Here’s a flower shot I like, taken with a A7-3 and 90mm f2.8 macro
Category: Guest Contributors
Tom’s World – 06OCT2025 – Arachnophobia
Guest Contributor – The Fat Man – 04OCT2025 – Photo
Tom’s World – 02OCT2025 – Trump’s Mockumentary of Dems
Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 01OCT2025 – Military Revival
Been a long time coming. I saw the “Social Laboratory Syndrome” creeping through the military for over thirty years. The worst started with Obama’s purge of true warfighters and replacing them with careerist toadies who would rubber-stamp his social agenda. Then the loss of standards in dress, fitness, and appearance, and the transgender idiocy. When Biden came in with his policies and appointments of deviants to high office, I was glad I was retired. Now we have leadership that knows what the military’s job is and will enforce standards, performance and mission…at ALL levels. I admit I had put on weight in my later years, but I could still pass the PT tests, and I worked out every day, and could keep up or surpass the younger troops, even working for three hours in a Level-A HAZMAT suit in 90-degree heat.
I’m waiting to see how many of the perfumed princes at that meeting put in for retirement.
Updates and Comments
Chemist
“Full disclosure: I have never served.
But I have to believe that the PT standards are different for a logistics specialist than for a Special Forces operator.
So if you have some middle age spread but still can pass the PT test for your specification – that’s all Pete is asking for.
And I think that’s fair.
We’ve all seen the videos of the 110 pound female cop trying to control a 300 pound ‘roided up perp and they are not pretty. (The videos, not the cops. Or the perps.)
But I hope to never see the day when a 200 pound jihadi starts pounding on undersized US servicewomen.
If this makes me a misogynist – then the definition is wrong.”
Jess
“My brother was in the Air Force, looked good, not carrying any noticeable weight, achieved Staff Sargent, and was over ten years in service, but was worried because he was notified his weight, and waist size, need to lower or face being removed. That was in the eighties. Seeing some of those in the military over the last few years made me wonder what happened to the discipline, since many looked way beyond anything resembling an effective military member demanded thirty years ago.”
Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 28SEP2025 – Dem’s Scylla and Charybdis
Milo’s analogy reminds me of a situation I saw. There was a pear tree on land near my home that was unclear if it was on my property or the neighbors. It was in a bad way as where it had been planted was rocky quick draining soil so it was often starved for moisture. After a couple dry summers and cold snowless winters it was on its last legs. I got out my pruning saw and was ready to do some major clean up removing some of the branches which were clearly damaged or diseased. The neighbor came out and said it was his tree and I was not to touch it. In the interest of neighborhood peace I didn’t even argue. withing 2 years the pear tree was dead and he had to have someone come in and remove it.
Like that tree the US has some damaged sections. Radical pruning is called for to solve (or at least mitigate issues) now. But the Democrats see this as our tree don’t you touch it! In my case the tree had been planted by the previous owners so I had little interest and just walked away. We can’t do that we depend on this tree and honestly, it feels like the USA is the last flowering tree of the Scottish Enlightenment. The UK, Australia and Canada (and little New Zealand) have all fallen to the modernist tilt.
I think Trump has carefully wedged the Democrat leadership between Scylla and Charybdis and is enjoying watching them squirm. Because the language the Trump Administration proposes is such that the removed positions are not layoffs or furloughs the positions cease to exist. Because of the language (unfunded positions) the removals essentially go around the civil service protections. In general, this hurts primarily Blue voters in areas so blue that they are bound both by representation and electoral votes to the Democrat party. Schumer can’t let this happen as hordes of his supporters will be unemployed. But neither can he give in as other parts of his base would be enraged. I suspect he chooses the former, hoping that the enraged unemployed Democrats vent their anger at the Administration. The one downside of this for the Republican party is this probably wipes out any Chance Winsome-Sears had of winning the Virginia Gubernatorial election if this falls out like I suspect. That’s a shame. Ms. Winsome-Sears is an impressive lady but not being native born she is not eligible for Vice president or president. A ticket with Vance/Winsome-Sears in 2028 would have made the Democrats heads explode.
Tom’s World – 28SEP2025 – Rename Them “Fa”???
It may not be delicious irony but it is surely irony defined when an organization named anitfa(scist) didn’t go to the trouble to research exactly what a fascist means and then adopts methods used by the 1930’s German fascists.
The rampages of the Brown Shirts during the late 1930’s around Kristallnacht weren’t inherent to Fascism but it was inherent in Naziism.
Fascism was the child of Socialism first envisioned by Benito Mussolini who was then a high party official of the Italian Socialist Party.
Guest Contributor – Milo Mindbender – 28SEP2025 – Trim It Back
Sometimes the thing best for a social organism is hardest on the individual.
Our government is vastly bloated with bureaucratic leeches, and other parasites. These unelected bureaucrats are not working to serve the American people, but preserve their sinecures and privilege.
Shutting down the government again at this time will hopefully demonstrate the true authors of the shutdown. It seems that every time the government gets shut down Republicans get blamed, even when the president holds line item authority.
Congress has the requirement to present a budget, but we have been working under a series of continuing resolutions. The last time the federal budget was passed as a total is 1996. This should be criminal as the continuing funding resolutions are focused spending.
Shut it down, and rather than than leave the rotted branches, trim it back.
Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 27SEP2025 – Chainsaw Art
Some may say this approach is too brutal, but I have seen some beautiful sculptures made with chainsaws!
<a href=”
” target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow ugc”>3f0d300a2d51ebc3ce205ca9bd88ebc0.jpg (1500×2008)
Tom’s World – 25SEP2025 – Bloop
I like this one too, it’s about 1/100 of a second before the 1st shot.
Time and events exists on all scales, from Panck time roughly 5×10^-44th sec up to 10’s of billions of years or roughly 3×10^17th sec. We just happen to exist such that we observe events in our very narrow band of that scale.
