“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert.” –J. Robert Oppenheimer
This Rejoice & Praise God Sunday Open Thread, with full respect to those who worship God on the Sabbath, is a place to reaffirm our worship of our Creator, our Father, our King Eternal.
It’s also a place to read, post, and discuss news that is worth knowing and sharing. Please post links to any news stories that you use as sources or quote from.
In the QTree, we’re a friendly and civil lot. We encourage free speech and the open exchange and civil discussion of different ideas. Topics aren’t constrained, and sound logic is highly encouraged, all built on a solid foundation of truth and established facts.
We have a policy of mutual respect, shown by civility. Civility encourages discussions, promotes objectivity and rational thought in discourse, and camaraderie in the participants – characteristics we strive toward in our Q Tree community.
Please show respect and consideration for our fellow QTreepers. Before hitting the “post” button, please proofread your post and make sure your opinion addresses the issue only, and does not confront or denigrate the poster. Keep to the topic – avoid “you” and “your”. Here in The Q Tree, personal attacks, name-calling, ridicule, insults, baiting, and other conduct for which a penalty flag would be thrown are VERBOTEN.
In The Q Tree, we’re compatriots, sitting around the campfire, roasting hot dogs, making s’mores, and discussing, agreeing, and disagreeing about whatever interests us. This board will remain a home for those who seek respectful conversations.
God is in Control . . . and His Grace is Sufficient, so . . . Keep Looking Up
Hopefully, every Sunday, we can find something here that will build us up a little . . . give us a smile . . . and add some joy or peace, very much needed in all our lives.
“This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn nor weep.” . . . “Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
Biblical Hope
Biblical hope has as its foundation faith in God. The word hope in English often conveys doubt. For instance, “I hope it will not rain tomorrow.” In addition, the word hope is often followed by the word so. This is the answer that some may give when asked if they think that they will go to heaven when they die. They say, “I hope so.” However, that is not the meaning of the words usually translated “hope” in the Bible.
In the Old Testament the Hebrew word batah and its cognates has the meaning of confidence, security, and being without care; therefore, the concept of doubt is not part of this word. We find that meaning in Job 6:20; Psalm 16:9; Psalm 22:9; and Ecclesiastes 9:4. In most instances in the New Testament, the word hope is the Greek elpis/elpizo. Again, there is no doubt attached to this word. Therefore, biblical hope is a confident expectation or assurance based upon a sure foundation for which we wait with joy and full confidence. In other words, “There is no doubt about it!”
One of the verses in which we find the word hope is Hebrews 11:1. “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” This verse at the beginning of the faith chapter (Hebrews 11) carries with it all of the confidence that comes with knowing for sure, with no question, what we have been promised by God in His Word. Our faith is confident assurance, for it is founded upon the Rock of our salvation, the Lord Jesus Christ. All of the actions of the heroes of the faith recorded in Hebrews 11 were made possible because they had this faith, based in their confident assurance or hope in God. As believers, we are also called to give an answer for the hope that is within us to any who would ask (1 Peter 3:15).
Therefore, biblical hope is a reality and not a feeling. Biblical hope carries no doubt. Biblical hope is a sure foundation upon which we base our lives, believing that God always keeps His promises. Hope or confident assurance can be ours when we trust the words, “He who believes on Me has everlasting life” (John 6:47, NKJV). Accepting that gift of eternal life means our hope is no longer filled with doubt but, rather, has at its sure foundation the whole of God’s Word, the entirety of God’s character, and the finished work of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. xhttps://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-hope.html
What is it that feeds our battle, yet starves our victory?
This post is scheduled to go “live” at 10:01PM MST on Friday, November 15, 2024. That’s 00:01 EST on Saturday, November 16, 2024 for those of you in that benighted timezone near the Atlantic Ocean.
As of that moment, there are 65 days, 11 hours, and 59 minutes until our rightful President of the United States is restored to office.
Not that I’m counting, mind you.
January 6 Tapes Reminder
After the first release, we were supposed to get more, every week.
As far as I know it hasn’t happened.
Speaker Johnson, please follow through!
A Caution
Just remember…we might replace the RINO candidates. (Or we might not. The record is mixed even though there is more MAGA than there used to be.) But that will make no difference in the long run if the party officials, basically the Rhonna McDaniels (or however that’s spelled–I suspect it’s RINO), don’t get replaced.
State party chairs, vice chairs, secretaries and so on, and the same at county levels, have huge influence on who ultimately gets nominated, and if these party wheelhorses are RINOs, they will work tirelessly to put their own pukey people on the ballot. In fact I’d not be surprised if some of our “MAGA” candidates are in fact, RINO plants, encouraged to run by the RINO party leadership when they realized that Lyn Cheney (and her ilk) were hopelessly compromised as effective candidates. The best way for them to deal with the opposition, of course, is to run it themselves.
Running good candidates is only HALF of the battle!
Biden Gives Us Too Much Credit
…we can move on to the next one.
Apparently Biden (or his puppeteer) has decided we’re to blame for all of the fail in the United States today.
Sorry to disappoint you Joe (or whoever), but you managed to do that all on your own; not only that, you wouldn’t let us NOT give you the chance because you insisted on cheating your way into power.
Yep, you-all are incompetent, and so proud of it you expect our applause for your sincerity. Fuck that!!
It wouldn’t be so bad, but you insist that everyone else have to share in your misery. Nope, can’t have anyone get out from under it. Somehow your grand vision only works if every single other person on earth is forced to go along. So much as ONE PERSON not going along is enough to make it all fail, apparently.
In engineering school we’re taught that a design that has seven to eight billion single points of failure…sucks.
Actually, we weren’t taught that. Because it would never have occurred to the professors to use such a ridiculous example.
Justice Must Be Done.
The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system.
Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2022 or 2024 is hopeless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud is not part of the plan, you have no plan.
Kamala Harris has a new nickname since she finally went west from DC to El Paso Texas: Westward Hoe.
Lawyer Appeasement Section
OK now for the fine print.
This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines, here, with an addendum on 20191110.
We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.
And remember Wheatie’s Rules:
1. No food fights 2. No running with scissors. 3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone. 4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns. 5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded. 5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty. 6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy. 7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire. 8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.
(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)
Spot Prices
All prices are Kitco Ask, 3PM MT Friday (at that time the markets close for the weekend). (Note: most media quotes are for the bid…the price paid by the market makers, not the ask, which is what they will sell at. I figure the ask is more relevant to people like us who wish we could afford to buy these things. In the case of gold the difference is usually about a dollar, for the PGMs the spread is much wider.)
There’s no sugar coating it…the precious metals except for platinum are taking a beating. (Platinum was already on sale anyway.) Silver at least didn’t take quite as much of a beating as gold. The FRNSI, when I calculated it, turned out to be 122.9996 which rounds up to 123.000, which is why it looks suspiciously “round” at the moment. (Like the time twenty years or so ago when I bought a bunch of random things, and the total at the cash register, including sales tax, was exactly $100.00. I told the cashier to get the machine checked.)
*The SteveInCO Federal Reserve Note Suckage Index (FRNSI) is a measure of how much the dollar has inflated. It’s the ratio of the current price of gold, to the number of dollars an ounce of fine gold made up when the dollar was defined as 25.8 grains of 0.900 gold. That worked out to an ounce being $20.67+71/387 of a cent. (Note gold wasn’t worth this much back then, thus much gold was $20.67 71/387ths. It’s a subtle distinction. One ounce of gold wasn’t worth $20.67 back then, it was $20.67.) Once this ratio is computed, 1 is subtracted from it so that the number is zero when the dollar is at its proper value, indicating zero suckage.
Neptune
We now reach the last full planet. But is it the end of the road?
History
Neptune’s discovery was a triumph of Newtonian theory.
Newton in the mid-late 1600s was pondering the forces that make the planets move, as opposed to forces we see on Earth. Apparently he saw an apple fall (it did not bonk him on the noggin), and it occurred to him that the force that made the apple fall might be the same force that makes the Moon orbit the Earth. Newton knew how far away the Moon was, he knew how much it would have to accelerate to remain in its orbit about the Earth. (If there was no acceleration, it would just go in a straight line and eventually disappear from sight from becoming too faint to see.) He also knew how far he and the apple were from the center of the Earth, and already knew how fast the apple accelerated.
He was able to determine that if the acceleration induced by gravity dropped off as the square of the distance, the number for the Moon’s distance actually matched what the Moon was doing.
Twenty years later after a lot of refining and elaboration, well…For the first time we knew that the stuff “up there” follows the same rules as the stuff “down here.” It’s not a special realm, as the ancients believed.
Newton did not discover gravity. Gravity was known to Og the caveman especially after he did a faceplant tripping over something while chasing game, nor was Og the first to notice it. What Newton did do was to show that gravity is universal, it applies everywhere not just here on Earth. And he was able to write equations that described it quite accurately.
Newton, during those 20 years, had gone on to prove that such a force would cause things to orbit other things in ellipses…which matched what we already knew; Johannes Kepler had in the early 1600s proved with meticulously collected data spanning decades and years of his own skull sweat that the orbits of the planets around the Sun (and the Moon around the Earth) were ellipses. Newton also was able to show that Kepler’s other two laws of planetary motion applied. Better, one could apply his laws to the Galilean moons (as well as Titan orbiting Saturn) and show that they, too followed Newtonian mechanics and gravity.
Over the next decades astronomers refined their data on the planets and had more and more accurate data to “plug into” their equations and predicting where planets and the Moon would be became an exact science; instead of being off by five degrees (the width of you three big fingers (not the thumb and not the pinky) held at arms length), we were much less than half a degree.
Then Uranus was discovered in 1781, and that was one more thing to track on top of the other planets, known moons of planets, and so on. (Starting in 1650, we discovered binary stars orbiting each other and could track them too.) Alexis Bouvard published tables of Uranus’s ephemerides (predictions of future predctions) in 1821.
Except there was a problem, one which became apparent over the next few decades (it takes a long time, when the planet has an 84 year orbital period or “year”). Uranus was being an ass…not behaving. It was traveling too fast for a while…then too slow.
Was Newton wrong after all? In spite of his stuff having worked so well for over a century?
Bouvard didn’t think so. He speculated that some unknown body was perturbing Uranus’s orbit, pulling on it and either making it speed up or slow down, depending on where it was in relation to Uranus. In 1843 John Couch Adams began trying to figure out where this unknown body was, and by 1845-6 had generated several predictions; he was continually refining them because his method was iterative. He’d guess, run the numbers, adjust his guess, and repeat. Then repeat again.
But Adams had competition; Urbain Le Verrier was also working on the problem. He came up with similar answers. The Astronomer Royal of England, Sir George Airy, persuaded James Challis to actually look through a telescope and try to find the planet. Challis tried through August and September 1846, and failed. (However he realized much later that he had actually seen it a couple of times in July and August 1845 (a year before his search) and not recognized it for what it was, because he had poor observing techniques and old star charts. D’oh!)
Le Verrier wasn’t going to wait on the Brits to get their act together; he wrote to Johan Gottfried Galle in Berlin, and asked him to look. Galle received the lettter on the 23rd of September, 1846. Heinrich d’Arrest, a student at the observatory, pointed out that they had just made a chart of that part of the sky recently. So all Galle had to do was point his telescope and look for something that wasn’t on the chart. That would be a moving object…a planet. Galle looked that evening with a nine inch refractor telescope (one with lenses at both ends of the tube), and found it almost immediately, less than a degree away from where Le Verrier had said it would be, and twelve degrees away from Adam’s prediction. However…the old chart could just be missing the object by mistake. Galle looked at the object over the next few days and satisfied himself that it wasn’t a mistake. It was indeed a moving object.
Another planet had been found!
Newton in trouble? No way! This was actually a triumph for Newtonian mechanics because it had been used to find a planet!
(As a footnote…Galileo saw Neptune, diagrammed its position in his notes, not once but twice when it was near Jupiter on 28 December 1612 and 27 January 1613 [both dates New Style] but didn’t realize it was a moving object. So, although interesting, it isn’t enough to give him credit for the discovery. However, “In 2009, a study suggested that Galileo was at least aware that the “star” he had observed had moved relative to fixed stars.” [From Wikipedia])
Voyager 2, 25 August 1989
This is a collection of official NASA animations depicting the sole spacecraft encounter (so far) with Neptune. These videos were made before the encounter, so Neptune’s and Triton’s appearances are just guesses. They also show the rings as arcs, because that’s what they thought back then (it turns out that they’re full rings, with some thicker sections we mistook for partial arcs).
Basic Info
For a while, it was simply called “the planet exterior to Uranus” or “Le Verrier’s Planet”. Galle suggested calling it Janus, which fortunately didn’t happen or it would be confused with the Hugh Janus of the solar system. Le Verrier said, since he had discovered it, he should be able to name it and he suggested “Neptune.” And that’s the name that ultimately “stuck.” The planet had a bluish tinge and Neptune was the Roman god of the sea (corresponding to the Greek Poseidon).
Neptune orbits the Sun in 164.8 years, almost twice as long as Uranus (84.02 years). Its average distance from the sun is 30.07 AUs (30.07 times as much as Earth’s average disance). That puts it at 4.5 billion kilometers from the Sun. That means that radio signals to and from Voyager 2 took over four hours each way!
Here it is in true color, with the Earth photoshopped in for comparison.
It’s roughly the same size as Uranus…just a bit smaller, but it is considerably denser than Uranus and notably more massive (Uranus is 14.536 times the mass of the Earth, Neptune is 17.147 times.)
Neptune rotates in 16 hours, 6 minutes; that’s its day. Its axis is tilted 28.2 degrees, a bit more than Earth’s but not ridiculous like with Uranus or Venus. The temperature is 55-72 Kelvins (-218 to -201 C) depending on how deep into the atmosphere you measure it. The latter number is measured where the atmospheric pressure is the same as Earth’s at sea level. The atmosphere consists of 80 percent hydrogen, 19 percent helium and 1.5 percent methane by volume, with traces of ethane, ammonia, water ice, and ammonium hydrosulfide. The methane gives Neptune its bluish tinge.
Innards
Deeper down the methane, ammonia and water ices become more prevalent, earning Neptune its place among the ice giants. One thing I just spotted is the speculation that at a depth of 7000km, methane might decompose with the carbon forming diamond crystals that rain downwards like hailstones; this would be true on Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus as well.
Whoops, spoiler…Rings.
You’re probably used to seeing this picture of Neptune:
But if you scroll back to the earlier picture, it’s the same picture of Neptune, just rendered in different colors. This one exaggerated the colors for contrast, and in it you can see the “Great Dark Spot” which means I can now segue to discussing the weather.
Weather
The “Great Dark Spot” is similar to Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. It’s 13,000km x 6,600 km or so…which means that measured the long way it’s slightly broader than Earth! However, it wasn’t nearly as permanent as the Red Spot. By the time Hubble looked at Neptune eight years later in 1994, it was gone. But a new dark spot had appeared in Neptune’s northern hemisphere.
The white smudge is called “Scooter” because it moved more rapidly than the Great Dark Spot
Neptune has the most extreme winds in the solar system…at least, as far as we can tell. The prevailing winds on the equator are 400 m/s, dropping to a “mere” 250 m/s at the poles. In the storms the velocity can reach 600 m/s. That’s roughly 2,200 kph or 1,300 mph, well over the speed of sound. This is a stark contrast to Uranus, which had no obvious storms when Voyager 2 flew by. The concentration of methane, ethane, and acetylene at the equator is 100 times that at the poles, so it seems that at the equator the atmosphere is upwelling, bringing that stuff from down deeper where it is more common. It subsides near the poles.
Neptune, like Uranus, has a multi pole magnetic field, indicating its dynamo is probably in a relatively thin layer of the planet–much as is thought with Uranus.
Rings
Neptune has rings, but not very substantial ones. In this case it’s likely to be tiny ice particles coated with carbon-based material. And here, we came up with cool names: the most important rings are named Adams, Le Verrier, and Galle. The best way to view them is in infrared..and well guess what we just put up there that sees really, really well in infrared?
None other than the James Webb Space Telescope, of course!
Before the Voyager 2 encounter, we thought the rings were partial arcs rather than full circles; we eventually figured out those arcs were actually thicker parts of full rings.
And what a nice segue into the moons, since we can see some of them here.
Moons
You might expect the same progression of small, inner moons, nice and regular in circular orbits, then major moons (either large and planetary sized, or medium or medium-small but still round, or a mix), also in nice tidy regular orbits, then irregular satellites, that we saw with Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus. Surely with a pattern like this three times running, we can expect more of the same here?
You might expect it, but that ain’t what you’re gonna get!
Neptune has 16 known moons, with a naming theme of water deities and one water critter out of Greek mythology.
First we have seven small regular satellites…in other words, inner moons. Some of them orbit among Neptune’s rings, as seen in the JWST photo above. Five of them were discovered by Voyager 2 in 1989, and of course the best photos we have of any of them are from that spacecraft, the only one ever to visit Neptune. Larissa was actually discovered in 1981, while Hippocamp was first spotted in 2013.
The largest of these is Proteus, with a diameter of 420 km. That puts it in the same size range as Mimas and Miranda, those smallest round moons, but it’s not round! It’s more like Hyperion in that regard, but unlike Hyperion, it’s not a gigantic sponge.
A craptastic picture like this is the best we can do when only Voyager 2 ever got close to it. Proteus, 420 km or so in diameter, orbiting at 117,646 km in 1.12 (Earth) days.
It is remarkable Proteus was discovered well after Larissa (which is much smaller) and Nereid, which is also smaller and has been known for decades–we’ll get to that.
So far so good, right? Inner moons.
Next should be large, planetary-sized moons and/or medium moons, all nice and regular.
Well, we do get a large moon. But it’s not regular. Not even close!
Triton is 2,705 km (give or take about 5 km) orbiting at 352,759 km in 5.87 days. It’s in a nice circular equatorial orbit…but it’s not in Neptune’s equatorial plane; it’s inclined at 23 degrees. Well, no, actually, it’s inclined at 157 degrees. Yes, it’s retrograde.
Triton’s orbit in red, compared to a “normal” moon’s orbit in green. Note the opposite directions of motion.
What the Biden is going on here? We’ll come back to that. And we’ll hit Triton in more detail shortly. Meanwhile, I’ll point out that it was discovered weeks after Neptune itself, by the English astronomer William Lassell.
A black and white picture of Triton–it’s actually a mosaic pieced together from smaller pictures. Triton looks a lot like a cantaloupe in places.
Next out is Nereid, discovered in 1949 by Gerard Peter Kuiper (you may recall I warned you that you’d be seeing his name again! And I wasn’t thinking about this when I said so). Nereid is 357 km across (give or take 13 km), and another non-round, but medium small moon. And now we see the suckage we have to deal with when only one spacecraft has ever spent any time at all near Neptune, and that only a few hours. Here is our absolute best picture of Nereid (out of 83 that Voyager took):
Nereid is another one of those “medium small” moons that didn’t quite become rounded. It got discovered before Proteus (which is larger) because it has a high albedo, reflecting most of the light that hit it.
And Nereid’s orbit is wacky. Its average distance from Neptune is 5,513,900 km–a huge jump up from Triton (it takes 360 days to orbit Neptune). But it’s at a relatively sane inclination of 5 degrees…very small for an irregular moon. But here’s the big surprise: the eccentricity is a whopping 0.75! That’s extremely elliptical. Its closest approach to Neptune is 1,381,500 km and its furthest distance is 9,626,500 km.
Next out is Halimede, about 62 km across, at 16,590,500 km, orbiting in 1879 days (almost five years), it’s retrograde and has an eccentricity of 0.521. It looks like it’s made out of the same stuff as Nereid, and there’s a 41 percent chance that at sometime in the past, it actually collided with Nereid. Or rather, that it broke off of Nereid (when you “run that tape backwards” that looks like a collision).
There are then two groups of three, the Sao group (inclined 36-50 degrees) and the Neso group (inclined 127-135 degrees), all of them 25-60km in diameter.
Halimede on out are clearly outer, irregular moons so here at least the usual pattern fits.
OK, we’ve got some crazy stuff going on here.
Triton
There are seven “large” or “planetary sized” moons in our Solar System (the Moon, Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Titan and Triton) and Triton is the smallest of them. It’s the only moon in the Solar System with a diameter in the 2,000-3,000 km range. Even so, it’s larger than all of the smaller moons in the Solar System, put together.
Before Voyager 2 flew by, we knew very little about Triton; Kuiper tried to measure its diameter in 1954 (well over a century after its discovery) and got 3,800 km. Others got values anywhere from 2500 to 6000km; that last is almost half the diameter of Earth and would have made Triton the largest moon in the solar system, beating out even Ganymede. The answer turned out to be 2706 km as measured by Voyager 2 on August 25, 1989.
Triton has a density of about 2 grams per cubic centimeter, which indicates that unlike many moons of the outer solar system, it’s more rock than ice. Its surface temperature is 38 K (-235C), slightly colder than Hitlary Klinton’s lap.
In the 1990s an atmosphere was detected (by watching stars fade as Triton passed in front of them). This is a very thin atmosphere, 0.02 millibar at most (Earth’s atmosphere is close to 1013 millibars). Nonetheless, clouds were photographed by Voyager (look at the horizon)
And also in this picture, a “parting shot” at Triton from the opposite side from the Sun (backlit pictures like this one can be very useful when studying atmospheres):
Triton also has geysers, this time of nitrogen. Triton is cold enough to have nitrogen ice on it (and remember that liquid nitrogen is stereotypically very cold stuff), but below the surface it’s warmer and you can have nitrogen geysers. The black smudges are thought to be downwind of them.
And finally we have this picture of the south polar ice cap (yes, “upside down” with south at the top):
Away from the cap we see more cantaloupe terrain. This feature is unique to Triton, so far as we know, and consists mostly of dirty water ice. They might be caused by lumps of less-dense material slowly rising to the surface, or perhaps flooding from cryovulcanism.
What’s with the red color? We’ve seen this a lot and it’s time I discussed it a bit. All of these outer moons have some amount of hydrocarbons on them (especially Titan), things like methane, ethane, and so forth. There’s zero protection from ultraviolet light on any of these moons (except maybe Titan), so the UV acts on the hydrocarbons and any sulfur that’s around and produces tholins, which are pretty much random goo formed of polymers. The term tholin was coined by Carl Sagan, who wrote:
For the past decade we have been producing in our laboratory a variety of complex organic solids from mixtures of the cosmically abundant gases CH4, C2H6, NH3, H2O, HCHO, and H2S [methane, ethane, ammonia, water, formaldehyde and hydrogen sulfide, respectively–SteveInCO]. The product, synthesized by ultraviolet (UV) light or spark discharge, is a brown, sometimes sticky, residue, which has been called, because of its resistance to conventional analytical chemistry, “intractable polymer”. […] We propose, as a model-free descriptive term, ‘tholins’ (Greek Θολός, muddy; but also Θόλος, vault or dome), although we were tempted by the phrase ‘star-tar’.[3][1]
We’ve only seen 40 percent of Triton, because that’s what Voyager photographed as it sped by. The other side might very well be a gigantic billboard reading “For a Good Time Call…” with Kamala Harris’s phone number, for all we know.
Here’s a geological map of Triton, based on what we have seen.
Triton orbits closer to Neptune than the Moon does to Earth, yet it is highly inclined and retrograde. Its orbit is nearly circular, and it has become tidally locked to Neptune (as would be expected).
Earth’s moon is slowly receding from Earth at a few centimeters per year. Triton is getting closer. In fact, in about three and a half billion years, it will probably get close enough to Neptune that tidal forces will pull it apart and we’ll have an absolutely killer set of rings to admire. (Book your travel plans now!)
But why is it getting closer to Neptune, when our Moon is getting further from Earth? Let’s look at why our Moon is getting further from Earth. It’s both raising and pulling at our tidal bulges, and our tidal bulges are pulling on the moon. The bulges precede the moon (because the rotation of the Earth shoves them ahead of where they “should” be directly under the Moon), which means the moon is pulling back on them and slowing the rotation of the Earth (which is why we keep having to add leap seconds). Conversely the bulges pull the Moon forward and cause it to speed up in its orbit. Speeding up raises the orbit. The Moon slowly recedes.
The same thing happens with Neptune and Triton…except that now the tidal bulges try to pull Triton “forward” in its orbit…but Triton is moving backward in its orbit, so pulling it forward actually cancels part of the backwards motion and slows Triton down. So, slowly but surely Triton’s orbit gets smaller and smaller.
OK So What Happened That Left This Trainwreck?
Neptune’s moon system is radically different from the others. There’s simply no way Triton could have formed where it did.
Astronomers are fairly certain that Triton is actually a captured object. And when it was captured, it wreaked havoc with the rest of Neptune’s moon system. Nereid, for instance is either also a captured object, or got put into its oddball orbit by Triton during the capture–if so it’s probably the only original Neptunian regular moon that survived, though it’s not regular any more. Any other moon that Neptune had at the time is long gone.
Adding to the pile of evidence for Triton being captured: it turns out to have a very similar chemical composition to Pluto, suggesting that they formed near each other.
Another Visit?
Will we ever visit Neptune again? Obviously the next step is an orbiter. Multiple concepts, both orbiters and more flybys, have been proposed and rejected. There’s some thought of doing things under the New Frontiers program, perhaps orbiters that would spend a lot of time on Triton, but these would be launching in 2031 or 2041 and arriving in 2047 and 2056 (note the fifteen or sixteen year travel times!). I’ll be a geezer by 2056; older than my parents lived. Failing that, the Chinese might put something at Neptune by 2058. So it looks like, not in my lifetime.
Neptune, the Mystic
Gustav Holst (1874-1934) composed an orchestral suite called The Planets in 1914-1917, with movements for Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. (It’s one of the few “classical” works from the 20th century that I like.) Although he tried to evoke the mythological figures the planets are named after, I find the Neptune movement evocative of the vast distance that Neptune is, and its extreme isolation.
The slow fading out makes one think of journeying off into the stupendous void that is beyond Neptune.
The sun is 30 times further away from Neptune than it is from Earth. It’s half a degree across as seen from earth (30 minutes of arc), which means it’s one minute of arc across at Neptune. It looks the size of a quarter at 100 yards. No wonder it gives such little warmth, 1/900th of what it gives to us. And also the same tiny fraction of light. Cold and Dark, and it’s hard to imagine it getting colder and darker. Surely we are at the corner of “no” and “where.”
And yet, though we are out of planets, we are not done.
The above free image of Justice is courtesy of Pixabay and Google Images.
Health Friday is a series of posts devoted to Big Pharma, vaccines, general health, and associated topics. However, the discussion is not limited to what is presented in today’s offering: It is an Open Thread.
As today’s Health Friday post is related to the COVID-19 disaster (the virus itself, and the COVID-19 “vaccines”; and, to the governmental and Big Pharma tyranny over the lives and livelihoods of millions of people “in the name of Science” related to the COVID-19 disaster), it is dedicated to the memory of Yours Truly’s COVID-19 “vaccinated” late brother Sam, and her late cousin Bill; and to the memory of all other persons of any age who have passed away since 11 December 2020, either directly or indirectly, due to the COVID-19 “vaccines” they have taken. May they rest in eternal Peace.
There are Important Wolf Moon Notifications, the Rules of our late, good Wheatie, and certain caveats by Yours Truly, of which readers should be aware, and which are all linked here.
Donald Trump was just overwhelmingly re-elected to be the next President of the United States. It appears that he will appoint Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to be Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Mr. Kennedy, Jr., has vowed to end the “stranglehold” that the FDA, the CDC, Big Pharma, and “Establishment Medicine” have imposed on the American people for decades. It also appears that he plans to re-organize the FDA into an agency that actually does its job in protecting the health of the American people. One of his efforts, in Yours Truly’s opinion, needs to be investigating the exact “reorganization” changes that the FDA began to implement within that agency on 1 October 2024: www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-organization/fda-modernization-efforts-establishing-unified-human-foods-program-new-model-field-operations-and.
In addition, there is much to be accomplished regarding holding multiple persons, agencies, and other entities accountable for the damage that has already been done to the general public health of Americans, in addition to the health of people all over the world, due to the COVID-19 disaster. While Yours Truly is notadvocating a “re-do” of the French Revolution, there must be ways to hold these multiple persons, agencies, and other entities to account. Please see www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/new-data-exposes-the-corruption-behind, “New Data Exposes the Corruption Behind the COVID Response”, 12 November 2024. A screenshot of the start of this blog post is below:
The following Listsbarely scratch the surface:
List One: Dr. Anthony Fauci (former head of the NIAID); Dr. Francis Collins (former head of NIH); Dr. Deborah Birx (White House Coronavirus response team under then-President Trump); Dr, Stephen Hahn (former Commissioner of the FDA); Dr. Robert Califf (current Commissioner of the FDA); Dr. Robert Redfield and Dr. Rochelle Walensky (former Directors of the CDC); Dr. Mandy Cohen (current Director of the CDC); Ralph Baric, Ph.D. (UNC, Chapel Hill); Peter Daszak, Ph.D. (EcoHealth Alliance); and, Dr. Eric Rubin (VRBPAC committee, FDA “We’re never gonna know if it’s effective unless we start giving it” — related to the committee’s recommendation to give the COVID-19 “vaccines” to children.) If Dr. Zheng-li Shi (Wuhan Institute of Virology) can be extradited from Communist China, that would be a good addition to the list.
The above article contains a link to the archived CDC document.
Regarding Dr. Anthony Fauci: Please watch the short video clip of leaked testimony from a Congressional hearing in which Dr. Fauci spoke. Listen to his comments. Listen to them again. At 0:23 in the clip, Dr. Fauci states: “And it’s been proven that when you make it difficult for people in their lives, they lose their ideological bullshit and they get vaccinated.” (Bolding mine). The video clip is here: https://x.com/LisaLu/status/1855788234392932353.
List Two: Albert Bourla, DVM (CEO of PfizerUSA); Stephane Bancel (CEO of Moderna); Alex Gorsky (former CEO of Johnson & Johnson.)
List Three: Alex Azar (former), and Xavier Becerra (current), Secretaries of the Department of Health and Human Services; Kathy Hochul, Governor of New York; Tom Wolf, former Governor of Pennsylvania; Gretchen Whitmer, Governor of Michigan.
List Four: United States Department of Defense Secretaries Patrick M. Shanahan, Mark Esper, Christoper C. Miller (former, 2018-2021); and, Lloyd Austin (current). United States Army Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley, Gen. James C. McConville (2015 through August 2023); and, Gen. Randy A. George (current.) These, all in relation to the United States Defense Department’s and the United States Army’s previous and (likely) current involvement in the development, manufacture, and distribution of the Pfizer-BioNTech modRNA COVID-19 “vaccines”; and, to the forced “mandate” that all US military personnel be COVID-19 “vaccinated.” www.documentcloud.com/downloads/22028603-pfizer-base-agreement, July 2018; www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/pfizer-inc-covid-19-vaccine-contract.pdf, 21 July 2021; www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/4022.
List Five: Bill Gates; Kelly L. Moore, MD, MPH (director of https://immunize.org/); Mark Green (former), and Samantha Power (current), Administrators of the United States Agency for International Development (www.usaid.gov/; also via https://usaidmomentum.org/.)
Readers are invited to add names to these lists, and/or to create other lists.
1st Vid) Vivek Ramaswamy “I will open criminal investigations into US feds who knowingly evaded the ban on gain of function research to fund it abroad”
2nd image) Elon Musk just called to Prosecute Anthony Fauci
OK let’s deal with this. The biggest ‘elephant in the room’ open secret in Washington DC. The money laundering. Let’s deal with it. No, they don’t actually SPEND all 4.5 million dollars to spray alcoholic rats with bobcat urine. I doubt they spent as much as $100,000 on it. What they are doing is what they have been doing for decades: stealing your tax money and laundering it. People who’ve been studying and researching how the money laundering game works internationally have known all along the USG does not actually spend $2500 on a hammer or $1 million on a box of parts. Look, as they steal the money and send it out to be laundered, they got write SOMETHING down, OK? About where it went, what it was used for, right? Here’s the brutal truth: you’ll never grasp exactly HOW MUCH they’ve been stealing until you realize about 75% of ‘foreign aid’ PLUS all of these weirdly expensive ‘studies’ are money-laundering fronts. Nobody audits the foreign aid, something the Ukraine madness has highlighted for the past 3 years. What Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are being brought in to do is to primarily REMOVE THE COVER for the money laundering operations that have been ongoing for more than a century. The Biggest Lie they ever told you was that they 6 trillion a year or whatever it is to fund this USG. That’s never been true. What they’ve been doing is stealing around 5 trillion/year. And you need an awful lot of laundering to cover up that kind of trail. Heads should be on a swivel because the last time a real initiative was undertaken to audit the Pentagon, it was suddenly ‘discovered’ that $2 trillion of taxpayer’s money was ‘unaccounted for’ and an investigation had been launched to try to discover where the missing money went. Then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld came out to announce the missing $2 trillion and the launch of the investigation on….September 10, 2001. Guess what happened next?
There needs to be an immediate hiring freeze inside the USG. There are reports from good people inside the government, much as
@obama hired approx 2500 personnel to subvert the 2017
@realDonaldTrump transition and presidency, the current administration is doing the same thing. This CANNOT be allowed. If no hiring freeze, then all new hires should be put on notice, their jobs should be terminated on Inauguration Day. The subversion ongoing inside of this administration is outrageous and must cease.
@VigilantFox TMZ Founder: Hollywood Is In a State of PANIC Over Diddy Sex Crime Scandal
“Every celebrity in the world seems to have gone to one of these white parties. Everybody wanted to go. And if you got an invitation, you went. So you can pretty much count every high profile [celebrity] has been to one of these parties.”
Harvey Levin went on to explain that Hollywood can get very loud very quickly when it wants to. But oddly, they are utterly silent on the Diddy allegations.
Harvey Levin explained that numerous videos reportedly kept by Diddy over the years have now been seized by federal authorities and are being shared with civil lawyers.
This has caused widespread panic in Hollywood, as people are questioning whether they might appear in the footage or be implicated in past events.
“I think there’s a lot of panic, and that’s what we’re hearing. And people just don’t want the association, and they don’t want to talk about it. I think it’s that simple,” Levin said.
I have stopped creating AI images. First of all, it isn’t art. Secondly, a few days ago I went to create an image of a girl by a waterfall and was terrified when a girl by a waterfall had a black cloaked demonic figure behind her as if it was going to choke her. I also note that most of the images created by others tend to be dark, bizarre, or sexualized. Not all, but the majority. I hoped to use it to bring some beautiful ideas to life, but ultimately, after the demonic image manifested in front of me, I could not justify utilizing it anymore. Beware.
Please join with me and pray for my dear friend and Salem radio colleague, Dennis Prager. He had a bad fall and doctors are currently assessing the best treatment options. His impact on my life, and this country, have been enormous, and I’m praying for a full and speedy recovery.
Regardless of how anyone feels about Trump’s picks, let’s isolate what we know: -The enemy is terrified -Elon is bullish on justice Based on the reactions from the Left, Trump appears to have touched some nerves with his appointees. Great sign. Elon is excited about it, and he is incontrovertibly one of the smartest living beings on Earth. He seems to be all-in on the situation and he has been in Trump’s ear the entire time. I trust his judgement and his vision. If Elon is excited, that’s a great sign. The country is in good hands. Also, Trump and Congress just proved that us bitching about who we want on the Internet, solved absolutely NOTHING and changed zero minds. Trump still picked Rubio for SOS, and the Senate did not pick Scott for SML. We may have influence, but not raw power. My point is, that it’s out of our hands now. We generated enough votes and hired Trump to get the job done. Now all we can do is see if he and his team can produce results. If they do, awesome. If they don’t, well then we are right back where we started, but at least there will be less LGBTQ flags flying around, cheaper gas, and it’s infinitely better than Kamala. Ultimately my message is … relax. Let it unfold. Focus on what we can control, which is replacing the failed corporate media, and waking up normies. The rest is in Trump’s hands now.
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20Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, he answered them, “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; 21nor will they say, `Lo, here it is!’ or `There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” 22And he said to the disciples, “The days are coming when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and you will not see it. 23And they will say to you, `Lo, there!’ or `Lo, here!’ Do not go, do not follow them. 24For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of man be in his day. 25But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.
. PRAY ……. Like Nehemiah OBEY ……. Like Daniel LEAD …….. Like Moses BUILD ……. Like Noah FIGHT ……. Like David SERVE ……. Like Martha BELIEVE ….. Like Mary EDUCATE … Like Paul PROTECT .… Like Peter LOVE ..……….Like JESUS
Steve Bannon: “Let me tell the Senate, and let me tell their staff…Even if you don’t agree to a PUBLIC vote, we’re gonna get it leaked…you are not going to be able to hide from this vote.”
So I have an important message for all of you Democrat #lawfare goons who are quaking in your $1,500 wingtips over the possibility of the Trump DOJ coming after you in the exact same manner you came after him and his close advisors.
When this happens, it will not be about revenge.
It will not be about retribution.
It will not be about vengeance.
It will be about protecting and preserving the United States of America.
You see, what you did in persecuting your political opponents under the color of law was Hitlerian. It was Stalinistic. It was absolutely unprecedented in US history. Your #lawfare was the stuff of genocidal dictators, and it can never be allowed to happen in the USA again.
What Trump is going to do is teach you such a scorched earth lesson that it will make Sherman’s March Through Georgia look like a Joe Biden ice cream party. He is going to make sure that you and everyone like you never, ever, ever inflicts such incredible damage on the USA and its system of justice ever again.
He is teaching you a lesson you will never forget, and that way he will preserve our Republic. The storm is coming. Deal with it, because you earned it. 10:27 PM · Nov 10, 2024
And I will say a big AMEN, MAKE IT SO to the above — GC TheseTruths
This is a (re-created) video of Abe Shinzo telling DJT to move his head at the assassination attempt. Hopefully it will show otherwise go to the link. – You will not regret it. https://twitter.com/i/status/1854895831700111610
The Pennsylvania senate race is over Election Denier. And if you file a frivolous lawsuit challenging the election results we will have you disbarred. These are the rules now.
Quote
Marc E. Elias
@marceelias
Nov 7
The Pennsylvania Senate race is not over. More soon.
So far, all of the appointments Trump has made have been balm for my spirit. The last four years have been hellish, to be blunt.
The personnel choices made so far have me convinced that this time it’s going to be a scorched earth, take no prisoners, kiss-our-ass Presidency. The administration we have needed for 100 years, and we are finally going to get it.
👉Trump could still change his mind, the sources cautioned, noting that the decision wouldn’t be finalized until the president-elect makes a formal announcement.
Michaelh
Marco Rubio for SoS?!?
Typical Fake News gaslighting. POTUS Trump is not going to take a Senator from congress. -GC
Trump’s choice for National Security Advisor, Rep. Mike Waltz, is married to Julia Nesheiwat.
Julia Nesheiwat: –Current member of the Atlantic Council -Served in the Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden Administrations –She served on the World Economic Forum’s Global Advisory Council on low-carbon energy transformation as well as an international affairs fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations. https://atlanticcouncil.org/expert/julia-nesheiwat/
WTF??? Why choose a guy married to a Globalist? Can’t he find anyone better? — GC
The more I read about Thune and Cornyn, the more disgusted I am with them.
Thune AND Cornyn are horrible people.
We have it on very good authority that @JohnCornyn is indeed threatening to hold up confirmation of President @realDonaldTrump’s AG appointment if it is @KenPaxtonTX
Any Senator voting Cornyn for Senate Majority Leader is holding up President Trump’s America First agenda.
Attorney General Ken Paxton Sues Biden-Harris DOJ to Prevent Destruction of Jack Smith’s Records Detailing Lawfare Against President Trump
AUSTIN – Attorney General Ken Paxton sued U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) to prevent potential destruction of any records from Jack Smith’s corrupt investigation into President Donald Trump.
On November 8, Attorney General Paxton made a Freedom of Information Act request to the DOJ requesting records related to Smith’s unconstitutional investigation into President Trump. Previous special counsels such as Robert Mueller destroyed records and escaped accountability for it.
Today, Attorney General Paxton sued and requested a preservation order preventing Smith and the DOJ from destroying any records related to the investigation into President Trump.
“I will not allow the corrupt weaponization of the United States government to be swept under the rug as Jack Smith and others who unjustly targeted President Trump attempt to avoid accountability,” said Attorney General Paxton. “The American people deserve transparency, and those responsible for these unlawful witch hunts must not destroy the evidence of their own misdeeds.”
The filing explains: “Attorney General Paxton, however, fears that many releasable records—including those that he sought—will never see daylight. That is not because DOJ has any legal reason to withhold them. Rather, Attorney General Paxton has a well-founded belief as set forth herein that Defendants will simply destroy the records. That is how they and/or their predecessors have operated in the recent past. And Jack Smith’s team has conducted itself in multiple ways that suggest it cannot be blindly trusted to preserve, and eventually produce, all of its records.”
On Monday morning Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) told FOX News that this was not an isolated incident and it was likely happening all over the state of Florida.
Rep. Steube also suggested that these criminal acts by FEMA were also likely taking place in North Carolina.
This is a serious accusation. Republicans need to investigate
Rep. Greg Steube: “If it was happening in Lake Placid, it’s happening all across the great state of Florida. It’s probably happening in western North Carolina, probably happening all of the states that were hit by Hurricane Helene.
And that’s what we, in Congress, need to get to the bottom of. The FEMA administration wants to say this was an isolated incident, but there is alleged text messages from Washington, DC to the supervisor advising them and directing them to do this.
👉So somebody higher up within FEMA was advising the people on the ground to do this. So if it was happening in Lake Placid, I can guarantee you it was happening in other places all across the great state of Florida and the country….”
#BREAKING: FEMA confirms it has begun an “Acquisition Project” of land in #WNC.
In their own words:
“This project moves people out of the 100-year floodplain or floodway, demolishes the property, and leaves it natural into perpetuity preventing future flood damage.”
That is ABSOLUTE BULL SCHIFF!!! I have neighbors who recently built on the river flood plain. A flood plain I saw flooded several feet deep 25 years ago. It was flooded again 5 years ago so it isn’t even a ‘100 year’ flood plain. It is ALL about the lithium and that is why NC voted in a republican president, 2 Senators BUT a DEMON-RAT Governor despite Mark Robinson (R) being BLACK. — GC
OOPS, looks like the Old Grey Whore got caught in ANOTHER Lie. — GC
Motor homes, gas stoves, mandatory electric vehicles…anything to alter our lives and make them worse and much less convenient. Those people are evil and must continue to be defeated.
One thing about it, the stark difference between “free” States will become glaring in the months and years ahead. Citizens in those States will really feel the difference.
In 2025, California’s Advanced Clean Trucks (ACT) regulation, aimed at promoting zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs), will create a near-total “ban” on motorhome sales in the state, as well as in additional states that follow the California Air Resource Board (CARB) regulations. While the regulation does not specifically ban motorhome sales, the ACT regulation mandates manufacturers of medium and heavy-duty vehicles to sell an increasing percentage of ZEVs each year. This has led chassis manufacturers to halt sales of traditional internal combustion engine chassis for motorhomes in California, stemming from the lack of ZEV chassis suitable for motorhomes.
This was the original tweet. We MUST KILL the Climate Change LIE DEAD since it is used as justification for enslaving the entire human race. California BTW is used to float new totalitarian ideas before being implemented nationwide– GC
You’re not going to believe this Democrats have just BANNED buying new motorhomes in multiple states starting January 1, 2025 to achieve their extreme environmental agenda: California, Oregon, Washington, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts. These states are set to implement regulations that will effectively ban the sale of new motorhomes with a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) over 8,500 pounds starting January 1, 2025. This is due to the state’s Advanced Clean Trucks (ACT) regulation, which requires manufacturers to sell an increasing percentage of zero-emission vehicles.
Their Clean Truck regs are going to mean little to NO TRANSPORT of goods through those states. HMMMmmm California, Oregon, & Washington…. That is the entire left coast so Bye, Bye CHINESE IMPORTS. 😂 New York, New Jersey & Massachusetts are going to put a crimp on EU imports too. Looks like a major boost to US manufacturing to me!
I wonder what the Teamsters Union and shipping companies are going to do? If I were they, I would refuse to transport in those states because the new zero-emission trucks are going to be WAY too expensive to buy and maintain. Not to mention How in hades do you re-fuel them? The inferstructure is not there AND it will take TOO DARN LONG to re-charge. Time is money to drivers and the companies.
Oh this is going to be really fun to watch. 😂 — GC
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
LIBERAL AIRLINE NOW TAKING RESERVATIONS FOR FLIGHTS OUT OF AMERICA — Well we can hope can’t we?
Let me expand that to our side – and then to “they want you divided”.
Trust me – after January Sixth, I fully understand that our socialists are capable of acting like Soviets or Maoists, and sending millions of us to camps or prison, if they thought they could get away with it.
However, most of the things that they try to scare us about, as a movement, are not ready to be backed up by real tyrannical actions.
They WANT people – some of us – to be terrified of this, or of that. Some of the parts that scare us are real, but much is exaggerated.
They want the left scared of the things that scare the left.
They want the right scared of the things that scare the right.
Not letting them scare you, as an individual, is one of the greatest forms of defense that any of us can have.
Unfortunately the fears were not unfounded. As Wolfie said, they will do what they think they can get away with.
…Kellyaccused Trump of being a “fascist” and claimed that he said Adolf Hitler “did some good things, too.”
Retired Army Gen. Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Trump was “fascist to the core.”
Trump responded by calling the military leaders “woke” and “weak.”
“The relationship between the White House and the DoD was really, really bad, and so … I know it’s top of mind for how they’re going to select the folks that they put in DoD this time around,” a former defense official told CNN.
American troops could be deployed in cities to help carry out Trump’s plan for mass deportations, a former defense official told CNN.
Local law enforcement departments “don’t have the manpower, they don’t have the helicopters, the trucks, the expeditionary capabilities” that the military brings, the official said.
But a decision to send active-duty troops into American cities must be looked at seriously….
The Constitution permits Congress to authorize the use of the militia “to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and 👉repel Invasions.” And it guarantees the states protection against invasion or usurpation of their “republican form of government,” and, upon the request of the state legislature, against “domestic violence.” These constitutional provisions are reflected in the Insurrection Acts, which have been invoked numerous times both before and after passage of the Posse Comitatus Act, 18 U.S.C. Section 1385, in 1878. Congress has also enacted a number of statutes that authorize the use of land and naval forces to execute their objective.
The Posse Comitatus Act outlaws the willful use of any part of the Army or Air Force to execute the law unless expressly authorized by the Constitution or an act of Congress.
History supplies the grist for an argument that the Constitution prohibits military involvement in civilian affairs subject to only limited alterations by Congress or the President, but the courts do not appear to have ever accepted the argument unless violation of more explicit constitutional command could also be shown. The express statutory exceptions include the legislation that allows the President to use military force to suppress insurrection 👉or to enforce federal authority, 10 U.S.C. Sections 251-255, and laws that permit the Department of Defense to provide federal, state and local police with information, equipment, and personnel, 10 U.S.C. §§ 271-284.
Case law indicates that “execution of the law” in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act occurs (a) when the Armed Forces perform tasks assigned to an organ of civil government, or (b) when the Armed Forces perform tasks assigned to them solely for purposes of civilian government. Questions concerning the act’s application arise most often in the context of assistance to civilian police….
So yes, the military can be used in a limited fashion at minimum.
Fox News has obtained images that show suspected cartel gunmen coming across the U.S. southern border in Texas toting body armor and rifles—the latest instance of armed men believed to be cartel members at the border…
The latest incident came just days after Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) drone operators in Eagle Pass spotted an armed smuggler in Eagle Pass carrying a long gun and guiding a group of illegal immigrants across the Rio Grande.
[UNQUOTE]
How can anyone not see we are being invaded? Law enforcement has the images to prove that armed men in body armor are crossing the border into the United States. Police suspect these are drug cartel members, who are often employed to help smuggle aliens into the country.
The latest photo shows men with rifles, wearing body armor, crossing the Rio Grande into U.S. territory. This comes after other accounts of heavily armed men moving in and out of the country over the border.
The brass on the seventh floor at FBI headquarters in Washington are walking around in a daze and wary of a housecleaning since President-elect Donald Trump won his reelection on Tuesday, according to inside sources.
The Washington Times learned through several anonymous bureau sources that senior executives who run the agency were “stunned” and “shellshocked” by Mr. Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris.
“You know the fit test? How they let the standards slack on the fit test?” the first FBI source said, referring to the agency’s physical fitness requirements. “Everyone’s going to have a real problem when they’re running for the door.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Director Paul Abbate have little chance of remaining at the bureau by the time Mr. Trump is sworn into office, sources say.
FBI employees also recall when Mr. Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey in 2017, five months after the president was sworn in….
OK, so this is a ploy by PAUL RYAN and FOX NEWS. Ryan is on the board of directors of Fox News. Ryan is also a partner in Solamere Capital LLC, a “private equity firm” with HQs in Massachusetts.
Solamere Capital LLC was founded by TAGGART ROMNEY with several other co-founders, including his father, MITT ROMNEY, in 2008. Apparently, Mitt Romney is still involved with the company.
Solamere Capital LLC is involved up to its eyeballs and beyond with the DeepState / Big Pharma / the aerospace industry, the insurance industry, and more.
Solamere Capital LLC is ** vigorously ** buying out more companies to add to its “portfolio.”
Solamere Capital LLC is only interested in working with individuals who have AT LEAST $10 Million to invest with the firm.
Below is a list of “sectors” and “focus areas” of Solamere Capital LLC.
Solamere Capital LLC just bought out another private insurance company group about a month ago (per Crunchbase and also PitchBook.) PitchBook says that Solamere Capital LLC has 61 “investments.”
Looking forward to Tina getting a pardon. Then an opportunity to support Trump AND piss off bad guys.
Unfortunately this is a STATE law Tina supposedly broke so only the DemonRat gov can pardon her. She will have to appeal and I certainly hope she does! — GC
More internal government communications will soon be revealed in a high-profile censorship case that already hit the U.S. Supreme Court, thanks to a Friday court ruling in Missouri v. Biden. The historic free speech case
uncoveredthat federal officials, all the way up to President Joe Biden, pressured social media companies to remove specific posts and discussion terms, systemically slanting society in favor of Democrats by controlling public discussions.
Readers Digest version of the significance below… (Assuming the X is legit.)
Trump and Gaetz secret?
BRUNSON DECISION: We’ve Known This For Quite a While. Sun. 10 Nov. 2024: Loy Brunson has signed an NDA. A verdict has been reached, which shows SCOTUS Thomas indicated was “in his favor.” The Military has not released the verdict of the Supreme Court yet to prevent CIVIL UNREST It really did happen. Trump will officially be put back into office BEFORE January 20th
The State of Arizona has become the poster child for election fraud. If those involved are caught in any fraudulent activity, they will likely be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Stop this nonsense of counting until the outcome is in your favor. That’s what Venezuela does, NOT America!
Important… Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: “The thing that people have to understand is that the four companies that make all 72 of those vaccines, which is Pfizer, Glaxo, Merck and Sanofi. All of those companies are convicted felons. And not only that, they’re serial felons. Their business model is committing felonies.” “These companies in the last 10 years collectively, have paid $35 billion in penalties, damages, fines for falsifying science, for defrauding regulators, lying to doctors, and for killing hundreds of thousands of people. Vioxx, which was Merck’s flagship product, killed between 120,000 and 500,000 Americans. This was a pill. And Merck was selling as a headache pill.” “And Merck knew, caused heart attacks and killed people. And they didn’t tell anybody. And they knew a certain, you know, we got the spreadsheets that showed there being counters, their accountants. And this is, you’re gonna kill so many people per dose. We can still make more money, even if they all sue us. And in the end, they killed, you know, up to half a million Americans. And they got away with it.” “They paid $7 billion in fines. Nobody went to jail. And this is, you know. They probably made $100 million in profits. Yeah. So this is a company, these, it requires kind of a cognitive dissonance to believe that these companies that are lying and cheating on every other pharmaceutical product, every other medical device that they create, are somehow found Jesus vaccines and aren’t lying to us.” “And the thing is with vaccines, vaccines are the only place they could never get caught because it’s illegal in this country to sue a vaccine company. So Congress passed a law in 1986 that said no matter how negligent that company is, no matter how malicious they are, no matter how toxic the product, you no matter how grievous or injury you cannot sue them.”
The Visa/MC credit card monopoly has put Americans into excessive debt with usurious interest rates at 25%+ President Trump wants a 10% cap on all credit card interest rates JD Vance co-sponsored the Credit Card Competition act which fights the 2-4% hidden tax you pay every time you swipe Common sense is back Let’s get people out of debt, eliminate hidden taxes, and make america wealthy again
WOAH, This is a man still on the ground in Western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene. He’s talking to victims and they’re having their land purchased out from under them for $2,500
He says it’s definitely a land grab for the lithium and quartz mining
WOAH, This is a man still on the ground in Western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene. He’s talking to victims and they’re having their land purchased out from under them for $2,500 He says it’s definitely a land grab for the lithium and quartz mining “Buying the land wholesale everywhere. Not just Chimney Rock, not just Spruce Pine, not just where the mine is going to be. They’re buying up in Burnsville, they’re buying up in Waynesville, everywhere where somebody lost their entire home, the government is confiscating the land and giving them a $2,500 check.” “It’s a state-wide land grab. And then the news, the local news just reported that Governor Roy, good old Democrat, Governor Roy, decided that they were going to buy up whole communities that were devastated.” This video is full of some of the most insane first hand information I’ve heard about what’s going on in North Carolina. There is so much talked about, if all this is true, it’s the crime of the century
FACT: EVERY CELEBRITY (Including Oprah) OR LEFT-WING PODCASTER Who Took Money From The @KamalaHarris Campaign AND DID NOT DISCLOSE THEY WERE A PAID POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT, BROKE FEDERAL LAW! Get A Lawyer Now! The Law Applies To Both Parties & A Trump DOJ MUST Investigate.
I’d throw in a few Rockefellers and Rothschilds also.
The Marines anniversary was over the weekend.
Of course, this does not mean committing felonies, but standing up to the forces that want to tear this nation – and humanity apart. The very people XVII told us will be destroyed by the time this movie comes to an end are currently roaming the halls of power…supposedly. It’s a sickening sight.
The discourse on this site is to be CIVIL – no name calling, baiting, or threatening others here is allowed. Those who are so inclined may visit Wolf’s other sanctuary, the U-Tree, to slog it out. There is also a “rescue” thread there for members of the Tree to rendezvous if the main site goes kablooey. A third site has been added for site outages of longer duration.
This site is a celebration of the natural rights endowed to humans by our Creator as well as those enshrined in the Bill of Rights adopted in the founding documents of the United States of America. Within the limits of law, how we exercise these rights is part of the freedom of our discussion.
Fellow tree dweller, the late Wheatie, gave us some good reminders on the basics of civility in political discourse:
No food fights.
No running with scissors.
If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
And Auntie DePat’s requests:
If you see something has not been posted, do us all a favor, and post it. Please, do not complain that it has not been done yet.
The scroll wheel on your mouse can be your friend. As mature adults, please use it here in the same manner you would in avoiding online porn.
Thank you so much for any and all attention to such details. It is GREATLY appreciated by more than one party here.
20“I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, 21that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. 22The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me. 24Father, I desire that they also, whom thou hast given me, may be with me where I am, to behold my glory which thou hast given me in thy love for me before the foundation of the world. 25O righteous Father, the world has not known thee, but I have known thee; and these know that thou hast sent me. 26I made known to them thy name, and I will make it known, that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
Be afraid neither of the world, nor of the future, nor of your weakness. The Lord has allowed you to live in this moment of history so that, by your faith, his name will continue to resound throughout the world. — Benedict XVI
St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And do thou, Prince of the Heavenly Hosts, by the power of God, cast down to Hell Satan and all his evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.
>>148156518 Amen brother. Q
As always, prayers for the fight against that which seeks to enslave us are welcome. Via con Dios.
This Stormwatch Monday Open Thread remains open – VERY OPEN – a place for everybody to post whatever they feel they would like to tell the White Hats, and the rest of the MAGA/KAG/KMAG world (with KMAG being a bit of both).
Our various sister sites, listed in the Blogroll in the sidebar
Our beloved country is under Occupation by hostile forces.
Daily outrage and epic phuckery abound.
We can give in to despair…or we can be defiant and fight back in any way that we can.
Joe Biden didn’t win.
And we will keep saying Joe Biden didn’t win until we get His Fraudulency out of our White House.
Wolfie’s Wheatie’s Word of the Week:
xenocracy
noun
government by a body of foreigners
Shown in a picture
Used in a sentence
It’s hard to say who has been in charge of the intermittent American xenocracy, but we know for sure that it has not been Americans. They do prefer to rule us through “quasi-Americans” like Osatan , Kakula, and even Lyin’ Ted Cruz.
MUSIC!
Have some random previously unknown (to me) country music!
Has anybody here ever heard of this woman before?
THE STUFF
Thank you, Elon!
Fake science is real. But we’re starting to take it on.
This Rejoice & Praise God Sunday Open Thread, with full respect to those who worship God on the Sabbath, is a place to reaffirm our worship of our Creator, our Father, our King Eternal.
It’s also a place to read, post, and discuss news that is worth knowing and sharing. Please post links to any news stories that you use as sources or quote from.
In the QTree, we’re a friendly and civil lot. We encourage free speech and the open exchange and civil discussion of different ideas. Topics aren’t constrained, and sound logic is highly encouraged, all built on a solid foundation of truth and established facts.
We have a policy of mutual respect, shown by civility. Civility encourages discussions, promotes objectivity and rational thought in discourse, and camaraderie in the participants – characteristics we strive toward in our Q Tree community.
Please show respect and consideration for our fellow QTreepers. Before hitting the “post” button, please proofread your post and make sure your opinion addresses the issue only, and does not confront or denigrate the poster. Keep to the topic – avoid “you” and “your”. Here in The Q Tree, personal attacks, name-calling, ridicule, insults, baiting, and other conduct for which a penalty flag would be thrown are VERBOTEN.
In The Q Tree, we’re compatriots, sitting around the campfire, roasting hot dogs, making s’mores, and discussing, agreeing, and disagreeing about whatever interests us. This board will remain a home for those who seek respectful conversations.
God is in Control . . . and His Grace is Sufficient, so . . . Keep Looking Up
Hopefully, every Sunday, we can find something here that will build us up a little . . . give us a smile . . . and add some joy or peace, very much needed in all our lives.
“This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn nor weep.” . . . “Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
Ask, Seek, Knock
Matthew 7 is part of what is commonly called the Sermon on the Mount. It’s a description of the truly righteous life, an outlining of “the law of Christ” (1 Corinthians 9:21, ESV). When Jesus says, “Ask and it will be given to you,” prayer is in view (Matthew 7:7a). Prayer is how we communicate our needs and desires to God. Of course, God, being omniscient, knows what Christians need whether they ask or not, but prayer is the means God has chosen to bring about those answers (James 4:2b).
Jesus is not saying that believers always get what they ask for—wrong motives, for example, will hinder answers to prayer (James 4:3). However, the more time a Christian spends in communion with God, the more he or she will know what to ask for in accordance with God’s will. Prayer, in and of itself, does not produce an increasing holiness in a believer’s life, but it does show a dependence on God for needs that can be met by Him. God is always pleased with such displays of faith. It is only faith in what God can do, and what Christ has done, that brings about true sanctification, not an artificial self-righteousness (Hebrews 11:6).
Jesus went on to say, “Seek, and you will find” (Matthew 7:7b). What is it believers ought to be seeking? It is God Himself! “You have said, ‘Seek my face.’ My heart says to you, ‘Your face, Lord, do I seek’” (Psalm 27:8). “The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing” (Psalm 34:10). “Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually!” (Psalm 105:4). “Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart” (Psalm 119:2). God is not hiding from His children. His heart’s desire is for us to persistently and passionately look for Him all around us, and when we do, He promises He will be found (Proverbs 8:17). Seeking is a matter of paying attention with an engaged mind and acute awareness.
Earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said to “seek first his kingdom and his righteousness” (Matthew 6:33). Seeking God’s kingdom means putting God’s plan before our own; seeking God’s righteousness means setting a priority on personal holiness and desiring to be sanctified.
Jesus then said, “Knock and the door will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7c). Here, the Lord uses a metaphor for the action a desire produces. If a person needs something from someone behind a door, the most natural thing to do is knock—until the door is opened and the desire is met. In the same way, a believer should pray in faith for God’s provision and be persistent in prayer (see Luke 18:1).
Ask, seek, knock. Notice the three different senses being considered here. Asking is verbal; Christians are to use their mouths and petition God for their needs and desires. And believers are to seek with their minds—this is more than asking; it is a setting of priorities and a focusing of the heart. To knock involves physical movement, one in which the Christian takes action. Although asking and seeking are of great importance, they would be incomplete without knocking. The apostle John said Christians ought not to love in word alone but with actions also (1 John 3:18). In the same way, it’s good to pray and seek God, but if one does not also act in ways that are pleasing to God, all is for naught. It’s no accident that Jesus said believers should love God with all their heart, soul, strength, and mind (Luke 10:27).
The commands are followed by promises: “Everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened” (Matthew 7:8). God delights in the prayer of faith, and He promises to give us what we need.
Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. James 1:17
What is it that feeds our battle, yet starves our victory?
OK Let’s Have Some Fun
Let’s nominate people from this site for positions in the 47 administration!
E.g., Scott for Press Secretary (assuming they don’t go with Kayleigh again). Imagine the YSM Jurinalists getting the Scott treatment!
Our Turn
We’ve often seen that quote from David Plouffe: “It is not enough to simply beat Trump. He must be destroyed thoroughly. His kind must not rise again.”
This was of course a declaration of intent to annihilate not just Trump, but rather “his kind.”
You know what? I think we should flip it around. David Plouffe’s kind should be destroyed thoroughly and their kind must not rise again.
What is Plouffe’s kind? I suppose it depends on who’s talking and what they are thinking of in particular. Well, at the moment it’s me talking and I am thinking of the sort of maggot who is attracted to politics not to better his world but rather so that he can wield power over others, or line their pockets with “free” money. Often these people end up as what Ayn Rand called “pull peddlers,” receiving money in exchange for using their connections to do favors.
This type is parasitic. Utterly parasitic. And they should be destroyed thoroughly and not allowed to rise again.
The bad news is we will never eradicate them. Useless turds who can’t do anything productive will always be with us. As will the outright sociopaths.
Of course they find Trump to be their enemy. And of course they find us to be their enemy. If we won’t simply lie down and let our “betters” have their way with us, we’re a problem, we’re something to be got rid of. And of late, we haven’t lain down without a protest, as we are “supposed” to do. Dang uppity Garbage Deplorables! We don’t know our place!!!
The good news is we can provide far fewer niches for these parasites. The niches come into being when something that people formerly did of their own free will is taken over by the government; then every aspect of that activity becomes a political football.
Take for instance education. Since the government runs it, if you don’t like what’s being done, you have to form a political movement and try to work your way around the maggots embedded in the bureaucracy. If education were private, then if you didn’t like what they were doing to your child, you’d take your money and your child elsewhere. And people who didn’t even have school-age children presently would have no voice–and not have to pay money. Making it a government “thing” turned it into a political thing, and the maggots began to swarm.
So we wreck them by seriously cutting government and giving them fewer places to exist. Among all of the other benefits, the body politic would have fewer sociopaths and parasites in it.
People like Plouffe are the same type, but they are the full-on political hacks who set policy, rather than implement it. They’re just as bad if not worse; they help government grow, and steer it into serving its own ends, rather than those of the people it is supposed to be serving.
The Deep State is nothing more than a government that serves its own ends.
And we have had enough of this.
They must be destroyed thoroughly, and their kind must not rise again.
This election wasn’t the end, it was the beginning. There are millions of these malignancies in this country and we’ve just defeated two of them. Keep pushing. Now we can go after them wholesale.
It’s our turn.
Our turn.
Our turn.
OUR TURN!
You stole the 2020 election. You’ve mocked and ridiculed and put people in prison and broken people’s lives because you said this thing was stolen. This entire phony thing is getting swept out. Biden’s getting swept out. Kamala Harris is getting swept out. MSNBC is getting swept out. The Justice Department is getting swept out. The FBI is getting swept out. You people suck, okay?! And now you’re going to pay the price for trying to destroy this country.
And I’m going to tell you, we’re going to get to the bottom of where the 600,000 votes [are]. You manufactured them to steal this election from President Trump in 2020. And think what this country would be if we hadn’t gone through the last four years of your madness, okay? You don’t deserve any respect, you don’t deserve any empathy, and you don’t deserve any pity.
And if anybody gives it to you, it’s Donald J. Trump, because he’s got a big heart and he’s a good man. A good man that you’re still gonna try to put in prison on the 26th of this month. This is how much you people suck. Okay? You’ve destroyed his business thing. And he came back.
He came back in the greatest show of political courage, I think, in world history. Like, [Roman statesman] Cincinnatus coming back from the plough [returning to politics to rescue the Roman Republic]. He’s the American Cincinnatus. And what he has done is a profile in courage. We’ve had his back. But I got to tell you, he may be empathetic. He may have a kind heart. He may be a good man. But we’re not. Okay? And you deserve, as Natalie Winters says, not retribution, justice. But you deserve what we call rough Roman justice, and we’re prepared to give it to you.
Steve Bannon, on election night
OUR TURN!!
OUR TURN!!!
OUR TURN!!!
OUR TURN!!!
January 6 Tapes?
Paging Speaker Johnson…this is your conscience calling you out on broken promises.
For all your high talk about your Christian moral background…you’re looking less and less like you have any kind of moral background.
If You are a Patriot and Don’t Loathe RINOs…
Let’s talk about RINOs, and why they are the lowest form of life in politics.
Many patriots have been involved with politics, often at the grassroots, for decades. We’ve fought, and fought, and fought and won the occasional illusory small victory.
Yet we can’t seem to win the war, even when we have BIG electoral wins.
I am reminded of something. The original Star Trek had an episode titled Day of the Dove. It was one of the better episodes from the third season, but any fan of the original series will tell you that’s a very low bar. Still, it seems to get some respect; at a time when there were about 700 episodes of Star Trek in its various incarnations out there, it was voted 99th best out of the top 100.
In sum, the plot is that an alien entity has arranged for 39 Enterprise crew, and 39 Klingons, to fight each other endlessly with swords and other muscle-powered weapons. The entity lives off of hostile emotions, you see and it wants a captive food source. (The other 400 or so Enterprise crew are trapped below decks and unable to help.) Each side has its emotions played and amplified by the alien entity; one Enterprise junior officer has false memories implanted of a brother who was killed by Klingons. The brother didn’t even exist.
Even people killed in a sword fight miraculously heal so they can go do it again.
The second best line of the episode is when Kang, the Klingon captain, notes that though they have won quite a number of small victories including capturing Engineering, can’t seem to actually finally defeat the Enterprise crew. He growls, “What power is it that feeds our battle yet starves our victory?*”
Indeed. He may have been the bad guy, but his situation should sound familiar.
We are a majority in this country. We have a powerful political party in our corner. There is endless wrangling.
And yet,
What power is it that feeds our battle yet starves our victory?
In our case, that power is the RINOs in our midst. They specialize in caving when on the verge of victory. Think of Obamacare’s repeal failing…by one Republican vote. Think of the way we can never seem to get spending under control (and now our entire tax revenue goes to pay interest on the debt; anything the government actually does now is with borrowed money).
We have a party…that refuses to do what we want it to do, and that refusal is institutionalized. If you’ve been involved with GOP politics, but haven’t seen this, it’s because you refuse to see it. Or because you are part of the problem yourself. (If so, kindly gargle some red fuming nitric acid to clear the taste of shit out of your mouth, and let those not part of the problem alone so they can read this.)
We fight to elect people, who then take a dive when in office. But it’s not just the politicians in office, it’s the people behind the scenes, the leaders of the national, state and county branches of the party. Their job is to ensure that real patriots never get onto the general election ballot. They’re allowed a few failures…who can then become token conservatives who will somehow never manage to win (Jordan), or can be compromised outright (Lauren Boebert?).
That way it doesn’t actually matter who has a congressional majority. I remember my excitement when the GOP took the Senate in 1980. But all that did was empower a bunch of “moderate” puddles of dog vomit like…well for whatever reason forty years later the most memorable name is Pete Domenici. And a couple of dozen other “moderates” who simply had no interest in doing what grassroots people in their party–those same grassroots people who had worked so hard to elect them–wanted them to do.
Oh, they’ll put up a semblance of a fight…but never win. And they love it when we fight the Dems instead of fighting them. Just like that alien entity, whose motto surely was “Let’s you and him fight. It’ll be delicious!”
If you think about it, your entire political involvement has come to nothing because of these walking malignant tumors.
That should make you good and mad.
The twenty five who blocked Jordan, and the hundred people who took that opportunity to stab Jordan in the back in the secret ballot should make you good and mad.
I’ll close this with another example of RINO backstabbing, an infuriating one close to home.
In my county, the GOP chair is not a RINO. She got elected when the grassroots had had enough of the RINOs. Unfortunately the state organization is full of RINOs, and the ousted county RINOs have been trying to form a new “Republican Party” and get the state GOP to recognize them as the affiliate. I’m honestly amazed it hasn’t happened yet.
In other words those shitstains won’t just leave when they get booted out; they’ll try to destroy what they left behind. It’s an indication that they know we know how important that behind-the-scenes party power is.
So they must be destroyed. That’s the only way they’ll ever stop.
We cannot win until the leeches “on our side” get destroyed.
What power is it that feeds our battle yet starves our victory?*
We know it. What is going to be done about it?
*NOTE: The original line was actually “What power is it that supports our battle yet starves our victory.” I had mis-remembered it as feeds. When I checked it, it sure enough was “supports” and that’s what I originally quoted. On further reflection, though, I realized my memory was actually an improvement over the reality, because feeds is a perfect contrast with starves. I changed it partway through the day this originally posted, but now (since this is a re-run) it gets rendered this way from the start.
If one must do things wrong, one should do them wrong…right.
RINOs an Endangered Species? If Only!
According to Wikipoo, et. al., the Northern White Rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) is a critically endangered species. Apparently two females live on a wildlife preserve in Sudan, and no males are known to be alive. So basically, this species is dead as soon as the females die of old age. Presently they are watched over by armed guards 24/7.
Biologists have been trying to cross them with the other subspecies, Southern White Rhinoceroses (Rhinoceri?) without success; and some genetic analyses suggest that perhaps they aren’t two subspecies at all, but two distinct species, which would make the whole project a lot more difficult.
I should hope if the American RINO (Parasitus rectum pseudoconservativum) is ever this endangered, there will be heroic efforts not to save the species, but rather to push the remainder off a cliff. Onto punji sticks. With feces smeared on them. Failing that a good bath in red fuming nitric acid will do.
But I’m not done ranting about RINOs.
The RINOs (if they are capable of any introspection whatsoever) probably wonder why they constantly have to deal with “populist” eruptions like the Trump-led MAGA movement. That would be because the so-called populists stand for absolutely nothing except for going along to get along. That allows the Left to drive the culture and politics.
Given the results of our most recent elections, the Left will now push harder, and the RINOs will now turn even squishier than they were before.
I well remember 1989-1990 in my state when the RINO establishment started preaching the message that a conservative simply couldn’t win in Colorado. Never mind the fact that Reagan had won the state TWICE (in 1984 bringing in a veto-proof state house and senate with him) and GHWB had won after (falsely!) assuring everyone that a vote for him was a vote for Reagan’s third term.
This is how the RINOs function. They push, push, push the line that only a “moderate” can get elected. Stomp them when they pull that shit. Tell everyone in ear shot that that’s exactly what the Left wants you to think, and oh-by-the-way-Mister-RINO if you’re in this party selling the same message as the Left…well, whythefuckexactly are you in this party, you lying piece of rancid weasel shit?
Justice
It says “Justice” on the picture.
And I’m sure someone will post the standard joke about what the fish thinks about the situation.
But what is it?
Here’s a take, from a different context: It’s about how you do justice, not the justice that must be done to our massively corrupt government and media. You must properly identify the nature of a person, before you can do him justice.
Ayn Rand, On Justice (speaking through her character John Galt, in Atlas Shrugged):
Justice is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake the character of men as you cannot fake the character of nature, that you must judge all men as conscientiously as you judge inanimate objects, with the same respect for truth, with the same incorruptible vision, by as pure and as rational a process of identification—that every man must be judged for what he is and treated accordingly, that just as you do not pay a higher price for a rusty chunk of scrap than for a piece of shining metal, so you do not value a rotter above a hero—that your moral appraisal is the coin paying men for their virtues or vices, and this payment demands of you as scrupulous an honor as you bring to financial transactions—that to withhold your contempt from men’s vices is an act of moral counterfeiting, and to withhold your admiration from their virtues is an act of moral embezzlement—that to place any other concern higher than justice is to devaluate your moral currency and defraud the good in favor of the evil, since only the good can lose by a default of justice and only the evil can profit—and that the bottom of the pit at the end of that road, the act of moral bankruptcy, is to punish men for their virtues and reward them for their vices, that that is the collapse to full depravity, the Black Mass of the worship of death, the dedication of your consciousness to the destruction of existence.
Ayn Rand identified seven virtues, chief among them rationality. The other six, including justice, she considered subsidiary because they are essentially different aspects and applications of rationality.
I’m sure enough of this that I put my money where my mouth is.
The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system. (This doesn’t necessarily include deposing Joe and Hoe and putting Trump where he belongs, but it would certainly be a lot easier to fix our broken electoral system with the right people in charge.)
Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2024 or 2026 is pointless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud in the system is not part of the plan, you have no plan.
This will necessarily be piecemeal, state by state, which is why I am encouraged by those states working to change their laws to alleviate the fraud both via computer and via bogus voters. If enough states do that we might end up with a working majority in Congress and that would be something Trump never really had.
Lawyer Appeasement Section
OK now for the fine print.
This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines, here, with an addendum on 20191110.
We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.
And remember Wheatie’s Rules:
1. No food fights 2. No running with scissors. 3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone. 4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns. 5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded. 5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty. 6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy. 7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire. 8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.
No whitewashing it, the precious metals took as big a beating as the Democrats did. Gold dropped over $75 on Wednesday and though it partially recovered Thursday, it dropped again on Friday. It’s possible the bull market is over…let’s see what happens next week.
Notably, silver did even worse than gold; the ratio is now 85.6 to 1.
For someone who took a substantial loss in net worth this week, I sure seem to be in a cheerful mood. I wonder why?
*The SteveInCO Federal Reserve Note Suckage Index (FRNSI) is a measure of how much the dollar has inflated. It’s the ratio of the current price of gold, to the number of dollars an ounce of fine gold made up when the dollar was defined as 25.8 grains of 0.900 gold. That worked out to an ounce being $20.67+71/387 of a cent. (Note gold wasn’t worth this much back then, thus much gold was $20.67 71/387ths. It’s a subtle distinction. One ounce of gold wasn’t worth $20.67 back then, it was $20.67.) Once this ratio is computed, 1 is subtracted from it so that the number is zero when the dollar is at its proper value, indicating zero suckage.
The Grand Tour
Meet Gary Flandro (1934- ):
He’s an aerospace engineer, who is currently the professor for the Boling Chair of Excellence at the University of Tennessee Space Institute. He is also the Vice President and Chief Engineer for Gloyer-Taylor Laboratories (GTL).
He has an interesting academic “ancestry”–he studied under Frank E. Marble, who studied under Hans Wolfgangg Liepmann, who studied under Bar, who studied under Emil Hilb, who studied under Karl Louis Ferdinand von Lindemann (who proved in 1882 that pi is a transcendental number), who studied under Felix Christian Klein, who studied under Rudolf Otto Sigismund Lipschitz, who studied under Johann Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet, who studied under Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier (yes, that Fourier), who studied under Joseph-Louis Lagrange (yes, that Lagrange), who studied under Leonhard Euler (yes, that Euler). Academics sometimes like to play “academic genealogy” (as do musicians; some can show that Beethoven or Haydn taught someone who taught someone who…(eventually)…taught them). Every one of these people has a Wikipedia page, with the exception of Bar, many are famous to mathematicians.
That’s cool. But it’s not the reason I chose to mention Flandro.
Flandro is the reason we have closeup pictures of Uranus and Neptune.
In 1964, he came to the realization that we were coming up on a very rare alignment of the outer planets. No, they weren’t going to be in a tidy straight line, but it would be possible to send a spacecraft past Jupiter, get a gravity assist from Jupiter to go to Saturn, then a gravity assist from Saturn to go to Uranus, and so on, on to Neptune and Pluto (still considered a planet back then).
Or, if one sends two spacecraft, get all of that done in less time, by sending one, launched in 1977 to Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto, and the other, launched in 1979, to Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune. This concept (with one modification) was dubbed the Grand Tour program, and was proposed in 1969. That modification was to send two pairs of spacecraft.
Total cost, $1 billion or so in real money, but cheaper than sending separate spacecraft. The biggest issue was that sending a probe of any useful size past Jupiter without any assistance is difficult; it still is. (All of these fancy Jupiter and Saturn orbiters needed gravitational assists to get there with enough fuel to do an orbital insertion burn and still have enough left over to make small maneuvers for many years.) This way, if you could get to Jupiter, you could automatically get to the other planets.
What’s not to like? The money.
Instead of four spacecraft, we’d send two Mariner-type probes. And we’d blow off Uranus, Neptune and Pluto…well, sort of. Now the project was called Mariner Jupiter-Saturn, which was approved in 1972, for $360 million apiece.
Both probes would visit Jupiter, Saturn, and Titan. (Titan was included because even then it was known to have an atmosphere, which made it unusual for a moon.)
That is what was advertised, to keep cost estimates down. Here’s what actually happened. The first probe was launched on a flight plan called JST: Jupiter Saturn Titan. The second was launched on a flight plan called JSX. JSX would visit Jupiter and Saturn, but if the first mission failed either at Titan or earlier, it could be diverted to visit Titan…and that would be it. If not diverted, however, it would not do a close flyby of Titan, but instead go on to Uranus and Neptune. The reason this wasn’t advertised is that controlling those spacecraft for the additional nine years would be expensive.
These would have been Mariner 11 and Mariner 12. The earlier Mariner probes had largely explored Mars; this would have been a continuation of that legacy. But these spacecraft had a lot of new features, and so in March, 1977 NASA held a competition to rename the project. And so, just months before launch they became Voyager 1 and 2. Voyager 1 would visit Jupiter and Saturn with a close flyby of Titan. Voyager 2 would visit Jupiter and Saturn, then Uranus and Neptune, but could be diverted if Voyager 1 failed either before or during the Titan flyby, since Voyager 2 would reach Saturn nine months after Voyager 1. (There was even an option to divert Voyager 1 away from Titan and send it to Pluto, but Titan was considered the more interesting target after Pioneer 11 saw just how thick its atmosphere was.)
Voyager 2 was launched first, on August 20, 1977, then Voyager 1 on September 5th, on a faster trajectory. It would actually overtake Voyager 2 and reach Jupiter on March 5, 1979 (barely a year and a half after launch!). Voyager 2 flew by on July 9, then both were off to Saturn. Voyager 1 reached Saturn on November 12, 1980 (shortly after the election), and flew by Titan later that day. The Titan encounter actually flung it out of the plane of the ecliptic, meaning Voyager wouldn’t be visiting any more planets. Voyager 2 was not diverted, and reached Saturn on August 26, 1981. And then Uranus on January 24, 1986, and Neptune on August 25, 1989, one day shy of eight years after the Saturn flyby.
So far Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to ever fly by Uranus and Neptune.
Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are still ticking, believe it or not, and Voyager 1 is now in interstellar space having passed outside of the Sun’s magnetic field. It’s returning data on the almost total vacuum of interstellar space. But, in the next two years (likely next year in fact) their RTG units will have degraded enough that they will no longer be able to power any of the scientific instruments. And ultimately they will be unable to maintain radio contact with Earth sometime in the 2030s; they will be out of range of our receivers.
(The RTGs on the Voyagers are slugs of plutonium oxide; the plutonium is isotope 238 (not the 239 used in bombs) which has an 87.7 year half life. The heat generated is converted to electrical power via thermocouples using the Seebeck effect. When new they generated 160 watts electrical, 2400 watts heat.)
Old Voyagers never die, they just fade away.
Voyager 1 is still moving at 16.9 km/sec relative to the sun; it crosses 3.57 AUs per year…almost the distance between Earth and Jupiter at its closest. Voyager 2 is moving at 15.2 km/sec. Their distances are 162 and 137 AUs, or 24.5 and and 20.5 billion kilometers.
And again, it is thanks to these stalwarts that we have any closeup pictures and data for Uranus and Neptune and their moons. Hubble and JWST can take occasional ganders, but there’s no substitute for being there, however briefly; and for now, this is what we’ve got.
Uranus
Uranus was spotted by John Flamsteed in 1690 as he created his star catalog. If you’ve ever seen a star with a name something like “61 Cygni” (a number and then a Latin genitive of a constellation name), that’s a Flamsteed designation. There are 84 of his designations that are today considered to have been mistakes; in particular “34 Tauri” was actually the planet Uranus.
Uranus was identified as a planet for the first time by William Herschel in 1781, his first thought was to name it after the King…As it happens, King George III; yes, that asshole. Good taste prevailed; we couldn’t get away from assholes apparently but at least it’s more egalitarian: It’s named after everyone’s asshole.
William Herschel, 15 November 1738 – 25 August 1822
OK, more seriously it’s named after the Greek sky god, Ouranos (Οὐρανός). Ouranos was one of the primordial deities, along with Gaia (Earth), he was the father of the Titans…in particular Kronos (Saturn). Saturn in turn was the father of Zeus (Jupiter). So it’s a neat progression, one generation back every planet out from the Sun. (But with this we’re out of generations; nothing preceded Ouranos.
The usual pronunciation is “YER-in-us” rather than “your anus” but I don’t even care for that one (as it means “full of urine”) and would like to go with OO-rahn-ose which is closer to the Greek pronunciation. Not a battle I’m likely to win.
OK, some basic facts since this bit is a recap of the Hugh Janus post from several months ago.
First a picture, with Blue Marble Earth (with a non-fubared Red Sea) photoshopped in for a size comparison. This is a natural-color image of Uranus taken by Voyager 2:
Well, that’s fascinating. We could probably argue over whether that’s more green than blue, or vice versa. It’s about as detailed as any true color image of Venus. Or Titan. More can be learned from false color images.
Uranus is 19.1 AU from the Sun, on average–about twice as far out as Saturn–and takes 84.02 Earth years to make one orbit around the Sun. It rotates once (relative to the Sun) in 17 hours, 14 minutes. However, here’s the thing: its axis of rotation is tipped 98 degrees from being perpendicular to its orbit (compare to our 23.5 degrees). Since axial tilts cause seasons, and this is almost as extreme as they get, Uranus has extreme seasons; at one point in its orbit almost the entire northern hemisphere has a midnight sun while the southern hemisphere gets no sun at all. And the poles get 42 years of continuous sunlight followed by 42 years of darkness (analogous to our poles getting six months of each). Because of these extreme seasons, Uranus has the lowest minimum temperature of any planet in the Solar System coming in at 49K.
This next graphic is a simulation of what Uranus looks like from Earth (hence just about what it looks like from the Sun) from 1985 to 2030, just a bit over half a Uranian year. The rings are included to provide a reference:
Uranus’s equatorial radius is 25,559 (give or take 4) km, compare to Earth’s 6,378. It has a mass 14.5 times that of Earth.
Uranus has multiple magnetic poles, and this likely has something to do with the fact that it is an “ice giant”
We’ve not dealt with ice giants before; these are gas giants (like Jupiter and Saturn) but with a heavier concentration of the molecules that planetary scientists call “ices” (even when they’re not frozen), water, ammonia, methane, sulfur dioxide, etc; generally hydrogen combined with some fairly small atom. Deep inside the planet all sorts of interesting forms of these compounds appear. In particular, water ice has many different polymorphs (different ways of crystalizing) under great pressure. Some of these even break the water molecules apart leaving oxygen crystallized and the hydrogen ions free to move through the lattice, others under greater pressure trap the hydrogen. It is thought that Uranus (and Neptune) have layers of the conducting ice deep inside and this is where the magnetic fields originate. Since the locations are relatively thin shells, it’s likely that multiple magnetic poles would form.
In some ways Uranus and Neptune resemble what you’d get if you removed the (mostly hydrogen and helium) outer layers from Jupiter and Saturn.
Uranus has rings; these were discovered in 1977. The discoverers were planning to watch Uranus pass in front of a star to hopefully learn something about Uranus’s atmosphere. They were surprised to see the star blink out five times before and afterwards, in symmetric patterns, which is what you’d see if an otherwise invisible ring was dimming the light. Later on they detected four more rings. The rings are made out of very dark objects about the size of a basketball (similar in size to Saturn’s rings’ constituents) and thus they couldn’t be seen directly. They’re named with Greek letters, sometimes numbers, and the names are not in any kind of logical order since they were assigned in discovery order.
Moons
Uranus has 28 known moons. The naming scheme is based on characters from Shakepeare and Alexander Pope.
We’ll start with an image taken by JWST; the big ones are bright blue, nine inner moons are also shown.
I learned Uranus had five moons in school, and these “original” five are four medium-sized major moons with one medium-small major moon.
Inner Moons
But we now know of 13 “inner moons” (small, non-round moons that orbit in nice circular orbits, closer than the major moons). That’s the most of any of the four giant planets. Working outward, we have Cordelia and Ophelia, which shepherd the ε (epsilon) ring. Then we have six at very similar distances forming a group: Bianca, Cressida, Desdemona, Juliet, Portia, and Rosalind. Then another close grouping of three: Cupid, Belinda, and Perdita. Finally there are Puck and Mab, Mab is likely the source of the μ (mu) ring.
We have a fuzzy picture with some detail for one of these moons, Puck:
Puck. 162 km across, orbiting at 86,005 km in 0.761 days.
All of these moons are involved with the ring system, which (unsurprisingly) is thought to have resulted from the fragmentation of other inner moons.
Major Moons
Then we come to the major moons; the five we heard about in school if you’re anything remotely my age. They are shown in this montage at the right relative sizes and brightness, in order of distance from Uranus.
They are: Miranda (471.6 km), Ariel (1157.8), Umbriel (1169.4), Titania (1577.8) and Oberon (1522.8). Titania at 1,577.8 km is just a bit bigger than Saturn’s Rhea, and is the largest “medium” moon. Titania and Oberon were discovered by Herschel in 1787, Ariel and Umbriel in 1851 by William Lassell, and Miranda by Gerard Kuiper in 1948. (And you will be seeing the name “Kuiper” a lot in the future.)
At the time Voyager 2 flew by the southern hemisphere of Uranus and each of its moons was oriented to the Sun, and we only got 20-40% coverage in the pictures…and we still don’t know what’s on the other sides of these moons!
These moons are fairly dark, by contrast with the bright moons of Saturn.
Miranda is mostly ice, while the other four seem to have significant rocky content:
The big four seem to all have salt water layers, underlain by hydrated water, and perhaps in the case of Titania and Oberon, dry rocky cores. I get the impression that all of this is somewhat speculative.
Miranda
Miranda, 471.6 km across, orbiting at 129,858 km in 1.41 days
Miranda is likely the most interesting of these moons, with fault canyons 20 km deep, terraced layers, and a patchwork chaotic surface of different ages and features. (We can tell the different ages from the different amounts of meteor craters.) Look at that picture; it looks like a Frankenmoon. Note that the canyons and mountains are large enough to be obvious bumps and cuts in what ought to be a circular outline. There is some speculation that this moon was broken apart and reassembled at some time in the past.
Of course I cannot think of Miranda without remembering the scene from Red Heat, where Ahnuld plays a Soviet policeman in the US to arrest and bring back Georgian thugs (no, the other Georgia, the one where they really talk funny). After roughing up one suspect and then being told that here in the US there are Miranda rights, warnings, etc…
Ariel
The highest resolution image of Ariel from Voyager 2 is this one:
Ariel, 1,157,8 km across, orbiting at 190,930 km in 2.52 days.
The broad channels to the lower right stand out, they’re called grabens and may be from liquid welling to the surface…sometime in the distance past.
Umbriel
Conveniently for those wanting to memorize names, Ariel and Umbriel rhyme which might help you remember they’re adjacent to each other in the list.
Umbriel is dark and heavily cratered, and as you can see the photo is a bit blurry. At the very top is the crater Wunda.
Umbriel, 1169.4 km across, orbiting at 263,982 km in 4.14 days
Titania
As mentioned before Titania is the largest “medium” sized moon, beating out Rhea by a slim margin. Water ice and a bit of carbon dioxide as dry ice have been detected. Again we have one not-very-high-res picture, and a slightly better one.
Titania, 1576.8 km across, orbiting at 436,282 km in 8.71 days.
Oberon
Oberon, 1522.8 km across, orbiting at 583,449 km in 13.46 days.
Oberon has a lot of bright patches, these are largely craters with bright rays. The largest of these is Hamlet, almost dead center in the photograph. There is also an 11 km mountain at about 8 o’clock on the limb.
Irregular Moons
There are 10 irregular moons, ones that are lumpy and orbit in inclined or even retrograde orbits with high eccentricity. They are: Francisco, Caliban, Stephano, S/2023 U 1, Trinculo, Sycorax, Margaret, Prospero, Setebos, and Ferdinand. The largest of these irregular moons is Sycorax, a respectably-sized 120-200km. Many of these moons were discovered by the Hubble Space telescope. Caliban, Stephano and S/2023 U 1 all seem to be part of a group, six of the others are retrograde but with very dissimilar orbits, and Margaret is actually prograde at a 60 degree inclination.
Patterns
We’ve seen a definite pattern so far with giant planets’ moons. There are inner moons, small, irregularly shaped moons that nevertheless are in nice, tidy circular orbits that have almost no inclination relative to the planet’s equator. Then major moons; the trend there seems to be smaller and smaller moons on the whole, the further out you go from the Sun (Jupiter had four large moons and no medium moons, Saturn had one large moon and a bunch of medium and medium-small ones, Uranus has only medium and medium-small ones).
Since all of those moons are in nice circular orbits usually in the plane of the planet’s equator, it’s thought that the original lump of gas, volatiles, and solids that formed the planet also formed the moons. This nebular lump would collapse, spin faster (angular momentum being conserved) and form an accretion disk. The main central mass would become the planet and the rest would form the regular moons (inner and major). This is actually a miniature of the formation of the Solar System itself, where the disk around the proto-Sun would form planets, all in nearly the same orbital plane, all orbiting in the same “prograde” direction.
Outside of those major moons, we go directly to irregular moons, which come in groups suggesting some larger body was broken up. The irregular moons are never big enough to be round, and are called irregular largely because they have very eccentric, inclined orbits; most in fact are retrograde, orbiting the planet “backwards” from the normal counterclockwise as seen from over the north pole. This strongly suggests these objects did not form with the planets as the regular moons did, but rather got captured later.
Saturn is a slightly special case, some small moons are mixed in with the major moons, including four that are Trojans to a couple of the major moons, but this is an addition to the pattern, not a true breaking of it.
Onwards…
Unlike with Saturn I simply wasn’t able to bury you in pictures and information. Again, that’s a consequence of the fact that we’ve sent one spacecraft on a flyby, ever. Whereas at Saturn and Jupiter we’ve been able to park spacecraft there for years, completely map the major moons, get good reads on their masses, and so on.
So will we ever learn more? There has been some talk of sending orbiters to Uranus, and it was given a high priority during NASA’s last decadal plan, but nothing was done about it. China is talking about sending probes as well. But there’s nothing firm.
The above free vintage image of DNA/RNA and lab equipment is courtesy of Google Images.
Health Friday is a series that discusses Big Pharma, vaccines, general health, and associated topics. Today’s post goes down several “rabbit holes”; Yours Truly believes they are all relevant to the core observation of the piece. There are multiple screenshots, and also a General Summary at the end. The discussion today is not limited to what is presented here: It is an Open Thread. As the post involves items related to the COVID-19 modRNA “vaccines”, it is dedicated to the memory of Yours Truly’s “fully vaccinated and boosted” brother Sam, who passed away last week due to complications from, among other things, “sudden-onset dementia”; and, to the memory of her cousin Bill, who “died suddenly and unexpectedly” in September 2023. May they rest in eternal Peace.
There are Important Wolf Moon Notifications, the Rules of our late, good Wheatie, and caveat items from Yours Truly, of which readers should be aware. These are all linked here.
Today’s post is about one of the ingredients of the modRNA COVID-19 “vaccines”: a lab-synthesized version N1-Methylpseudouridine.
To begin: Once upon a time, a very long time ago (say, about 2.7 billion years ago), an organism domain evolved into being on the Earth. The name of this organism is Archaea. It is a “middle-position” domain between the domains of Eukaryotes and of Bacteria. Archaea gradually evolved into multiple types of Phyla (a position between Kingdom and Class in taxonomic rank.) Archaea are a large part of what is called microbiota (a “range” of microorganisms that include Archaea, bacteria, fungi, and viruses.) Archaea are literally “all over the place”, including in the human gut microbiome, the plankton in the waters of the Earth, and in the Earth’s soil. Archaea can “communicate” with each other through a kind of “cross-talk.” The various types of this microorganism can exist in all kinds of places and in conditions of extreme heat or extreme cold. Archaea are a kind of “recycling center” for carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur, depending on where it lives. Methanogen Archaea “…play an important role in the decay of organic matter…”, such as would be seen in a swamp. (Remember this for later in the post.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaea. Below is an image of some types of Archaea:
More information about Archaea and what it does is here: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1578729/, “The origin and evolution of Archaea: a state of the art”, by Simonetta Gribaldo and Celine Bochier-Armanet, 9 May 2006. A portion of the Introduction of this paper is below:
Again, remember the reference to methanogensis related to Archaea for further down in today’s post.
Then, there is Uridine.
Uridine is an RNA component that is manufactured by the Liver in the human body. It is either synthesized from foods that contain Uridine in the RNA of the food; or, if the body is not taking in sufficient food sources, Uridine production shifts to the adipose tissues (fat tissues) of the body. The importance of Uridine presence in the human body cannot be over-emphasized. Uridine crosses the Blood-Brain Barrier and helps to regulate mood, dopamine release, and other functions of the brain; It can help to mitigate Alzheimer’s Disease; it helps to regulate body temperature and circadian rhythm; it helps in tumor decrease; it has profound positive effects on the Central Nervous System; and more: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10937367/, “Uridine and its role in metabolic diseases, tumors, and neurodegenerative diseases”, Yueyuan Yang, et al., 28 February 2024. Food sources of Uridine include beer; Brewer’s Yeast; beets; tomatoes; goat’s milk and cheese; organ meats (liver, etc.); fish; molasses; and, walnuts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uridine; and, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21401985/, “Uridine function in the central nervous system”, Juliana Kardos, et al., 2011. Below is the Abstract from the Kardos, et al., paper:
Natural Pseudouridine (as opposed to the lab-created versions) appears in the RNA of the human body. It is a “by-product” of RNA mechanisms in the body. It is also found in yeast and in E. coli (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudouridine.) If one or more of the mechanisms involved in the creation of Pseudouridine become “aberrant”, this can contribute to the onset of cancer or to certain types of genetic disorders (www.cell.com/trends/pharmacological-sciences/fulltext/S0165-6147(22)00058-X. “Decoding pseudouridine: an emerging target for therapeutic development”, Jonas Cerneckis, et al., June 2022. The Abstract of the Cerneckis, et al., paper, is below:
The exact mechanisms and consequences of Pseudouridine are a fairly recent “hot topic” for research, including in the fields of gene therapy and vaccine development. In fact, several COVID-19 “vaccines” have been developed that use Pseudouridine as an ingredient; however, it appeared that this element was lacking in “efficiency” regarding its ability to replace Uridine in the body; and, in fact, Pseudouridine, in this context, created “unintended proteins.” (www.science.org/content/article/mrna-vaccines-may-make-unintended-proteins-there-s-no-evidence-harm. “mRNA vaccines may make unintended proteins, but there’s no evidence of harm”, by Gretchen Vogel. The use of Pseudouridine in the COVID-19 “vaccines” was superseded by the use of the element that is the main topic of today’s post: N1-Methylpseudouridine.
Recall that Archaea has various manifestations, including ones that are called Methanogens. Naturally-occurring N1-Methylpseudouridine is found in the soil: one type, Streptomyces lincolnensis (Nebraska origin), forms the basis for the antibiotic lincomycin: www.drugs.com/mtm/lincomycin.html. (Note: this antibiotic is used for severe cases of bacterial infections in persons who are allergic to penicillin.) Lincomycin has a “sister” drug, clindamycin. (https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/aem.02091-18, “TetR-Type Regulator of Lincomycin Biosynthesis in Streptomyces lincolnensis“, Yurong Xu, et al., 13 December 2018.)
When ruminating animals (cows, for example) take in N1-Methylpseudouridine from the grass that grows in soil that has Archaea producing this element, it passes through the animal’s body and is released; as solid waste, or as gas (that “cow methane” that the environmentalists are so upset about.) The human body, in its evolved wisdom, “recognizes” that naturally-occurring N1- Methylpseudouridine is not Uridine, and usually will eliminate it. However, this is not the case regarding the type of N1-Methylpseudouridine in the modRNA COVID-19 “vaccines” by Pfizer-BioNTech and by Moderna: In these injectables, the element not only is a “lab-synthesized and enhanced” form; in this form, it is deliberately included in the “vaccines” to replace the natural Uridine in the body of the “vaccinated” person. This Uridine replacement is done for two reasons: One, to “increase” the utilization of the modRNA COVID-19 “vaccines” in the “vaccinated” persons’ body; and, Two, to evade and/or destroy the “vaccinated” person’s body’s natural capability to “recognize” the foreign element and to eliminate it. Yours Truly will repeat this: The natural Uridine RNA of the “vaccinated” person’s body is replaced with the “lab-synthesized and enhanced” version of N-1 Methylpseudouridine in the modRNA COVID-19 “vaccines.”
Please refer back in today’s post regarding the multiple beneficial activities of naturalUridine in the human body. These multiple beneficial activities are either depleted or completely replaced by the “lab-synthesized and enhanced” version of N-1 Methylpseudouridine in the modRNA COVID-19 “vaccines” — in order for the ingredients and mechanisms of these injectables to work in the “vaccinated” person’s body.
Experiments using various “lab-synthesized and enhanced” forms of N1-Methylpseudouridine have been in process for some time. An important paper that describes this type of experimentation is here: https://doi.org/10.1002/stem.2402, “Concise Review: Application of In Vitro Transcribed Messenger RNA for Cellular Engineering and Reprogramming: Progress and Challenges”, Andreas Behring et al., 2 June 2016. Below are three screenshots from this paper, beginning with a portion of the section Protein Synthesis in Cells:
Followed by Table 1 of the above paper, listing the natural immune system responses when “foreign RNA” is detected in the human body (the numbered links lead to various papers):
And, followed by a portion of the section Modifications of the Synthetic mRNAs from the Behring, et al., paper:
Note the mention of “100% replacement” of Uridine.
The type of N1-Methylpseudouridine used in the Pfizer-BioNTech and in the Moderna modRNA COVID-19 “vaccines” is a “lab-synthesized and enhanced and turbo-charged” version. It is called N1-Methylpseudouridine-5′-Triphosphate. Below is the entry from one commercial lab where this version can be purchased (the N-1081 is the catalog number at TriLink Biotech for the compound):
Below is a screenshot of the chemical construction of this version of N1-Methylpseudouridine used in the modRNA COVID-19 “vaccines”, sold by New England Biolabs:
Where was this “lab-synthesized and enhanced and turbo-charged” version of N1-Methylpseudouridine inserted in the modRNA of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein for use in the modRNA COVID-19 “vaccines”? On both ends of the RBD (Receptor Binding Domain) area of the SARS-CoV-2 virus spike protein (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC80433204, “Modifications in an Emergency: The Role of N1-Methylpseudouridine in COVID-19 Vaccines”, Kellie D. Nance, Jordan L. Meier, 6 April 2021. This important paper describes the process of how this ingredient truncates the body’s natural immune mechanisms and processes that would normally “recognize” this element as a “foreign RNA” and eliminate it. Below is a screenshot from the paper of the location on the RBD section of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein where this “foreign RNA” was inserted (the light pink areas mark the beginning and end of the insertion):
And, from the above paper, a screenshot of the entire SARS-CoV-2 virus spike protein code as used by Pfizer-BioNTech for the company’s “flagship” modRNA COVID-19 “vaccine”, BNT162b2. The areas that were used to “insert” the coding sequence changes for the synthesized, enhanced, and “turbo-charged” version of N1-Methylpseudouridine are marked in pink:
The use of forms of N1-Methylpseudouridine is being touted as “the best approach” for inclusion in mRNA products. This is because N1-Methylpseudouridine “does a better job” of replacing the natural Uridine in the “vaccinated” person’s body:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-17249-1, “N1-methyl-pseudouridine is incorporated with higher fidelity than pseudouridine in synthetic RNAs”, Jennifer Ong, et al., July 2022. However, there are problems with this situation; among them, the evidence that “frameshifting” is induced: https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.36710.40005, “Ribosomal frameshifting and misreading of mRNAs in COVID-19 vaccines produce “off-target” proteins and immune responses eliciting safety concerns: Comment on UK study by Mulroney et al.”, David M Wiseman, Jessica Rose, et al., December 2023. The National Cancer Institute defines “ribosomal frameshifting” as follows, below (www.cancer.gov/publication/dictionaries/genetics-dictionary/def/frameshift-mutation):
In other words, a kind of “unintended consequence” from using things like “lab-synthesized and enhanced and turbo-charged” forms of N1-Methylpseudouridine in modRNA COVID-19 “vaccines.” Dr. Peter McCullough’s important take on this issue is here: https://doi.org/10.1002/prp2.1218, “Long-lasting, biochemically modified mRNA, and its frameshifted recombinant spike proteins in human tissues and circulation after COVID-19 vaccination”, Peter A. McCullough, et al., 12 June 2024. Below is a screenshot of a portion of this paper:
In other words, the frameshifting induced in the COVID-19 “vaccinated” person’s body via the use of synthesized, enhanced, and “turbo-charged” N1-Methylpseudouridine in the injectable is pervasive and long-lasting.
To summarizethe above: N1-Methylpseudouridine, as it is used in the “synthesized, enhanced, and turbo-charged” form found in the modRNA COVID-19 “vaccines”, replaces the body’s natural Uridine (by 100%) in the “vaccinated” person’s body; it assists in the evasion of the body’s natural immune system by these “vaccines”; it assists in the mechanisms of action of these”vaccines” in the body; and it negates the multiple beneficial effects that natural Uridine provides for the body. It replaces the body’s natural Uridine with a combination of what is basically an element (Pseudouridine) that is, at best, a “by-product” of RNA and can cause cancer, plus a “turbo-charged” methylation of Pseudouridine. Yes, a form of methane. Recall that the modRNA COVID-19 “vaccines” cross the Blood-Brain Barrier and enter the brain of the “vaccinated” person’s body. Recall that the modRNA COVID-19 “vaccines” are spread throughout the “vaccinated” person’s body via the dangerous lipid nanoparticles present in these “vaccines.” The result, in Yours Truly’s opinion, is a recipe for disaster. It is inconceivable that the scientists at Pfizer-BioNTech and at Moderna did not know how Uridine works, and how important it is for the human body. In Yours Truly’s opinion, the replacement of Uridine with the “lab-synthesized, enhanced, and turbo-charged” version of N1-Methylpseudouridine was “acceptable” in order to use the modRNA COVID-19 “vaccines” as a vehicle for human cellular modification and “reprogramming”, in addition to assisting in the mechanisms of these “vaccines.”
To the best of Yours Truly’s knowledge so far, Uridine RNA that has been replaced by the N1-Methylpseudouridine form described in today’s post does not “regenerate” in the “vaccinated” person’s body. It may help to Uridine-rich foods (see above in the post), perhaps along with taking a Uridine supplement (the use of Uridine supplementation, in Yours Truly’s opinion, would need to be discussed with a healthcare professional); and for the COVID-19 “vaccinated” person to at least consider refusing to take any further injections of modRNA COVID-19 “vaccines.”
General Summary: The modRNA COVID-19 “vaccines” manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech and by Moderna contain a “lab-synthesized, enhanced and turbo-charged” version of an element that occurs in the microorganism domain called Archaea. This Archaean element is called N1-Methylpseudouridine. The version in the modRNA COVID-19 “vaccines” is called N1-Methylpseudouridine-5′-Triphosphate. Once inside the “vaccinated” person’s body, this ingredient replaces an important RNA component in the human body, called Uridine. Uridine has multiple beneficial benefits and mechanisms in the human body. It is found in the RNA of various foods, such as beets, goat’s milk and cheese, walnuts, and in beer. N1-Methylpseudouridine-5′-Triphosphate appears to have no natural benefits for the human body; its use in the modRNA COVID-19 “vaccines” is as a vehicle for human cellular modification and “reprogramming”; and, to assist in the mechanisms of these “vaccines.”
UPDATE, Friday 8 November 2024: At the suggestion of SteveInCO, the following comment from Aubergine is included regarding natural assistance for Uridine production in the body (two screenshots, below). Thank you, Aubergine!
Salads with goat cheese and walnuts can work. So can raw broccoli spread with a mixture of goat cheese, a little pepper, and a little Balsamic vinegar.
