Oh Noes, The Left’s Anti-Trump Hail Mary Has Officially Collapsed:

For years, Democrats have tried to twist the Epstein saga into a Trump scandal, clinging to the hope that it could finally damage him. In recent weeks, they convinced themselves they’d found a powerful political weapon. But the truth is, there was never any substance; Trump’s hands were clean. They knew it. The public knew it. And now, the country has moved on.

And this is according to even TDS-CNN (and surely their remaining viewers must be hating on Harry Enten now).

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I’m sure we have plenty of old farts who will recall the birth of the Interwebby with these noises circa early 1990’s. I think I first heard this in 1992 but then I’d been “on the Internet” since the early 1980’s courtesy of the backbone on which “www” was built.

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Of course one of the promises of the Interwebby was wider, cheaper, easier communication…

A couple of weeks ago I did a post on the Great Dating Meltdown in the USA and Britain, where girls are tearing their hair out about how men won’t approach them – even in New York – none of which is a surprise if you watch that, or this. I don’t know what the situation is like in London but I would be surprised if it’s not the same, given the efforts of people like barrister Charlotte Proudman (don’t worry sweetheart, no man would now think you’re “asking for it” in that photo).

The good news is that the TikTok woman above is unlikely to re-produce and spread the damage wider by mentally fucking up her partner/husband and kids.

The bad news is that since this sort of shit is not genetic, her failure means another downward notch on the West’s demographic death spiral, with South Korea and Japan in the lead.

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The interwebby also promised exposure to a vast ocean of information – possibly, ultimately, everything that humans had ever known. Unfortunately there are still teachers and other “educators”

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A very cool story here on the attack launched a couple of months ago by the Ukrainians on the Russian strategic bomber force, Operation Spiderweb:

The special forces operated by Ukraine’s intelligence directorate, the SBU, used semi-trucks hauling trailers that were drone launch pods…This was a fire-and-forget attack. There was no need for Ukrainian drone operators to remain on the scene to manage the attacks. An autonomously targeted drone swarm hit each target. SBU operatives placed the trucks, and the rest of the operation, from first launch to the self-destruct of the transport, appears to have been carried out without a man in the loop.

The Russian truck drivers had no idea, having been hired to deliver “wooden huts” on the back of the trucks.

The lessons for other militaries, especially the US military, is clear. Strategic forces can no longer necessarily be protected by things like missile defence when an adversary like China can launch such attacks on US military bases from inside America, using:

All of which is infinitely easier to pull off in America than Russia.

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I didn’t want to write about the 80th anniversary of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9), given how much it was covered elsewhere and the fact that there have been no new arguments or documentary revelations for at least twenty years. At the 50th anniversary there was much fluffing about new material “revealing” that Japan had actually surrendered because of the Soviet attack on August 8 – but that seems to have been pushed into a small corner by historians since then.

Instead, I discovered this small piece of history, of which I had never before heard, which should serve as testimony to what the Japanese military was like eighty years ago:

Sub-Lieutenant Frederick (Fred) Hockley was an English Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm fighter pilot who was shot down over Japan while taking part in the last combat mission flown by British aircraft in the Second World War….On the 15th of August 1945 he took off leading five Seafires of 894 Squadron to escort Firefly and Avenger fighter bombers attacking airfields in Tokyo Bay. They were diverted to a chemicals factory in Odaki Bay.

Hockley was shot down and captured on the day the Emperor declared that Japan had surrendered, and yet:

At regimental headquarters the commanding officer, Colonel Tamura Tei’ichi, having heard Emperor Hirohito announce the Japanese surrender at 12 noon, called divisional headquarters for advice on what to do with the prisoner. The 147th Division’s intelligence officer, Major Hirano Nobou, responded with words to the effect that he was to shochi-se (finish him off) in the mountains that night, despite the fact that Tamura had sought no authority to do so.
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Captain Fujino Masazo.. ordered Sergeant Major Hitomi Tadao to move Hockley to regimental headquarters. There Hitomi was ordered by another officer to take six soldiers into the mountains to dig a grave with pickaxes and shovels. At about nine o’clock at night, nine hours after the Emperor had announced the surrender, Hockley was taken to the grave blindfolded, his hands were tied and he was told to stand with his back to the hole. He was then shot twice and rolled into the hole, where Fujino stabbed him in the back with a sword to ensure that he was dead.

In 1947 both Tamura and Hirano were convicted, sentenced to death and hung, while Fujino was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment, for that war crime.