vaccines, and sanitation. The three biggest forces operating on our longevity. So to come around and say I don’t need vaccines because I’m not getting sick, that’s like saying, why are you using dandruff shampoo? You don’t have dandruff.” Shannon Sharpe: “Well, I don’t want to get it.” Neil deGrasse Tyson: “That’s my point. If you’re successful, people think you don’t need it when that’s what’s creating the ongoing success in the first place.”

@VigilantFox Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1705][Note 1] – April 17, 1790) was an American polymath: a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and political philosopher.[1]

@ingelramdecoucy @SicSemperDeez Me: He has a lot of Charm. My Aunt: The Devil has Charm

@SicSemperDeez He seems like he’d have been quite personable

Charles Kuralt, never a hint of scandal or bloviating. Just a normal guy like you and me

Let me ruin your June for a second. Every year when National Gun Violence Awareness Month rolls around, the same people who have not read a single page of John Lott's 13,312-regression peer-reviewed study start posting pictures of children and demanding you feel responsible for deaths you did not cause and had nothing to do with. So. Let us talk about children. Since they brought it up. In 2006, the CDC recorded 642 accidental firearm deaths in the entire United States. For children under the age of ten — the number was 31. Thirteen under age five. Eighteen between five and nine. Tragic? Absolutely. Every single one. But here is the number that will not appear on a single "Orange Friday" awareness post: 80. Eighty children under the age of five drown in bathtubs every year. Every. Single. Year. ALMOST THREE TIMES as many children drown in bathtubs annually as die from ALL firearm accidents combined — including adults. And forty more drown in five-gallon water buckets. The kind you buy at Home Depot for $4.99. I have given this information at talks and watched jaws drop, because people genuinely believe the number is in the thousands. They have been so thoroughly marinated in "gun violence awareness" content that their perception of actual risk is completely detached from reality. That is not an accident. That is the point of the campaign. Where is Bathtub Awareness Month? Where is the congressional hearing on five-gallon bucket control? Where is the hashtag? Where are the orange ribbons for the children who drowned while their parents were in the next room? There are none. Because the campaign was never about children. It was never about safety. If it were about safety, they would be equally outraged about cars — which killed 1,305 children that same year. Or fire. Or drowning. But they are not. The selective fury lands exclusively on firearms. And if you are a scientist, which I happen to be, you do not get to cherry-pick your data based on which conclusion you prefer. Quinn's Law Number Six: facts are the enemy of liberalism. Now let us talk about what the actual data says about guns and safety, because John Lott ran 13,000-plus statistical regressions across every county in America and the results are not ambiguous. Fifty-six percent of convicted felons surveyed in a ten-state study said they would NOT attack a target they believed was armed. Fifty-six percent. The deterrence is real, it is documented, and it functions whether or not a shot is ever fired. The firearm you carry protects your neighbor whether your neighbor knows it or not. When states passed right-to-carry laws, multiple-victim public shootings — what the media insists on calling "mass shootings" to maximize terror — dropped by 67 percent. Deaths in those events dropped by 75 percent. Injuries by 81 percent. States that adopted these laws virtually ELIMINATED mass public shootings within four to five years. The remaining events? They happened almost exclusively in the specific locations where guns remained banned. The gun-free zones. The places we hang the sign that only the law-abiding ever read. There were between 760,000 and 3.6 million defensive gun uses in the United States last year alone, depending on which of fifteen national polls you consult. A JAMA Network Open study from March 2025 estimated 489,000 DGUs in which a firearm was actually discharged. The Department of Justice's own National Crime Victimization Survey puts the conservative floor at 65,000 defensive uses per year against assaults, robberies, and home invasions. No dead body. No coverage. No awareness month. Here is one more number for you: 74. Seventy-four percent of convicted felons in a National Institute of Justice survey said they actively avoided homes they believed were occupied by armed residents. Criminals respond to incentives. That is not ideology — that is basic deterrence theory, and it is confirmed by the people who actually commit the crimes. I also want you to think carefully about something the Supreme Court already settled. DeShaney v. Winnebago County (1989). Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales (2005). Two separate rulings establishing that the government has NO legal obligation to protect you as an individual. None. You are your own first responder. That is not my opinion — that is settled constitutional law from the highest court in this country. So the political class that just told you the government is not required to protect you... is also the one demanding you surrender the tool you use to protect yourself. I want fewer people dead. That is why I know the data. That is why I read the book. That is why I am furious every June when emotion and fundraising replace science and evidence in a "debate" that has actual life-or-death consequences for real people. You want to honor the children? Honor ALL of them. The ones who drowned. The ones who died in car crashes. And the ones who will never be born because a woman alone in her house at 2 a.m. had no way to stop what was coming through her door. But what do I know — I am only a published textbook author, a science teacher, a father of four, and a combat medic who spent his career reducing human suffering and who actually read the peer-reviewed data before forming an opinion. IF you agree: LIKE this post so the algorithm shows it to people who need to read it. SHARE this. COMMENT below — did you know the bathtub number? Or did the narrative keep that from you? Tell me. And if you want MORE of this -- the data, the history, the science, the stories -- JOIN Bski's Classroom community on X or YouTube. #MAGA #Veterans #Trump @JoJoFromJerz @GuntherEagleman @catturd2

@dogwoodblooms @wittsworld I’m sorry, it was his mother who put the Hellmans in her potato salad

@tmitsss @wittsworld He uses Miracle Whip and we all know it!

This man has been in office in NC for 3 decades at least. If life needs to be easier as he says, then he helped make it difficult. A vote for Roy is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. @dogwoodblooms

@dogwoodblooms @wittsworld Roy Cooper puts Hellmans mayonnaise in his potato salad

@wittsworld I have a project I’m working on right now to shed some light on Cooper and his reign. 💯

Guys with cowboy hats generally have tans, and their hats have been worn at least once before. If this guy were any whiter, I'd have to wear shades … I do love the Yassir Arafat "just came in from work, didn't have time to shave" look, though. w.

Physics has gone crazy. Now there's a theory that in the entire universe, there is only one electron.

Remember when Roy Cooper had Stacey Abrams campaign for him? Yeah, I remember that.

@GuntherEagleman Ford

I guarantee a bunch of people are about to answer this with 100% confidence and still get it wrong. Take your shot!