I’m a bit confused this morning on what Trump is doing…”great phone calls” with Frye and Walz; Bovino out, Harmon in, Noem called to the woodshed at the White House. I feel like he’s caving a bit, but I also understand that this second shooting is not clear cut.
However, I just watched this interview by Megyn with James O’Keefe and what happened to him in MPLS…. terrifying, and certainly, to me, makes a strong case for the Insurrection Act now. When private citizens start acting like police, or worse, to other random people, things are out of control. Take a look/listen:
My ‘worthwhile reading’ roundup today has several especially interesting & important links, including the importance of manufacturing, the neglected factor of training in the WWII industrial mobilization, the connection between migration and identity-seeking, and a Paul Graham essay on social fragmentation. Also a review of American Technology, its history and future, by a new Andreessen-Horowitz partner.
Notice we don’t hear much about DC now. Take a look at the monthly homicide rates per month in DC before and after Trump deployed the Guard. Tremendous drop.
Now that the Signal network and funding sources of ICE Watch are identified and in the hands of the FBI, I imagine we’re going to see quiet in Minneapolis sooner rather than later, and a strange new cooperative attitude from Tim Walz is perhaps not so surprising.
The NGOs that fund this stuff all file Form 1099 and you have to put people’s names on there and describe funding sources, expenditures, and assets.
The online exposés have a lot to do with the willingness of elected officials in MN to begin cooperating. We’ll see what they actually do.
Homan won’t indulge in the grandstanding that is Noem’s specialty. Noem made statements immediately following the Pretti shooting which proved inaccurate. Bad mistake.
and just like that Trump takes all the wind out of the Schumer ICE/DHS Shutdown, Part Duex
Don’t Go Wobbly
Re: Trump changing course – there was really no way for him to do anything else. If he maintained the status quo, more civilian deaths were inevitable. Even though he would have been justified in invoking the Insurrection Act, that would have resulted in even bigger propaganda wins for the leftists. If Trump understands anything, its the media environment and the impact of headlines.
The big issue is whether the deportations stop. If Trump folds on that, he’s granted blue states and cities a ticket to nullify federal law. Not OK. There are reports that Minneapolis police are beginning to respond to leftist agitations against ICE officers. Maybe cooler heads have prevailed all around.
Regarding the signal chats and prosecutions, I’m not getting my hopes up. You need a competent, well respected US attorney and staff in MN to do any of that. You need the same if you want to continue going after the entitlement fraud up there. If they send a Trump toadie like “Judge” Pirro or Alina Haba or anyone who is perceived as doing Trump’s bidding instead of just following the facts and the law, they’re going to get their rear ends handed to them by the courts and the jury pool.
Prompting the existing US Attorney for MN to resign was a significant self-own by Bondi and Trump.
Jon Baker on the numbers.
YES, but to summarized the relevant facts, the US murder rate last year has plummeted by over 20%, a historic record — carjackings are similarly in steep decline — and deaths by opioid overdose (like fentanyl) are down by 20%.
The indicators of crime and violence are wildly and uniformly DOEN, BIGLY. ICE intervention in Memphis, for example, has in a mere 4 months slashed the crime rate there in half!
Furthermore, ICE interventions in Florida and Texas don’t show us the violence by Fed Agents like Minneapolis…why is that?
THE TRUTH—enforcing the law benefits ordered liberty. And as these fruits become more and more undeniable, the Blue City and State counter-vailing movement can assert itself.
DaveRubin’s LIVE Stream from mid-day examines the controversial facts in Minnesota protest turned vicious…such as Rep Ilhan Omar’s sudden wealth — is her Winery benefitting from money laundering?
Rubin goes on with “The View” getting wilder after the Pretti shoot, comics Kimmel and Colbert getting projectionist over Minnesota ICE protests! He also interviews accute observer Adam Corolla. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK9TNvbFwsc
Good update for physicsguy (as well as my three posts on Open Thread from late last night).
Bauxite writes “ more civilian deaths were inevitable.”
No. The facts contradict you. Wherever the local authorities cooperate with ICE Federal enforcement, there are no deaths and crime subsequently declines (cf, Wash DC), leaving the innocent and law abiding freer, more secure and prosperous — unlike Blue Hell Holes run by the Gynocracy like Minneapolis etc…
The truth about the shifting of ICE management is simply because Minnesota has gone national, and his management back to El Centro district in Sourthern California — an area I have frequently visited or tracked through recently — is less visible to the rest of the country. Hence, moving his Obama Award winning ICE Chief Tom Homans to Mpls.
TJ – I’m not suggesting that civilian deaths are an inevitable part of immigration enforcement, but they sure as heck were an inevitable result of immigration enforcement in Minneapolis in 2026 with its citizens, activists, and local government officials are behaving in the way that they have. And I think that Watz, Frey, and all of the leftists activists were more than satisfied with how all of this played out from a propaganda standpoint.
The bigger picture IMO is that the Democrat party/Antifa/leftists no longer have the upper management of the FBI in their back pocket and keeping signals intelligence at bay (they no longer have secure communications). Hence Signals is busted and the Dems are at risk for federal criminal charges. NSA won’t have a problem with Signal decription I would think.
Time to roll up the Antifa LARPer pukes.
CC™ of course can be counted on to find the falling sky.
Don’t Go Wobbly.
Civilian deaths, Saint Sparkles and Saint Sig-Saurer(Saint SS, they are the fascists nowadays) were intentional from the Democrat/Antifa leaders. Their training manuals didn’t mention not bringing loaded weapons to your play date with the feds, or the danger of handling non lethal ordnance? Oh, they didn’t anticipate that? Cannon fodder Bauxite/CC™, eggs for the omelette.
Bauxite/CC™:
Your animosity and fury about The Great Orange Whale is a feature but I wasn’t aware that it extended to female lawyers, Alina Haba and Harmeet Dhillon.
Is there another personality feature in play? Or just a new script to peddle?
I am just sooooo tired of all this. And I am a realist enough to understand that it isn’t going away anytime soon. In fact, will get much worse.
Om – “Saint Sparkles and Saint Sig-Saurer”
Can you explain these code names? And why are they “saints” ?
Thanks.
Just guessing, Saint Sparkles is akin to Saint Pancake, whereas Saint Sig-Sauer is akin to Saint Handsupdontshoot.
I’m guessing that Trump has the goods on Waltz, the Minneapolis mayor, and the assistant governor and their part in the Somali billion dollar scam. “How many life sentences do you want to spend in prison?” This was a very sudden change in attitude by Waltz that is best explained by that.
The left creates martyrs and saints (although I’m not sure how much you can trust a leftist/progressive when it comes to Christianity). And I am NOT making any negative comparisons to Catholic or Orthodox Christians and their veneration of Saints.
Renee Good’s partner who yelled Drive, baby, drive described Renee as “sparkling with love.” Not sure if she loved to drive …. hence “Saint Sparkles”
Mr. Pretti brought a Sig-Saurer P320 semi-auti pistol and extra magazines to his confrontation with the feds. The P320 is notoriously subject to unintended discharges. It probably got him killed.
Both are not martyrs nor Christian saints, IMO, just usefull tools for the left.
So Xi is purging rivals in the Chicom government. There’s a lot of speculation about the implications for Taiwan. Could also have implications now that the Minneapolis insurrection seems to be succeeding.
Here’s what Reuters thinks
“China experts said Xi’s move against his long-term ally and Politburo member Gen. Zhang Youxia also concentrates even more power in the president’s hands, makes the already secretive command of China’s military more opaque, and suggests that a near-term attack on Taiwan is less likely.”
Tampon Timmy probably asked Trump if there was an exit ramp that didn’t leave Timmy in prison.
Bauxy is almost as happy about the Pretti shooting as Neville Roy Singham.
The professional Concerned Conservatives at National Review are also putting the blame on Trump, but they have mortgages to pay.
Successful insurrections build a swell of energy to a quick flip in power…. Many of Alinsky’s rules quickly go sour if the movement loses momentum.
Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. ——————————–
Now we know what they have… and much more has been revealed about their funding and motives that they didn’t want their own troops to know.
Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.
The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.
——————————–
It turns out that actual violence is waaaay beyond the experience of most bien-pensant Lefties, despite the paramilitary training manuals. The reality of confrontation plus the cold – and the White House’s resolve – has quickly thinned the ranks to the True Believers and crazies, who now look less appealing.
Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
——————————–
See above. However unpleasant it may be for ICE operatives, they are used to policing and even combat.
Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”
——————————–
The contradictions inherent in woke progressivism have been brought to the fore. Did Renee Goode’s car have a “Coexist” bumper sticker?
The hypocrisy of their corrupt leadership is revealed as well.
Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
——————————–
Trump is pretty good at this one… restraint sent the message the Tampon Tim was a weakling, rather than a threat. See Rule 1.
Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. “If your people aren’t having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.”
——————————–
The suburban moms have been scared away from the protest space. Quickly. Look at the latest videos.
Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.
——————————–
The lack of engagement by Trump starved them of their oxygen. The grownups weren’t panicked, didn’t provide the scripted “fascist” response, weren’t taking Timmy seriously. The movement was denied the justification for ratcheting up the violence. The uncontrollable fringe comes off as unhinged and dangerous…. besides I need to defrost my water pipes/plow my garage/check on Mom.
Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage.”
——————————–
But they didn’t react. Timmy and others were left talking up boogeymen… it was the center-right that “kept up the pressure” as a steady stream of corruption revelations dropped.
Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself.
——————————–
See Rule 1. They’ve played their hand.
Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, “Okay, what would you do?”
——————————–
They don’t yet have a successful attack… if they don’t build the wave of chaos into a full-on insurrection, they are stuck. And many observers now understand that their “constructive alternative” is Mamdani Marxism.
Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.
——————————–
Trump has been demonized for almost a decade by now… but a cast of Minnesota Dem pols and Somali nationals have come into focus as the new faces of corruption and demagoguery.
The White House has played this one perfectly, and with the prescience, shrewdness, and maturity that Lefties miss when they insist on viewing Trump as a buffoon.
Nikitas—But how far and for what do the NR blame Trump this time? Please expand on your point.
Although, I too distrust that entire crowd, there is an NR columnist or editor recently posting sensibly on Minneapolis at YT, usefully explaining why that Lutheran Scandinavian area was already inured to pathological altruism—hence, welcoming their own invasion and deeply rationalizing and excusing its costs.
Bauxite replies—
“TJ – I’m not suggesting that civilian deaths are an inevitable part of immigration enforcement, but they sure as heck were an inevitable result of immigration enforcement in Minneapolis in 2026 with its citizens, activists, and local government officials are behaving in the way that they have.” True.
But why are they so gullible? a population so ideologically indoctrinatizable? (And through the Marxist teachers unions, so indoctrinated into “Hate America First” self-flagellation.) We don’t see this in Sioux Falls (SE) South Dakota?
We don’t really see this anywhere else in the Mid-West? Unless perhaps Columbus OH turns out to be a Mpls in miniature….?
Why is this big burg in the far North so damnably gynocratic and gynocrocentrically radicalized? If anything, this season’s fracas ought to have happened in Madison, Wisconsin? — home of much extreme radicalism since the 1960s….
Ben David — THANK YOU for providing such a penetrating and perspicacious application of Alinskyite theory to Mpls area practice!
With explicit insights into Team Trump’s manoeuvres. Very impressive.
OFF TOPIC discussion-global warming model prediction failure! Al Gore AGAIN!
“Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’ turns 20, and critics say biggest disaster is its failed predictions”
I thought that President Trump had them beaten this morning, but you fleshed out the situation.
Now it’s time for the perps to do the walk while cuffed.
One reason I believe that Minneapolis has been the focus of the anti-ICE protests and provocations is that local police have been castrated there since the George Floyd incident. The problem mostly goes away when local police co-operate with ICE. Not to mention Walz ratcheting up the rhetoric to distract from the fraud/corruption investigations.
In re the video: quite a bit different from childbirth in the tundra.
Re: Trump / Walz friendliness
I would mention Trump’s compliments to Kim Jong Un after their meetings in 2018-19.
Trump is playing carrot and stick. He shapes the behavior of his opponents. He is not being bamboozled. It’s behavioral psychology.
@huxley:Trump is playing carrot and stick. He shapes the behavior of his opponents. He is not being bamboozled. It’s behavioral psychology.
Seconding this, and wondering if those who haven’t caught on to it yet are making it their business not to catch on.
David Foster,
Interesting presentation by Christian Keil. I didn’t make it through all 346 slides. I read maybe 12 all the way through and skimmed about 20 more to try to get his gist. On slides 20 – 155 he tries to quantify how Americans are doing in relation to three, broad categories. His data points (the ones I looked at) seem correct, but I think his entire presentation (at least the pieces I looked at) is too, tech centric.
To use an absurdity to make my point, the humans connected to the Matrix in the movie of the same name were thriving by Keil’s metrics. They were healthy, lived long lives, they were entertained, not living in poverty… Tech did everything for them, including living their lives for them and feeding the experience back into their senses with no risk to their physical or mental well being. No one watching the movie saw that as the goal of human existence, or optimal.
When I talk to people in their 30s and 40s today I almost never see attitudes like my age group had in our 30s and 40s. We were generally positive about our community’s prospects, our prospects, our children’s futures… Folks in their 30s and 40s have a lot more tech than we had; cheaper food, more medical advancements. Yet I don’t hear many proclaiming that they are thriving. And they don’t appear to be. I see a lot of loneliness.
Psychologists have mostly figured out the basic things that help most humans feel their lives have worth*. It ain’t tech.
Think of great moments in your life:
A camping vacation with your parents and siblings.
The first time you hold the hand of a person you are romantically interested in.
Training hard physically and winning in a sporting event.
Working hard for years in a rigorous academic system and graduating.
The callouses on your fingers or lips from practicing a musical instrument.
Finding your first apartment and eating Ramen noodles to make rent.
Losing a job and moving to a city you’ve never been to to find work.
Dancing.
Dancing with someone you think is cute.
Asking someone to marry you/Having someone ask you to marry you.
Having a child with someone you love.
Letting go of your kid’s bicycle seat when you’re about 50.6% confident they won’t crash and get hurt.
Helping your elderly parents age with some level of dignity.
Does the top 100 list of great moments in your life contain a single entry centered on interacting with tech?
Tech has been replacing community for decades and that doesn’t seem to be a net positive for human flourishing.
Well, I’m doing an Emily Letilla. I went back and looked at slides 146 – 158 and Mr. Keil covers the decline of community and social bonds and their impact.
So, ignore my prior comment. Never mind.
David Foster,
I just read slides 330, 331 and 334 and I’m back to thinking Mr. Keil is a menace and threat to humanity.
However, I just watched this interview by Megyn with James O’Keefe and what happened to him in MPLS…. terrifying, and certainly, to me, makes a strong case for the Insurrection Act now.
— physicsguy
The IA is certainly justifiable on the merits. It’s probably justifiable on the legality. But there are merits, laws, and then there is practical politics. The third is by far the most potent factor in governance.
Does it make political sense to invoke the IA right now? That’s a whole different question, and it is highly debatable. Max Weber would advise us to always consider the practical real-world consequences of our actions, not just the theoretical justification. To ask ourselves not what should happen if we choose ‘x’, but what actually would happen. It’s good advice.
HC68
I understand your point, but did you watch what happened to O’Keefe??? Maybe there’s a different way to stop what was going on in that video other than the IA. Better minds than I have….
TJ on January 27, 2026 at 5:06 pm:
“Ben David — THANK YOU for providing such a penetrating and perspicacious application of Alinskyite theory to Mpls area practice!
With explicit insights into Team Trump’s manoeuvres. Very impressive.”
Ditto to TJ’s and om’s endorsement. But I was unnerved to see manoeuvers [with an “o”] vs. maneuvers as I was expecting. Glad that Wiki said both were valid British/English vs. American English versions.
@ RTF: Nice commentary on the Keil slides. I did not review them in full either, but just the 3 or so you cited, and agree we ought to be careful and concerned about where this all leads.
“Does the top 100 list of great moments in your life contain a single entry centered on interacting with tech?”
Well, not in the top 100, but maybe in the top 500 I would include my learning the matrix calculating program PL-1 [different from that other PL-1 language?], using email, learning word processing (3 or 4 versions), 2 major spreadsheets (including charting, which I would need to relearn now), and generating slide animation in PowerPoint. These skills aided me in achieving other accomplishments of greater value/worth. As do most / many tools that humanity has developed*. Life is complicated, but new ideas and new tools are used for both good and ill throughout history.
But as I get older, I don’t want to bother learning new modes of engaging with those (and other) high tech tools, I just want them to work as expected (consistently, if not also intuitively). If we do end up with a truly high surveillance world and reduction in personal liberty as a result, some people will evolve the skills to work around it, although a few thousand years from now they might no longer be truly human.
Or we will follow the paths of the USSR, CCP, and Iranian or related dictatorships and ultimately fail to achieve viability long term.
*In fact I find it hard to understand why it took so many millennia after primitive stone tools were made to advance beyond that; and then again around 50K years ago to see more a surge with more advances achieved. But that it still took to around 1500’s or so for the scientific mode of experimentation and thinking to take hold.
@Rufus: Does the top 100 list of great moments in your life contain a single entry centered on interacting with tech?
Well, reading “Computer Lib/Dream Machines” by Ted Nelson was one. Buying a developer Macintosh in 1983 before it was released was another.
But that’s just me.
I emailed President Trump urging him to stay tough on illegal immigration and sanctuary cities and states. I also stated that Pretti’s crime was not carrying a pistol; his crime was interfering and fighting with agents who were just trying to do their jobs.
President Trump on Tuesday said pulling controversial Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino and some agents from Minneapolis was not a retreat, although he called Mr. Bovino a “pretty ‘out-there’ kind of guy.” [snip]
Mr. Trump’s comments come after it was reported that Mr. Bovino and some of his agents were expected to leave Minneapolis on Tuesday and return to their jurisdictions … [snip]
The Department of Homeland Security also suspended Mr. Bovino’s access to his social media accounts after he spent the weekend fighting online with lawmakers and critics about his tactics in Minnesota. Mr. Bovino also lost his commander title.
*In fact I find it hard to understand why it took so many millennia after primitive stone tools were made to advance beyond that; and then again around 50K years ago to see more a surge with more advances achieved. But that it still took to around 1500’s or so for the scientific mode of experimentation and thinking to take hold.
R2L:
That’s just what they want you to believe. 🙂
I don’t mind pushing the speculative envelope. Anthropologists now date Homo Sapiens back to 300,000+ years ago. I find the idea that we were just hunter-gatherers with primitive stone tools until 5000 years ago provincial.
I suspect there’s a civilization or two missing in the current timeline.
It’s more useful to think of the Giza pyramids and the Sphinx as remnants of an earlier civilization than as Egyptian beginner’s luck that they never equaled again.
Reporter (Right leaning I believe) Mark Halperin explains that Suzy Wiles likely had a chat with Trump. If you want to change the directions now, then lead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6-6Z9NQB3I
Yet in different interview, this time with Michael Malice (author of “Not Sick of Winning”, yet a super critical of state power in general), arguably the best libertarian commentator, he says that it took Walz to “bend the knee” and call Trump! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoX9yeFOqEI
Halperin concludes that Trump considered the media optics context. He thinks Trump thought that because of the Pretti shooting (just or not), “I look bad.” But Mpls Mayor Frey and Gov Walz look worse! Trump is a savvy consumer of TV-news — and he knows when he’s not being perceived as doing good, he explains.
Halperin says if Trump wanted to increase confident and regain the upper hand and dominate the narrative, optically, then change is what he’ll do. And did it seems (ie, Malice’ host Emily Jashinsky cites a source saying that ICE Commander Bovino[?7] did not get a demotion — only a reassignment).
This calculus says, as Malice notes, both sides came out with identical public statements— Walz and Trump both. “This is not an accident,” he explains. In fact, this was a de-escalation “let’s make a deal” moment, which Trump seized!
Finally, “Doug in Exile” (to Tennessee from San Diego) on YT has a 20m roundup of the corruption Democrats news on Tuesday (He posted suitably late at 5PM Eastern Time). He leans heavily on Elon Musk’s many cryptic posts and re-posts today. “He’s revealing everything” wrong with these Corruptocrats, Doug says. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh4PK3HsT24
For example, Kamala only won instates with no voter ID! His reveal from one of Musk’s xPressions states that immigrants became essential to Democrat’s game because they flip large cities and Blue states. And Biden’s 3020 Census policy — reversing Trump’s (or was there a SCOTUS decision I’m forgetting? Or maybe an Appeal Court case?) policy that ONLY actual citizens ought to counted for Congressional apportionment purposes.
It’s all about election rigging advantage for the Dem Machine. The impact of changing population shifts could give Rs 9 to 11 more seats, out of 18 coming changes.
In passing, Doug Tenaple mentions how very much Charlie Kirk’s public assassination affected Elon Musk! It showed him that it only takes one breech in security, and then you’re gone.
He notes what others have saying about Musk. He no longer opines in open, public settings. And if he’s right about massive Democrat electioneering by rigging votes — and I believe he is — Musk dares to keep pissing off our enemies.
That ends my gleanings.
CORRECTION “Biden’s 2020 Census policy”, naturally.
I’m moving my reply to Snow on Pine here, because it’s not appropriate for the Alex Pretti thread.
”…when you would think that things [the moon program] were just getting started, it all just died. Why?”
Because it was friggin’ expensive. In the 1960s we were spending 4-1/2 percent of the federal budget on the space program, almost all of it related in some way to Project Apollo. That was never sustainable. We had a lot of other things on which to spend the money.
It was also extremely dangerous with the technology we had in the 1960s. NASA estimated that each moon landing had a 10% chance of being fatal. That’s only slightly better odds than playing Russian roulette. We had already lost three astronauts on Apollo 1 (59 years ago today), almost lost three more on Apollo 13, and Apollo 12 was literally hit by lightning during the ride uphill. It was only a short matter of time before we lost another crew.
”It has always puzzled me why we didn’t follow up on our great successes, and go on to expand our Moon exploration program–setting up permanent bases, and eventually larger colonies–and just gave up, and never went back.”
Project Apollo was never about exploring the moon, setting up bases, or colonizing anything. It wasn’t about space exploration at all. It was a battle in the Cold War. We won! After that there was no reason to keep fighting.
After winning that battle we could more effectively fight the war by building F-14s, F-15s, and Apache helicopters. So that’s what we did.
”…and what appeared to be an ancient wall built of individual blocks…”
There are satellites in orbit about the moon with cameras that can detect the tracks left by the astronauts on their lunar spacewalks. None of them have ever detected any such wall.
”… voice transcripts with deliberate gaps…”
All moon-to-Earth communications were by unencrypted radio links. The Soviets heard — and probably recorded — every word. The Chinese and some of our allies probably did as well. You’d think one of them would have spilled the beans by now.
huxley on January 28, 2026 at 12:08 am ;
“I find the idea that we were just hunter-gatherers with primitive stone tools until 5000 years ago provincial.” Did you perchance mean 50,000 years ago, in line with my comment?
I agree about 300,000 years ago (BP, before present) anatomically modern homo sapiens is reported to be on the scene (perhaps even 100K years earlier?), but they were small populations of hunter gatherers using simple knapped stone tools. I understand this lasted for 250K years or so, when evidence of bow and arrows, axes, better quality spear heads, etc., appear (perhaps with reed baskets, bone and wood tools, too; etc. One supposition would be there had been an evolutionary advance in cognitive abilities that did not change the fossil skull sizes, etc., but still allowed for enhanced physical and social capabilities. Also over this time span homo sapiens populated the whole of Africa with greater coordination and cooperation (and warfare) among distant groups. As you suggest, maybe there were sufficient advances in social structures and behaviors that created some form of earlier civilization that are now mostly lost, but I remain skeptical pending better evidence.
Then around 12,000 years ago plant and animal domestication is learned/ discovered in suitable* longitudinal tropic zones [not so much in latitudinal orientation]; farming advances; hamlets become villages; become cities, become nations/empires, etc. But the pater familias, clan/tribal, big chief political structure still dominates for way too long [and even Greeks and early Canaanites had slaves.] Eventually we have (in the West) the growth of the Church, Renaissance, Enlightenment, and the Declaration of Independence, coupled with growth in scientific thinking and practice (initially to help explain God’s world and Nature).
We have the 48 to 96 hour rule for day to day political reporting. We probably need to set a 2 to 6 year rule for new reports from archeology and (maybe) paleo genetics. Especially given the fall off in quality of scientific papers and repeatability of investigations in the last few decades. I have seen teaser titles on some You Tube videos claiming new discoveries about even earlier Gobekli Tepe features, but I have not had time to view them yet.
I’m a bit confused this morning on what Trump is doing…”great phone calls” with Frye and Walz; Bovino out, Harmon in, Noem called to the woodshed at the White House. I feel like he’s caving a bit, but I also understand that this second shooting is not clear cut.
However, I just watched this interview by Megyn with James O’Keefe and what happened to him in MPLS…. terrifying, and certainly, to me, makes a strong case for the Insurrection Act now. When private citizens start acting like police, or worse, to other random people, things are out of control. Take a look/listen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUOPFfDTuos
My ‘worthwhile reading’ roundup today has several especially interesting & important links, including the importance of manufacturing, the neglected factor of training in the WWII industrial mobilization, the connection between migration and identity-seeking, and a Paul Graham essay on social fragmentation. Also a review of American Technology, its history and future, by a new Andreessen-Horowitz partner.
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/76014.html
Notice we don’t hear much about DC now. Take a look at the monthly homicide rates per month in DC before and after Trump deployed the Guard. Tremendous drop.
Now that the Signal network and funding sources of ICE Watch are identified and in the hands of the FBI, I imagine we’re going to see quiet in Minneapolis sooner rather than later, and a strange new cooperative attitude from Tim Walz is perhaps not so surprising.
The NGOs that fund this stuff all file Form 1099 and you have to put people’s names on there and describe funding sources, expenditures, and assets.
The online exposés have a lot to do with the willingness of elected officials in MN to begin cooperating. We’ll see what they actually do.
Homan won’t indulge in the grandstanding that is Noem’s specialty. Noem made statements immediately following the Pretti shooting which proved inaccurate. Bad mistake.
and just like that Trump takes all the wind out of the Schumer ICE/DHS Shutdown, Part Duex
Don’t Go Wobbly
Re: Trump changing course – there was really no way for him to do anything else. If he maintained the status quo, more civilian deaths were inevitable. Even though he would have been justified in invoking the Insurrection Act, that would have resulted in even bigger propaganda wins for the leftists. If Trump understands anything, its the media environment and the impact of headlines.
The big issue is whether the deportations stop. If Trump folds on that, he’s granted blue states and cities a ticket to nullify federal law. Not OK. There are reports that Minneapolis police are beginning to respond to leftist agitations against ICE officers. Maybe cooler heads have prevailed all around.
Regarding the signal chats and prosecutions, I’m not getting my hopes up. You need a competent, well respected US attorney and staff in MN to do any of that. You need the same if you want to continue going after the entitlement fraud up there. If they send a Trump toadie like “Judge” Pirro or Alina Haba or anyone who is perceived as doing Trump’s bidding instead of just following the facts and the law, they’re going to get their rear ends handed to them by the courts and the jury pool.
Prompting the existing US Attorney for MN to resign was a significant self-own by Bondi and Trump.
Jon Baker on the numbers.
YES, but to summarized the relevant facts, the US murder rate last year has plummeted by over 20%, a historic record — carjackings are similarly in steep decline — and deaths by opioid overdose (like fentanyl) are down by 20%.
The indicators of crime and violence are wildly and uniformly DOEN, BIGLY. ICE intervention in Memphis, for example, has in a mere 4 months slashed the crime rate there in half!
Furthermore, ICE interventions in Florida and Texas don’t show us the violence by Fed Agents like Minneapolis…why is that?
THE TRUTH—enforcing the law benefits ordered liberty. And as these fruits become more and more undeniable, the Blue City and State counter-vailing movement can assert itself.
DaveRubin’s LIVE Stream from mid-day examines the controversial facts in Minnesota protest turned vicious…such as Rep Ilhan Omar’s sudden wealth — is her Winery benefitting from money laundering?
Rubin goes on with “The View” getting wilder after the Pretti shoot, comics Kimmel and Colbert getting projectionist over Minnesota ICE protests! He also interviews accute observer Adam Corolla.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK9TNvbFwsc
Good update for physicsguy (as well as my three posts on Open Thread from late last night).
Bauxite writes “ more civilian deaths were inevitable.”
No. The facts contradict you. Wherever the local authorities cooperate with ICE Federal enforcement, there are no deaths and crime subsequently declines (cf, Wash DC), leaving the innocent and law abiding freer, more secure and prosperous — unlike Blue Hell Holes run by the Gynocracy like Minneapolis etc…
The truth about the shifting of ICE management is simply because Minnesota has gone national, and his management back to El Centro district in Sourthern California — an area I have frequently visited or tracked through recently — is less visible to the rest of the country. Hence, moving his Obama Award winning ICE Chief Tom Homans to Mpls.
TJ – I’m not suggesting that civilian deaths are an inevitable part of immigration enforcement, but they sure as heck were an inevitable result of immigration enforcement in Minneapolis in 2026 with its citizens, activists, and local government officials are behaving in the way that they have. And I think that Watz, Frey, and all of the leftists activists were more than satisfied with how all of this played out from a propaganda standpoint.
The bigger picture IMO is that the Democrat party/Antifa/leftists no longer have the upper management of the FBI in their back pocket and keeping signals intelligence at bay (they no longer have secure communications). Hence Signals is busted and the Dems are at risk for federal criminal charges. NSA won’t have a problem with Signal decription I would think.
Time to roll up the Antifa LARPer pukes.
CC™ of course can be counted on to find the falling sky.
Don’t Go Wobbly.
Civilian deaths, Saint Sparkles and Saint Sig-Saurer(Saint SS, they are the fascists nowadays) were intentional from the Democrat/Antifa leaders. Their training manuals didn’t mention not bringing loaded weapons to your play date with the feds, or the danger of handling non lethal ordnance? Oh, they didn’t anticipate that? Cannon fodder Bauxite/CC™, eggs for the omelette.
Bauxite/CC™:
Your animosity and fury about The Great Orange Whale is a feature but I wasn’t aware that it extended to female lawyers, Alina Haba and Harmeet Dhillon.
Is there another personality feature in play? Or just a new script to peddle?
I am just sooooo tired of all this. And I am a realist enough to understand that it isn’t going away anytime soon. In fact, will get much worse.
Om – “Saint Sparkles and Saint Sig-Saurer”
Can you explain these code names? And why are they “saints” ?
Thanks.
Just guessing, Saint Sparkles is akin to Saint Pancake, whereas Saint Sig-Sauer is akin to Saint Handsupdontshoot.
I’m guessing that Trump has the goods on Waltz, the Minneapolis mayor, and the assistant governor and their part in the Somali billion dollar scam. “How many life sentences do you want to spend in prison?” This was a very sudden change in attitude by Waltz that is best explained by that.
The left creates martyrs and saints (although I’m not sure how much you can trust a leftist/progressive when it comes to Christianity). And I am NOT making any negative comparisons to Catholic or Orthodox Christians and their veneration of Saints.
Renee Good’s partner who yelled Drive, baby, drive described Renee as “sparkling with love.” Not sure if she loved to drive …. hence “Saint Sparkles”
Mr. Pretti brought a Sig-Saurer P320 semi-auti pistol and extra magazines to his confrontation with the feds. The P320 is notoriously subject to unintended discharges. It probably got him killed.
Both are not martyrs nor Christian saints, IMO, just usefull tools for the left.
So Xi is purging rivals in the Chicom government. There’s a lot of speculation about the implications for Taiwan. Could also have implications now that the Minneapolis insurrection seems to be succeeding.
Here’s what Reuters thinks
“China experts said Xi’s move against his long-term ally and Politburo member Gen. Zhang Youxia also concentrates even more power in the president’s hands, makes the already secretive command of China’s military more opaque, and suggests that a near-term attack on Taiwan is less likely.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/nobody-is-safe-chinas-xi-targets-his-close-ally-purge-2026-01-26/
Tampon Timmy probably asked Trump if there was an exit ramp that didn’t leave Timmy in prison.
Bauxy is almost as happy about the Pretti shooting as Neville Roy Singham.
The professional Concerned Conservatives at National Review are also putting the blame on Trump, but they have mortgages to pay.
Successful insurrections build a swell of energy to a quick flip in power…. Many of Alinsky’s rules quickly go sour if the movement loses momentum.
Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. ——————————–
Now we know what they have… and much more has been revealed about their funding and motives that they didn’t want their own troops to know.
Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.
The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.
——————————–
It turns out that actual violence is waaaay beyond the experience of most bien-pensant Lefties, despite the paramilitary training manuals. The reality of confrontation plus the cold – and the White House’s resolve – has quickly thinned the ranks to the True Believers and crazies, who now look less appealing.
Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
——————————–
See above. However unpleasant it may be for ICE operatives, they are used to policing and even combat.
Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”
——————————–
The contradictions inherent in woke progressivism have been brought to the fore. Did Renee Goode’s car have a “Coexist” bumper sticker?
The hypocrisy of their corrupt leadership is revealed as well.
Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
——————————–
Trump is pretty good at this one… restraint sent the message the Tampon Tim was a weakling, rather than a threat. See Rule 1.
Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. “If your people aren’t having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.”
——————————–
The suburban moms have been scared away from the protest space. Quickly. Look at the latest videos.
Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.
——————————–
The lack of engagement by Trump starved them of their oxygen. The grownups weren’t panicked, didn’t provide the scripted “fascist” response, weren’t taking Timmy seriously. The movement was denied the justification for ratcheting up the violence. The uncontrollable fringe comes off as unhinged and dangerous…. besides I need to defrost my water pipes/plow my garage/check on Mom.
Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage.”
——————————–
But they didn’t react. Timmy and others were left talking up boogeymen… it was the center-right that “kept up the pressure” as a steady stream of corruption revelations dropped.
Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself.
——————————–
See Rule 1. They’ve played their hand.
Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, “Okay, what would you do?”
——————————–
They don’t yet have a successful attack… if they don’t build the wave of chaos into a full-on insurrection, they are stuck. And many observers now understand that their “constructive alternative” is Mamdani Marxism.
Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.
——————————–
Trump has been demonized for almost a decade by now… but a cast of Minnesota Dem pols and Somali nationals have come into focus as the new faces of corruption and demagoguery.
The White House has played this one perfectly, and with the prescience, shrewdness, and maturity that Lefties miss when they insist on viewing Trump as a buffoon.
Nikitas—But how far and for what do the NR blame Trump this time? Please expand on your point.
Although, I too distrust that entire crowd, there is an NR columnist or editor recently posting sensibly on Minneapolis at YT, usefully explaining why that Lutheran Scandinavian area was already inured to pathological altruism—hence, welcoming their own invasion and deeply rationalizing and excusing its costs.
Bauxite replies—
“TJ – I’m not suggesting that civilian deaths are an inevitable part of immigration enforcement, but they sure as heck were an inevitable result of immigration enforcement in Minneapolis in 2026 with its citizens, activists, and local government officials are behaving in the way that they have.” True.
But why are they so gullible? a population so ideologically indoctrinatizable? (And through the Marxist teachers unions, so indoctrinated into “Hate America First” self-flagellation.) We don’t see this in Sioux Falls (SE) South Dakota?
We don’t really see this anywhere else in the Mid-West? Unless perhaps Columbus OH turns out to be a Mpls in miniature….?
Why is this big burg in the far North so damnably gynocratic and gynocrocentrically radicalized? If anything, this season’s fracas ought to have happened in Madison, Wisconsin? — home of much extreme radicalism since the 1960s….
Ben David — THANK YOU for providing such a penetrating and perspicacious application of Alinskyite theory to Mpls area practice!
With explicit insights into Team Trump’s manoeuvres. Very impressive.
OFF TOPIC discussion-global warming model prediction failure! Al Gore AGAIN!
“Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’ turns 20, and critics say biggest disaster is its failed predictions”
“Twenty years ago ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ received a standing ovation at the Sundance Film Festival. Though it was full of predictions that never came to pass, it was a key catalyst of the climate activist movement.” At Just The News by the very able Kevin Killough: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/energy/al-gores-inconvenient-truth-turns-20-and-critics-say-only-disaster-its
Ben David :
What TJ said! Excellent! (Mr. Burns).
I thought that President Trump had them beaten this morning, but you fleshed out the situation.
Now it’s time for the perps to do the walk while cuffed.
One reason I believe that Minneapolis has been the focus of the anti-ICE protests and provocations is that local police have been castrated there since the George Floyd incident. The problem mostly goes away when local police co-operate with ICE. Not to mention Walz ratcheting up the rhetoric to distract from the fraud/corruption investigations.
In re the video: quite a bit different from childbirth in the tundra.
Re: Trump / Walz friendliness
I would mention Trump’s compliments to Kim Jong Un after their meetings in 2018-19.
Trump is playing carrot and stick. He shapes the behavior of his opponents. He is not being bamboozled. It’s behavioral psychology.
@huxley:Trump is playing carrot and stick. He shapes the behavior of his opponents. He is not being bamboozled. It’s behavioral psychology.
Seconding this, and wondering if those who haven’t caught on to it yet are making it their business not to catch on.
David Foster,
Interesting presentation by Christian Keil. I didn’t make it through all 346 slides. I read maybe 12 all the way through and skimmed about 20 more to try to get his gist. On slides 20 – 155 he tries to quantify how Americans are doing in relation to three, broad categories. His data points (the ones I looked at) seem correct, but I think his entire presentation (at least the pieces I looked at) is too, tech centric.
To use an absurdity to make my point, the humans connected to the Matrix in the movie of the same name were thriving by Keil’s metrics. They were healthy, lived long lives, they were entertained, not living in poverty… Tech did everything for them, including living their lives for them and feeding the experience back into their senses with no risk to their physical or mental well being. No one watching the movie saw that as the goal of human existence, or optimal.
When I talk to people in their 30s and 40s today I almost never see attitudes like my age group had in our 30s and 40s. We were generally positive about our community’s prospects, our prospects, our children’s futures… Folks in their 30s and 40s have a lot more tech than we had; cheaper food, more medical advancements. Yet I don’t hear many proclaiming that they are thriving. And they don’t appear to be. I see a lot of loneliness.
Psychologists have mostly figured out the basic things that help most humans feel their lives have worth*. It ain’t tech.
Think of great moments in your life:
A camping vacation with your parents and siblings.
The first time you hold the hand of a person you are romantically interested in.
Training hard physically and winning in a sporting event.
Working hard for years in a rigorous academic system and graduating.
The callouses on your fingers or lips from practicing a musical instrument.
Finding your first apartment and eating Ramen noodles to make rent.
Losing a job and moving to a city you’ve never been to to find work.
Dancing.
Dancing with someone you think is cute.
Asking someone to marry you/Having someone ask you to marry you.
Having a child with someone you love.
Letting go of your kid’s bicycle seat when you’re about 50.6% confident they won’t crash and get hurt.
Helping your elderly parents age with some level of dignity.
Does the top 100 list of great moments in your life contain a single entry centered on interacting with tech?
Tech has been replacing community for decades and that doesn’t seem to be a net positive for human flourishing.
*https://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Community/dp/1982130849/ref=sr_1_1
David Foster,
Well, I’m doing an Emily Letilla. I went back and looked at slides 146 – 158 and Mr. Keil covers the decline of community and social bonds and their impact.
So, ignore my prior comment. Never mind.
David Foster,
I just read slides 330, 331 and 334 and I’m back to thinking Mr. Keil is a menace and threat to humanity.
— physicsguy
The IA is certainly justifiable on the merits. It’s probably justifiable on the legality. But there are merits, laws, and then there is practical politics. The third is by far the most potent factor in governance.
Does it make political sense to invoke the IA right now? That’s a whole different question, and it is highly debatable. Max Weber would advise us to always consider the practical real-world consequences of our actions, not just the theoretical justification. To ask ourselves not what should happen if we choose ‘x’, but what actually would happen. It’s good advice.
HC68
I understand your point, but did you watch what happened to O’Keefe??? Maybe there’s a different way to stop what was going on in that video other than the IA. Better minds than I have….
TJ on January 27, 2026 at 5:06 pm:
“Ben David — THANK YOU for providing such a penetrating and perspicacious application of Alinskyite theory to Mpls area practice!
With explicit insights into Team Trump’s manoeuvres. Very impressive.”
Ditto to TJ’s and om’s endorsement. But I was unnerved to see manoeuvers [with an “o”] vs. maneuvers as I was expecting. Glad that Wiki said both were valid British/English vs. American English versions.
@ RTF: Nice commentary on the Keil slides. I did not review them in full either, but just the 3 or so you cited, and agree we ought to be careful and concerned about where this all leads.
“Does the top 100 list of great moments in your life contain a single entry centered on interacting with tech?”
Well, not in the top 100, but maybe in the top 500 I would include my learning the matrix calculating program PL-1 [different from that other PL-1 language?], using email, learning word processing (3 or 4 versions), 2 major spreadsheets (including charting, which I would need to relearn now), and generating slide animation in PowerPoint. These skills aided me in achieving other accomplishments of greater value/worth. As do most / many tools that humanity has developed*. Life is complicated, but new ideas and new tools are used for both good and ill throughout history.
But as I get older, I don’t want to bother learning new modes of engaging with those (and other) high tech tools, I just want them to work as expected (consistently, if not also intuitively). If we do end up with a truly high surveillance world and reduction in personal liberty as a result, some people will evolve the skills to work around it, although a few thousand years from now they might no longer be truly human.
Or we will follow the paths of the USSR, CCP, and Iranian or related dictatorships and ultimately fail to achieve viability long term.
*In fact I find it hard to understand why it took so many millennia after primitive stone tools were made to advance beyond that; and then again around 50K years ago to see more a surge with more advances achieved. But that it still took to around 1500’s or so for the scientific mode of experimentation and thinking to take hold.
@Rufus: Does the top 100 list of great moments in your life contain a single entry centered on interacting with tech?
Well, reading “Computer Lib/Dream Machines” by Ted Nelson was one. Buying a developer Macintosh in 1983 before it was released was another.
But that’s just me.
I emailed President Trump urging him to stay tough on illegal immigration and sanctuary cities and states. I also stated that Pretti’s crime was not carrying a pistol; his crime was interfering and fighting with agents who were just trying to do their jobs.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/jan/27/trump-says-border-patrol-official-pulled-minnesota-agent/
*In fact I find it hard to understand why it took so many millennia after primitive stone tools were made to advance beyond that; and then again around 50K years ago to see more a surge with more advances achieved. But that it still took to around 1500’s or so for the scientific mode of experimentation and thinking to take hold.
R2L:
That’s just what they want you to believe. 🙂
I don’t mind pushing the speculative envelope. Anthropologists now date Homo Sapiens back to 300,000+ years ago. I find the idea that we were just hunter-gatherers with primitive stone tools until 5000 years ago provincial.
I suspect there’s a civilization or two missing in the current timeline.
It’s more useful to think of the Giza pyramids and the Sphinx as remnants of an earlier civilization than as Egyptian beginner’s luck that they never equaled again.
Reporter (Right leaning I believe) Mark Halperin explains that Suzy Wiles likely had a chat with Trump. If you want to change the directions now, then lead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6-6Z9NQB3I
Yet in different interview, this time with Michael Malice (author of “Not Sick of Winning”, yet a super critical of state power in general), arguably the best libertarian commentator, he says that it took Walz to “bend the knee” and call Trump! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoX9yeFOqEI
Halperin concludes that Trump considered the media optics context. He thinks Trump thought that because of the Pretti shooting (just or not), “I look bad.” But Mpls Mayor Frey and Gov Walz look worse! Trump is a savvy consumer of TV-news — and he knows when he’s not being perceived as doing good, he explains.
Halperin says if Trump wanted to increase confident and regain the upper hand and dominate the narrative, optically, then change is what he’ll do. And did it seems (ie, Malice’ host Emily Jashinsky cites a source saying that ICE Commander Bovino[?7] did not get a demotion — only a reassignment).
This calculus says, as Malice notes, both sides came out with identical public statements— Walz and Trump both. “This is not an accident,” he explains. In fact, this was a de-escalation “let’s make a deal” moment, which Trump seized!
Finally, “Doug in Exile” (to Tennessee from San Diego) on YT has a 20m roundup of the corruption Democrats news on Tuesday (He posted suitably late at 5PM Eastern Time). He leans heavily on Elon Musk’s many cryptic posts and re-posts today. “He’s revealing everything” wrong with these Corruptocrats, Doug says. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh4PK3HsT24
For example, Kamala only won instates with no voter ID! His reveal from one of Musk’s xPressions states that immigrants became essential to Democrat’s game because they flip large cities and Blue states. And Biden’s 3020 Census policy — reversing Trump’s (or was there a SCOTUS decision I’m forgetting? Or maybe an Appeal Court case?) policy that ONLY actual citizens ought to counted for Congressional apportionment purposes.
It’s all about election rigging advantage for the Dem Machine. The impact of changing population shifts could give Rs 9 to 11 more seats, out of 18 coming changes.
In passing, Doug Tenaple mentions how very much Charlie Kirk’s public assassination affected Elon Musk! It showed him that it only takes one breech in security, and then you’re gone.
He notes what others have saying about Musk. He no longer opines in open, public settings. And if he’s right about massive Democrat electioneering by rigging votes — and I believe he is — Musk dares to keep pissing off our enemies.
That ends my gleanings.
CORRECTION “Biden’s 2020 Census policy”, naturally.
I’m moving my reply to Snow on Pine here, because it’s not appropriate for the Alex Pretti thread.
”…when you would think that things [the moon program] were just getting started, it all just died. Why?”
Because it was friggin’ expensive. In the 1960s we were spending 4-1/2 percent of the federal budget on the space program, almost all of it related in some way to Project Apollo. That was never sustainable. We had a lot of other things on which to spend the money.
It was also extremely dangerous with the technology we had in the 1960s. NASA estimated that each moon landing had a 10% chance of being fatal. That’s only slightly better odds than playing Russian roulette. We had already lost three astronauts on Apollo 1 (59 years ago today), almost lost three more on Apollo 13, and Apollo 12 was literally hit by lightning during the ride uphill. It was only a short matter of time before we lost another crew.
”It has always puzzled me why we didn’t follow up on our great successes, and go on to expand our Moon exploration program–setting up permanent bases, and eventually larger colonies–and just gave up, and never went back.”
Project Apollo was never about exploring the moon, setting up bases, or colonizing anything. It wasn’t about space exploration at all. It was a battle in the Cold War. We won! After that there was no reason to keep fighting.
After winning that battle we could more effectively fight the war by building F-14s, F-15s, and Apache helicopters. So that’s what we did.
”…and what appeared to be an ancient wall built of individual blocks…”
There are satellites in orbit about the moon with cameras that can detect the tracks left by the astronauts on their lunar spacewalks. None of them have ever detected any such wall.
”… voice transcripts with deliberate gaps…”
All moon-to-Earth communications were by unencrypted radio links. The Soviets heard — and probably recorded — every word. The Chinese and some of our allies probably did as well. You’d think one of them would have spilled the beans by now.
huxley on January 28, 2026 at 12:08 am ;
“I find the idea that we were just hunter-gatherers with primitive stone tools until 5000 years ago provincial.” Did you perchance mean 50,000 years ago, in line with my comment?
I agree about 300,000 years ago (BP, before present) anatomically modern homo sapiens is reported to be on the scene (perhaps even 100K years earlier?), but they were small populations of hunter gatherers using simple knapped stone tools. I understand this lasted for 250K years or so, when evidence of bow and arrows, axes, better quality spear heads, etc., appear (perhaps with reed baskets, bone and wood tools, too; etc. One supposition would be there had been an evolutionary advance in cognitive abilities that did not change the fossil skull sizes, etc., but still allowed for enhanced physical and social capabilities. Also over this time span homo sapiens populated the whole of Africa with greater coordination and cooperation (and warfare) among distant groups. As you suggest, maybe there were sufficient advances in social structures and behaviors that created some form of earlier civilization that are now mostly lost, but I remain skeptical pending better evidence.
Then around 12,000 years ago plant and animal domestication is learned/ discovered in suitable* longitudinal tropic zones [not so much in latitudinal orientation]; farming advances; hamlets become villages; become cities, become nations/empires, etc. But the pater familias, clan/tribal, big chief political structure still dominates for way too long [and even Greeks and early Canaanites had slaves.] Eventually we have (in the West) the growth of the Church, Renaissance, Enlightenment, and the Declaration of Independence, coupled with growth in scientific thinking and practice (initially to help explain God’s world and Nature).
We have the 48 to 96 hour rule for day to day political reporting. We probably need to set a 2 to 6 year rule for new reports from archeology and (maybe) paleo genetics. Especially given the fall off in quality of scientific papers and repeatability of investigations in the last few decades. I have seen teaser titles on some You Tube videos claiming new discoveries about even earlier Gobekli Tepe features, but I have not had time to view them yet.
*Michael Magoon’s Substack has a lot about this aspect of human development and progress.
https://substack.com/@frompovertytoprogress
R2L:
No, I meant 5000 years ago per the conventional time line. I was being casual, but I’m not sure we disagree.
A summary of your position would help.