Don't hold back.

Life is short.

Say what you mean, mean what you say.

Who are you, really?

This is my 2nd post here so I'm basically a veteran now. 

ATS... DI... R.I.P.

I'm like a forum refugee with trust issues and three backup hard drives. At this point I don't unpack my bags anymore, just leave everything in the U-Haul. 

Anyway, good to see some of you made it here. If this place vanishes too, I'll see you on the dark web or a Discord server run by a guy named IntelJoker. Whichever comes first.  

The B-36 was flying all over my area of Texas; nothing sounds like 6 turning and 4 burning. 


Then the B-47 was made by Boeing and I remember thinking what a weird but beautiful airplane. Next came the BUFF or the B-52.

I went to flight engineer school with the son of a Boeing test pilot who rolled the 707 during a super bowl game.. The pilot nearly lost his job because the engineers were afraid in a roll you could sling an engine off the wing of the 707...That is what the son told me... I found that hard to believe and have never been able to confirm the story. I knew Tex the Chief pilot for Boeing  had rolled the aircraft over a speed boat race which helped sell the 707.

Given the right altitude and deck angle I always figured I could roll any aircraft as a bird does not care if it is right side up or dirty side up as long as there is a positive amount of "G" loading on the wing. . I did airshows at some of our local fly-ins with a Super Swift and never crashed , "Ta Da" however the first time I tried to do a low level roll in the Boeing 727 with no flaps I nearly crashed; without major rudder input I would have hit the simulated dirt.. Roll rate clean ( no flaps) was terrible at 250 knots in clean configuration.. The roll was attempted in one of our full motion simulators at the airline. I continued to mess around with doing what I considered fun weird stuff with the 727 but that bitch did not like it; otherwise the 727 (Iron maiden) would save your butt if you knew what to do in a given situation. 280 knots with 25 degrees nose up was the best speed to roll the 727 clean unless you were using some flaps which would enabled the actual ailerons on the wings to become operative. Flaps 2 you get the leading edge devices 2,3, 6 and 7 slats plus partial ailerons but you are speed restricted.
 
A lot of stuff happens when the flaps are extended but you never get full Aileron control until flaps 5 and beyond. It is designed that way to prevent wing bending/twisting at high speed aileron use. Lessons learned from the B-47 and B-52. 

OK a brief history on how we got jets and how a company bet the farm on an Idea.

https://www.rtx.com/news/2026/02/18/fast...the-future

Quote:Fast-tracking the fighter jet engine of the future

How Pratt & Whitney is using digital tools to speed development of its adaptive engine



How digital helps meet demand
Digital design addresses communication problems that have historically hindered engine development. On a typical program, as many as 1,500 engineers would work with hundreds of vendors across dozens of software platforms and even paper documents. They had no way to combine their information into a single place where everyone could see it.
Pratt & Whitney fixed that problem through a digital collaborative environment. Engineers now have a dashboard-like interface where teams can share information and work together in real time. Their goal was to develop XA103 in a way that would reduce errors, identify problems earlier, shorten turnaround times and improve communication between internal teams, vendors and the Air Force.
The digital collaborative environment takes decades of computer-aided design work that’s been happening across the company and brings them together for greater results.
“What is happening in the digital transformation that we are going through now,” Johnson said, “is that we’re having a more concerted effort to connect some of those digital tools to have them optimize with each other.”
The team completed the program’s detailed design review in early 2025 and is now preparing to build a prototype that will continue to be tested and refined until the engine’s ground test, which is expected in the late 2020s.

https://prd-sc102-cdn.rtx.com/-/media/rt...9d5c4b9275


The digital collaborative workspace is just one way the team is working differently. They’ve also realized time savings by bringing testing and validation earlier in the design process instead of adding test instrumentation after the engine has been designed. 
Another key component of the program is its use of model-based systems, or 3D digital models that contain all the relevant program details and data. This will simplify reporting because years of test data will be neatly stored and easily accessible in the model and make it easier for onboarding teammates mid-project.
“Our current engine is over 2,000 pieces of instrumentation sensors – all with their own little story that goes along with them and why they’re needed. In the past, you’d have somebody at the center of all of that who has lived it,” Seipt said. “Now, even if a new person comes onto the program that hasn’t lived the last four or five years of history with that particular test asset, they can jump right in and have those impact analyses available immediately.”
Model-based systems will help streamline the supply chain as well. Chris Scott, from Pratt & Whitney’s supply chain team, is training roughly 200 suppliers for model-based definition for manufacturing and inspection – a method that includes manufacturing data in a 3D model rather than traditional, hard-copy blueprints. Because the models are machine readable, the supplier doesn’t have to recreate the paper blueprint with their software, which means fewer errors in translation, and they can begin working as soon as they receive the technical data package from Pratt & Whitney.

Industry studies show the time between order receipt and delivery could be cut in half when using model-based technologies.
“There’s a lot of manual handoff of information. Model-based definition for manufacturing and inspection really focuses on automating a lot of those processes,” Scott said. “We want to get away from doing data-mining activities and really focus on making decisions with relevant information in front of us in real time. There’s a lot of opportunity to speed up that process and get to market faster.”
Pratt & Whitney plans to use a digital shop floor that will automate manufacturing – as it’s already doing across several sites including Asheville, North Carolina, for airfoil production and in Oklahoma City for maintenance, repair and overhaul.
Recreating the F119 experience
The move to digital processes has made it easier for the Air Force to collaborate with Pratt & Whitney – something both parties enjoyed in the 1990s, during the development of the F119 engine for the F-22 Raptor.
“They wanted that experience again not only from the performance of the engine but from the interaction with our team,” Johnson said. “We took that to heart as we started this program, and the digital tools have given us a way to step that up.”
The digital collaborative environment allows the Air Force to access program files and provide feedback at any time through a classified system. That transparency, coupled with Pratt & Whitney’s history in military engines, has strengthened trust and shown the team’s commitment to providing new capabilities quickly.
“We’re creating perhaps the most complicated machines on the face of the planet, and yet they are some of the most reliable machines on the planet,” Johnson said. “That’s important because our team is committed to making sure the warfighter has what they need to complete their mission and come home safely. You want to make sure that it’s going to work, and you want to make sure that it’s going to get done on time – Pratt & Whitney is the place that you can get that dependable engine.”

Sounds like we are getting Congress involved, which, depending on who owns them, renegotiation could be quick or take years.

Id imagine there is Chinese money pushing for negotiations. 

Quote:[/url]
Nick Sortor


@nicksortor


 MAJOR BREAKING: The US Supreme Court has just STRUCK DOWN President Trump’s tariff authority,

6-3

SCOTUS just WRECKED our country.

One of the biggest economic comebacks in world history just got thrown in the incinerator.

What a shame.

Quote:
Townhall.com
@townhallcom
[url=https://x.com/townhallcom]
JONATHAN TURLEY: "There's a lot of runway still for the administration..."

"The administration has other tools in its toolbox. It CAN actually impose tariffs under other statutes!"

I am interested in the aging process and try to keep up on the latest longevity findings. This one caught my attention because magic mushrooms seem to be able to delay aging for a time in mice in this pre-clinical study. How it will act on humans is yet to be determined.

"Magic mushrooms rewind aging in mice—could they do the same for humans?"

"A surprising discovery from Emory University shows that psilocin, the active metabolite of psychedelic mushrooms, can delay cellular aging and extend lifespan. Human cells lived over 50% longer, and mice treated with psilocybin not only lived 30% longer but also looked and aged better.

"Emory is actively involved in Phase II and III clinical trials of psilocybin-assisted therapy for depression, and these results suggest we also need to understand psilocybin's systemic effects in aging populations," says Zarrabi. "My hope is also that if psilocybin-assisted therapy is approved as an intervention for depression by the FDA in 2027, then having a better quality of life would also translate into a longer, healthier life."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...223838.htm
----

Fascinating!

Hi all!  I thought it would be fun and educational to share which books we are currently reading, have recently finished, and maybe a sentence or two synopsis, and what we thought of them.  Then we can learn what we are all into, and get some recommendations.

I will start


CURRENTLY
I am reading:

The Selected Letters of HP Lovecraft Vol 3 
Very erudite and shows what Ecclesiastes said is true , there is nothing new under the sun. In our pitifully short human life spans we repeat repeat repeat the sins and idiocies of the past. 



I Just Finished

The Imago Sequence by Laird Barron

Here is a great horror writer at the beginning of his career.  This book harkens back to Thomas Ligotti, HP Lovecraft, and other masters of gnawing eldritch and terrifying cosmic horror.  Highly reccomended!

Attached Files

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I was reading Collected Letters vol 3 by H.P. Lovecraft for the first time this week, and his letters never cease to amaze me how prophetic, and intelligent he was in regards to life on this planet, especially human nature, extrapolated out to aesthetics, politics, and history.  That is to say, 'civilisation.'

Please read this and tell me it is not the spitting image of what is going on right now.  This letter was written about a hundred years ago, in about 1929.

It's main themes are the 'current obsession with quantity and speed vs quality and aesthetics, and learning:

As for democracy-I don't really see much to add to what I said before. The whole thing is as much an illusion as "romantic love"-only it happens to be the illusion of the 20th century instead of the 19th. It is a mere deification of the ethical abstraction of "justice," plus the crude modernistic devotion to quantity as opposed to quality. If made a cardinal principle, it can do nothing but harm to civilisation ....  The evil is very definitely on the increase, and will probably spread until it has lowered our culture to a level scarcely endurable to a  civilised being-unless, by chance, a counter-movement of intellectual-aesthetic aristocracy can somehow manage to coexist with a state of social-political democracy. 

The social-political future of the United States is one of domination by vast economic interests devoted to ideals of material gain, aimless activity, & physical comfort-interests controlled by shrewd, insensitive, & not often well-bred leaders recruited from the standardised herd through a competition of hard wit & practical crafti-ness-a struggle for place & power which will eliminate the true & the beautiful as goals, & substitute the strong, the huge, & the mechanically effective. I'd hate to have descendants living in such a barbarism-a barbarism so tragically different from the old civilisation of New England & Virginia which rightly belongs to this land. Thank God I'm the last of my family-requiescamus in pace!...

If everybody in a nation could be given the mellow culture that characterises the nation's highest thought, there would of course be no need for social classes. But it simply can't be done. There's no way of establishing a set of influences calculated to ensure the high education, emotional refinement, & civilised living of uncounted millions of people doing thousands of different things. Obviously, if a civilisation is to exist, a certain number of individuals must be given a training & environment above the average, with more than the average opportunities for freedom, influence, & self-expression. This is virtually axiomatic except among utterly irrational & ethics-mad communists & I.W.W.'s..

.. At present it cannot be said that the life of any civilised & sensitive man in America is really worth living-except so far as he is able to make an imaginative escape from the encroaching milieu, either into the past of his culture-stream or into a fantastic & hypothetical future of his own dreaming. 

Clods can stand the usurping barbarism very well-it quite expresses their utilitarian minds & stunted personalities-but fully evolved human beings will have to return to the old world unless some-thing can be done toward restoring the civilisation of the new. 

Already the exodus of sensitive men to France & England is becoming marked. The quantity ideal of the overspeeded machine "civilisation" of this continent is too utterly sterile to make the process of consciousness bear-able to anyone of evolved imagination & delicately attuned emotions. There is no reward for keeping alive-no food for the myriad spiritual hungers of the civilised personality. It became that way in later Imperial Rome, & sensitive men had to flee to the Hellenistic East-to Alexandria & Athens, Pegamus & Antioch-in order to find an air that they could breath....
...group of I's becomes strong enough to challenge it. Then the new group wins & reigns until another group gets strong enough to depose & sup-plant it. As long as the humanistic I-element remains a motivating force, democracy cannot exist. WHAT IS NOW MAKING DEMOC-RACY NOT ONLY POSSIBLE BUT SADLY INEVITABLE IS THE DECLINE OF THE HUMANISTIC I-ELEMENT AS THE GROWTH OF THE MACHINE AGE DESTROYS HUMANISM & SPLITS UP THE LIFE OF MEN INTO ROBOT ME-CHANICALISM & ANIMAL SIMPLICITY. HUMANISM & DEMOCRACY CAN-NOT COEXIST

 Democracy means decadence the triumph of the machine over the individual. 

Democracy, we agree, is inevitable in the early machine M age. BUT WHAT THEN? Here is the situation in a nutshell-2100 or 2200 A. D. Huge machine barbarism with incredible physical luxury & a vast ruling class of highly intelligent men trained to think in terms of money, size, speed, profit, & activity for its own sake. 

Technique & machinery so perfected that there are too many intelligent men for the number of directive jobs requiring them; a wealthy surplus trained to think so materially that aesthetic & intellectual traditions will be virtu-ally closed to them. A new aristocracy without the souls of aristocrats. Here is where your common-peepulism breaks down. This aristocracy will be open to all-but who save its own members can mentally qualify? Remember that it was produced by the selection of all the first-rate brains (never a great percentage) in the race. What of the surplus? 

To me it looks very much like the old story of wine, woman, & chance just what you object to in the baser elements of the present aristocracy! You see, history has quite a repetitive tendency, & you can't dodge the order of nature-which is essentially stratified no matter how many ethical illusions you pile on! Of course it is conceivable that even in a machine age a new aristocratic culture might be worked out by the lei-sure class. That would bely both your wishes & my antimachine predictions, but it is possible.

 Given a few generations of enforced leisure through lack of jobs, the wealthy surplus may at last turn to ways of cultivation & try to recapture the art of life the art of being instead of doing, & of enjoying quality instead of quantity. But it will be uphill work, for the lack of traditional background & the standardisation of a mechanised world won't be any myth or joke. Below this administrative & surplus ruling-class there will naturally be a fairly large subordinate-executive or manager class composed of moderate, third-rate intellects.

 This may be an independent stratum made up of rising proletarians, belted by limited brains, or it may be a social appendage of the ruling class, recruited from the occasional inferior minds from which the superior stock will breed. And below this, infinitely varied within itself according to occupation, but virtually brainless because it will be the residue of a selective process, will be the vast industrial proletariat—well-fed, well-housed, well-amused, well-clothed, well-medicated, well-treated, and well-flattered; living its half-animal, half-vegetable round in perfect physical comfort, and with ample leisure for as much diversion as its brains will enable it to enjoy. It will have the privilege of rising as high as it can, but its potentialities of ascent will have long been exhausted. It will be the utter and implicit property of its intelligent masters, free in law and tradition but in fact completely and benevolently enslaved. 



The only place I would disagree with him is that I am not a materalist, and I don't think that our 'ruling class' is that intelligent at all. Maybe they used to be.....
Tune the idiots into their 'smart phones' and 'subscriptions of content' with the illusion of choice, and slowly kill the love of learning , reading, and thinking, and foster blind pursuit of pleasure. Check....

To answer that question we will never know as the shooter after pulling a second pistol shot himself. 

Sometimes all it takes is one brave man to stop evil; this hero was lucky IMO as the shooter had a second hand gun.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/rhod...36415.html

Quote:The trans suspect who opened fire at a Rhode Island ice hockey rink on Monday killed his ex-wife and adult son, authorities said, while his daughter alleged he had a "vendetta" against the family.
Robert Dorgan, 56, fatally shot his ex-wife, Rhonda Dorgan, at the Dennis M. Lynch Arena in Pawtucket as well as his son Aidan Dorgan, who later died at the hospital, North Providence Mayor Charles Lombardi said, according to WCVB.
Three other victims were injured in the shooting, including Linda and Gerald Dorgan, who were the parents of Rhonda Dorgan. Both Linda and Gerald are currently hospitalized in critical condition, according to the outlet.
Rhode Island Ice Rink Shooting Suspect's Gender Identity Was Source Of Past Family Conflict: Docs


Police respond outside the Dennis M. Lynch Arena in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, after the Feb. 16, 2026, shooting. At right is Robert Dorgan, identified by police as the suspect, who died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
(Getty Images)

The third victim was identified as Thomas Geruso, a friend of the Dorgan family, who is also in critical condition.
The shooter, who identified as transgender, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said.
Read On The Fox News App
"I just want to make sure people understand this was one person’s vendetta against their family," Amanda Wallace-Hubbard, Dorgan’s daughter, told WPRI-TV. "We were targeted. This was very specific. It wasn’t random."
Wallace-Hubbard, Robert Dorgan’s daughter from another relationship, said she was with her two young sons and the rest of the family in the stands when the shooting occurred. She described Rhonda as her stepmother and Aidan as her half-brother.
She credited an unidentified good Samaritan with saving her life and those of her sons. The individual is seen tackling Robert Dorgan in footage from the shooting, per WPRI-TV.