End the War on Freedom

At the time of this writing, Pope Francis is in critical condition at Gemelli University Hospital in Rome with a complex case of pneumonia in both lungs and early-stage kidney failure. Before all else, we pray for his well-being and peace. But death is in the air. The Swiss Guard have held funeral rehearsals. The pontiff has shared his plan to relinquish the papal triple-interlocking casket and confided that he doesn’t believe he will survive this bout. Even before this decline in his fragile health, however, political preparations for the pope’s passing had begun. For those who haven’t seen the … Continue reading →

The post Preparing for the Pope’s Passing appeared first on LewRockwell.

Yesterday Trump began the task of his first term–the normalization of relations with Russia–which was blocked by the corrupt FBI’s “Russiagate” hoax, an act of treason for which executions should take place and, indeed, the utterly corrupt agency abolished. The United States, to the chagrin of USAID-supported CNN, voted with Russia against a UN General Assembly revolution condemning Russia’s “invasion” of Ukraine. CNN true to its reputation as the worst liar on earth found it “shocking” that the US aligned with Russia against the “free world” and aligned with “the aggressor in the war on the three-year anniversary of Moscow’s … Continue reading →

The post A Change in US Foreign Policy from Lies to Truth, from War to Peace appeared first on LewRockwell.

In the history of the world, nations and even empires have risen, then declined and were lost to time, leaving only artifacts behind for archaeologists to piece together what happened.  From our vantage point, it’s easier to see what happened, the slow decline in so many areas that finally led to a collapse.  Fortunately, we understand today many of the factors that have to be in place.  Unfortunately, even knowing these signs of decline may not be enough to slow or stop the momentum of your nation’s collapse.  In this video, we will lay out the eight signs of imminent … Continue reading →

The post First Stages of Civilization’s Collapse appeared first on LewRockwell.

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New screen shot for WordLand.

By Liberty Nation Authors

Digging deep on what the new Trump tariffs actually mean. For more episodes, click here.

By Dave Patterson

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is putting common sense into the Pentagon budget process, correcting the record about what that means. Many in the media called it an 8% cut in the defense budget, but that was wrong. Since Congress has been talking about as much as a $150 billion increase in defense spending, the […]

I posted something sad on Bluesky last night. It was short, but the thinking behind it wasn't. Here's the quote:

• It might be the last minute but we can still legally remove Trump, and objectively it’s the only thing that makes any sense.

I got two responses from Karoli Kuns, an early blogger, and editor at Crooks and Liars, a long-lived blog that if I recall correctly was started with software I wrote in 2002, so I feel some pride in helping in a small way to enable her accomplishments and contributions, which are long-lived and substantial. Both of her responses missed the sadness in my post, the reflectiveness, but rather did what a lot of arguing online devolves to, showing someone else that their thinking is wrong. I couldn't think straight I was so angry, so I just said no, I'm not going to do this. Lots of experience trying to explain myself in little 300-character bursts, there's no reason to add to the grief of the moment.

But this morning I opened up my Bluesky window and started typing. What came out was far too long to post there, and even a screen shot doesn't fit in the space allotted, so my only choice is to blog it and post a link on Bluesky. I hope she reads it, because we're not out of options, and as I say in this story, we should be working together, and as far as I know we are not. I say this to everyone I think is making a contribution, my belief that if we can steer our efforts so they are complementary we can square each others' power. It's imho the beginning of our way out of this situation.

Anyway, this is what I wrote. (Note when writing this stuff I tend not to capitalize, a lazy habit I have developed. I decided not to edit that here, just to leave it as it was written.)

• karoli -- there's a lot to say about this, and i don't like arguing on social networks, and it was late, and i didn't feel like getting into it with you.
• anyway i wrote what i wrote not as a plan but rather a note that we're passing a line, over which there soon won't be any recourse. we probably are already over the line, but if by some miracle the repubs saw clearly that this was the last chance and enough of them decided to do what so far they have been unwilling to do, there would be a fight. i wasn't saying i thought it was likely, which is what your rebuttals were rebutting, i was just sharing a sad observation that i had made earlier in the day when i was thinking this through. i like to do that because it's part of my creativity. sometimes you think of the ideal answer, and it leads you back to an acceptable answer -- in software design and in writing (which is what i do pretty well with lots of experience).
• what was really frustrating is that i think you and i should be collaborating. giving me grief over something so ridiculous was about 180 degrees opposite of where i think we should be. that we are still doing this to each other, gives an idea of how we got here. the democrats pick on classes of people, sometimes destroying their lives, and big surprise -- a lot of them vote for the other party. i think you think you can dis me the way you did because of my gender, or age, or race, or who the fuck knows. and for all i know you were just having a bad moment and decided to share it with me for some reason having nothing to do with what was bothering me.
• karoli -- i think we have to bend over backwards to be kind to each other. we're all going through a terrible time, in ways that may not be obvious. i certainly am, and i don't want to share it with you, but it comes on top of the crazy uncertainty of the political world.
• anyway that's my response, and maybe now you can see why, as the day was winding down and i was watching some basketball on tv, i didn't feel like getting into it with you.
• the struggle isn't over -- they had antiwar demonstrations in russia, a country that has the kind of government ours is about to become. and the sooner we accept the new reality and get smart about it, and i'm not talking about the repubs, i'm talking about us, the shorter the nightmare will be imho.

An afterthought -- the reason it makes sense for the Repubs to join us in removing Trump is the turn away from democratic Europe and toward the authoritarians. This just happened, and it's shocking. We don't even know how to think of ourselves. If I were a Republican, I would think my world just turned upside down. They didn't believe it would come to this, as far as I can tell. So it may be a time when real change is possible. We've become so fatalistic that we couldn't even recognize such an opportunity.

The Atlantic asked in a story yesterday what a liberal tea party movement would look like. They're doing it too. We should create an American tea party. We're so addicted to divides we can't see when we're doing it ourselves.

And btw, having explained all that was overlooked in my simple idea, if we managed to remove Trump, what part of your mind thinks we wouldn't also remove Vance? Geez Louise. 😄

I finally get a break from appliances! . . . If you like what you’ve found here please consider supporting EPautos.  We depend on you to keep the wheels turning!  Our donate button is here. We also accept crypto (see below).   If you prefer not to use PayPal, our mailing address is: EPautos 721 Hummingbird Lane SE Copper Hill, VA 24079 […]

The post Appliance Reprieve! appeared first on EPautos - Libertarian Car Talk.

People – at the time – made fun of the Pontiac Aztek. They made fun of it as recently as 2008, when Breaking Bad debuted. Times have changed. We don’t know how good we had it, once. But we can look back, in order to remember. When the Aztek came out in 2001 it was derided […]

The post The Unappreciated Greatness of the Aztek appeared first on EPautos - Libertarian Car Talk.

By Leesa K. Donner

Despite a fresh rant by Democratic strategist James Carville that the Trump administration will collapse in the next month, a new poll by Harvard CAPS/Harris released Feb. 24 is nothing short of devastating for the Democrats. Not only that, but the survey shows widespread support for Trump’s DOGE efforts, which have been the subject of […]

By Graham J Noble

On Feb. 19, President Donald Trump signaled his intention to soon meet with top Democrats for lunch, expressing his hopes that they could work together. Speaking at a Future Investment Initiative (FII) Institute summit in Miami, the chief executive seemed hopeful that his olive branch to Democrats might lead to some bipartisan progress in Washington, […]

By Liberty Nation Authors

European partners are fast learning that there’s a whole new game in town and they had better learn to play. For more episodes, click here.

By Dave Patterson

Presidents often start building a Pentagon to their liking shortly after taking office. That the present commander-in-chief would do the same should be no surprise. So, when President Donald Trump gave Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force General C.Q. Brown his walking papers, it was the inevitable management action of a new […]

For day 14, we are given the initial positions and velocities of a number of robots that walk a 101x103 grid. These are parsed with a regular expression:

(in-package "ADVENT2024/DAY14")

(defun read-input (input-file)
  (collect ’list
    (#M(lambda (line)
         (cl-ppcre:register-groups-bind ((#’parse-integer column) (#’parse-integer row)
                                         (#’parse-integer dx) (#’parse-integer dy))
             ("p=(\\d+),(\\d+)\\s+v=(-?\\d+),(-?\\d+)" line)
           (list (coord column row)
                 (coord dx dy))))
       (scan-file input-file #’read-line))))

The robots walk a grid linearly. They do not interact with each other, and they wrap when they cross the edge of the grid.

(defun step-n (width height coord velocity n)
  (2v-mod (2v+ coord (2v* n velocity)) (coord width height)))

For part 1, we are asked to multiply the number of robots in each quadrant after 100 steps in a 101 x 103 grid.

(defun quadrant (width height coord)
  (let ((half-width (floor width 2))
        (half-height (floor height 2)))
    (cond ((< (row coord) half-height)
           (cond ((< (column coord) half-width) 1)
                 ((> (column coord) half-width) 2)
                 (t nil)))
          ((> (row coord) half-height)
           (cond ((< (column coord) half-width) 3)
                 ((> (column coord) half-width) 4)
                 (t nil)))
          (t nil))))

(defparameter +grid-width+ 101)
(defparameter +grid-height+ 103)

(defun part-1 ()
  (let ((quadrants
          (#M(lambda (coord)
               (quadrant +grid-width+ +grid-height+ coord))
             (#M(lambda (robot)
                  (step-n +grid-width+ +grid-height+ (first robot) (second robot) 100))
                (scan 'list (read-input (input-pathname)))))))
    (* (collect-sum (#M(lambda (q) (if (eql q 1) 1 0)) quadrants))
       (collect-sum (#M(lambda (q) (if (eql q 2) 1 0)) quadrants))
       (collect-sum (#M(lambda (q) (if (eql q 3) 1 0)) quadrants))
       (collect-sum (#M(lambda (q) (if (eql q 4) 1 0)) quadrants)))))

We’re told that the robots form a picture of a Christmas tree after a certain number of steps. This was a bit tricky to figure out, but I figured that if the robots were clumped together in a picture, the number of empty rows and columns elsewhere would be maximized. Robots return to their starting point every 101 x 103 steps, so we only need to check the first 10403 steps.

(defun occupied-row? (locs row)
  (find row locs :test #’= :key #’row))

(defun occupied-column? (locs column)
  (find column locs :test #’= :key #’column))

(defun score (locs)
  (+ (collect-length
       (choose-if #’not
         (#Moccupied-row? (series locs) (scan-range :from 0 :below +grid-height+))))
     (collect-length
       (choose-if #’not
         (#Moccupied-column? (series locs) (scan-range :from 0 :below +grid-width+))))))

(defun part-2 ()
  (let ((robots (read-input (input-pathname))))
    (caar
     (sort
      (collect ’list
        (#M(lambda (n)
             (cons n (score (map ’list (lambda (robot)
                                         (step-n +grid-width+ +grid-height+ 
                                                 (first robot) (second robot) n))
                                 robots))))
           (scan-range :from 0 :below (* +grid-width+ +grid-height+))))
      #’> :key #’cdr))))

The governor of Florida – Ron DeSantis – says he wants to end the most odious of all taxes, that applied as rent which a “homeowner” must pay in order to avoid being evicted from what isn’t his home – even if he paid off the mortgage – by dint of that fact. The tax […]

The post Ron DeSantis Wants to End Rent-Paying by Homeowners appeared first on EPautos - Libertarian Car Talk.