In my opinion, a very lucky man. (Link)

A buyer's agent drove up. He says he has a client who wants to make an offer on the property. I asked him how much and he said he'd like to sit down and discuss it. I told him he better say a number or turn around and leave.

Well ... he told me. I almost sat down right there on the driveway. 'Somebody' wants this place at over three times what I've got invested in it. We went inside to discuss details over coffee. The wife was ready to sign right there on the spot. If that number is real we won't ever have to worry about money again.

We've been planning and preparing to move closer to our kids ... and I really am getting too old for this kind of lifestyle. The property I have under development will be finished between September and December. It's still a hardhat area and a little too soon for even limited occupancy. I say this as my Army brother has to have a roof over his head too.

I guess if we have to we can move down to Texas for a while. Moving sucks. Was hoping for just one last bounce ... but we'd have to do two if this thing happens in a hurry.

Cross your fingers for us!!

Uh oh! Grandpa is "McConnelling" again! 

Fly by wire computer controlled flight systems and controls; what could go wrong ?

Quote:On the 23rd of February 2008, a Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit crashed just seconds after take-off. This mistake ended up becoming the most expensive mistake in the history of aviation, with costs approaching $2 billion dollars in damages. So, what happened?

This story is wild.

Colorado ranchers tampered with NOAA weather instruments to reduce reported rainfall in order to collect more federal drought relief money.

But, then their co-conspirator escaped from prison.

Quote:Two southeastern Colorado ranch owners were recently sentenced to pay $6.6 million to resolve federal charges that they damaged or altered rain gauges in an effort to get paid for worsening drought conditions.

By preventing the rain gauges from accurately measuring precipitation, the men aimed to increase the amount of money they could receive from the federal government, according to court documents.

Patrick Esch, 72, and Ed Dean Jagers, 62, both of Springfield, received short prison sentences - Esch two months and Jagers six. They also were ordered to pay a combined $3.1 million in restitution - the estimated amount of fraudulently inflated funds they received from the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation. As well, they agreed to pay a combined $3.5 million to settle the allegations.

The cases against Esch and Jager included civil allegations and criminal charges accusing the men of making false statements and defrauding the federal government, in addition to the physical tampering of the rain gauges.

"Hardworking farmers and ranchers depend on USDA crop insurance programs, and we will not allow these programs to be abused," U.S. Attorney for the District of Colorado Cole Finegan stated in a press release.  "This case also shows the full measure of justice that can be achieved when our office uses both civil and criminal tools to protect vital government programs."



The Jager and Esch plea agreements describe two other people who were involved in the conspiracy. Those two people were not identified.

The group allegedly damaged rain gauges located in Springfield, Ordway, La Junta, Walsh, and Ellicott, Colorado, and others in Syracuse, Coolidge, and Elkhart, Kansas. Wires were cut, funnels to rain collectors were filled with silicone, holes drilled or punched in collectors, parts of collectors were disassembled, and objects such as cake pans or pie tins were placed over the gauges during rainstorms. The incidents occurred between July 2016 and June 2017.

The affected gauges are part of the Automated Surface Observing System operated by the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. There are more than 900 of the units nationwide. ASOS "serves as the nation's primary surface weather observing network," according to the NWS.



The scheme was designed to benefit Jagers through his crop insurance, the Rainfall Index Annual Forage Insurance Plan, which is one of several agriculture subsidies administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Federal Crop Insurance Program.

Federal crop insurance is typically sold through private insurance companies who are subsequently reimbursed by the federal government. The Rainfall Index plan covers annual crops and "is focused on the amount of precipitation, not on actual crop production," as described by prosecutors in a case document. "This means that a farmer can receive a payment when precipitation is below the historical normal level even if the relevant farmland suffers no loss in productivity."

Jager filed claims on the falsified lower precipitation measurements, thereby increasing the benefits received from his crop insurance policy. In return for their rain gauge activities, Esch and the two unidentified co-conspirators received payouts, as outlined in the plea agreements.

Incidentally, one of the co-conspirators turned on the group and extorted Esch in particular. The unidentified male threatened to expose the entire enterprise to authorities in exchange for Esch paying the man's bond for release from jail and giving several five-figure payments to the man's girlfriend. Esch, according to his plea agreement, even shrugged off the man's admitted theft of an all-terrain vehicle from Esch in exchange for the man's silence. 

In August of 2023, a month before Jager and Esch reached their plea agreements with prosecutors, this unidentified male co-conspirator escaped from prison. This triggered a nationwide manhunt and caused Esch and his family "to go into hiding," as stated in a court document. Two weeks after the escape, the co-conspirator was found dead.

Prior to reaching the settlements with prosecutors, Jager and Esch faced between 30 and 46 months in prison based on the charges against them.

Both Jager and Esch were ordered to begin serving their prison time on January 25 - Jager at a federal prison in Florence and Esch at another in Englewood.

Additionally, Jager and Esch both engaged in previous litigation against the federal government regarding conflicts over federal subsidies, according to public documents.

I seen this image (painting) the other day that captured my eye.

Martin Johnson Heade, Cattleya Orchid and Three Hummingbirds, 1871, oil on wood, National Gallery of Art, Gift of The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation.


Three hummingbirds, a Sappho Comet (green with a yellow throat and brilliant red tail feathers) and two Brazilian Amethysts (green with pink throats); A hummingbird nest.

The Cattleya orchid, a bright pinkish-purple flower that is much sought after by orchid collectors and is found in the wild only in Brazil.

Quote:An American Naturalist

American painter Martin Johnson Heade (1819 – 1904) specialized in landscapes, seascapes, and still lifes during his long career. Born the son of a farmer in rural Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Heade began to paint in his late teens after he received art training from a neighbor. At age twenty-four, Heade launched a career as a portrait painter and spent the next fifteen years traveling around the United States and Europe in search of commissions. He was nearly forty years old when he began to paint the New England coastline and salt marshes, subjects whose light and atmosphere would preoccupy him for several years.

Heade began painting hummingbirds in 1862. He had long been fascinated by the tiny birds’ quivering movements and jewel-like plumage. The next year, in 1863, he journeyed to Brazil on the first of three expeditions he made to South and Central America. At that time many artists and scientists undertook similar trips to study, draw, and document the exotic plants and animals of the lush tropical rain forests. Heade was particularly interested in the many types of hummingbirds in Brazil, as only the ruby-throated species was found in the northeastern United States. In Brazil, he began a series of small pictures called “The Gems of Brazil,” which depicts the great variety of hummingbirds in landscape settings.

In the 1870s, after his final visit to the tropics, Heade lived in New York City. There, relying on his memory as well as on the nature studies he made during his travels, he began to paint another series of hummingbirds with orchids in their natural habitat. This group of works poetically combines Heade’s interests in botany, birds, and landscape. Cattleya Orchid and Three Hummingbirds is a dazzling example of his inventive compositions.



Martin Johnson Heade (PDF)

Just sad and embarrassing. I am shocked MSDNC actually let this out.

(03-10-2024, 08:48 AM)Ninurta Wrote:

(03-10-2024, 03:41 AM)Infolurker Wrote: This is the future of Policing in America.

As far as I know, police employment of drones against civilians is still illegal in Virginia. The next county over bought one several years ago, and has never been able to fly it because of state law making that illegal...

https://cha.house.gov/press-releases?id=...7D52B3674C

Quote:Chairman Loudermilk Publishes Never-Before Released Anthony Ornato Transcribed Interview
March 8, 2024
WASHINGTON - Today, Committee on House Administration's Subcommittee on Oversight Chairman Barry Loudermilk (GA-11) released a transcribed interview the January 6 Select Committee conducted with President Trump's former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Anthony Ornato, which shows President Donald Trump pushed for 10,000 National Guard troops to protect the nation’s capital.

The interview also shows White House frustration with slow deployment of assistance. The Select Committee conducted this interview in January of 2022, but never released it.

Following Mollie Hemingway's reporting, Chairman Loudermilk released the following statement:

“The former J6 Select Committee apparently withheld Mr. Ornato’s critical witness testimony from the American people because it contradicted their pre-determined narrative," said Chairman Loudermilk. "Mr. Ornato's testimony proves what Mr. Meadows has said all along, President Trump did in fact offer 10,000 National Guard troops to secure the U.S. Capitol, which was turned down.

"This is just one example of important information the former Select Committee hid from the public because it contradicted what they wanted the American people to believe. And, this is exactly why my investigation is committed to uncovering all the facts, no matter the outcome.”

Click here to read Ornato's full transcribed interview.
Original reporting by Mollie Hemmingway in The Federalist reveals the January 6 Select Committee suppressed exonerating testimony of President Trump's push for the National Guard on January 6, 2021. The Select Committee falsely claimed they had "no evidence" to support Trump officials' claims the White House had asked for 10,000 National Guard troops. Ornato's interview proves this was false.

Read the full article here.

Top Takeaways:

1. A January 6 committee staffer asked Ornato, “When it comes to the National Guard statement about having 10,000 troops or any other number of troops, do you recall any discussion prior to the 6th about whether and how many National Guard troops to deploy on January 6th?” Ornato surprised the committee by noting he did recall a conversation between Meadows and Bowser: “He was on the phone with her and wanted to make sure she had everything that she needed,” Ornato told investigators.
    
   
2. Meadows “wanted to know if she need any more guardsmen,” Ornato testified. “And I remember the number 10,000 coming up of, you know, ‘The president wants to make sure that you have enough.’ You know, ‘He is willing to ask for 10,000.’ I remember that number. Now that you said it, it reminded me of it. And that she was all set. She had, I think it was like 350 or so for intersection control, and those types of things not in the law enforcement capacity at the time.”  Ornato was correct. Bowser declined the offer, asking only for a few hundred National Guard and requiring them to serve in a very limited capacity. 
    
   
3. Bowser’s decision to decline help from the White House did not end the Trump team’s efforts to secure troops ahead of the protest. When the D.C. mayor declined Trump’s offer of 10,000 troops, Ornato said the White House requested a “quick reaction force” out of the Defense Department in case it was needed.
    
   
4. Once the Capitol was breached, the Trump White House pushed for immediate help from Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller and grew frustrated at the slow deployment of that help, according to the testimony. “So then I remember the chief saying, ‘Hey, I’m calling secretary of defense to get that [quick reaction force] in here,” Ornato said. Later he said, “And then I remember the chief telling Miller, ‘Get them in here, get them in here to secure the Capitol now.'”
    
   
5. Cheney and her committee falsely claimed they had “no evidence” to support Trump officials’ claims the White House had communicated its desire for 10,000 National Guard troops. In fact, an early transcribed interview conducted by the committee included precisely that evidence from a key source. The interview, which Cheney attended and personally participated in, was suppressed from public release until now.
   

Quote:AI drone that could hunt and kill people built in just hours by scientist 'for a game'
News
By Keumars Afifi-Sabet
published 2 days ago
The scientist who configured a small drone to target people with facial recognition and chase them at full speed warns we have no defenses against such weapons.
 
Comments (3)


Luis Wenus, an entrepreneur and engineer, incorporated AI and facial recognition into the small drone so it could chase people down at full speed. (Image credit: simonkr via Getty Images)


It only takes a few hours to configure a small, commercially available drone to hunt down a target by itself, a scientist has warned.
Luis Wenus, an entrepreneur and engineer, incorporated an artificial intelligence (AI) system into a small drone to chase people around "as a game," he wrote in a post on March 2 on X, formerly known as Twitter. But he soon realized it could easily be configured to contain an explosive payload.

Collaborating with Robert Lukoszko, another engineer, he configured the drone to use an object-detection model to find people and fly toward them at full speed, he said. The engineers also built facial recognition into the drone, which works at a range of up to 33 feet (10 meters). This means a weaponized version of the drone could be used to attack a specific person or set of targets.
Related: 3 scary breakthroughs AI will make in 2024
"This literally took just a few hours to build, and made me realize how scary it is," Wenus wrote. "You could easily strap a small amount of explosives on these and let 100's of them fly around. We check for bombs and guns but THERE ARE NO ANTI-DRONE SYSTEMS FOR BIG EVENTS & PUBLIC SPACES YET."
Wenus described himself as an "open source absolutist," meaning he believes in always sharing code and software through open source channels. He also identifies as an "e/acc" — which is a school of thinking among AI researchers that refers to wanting to accelerate AI research regardless of the downsides, due to a belief that the upsides will always outweigh them. He said, however, that he would not publish any code relating to this experiment.


See more
He also warned that a terror attack could be orchestrated in the near future using this kind of technology. While people need technical knowledge to engineer such a system, it will become easier and easier to write the software as time passes, partially due to advancements in AI as an assistant in writing code, he noted.
Wenus said his experiment showed that society urgently needs to build anti-drone systems for civilian spaces where large crowds could gather. There are several countermeasures that society can build, according to Robin Radar, including cameras, acoustic sensors and radar to detect drones. Disrupting them, however, could require technologies such as radio frequency jammers, GPS spoofers, net guns, as well as high-energy lasers.
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While such weapons haven't been deployed in civilian environments, they have been previously conceptualized and deployed in the context of warfare. Ukraine, for example, has developed explosive drones in response to Russia's invasion, according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
The U.S. military is also working on ways to build and control swarms of small drones that can attack targets. It follows the U.S. Navy's efforts after it first demonstrated that it could control a swarm of 30 drones with explosives in 2017, according to MIT Technology Review.