Random News and Notes 17 July
On this date in 1453 French and English forces met at Castillion in what would be the last major battle of the Hundred Years War. On the day of the battle, the English commander, John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury, mistakenly believing that the enemy was retreating, led a small advance force of his army in an attack on a strongly fortified French encampment without waiting for reinforcements. Talbot then refused to withdraw even after realising the strength of the French position, allowing the French artillery to destroy his reinforcements piecemeal. Castillon was the first major European battle won through the extensive use of field artillery.
The battle led to the English losing nearly all their holdings in France, especially Gascony, which had been a possession of the Plantagenet kings for the previous three centuries. Political instability ensued in England.
On this date in 1936, Generalissimo Francisco Franco and the Nationalists began the Spanish Civil War. From the Canary Islands, Franco broadcasts a message calling for all army officers to join the uprising and overthrow Spain’s leftist Republican government. Within three days, the rebels captured Morocco, much of northern Spain, and several key cities in the south. The brutality of the Spanish Civil war became the stuff of legend. Nearly 1 million Spaniards lost their lives in the conflict. Franco and the Nationalists would eventually prevail over the leftist Republicans and Franco would rule Spain until his death in 1975.
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On this date in 1944, the merchantmen the SS Quinault Victory and SS E.A. Bryan were being loaded at Port Chicago on the California coast. The cargoes were 4,600 tons of explosives—bombs, depth charges and ammunition. Another 400 tons of explosives were nearby on rail cars. At 10:18 p.m., a series of massive explosions over several seconds destroyed everything and everyone in the vicinity. 320 people lost their lives in the blast itself. Every building in Port Chicago was damaged and people were literally knocked off their feet. Smoke and fire extended nearly two miles into the air. The pilot of a plane flying at 9,000 feet in the area claimed that metal chunks from the explosion flew past him.
Nearly two-thirds of the people killed at Port Chicago were African American enlisted men in the Navy—15 percent of all African Americans killed during World War II. The surviving men in these units, who helped put out the fires and saw the horrors firsthand, were quickly reassigned to Mare Island. Less than a month later, when ordered to load more munitions, but still having received no training, 258 African American sailors refused to carry out the orders. Two hundred and eight of them were then sentenced to bad conduct discharges and pay forfeiture. The remaining 50 men were put on trial for general court martial. They were sentenced to between eight and 15 years of hard labor, though two years later all were given clemency, and one of the convictions was dismissed for mental incompetency.
We start today’s news with a local-ish story to this editor. The absolute retards that run this state just put a moratorium on the construction of new data centers. Why? There hasn’t been a coherent answer to that question that I could find other than data centers bad. Under normal; circumstances, this decision wouldn’t merit the coverage it is getting in this space, Albany is doing normal – read retarded – Albany things. However, President Trump took aim at Frau gauleiterin Hochul and the rest of the retards in the State Capitol over the subject.
Nearly all the negative hype about data centers is bullshit plain and simple. Water use? The projected water use for data centers is about 0.22% of the all the water used in a year. Not 22%, 0.22%. You know what uses more water? Almond production uses 4-5 times the amount of water. Water Pollution? It’s used for evaporative cooling not in any manufacturing process. You know who else uses evaporative cooling? Most modern healthcare facilities. The one thing that isn’t hype is the electricity usage. They do use a lot of electricity but if you live in an area with a functional grid, there isn’t likely to be any issues. This has all the hallmarks of a Chinese info op and you should treat it that way.
Senator Bernie Moreno; R, OH, plans to introduce a bill requiring President Trump to evaluate if Canada’s wildfires harmed U.S. air quality, then impose sanctions like asset freezes, visa revocations, and declaring Canada’s ambassador persona non grata until prevention steps are taken. The smoke from over 800 Canadian fires has triggered hazardous air alerts for 120 million people across 18 states, with cities like Detroit and Chicago seeing AQI over 300.
Sorry, but this is retarded. Are there steps Canada can take to mitigate wildfires? Sure. Are they doing them? Kinda. Is Canada responsible for the acts of arsonists? Not really. WIll this bill convince them to do more? Probably not. Will Canada do something similar when the shoe is on the other foot? Probably.
At his televised remarks yesterday, President Trump announced the declassification of thousands of documents relating to election security. The declassified files, now on whitehouse.gov, detail Chinese efforts to access voter names, addresses, party affiliations, and phone numbers, plus vulnerabilities in registration and voting systems. Among the details in the files is the fact that the FBI purposefully withheld intelligence from the president and altered the presidential daily brief.
We’ll see where this goes. Based on some of the things that have been posted on X and other places, there are prosecutable offenses in the documents.
Expect a big push for election security from this administration. That was the primary reason for the presser.
Maine Dems are having a go at replacing the Porta-Nazi rapist Graham Platner in the race for US Senate. Two commies, a tranny and a feminazi.
I got nothing. . .