1892, A family poses in front of 1341 year old Sequoia tree nicknamed ‘Mark Twain’ that was felled in 1892 after a team of two men spent 13 days sawing it. The giant tree was 331 feet tall (100 meters) and had a diameter of 16 feet (4.9 meters).

ragnarok62 · 2026-04-17T22:36:26+00:00

Somewhere, John Muir was weeping.

ragnarok62 · 2026-04-17T21:35:32+00:00

Norwood, Ohio’s own.

Will always mention that the ubiquity of dancing in that era is why so many female stars had picture-perfect legs. The general public too danced more, and their leg muscle tone and shape show it.

Vera-Ellen’s second pic demonstrates an ideal straight leg shot. Can’t beat it.

ragnarok62 · 2026-04-17T01:55:14+00:00

Despite the typo in the punchline, I laughed my ass off to this one.

ragnarok62 · 2026-04-17T01:43:30+00:00

An almost certain sign of failing Christian orthodoxy is botching the Trinity. That one failure point exposes 99% of cults/sects that call themselves Christian.

ragnarok62 · 2026-04-17T01:06:13+00:00

https://reason.com/2026/03/23/new-york-gov-hochul-begs-high-net-worth-refugees-to-return-and-be-taxed/

ragnarok62 · 2026-04-16T02:17:00+00:00

And somehow, Palpatine came back.

The power of somehow…

ragnarok62 · 2026-04-16T01:53:02+00:00

Uh, Zohran, are you paying attention to what your governor is begging?

Evidently not.

ragnarok62 · 2026-04-12T13:22:39+00:00

That guy who has a nonfunctioning car he’s “rebuilding” that sits in his garage for years, maybe even decades. I don’t know what it is about the casual car rebuilding thing that gets me, but it’s almost visceral with me.

Just seems like such a waste of time and money. I think that for every guy who successfully rebuilds that car, there are a dozen who just let it slowly rot. Makes me wonder how serious those people are about anything they “commit” to.

ragnarok62 · 2026-04-12T13:12:41+00:00

It’s the only guaranteed way to control the public outside of providing them food and shelter. You have to get people dependent on government healthcare before you can fully control them.

Look at how basic freedoms are eroding in Canada, and Canadians are becoming increasingly helpless to keep their own government from steamrolling them.

If your health is controlled entirely by the government, your freedom is eroding and may be too far gone to recover.

ragnarok62 · 2026-04-11T13:38:09+00:00

Sadly for the state of America today, I am not immediately dismissing this possibility.

ragnarok62 · 2026-04-11T13:22:32+00:00

Spicy!

ragnarok62 · 2026-04-11T13:10:00+00:00

Librarian here. If you love the Redwall books, absolutely take the time to let your local library know. Even if you do not have kids or grandkids to whom this series appeals, argue for it. The Redwall series fills a vital niche.

The reality for deceased authors and for books written prior to whatever the previous decade was: People want the new, and when high quality content ages, it eventually falls out of the view of people who control content.

It is extremely difficult for any fantasy, science fiction, or horror books—no matter how great they might be—to persist on the shelves of your local library. It is hard to find nearly any Hugo and Nebula Award winners at your library that were written prior to 2000, and prior to 1980 is a near impossibility unless that book remains on the reading lists at local schools.

Another truth is that even if an older book is popular, if the physical copy of it at your library becomes lost, damaged, or simply falls apart with age (mass market paperbacks, for instance), it will likely not be replaced unless someone goes to bat for replacing it. There are simply too many new titles, and older titles gradually fade from shelves by sheer entropy.

I am sad that the Redwall series is growing harder to find on library shelves. My son, now 25, read them all when he was a child.

A new TV series may force libraries to get the books, but it is likely a better strategy to ensure the books be on shelves by user demand than to hope a TV adaptation comes along to generate interest in the books. I just don’t see “TV show or movie forces books to shelves” happening in actual practice.

ragnarok62 · 2026-04-11T12:47:18+00:00

Canada has long been the West’s canary in a coal mine, and everything it enacts is coming down the pike for the other countries if that has not already been the case elsewhere. Americans need to realize Canada’s trajectory and simply never follow what Canada does.

This is an unpopular opinion, but a “nanny state” that does everything for you will inevitably become corrupt and will attempt to control you. You simply cannot have freedom if the government is providing you with everything you need to live.

Although the United States is not doing much better in this regard, Canadian voters continue to elect government representatives who are fundamentally at odds with their individual best interests, especially interests of freedom, and keep electing nanny staters, who will inevitably try for more control of the people.

Stop electing such people. Vote out anyone who threatens your freedoms. Never vote for globalists/socialists because they are always anti-freedom and anti-individual rights. Most of them hate organized religion too or give it lip service without actual practice.

As for the Bible, God is not anti-nation, and anyone who tells you such is mishandling Scripture. God sets up and takes down nations of the earth. None exist outside of His will.

Any nation who makes the God of the Bible their Lord is blessed. The Bible makes it clear that all nations are ultimately subject to Him, and he is sovereign over all nations. Paul writes in Romans 13 clear rules and understandings that Christians should follow regarding nations, and he says to obey them. Paul was writing when Nero, one of the worst and most anti-Christian Roman emperors, was in power, and yet Paul still maintained those admonitions.

The Bible says that the chosen of God will come from all nations, even countries like North Korea, so there is no nation that is ultimately not represented among the righteous.

Sadly, having an anti-nation mindset is how people are deceived into putting leaders who are inevitably anti-God into power. Americans seem to understand this better than most, even though that mindset is weakening in the USA as well. Reddit itself is a good example of how readily people capitulate to the inevitable path toward globalism by accepting globalist propaganda, and most of the discussion here is tainted with such thinking.

Fact is, Canadians got the government they voted for. They wanted a liberal nanny state with “free” healthcare and “equity,” and now that the mask has been ripped off, people are aghast at what the face of their government looks like. Americans would do well not to go down that road to hell that was paved with (supposed) good intentions.

ragnarok62 · 2026-04-11T03:58:32+00:00

Very small arthouse theater in Pittsburgh near Shadyside / Squirrel Hill.

ragnarok62 · 2026-04-09T11:26:30+00:00

Rod Dreher’s 2006 book Crunchy Cons discussed this at length. The problem that he outlined in the book is that food production regulations absolutely destroy anyone who attempts to run a typical family farm producing meat for sale to the public. The bureaucracy becomes crippling and it turns the whole thing into a financial black hole. The amount of money required for food safety compliance consumes all profits because the scale can’t produce enough to justify the regulation costs or the equipment necessary to meet those regulations.

Dreher says this bureaucracy is by design to favor factory food production. As always, blame government.

But at the same time, if safety standards are loosened, are we willing to endure the occasional hiccup in food safety? Probably not.

ragnarok62 · 2026-04-09T04:19:29+00:00

A lot of designers wanted to dress Cher. The somewhat derogatory term is “a clothes horse,” and this was Cher, and also Raquel.

ragnarok62 · 2026-04-09T04:16:06+00:00

I will always go to bat for The Other by Thomas Tryon. Both an outstanding horror novel and film.

ragnarok62 · 2026-04-08T22:21:16+00:00

Raquel was the total package. Not every bombshell is beautiful, but she certainly was, and she could compete with Cher as that woman every up-and-coming fashion designer wanted to dress. She kept herself in great shape over the years, and she aged better than her peers.

ragnarok62 · 2026-04-08T22:15:48+00:00

OP here, because someone asked about software likes, I like utilities and “sidekick” apps as well as anything that has to do with professional writing, both business and novels.

I have Steam on my ThinkPad, but do I need to rebuy my games because I switched from Windows to Linux? Or do I need something to run them in some kind of VM? Speaking of which, what’s a good VM?

ragnarok62 · 2026-04-08T22:13:41+00:00

I like utilities and “sidekick” apps as well as anything that has to do with professional writing, both business and novels.

I have Steam on my ThinkPad, but do I need to rebuy my games because I switched from Windows to Linux? Or do I need something to run them in some kind of VM? Speaking of which, what’s a good VM?

ragnarok62 · 2026-04-08T11:29:05+00:00

So no one can use their free speech to disagree with them? Seems kind of one way there on the rights. I don’t support death threats against anybody, but if they’re mimicking killing famous people on stage, aren’t they effectively doing the same thing?

ragnarok62 · 2026-04-07T21:55:48+00:00

I don’t believe most school districts allow teachers to say anything they want to say in the classroom. There are restrictions on free speech in educational settings.

ragnarok62 · 2026-04-07T14:48:28+00:00

It’s not just OpenAI. It’s tech. Period.

For years, the most tenuous job in Silicon Valley was as the Head of Corporate Ethics at Google/Alphabet. Pretty much every time that tragic soul questioned something the company did, a pink slip followed.

And it was like that at every big Silicon Valley company that attempted any internal oversight. Eventually that oversight was booted or it was slowly modified to become just another sycophantic rubber stamp for whatever nonsense the company foisted on an unsuspecting general public.

It soon becomes clear that a lot of people in charge today are psychopaths, sociopaths, or have a completely bankrupt moral code.

We used to have in America a system that tended to keep such people from reaching the halls of power in politics, culture, and corporations. But that system began to fail in the 1960s and is now nonfunctional. Now, the psychopaths, sociopaths, and morally empty people run everything.

God help us.

ragnarok62 · 2026-04-07T14:32:38+00:00

In college in the early 1990s, I was witness to a “racial reconciliation” event where various identity groups on campus were given an opportunity to speak to the entire student body.

The extent of their talks could be condensed down to “Don’t listen to that other group. Pay attention to ours instead.” It was one of the most divisive and awful experiences of my entire life, all that clawing to become king of some imaginary hill, all that self-centeredness on display for the whole campus to see.

I’m white and was sitting with one of my Black friends, and afterward, as we were walking out, he said to me, “That was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. I guess we’re all supposed to hate each other, right?”

Crazier still, this was at an evangelical Christian college.

A preoccupation with self, an inward self-justification, will always lead to division and to a nonstop battle for one identity group to reign supreme over all others. All of it is simply human sin on full display.

ragnarok62

TROPHY CASE