Jack of Harts

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by on January 19, 2024 at 12:02 am
Posted In: Diaries

We found hyperspace in 2105 and the Great Space Race began. Alliances, nations, corporations, and religions reached out for the stars and humanity spread beyond the Solar System. We learned the answer to one of the oldest questions of all time in 2205. Are we alone? They brought medicines with them that nearly wiped out diseases, and extended the human lifespan into the centuries. They helped us study advanced technologies, and we expanded our colonies hundreds of lightyears from Earth. It was a golden age that many thought would never end.

Jack grew up in a world at peace, his only interests, partying and girls. But then an alien sneak attack killed millions of Americans, and wiped out almost everything and everybody Jack knew. He volunteered to serve and kick the alien scum back to the other side of the galaxy. But the Marines wanted more than people looking for revenge, and cybernetic partners demanded a far higher commitment. If Jack wanted to earn his commission as a Marine Corps fighter pilot, he had to grow up. He had to let himself be forged into something stronger than he’d ever wanted to be. He had to live up to the name of his squadron.

The Republic of Texas Marine Corps Fighter Attack Squadron 112. The Cowboys.

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Rob Reiner

by on December 15, 2025 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I’ve seen a great many movies Rob Reiner had a hand in. I have almost always liked them. He was a gifted creator and I’m sorry to find out he is dead. Killed. Murdered. By a member of his own family if the early reports are right. His own son.

The reports of his son’s various instabilities have gone back for years, to the point that many people said his name the moment they heard Rob and his wife were murdered. Drugs. Physiological disorders. They had all the money in the world. They could send him to rehab multiple times a year. They could do everything for their son except fix him. The reasons for that are many. Sometimes the sick person doesn’t want to be helped. Sometimes they want help but the help doesn’t stick. Some people are simply incapable of functioning in society. It would appear that their son may be one of them, and there is every chance he will now spend the rest of his life in prison because of it. Or he may be found not guilty due to insanity and be released into society again.

And both of those options are the greatest cruelty we can inflict on someone. We must find another way to care for the mentally ill amongst us. Something between abandoning them to homelessness or the long term prison sentence they get when they do something crazy horrible and kill someone. We need some form of long term care facility for those people who simply cannot function in a civil society. I don’t know where the line is. I don’t know how exactly we should do it. I don’t have the answers. And I definitely don’t want to see people having their freedom taken away because someone simply doesn’t like what they do, say, think, or believe.

But there are a great many mothers and fathers who have a child that they have tried to help again and again and again. For years, and nothing works. They’re still unstable and dangerous, and the parents know this. People who see a picture of their son having just murdered someone and know in their hearts that it is true. Not even being surprised about it. There must be something we can offer parents in a position like that. A place they can send the child they cannot fix, in hopes that someone else can. Or if not, at least keep them stable enough that they are not a danger to society.

The cruelest thing we can do to both the parents and the children caught in this cycle is to abandon them. It results in dead parents and dead children, and often dead people who have nothing to do with any of them, far too many times. We must find a way to help them. But I do not know what exact way it is.

For now, for today, we mourn the death of Rob Reiner and his wife. Reportedly killed by the child they could not fix with all the wealth in the world. This is a tragedy in every sense of the word, and I mourn for everyone hurt by it today.

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Terror Attacks

by on December 14, 2025 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Three major terror attacks have hit the news today. All happened yesterday, across the world. Australia. America. Syria. In Syria they were targeting American troops. In Australia and America they attacked Jewish civilians in the most civilian of all places. At a university taking exams in America. On a beach celebrating the beginning of Hanukkah in Australia.

The attacker in Syria appears to be from ISIS if what I’ve read is accurate.

We don’t know anything about the attacker in America yet. They arrested him but won’t tell us anything about him. We know he shouted something as he started his attack but we don’t know what. That usually means he is from some protected class that the politicians are trying to support, but not always. We will find out in time.

The attackers in Australia were a father and son team who took rifles onto the beach and just started shooting as many Jews as they could. Because it seems killing Jews is a father and son bonding experience in certain cultures.

Politicians across the world have used their positions to make it easier for people to do this. This must stop. If it doesn’t stop, it is the end of civilization as we know it. And it could be even if it is stopped. This is a civilization-ending threat. And I’m very much afraid that is the whole point of it.

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Babylon 5 and Crusade

by on December 13, 2025 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I have completed my Babylon 5 run. Not the main series. It’s not the designated time for me to do another main series run. But I’d finally collected all of the other Babylon 5 stories. The movies. Legend of the Rangers. Crusade. And the newest Babylon 5 movie that just came out last year or so. So I watched them all and I liked it.

Legend of the Rangers was a bit rough, and the less said about kung fu starships the better. I think it had heart though, and I would have loved to see where it went. Crusade I got to see enough of it to think that I would have liked to see more. It was also very rough, and I could see where the suits really got in there to make the corporate TV stuff. I watched it in the Chronological order, so I got to see the uniform shift and then back to the nice uniforms. And I can see all the “adventure TV” the suits wanted. The single biggest problem of Crusade IMHO was an overuse of CG. Babylon 5 masked that by having real sets and using the green screens as backdrops. Crusade went so many places that the green screens were doing all the work. They are nice, but it is too easy to make them appear divorced from the actors. The movies had the same problem. Nothing is truly as good as a good set to shoot on.

I enjoyed my run through the Babylon 5 side materials. I wish we’d gotten more of each. And I hope the newest movie is a sign of more things to come. JMS is an amazing creator and a gifted writer and I’ve never disliked anything he was part of creating. I want to see more, and I very much hope I will get to see more from him.

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The Great Satan

by on December 12, 2025 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Elected leaders call their nation the Great Satan.

They say they are at war. That their nation is under attack.

That their enemies should be made unwelcome anywhere. Silenced if they won’t shut up on their own.

And when their enemies are shot, the leaders say there is no room for violence in politics.

But their followers cheer the shootings. Reenact them. Or Preenact them.

It is a tale as old as time in nations that have fallen to the various Socialist movements of the last century.
National Socialist. Soviet Socialist. Communist.
Names like Hitler and Stalin and Mao Zedong killed millions of their own citizens after they took power.

But it’s rarely the elected officials that pull the triggers. It’s the people under them who do it. Their followers. And once their followers have killed enough people to put the leaders in power, the leaders have the followers killed so they won’t threaten the new leaders. Nobody kills more Socialists than other Socialists do because they can never abide another flavor of socialist in power in their countries.

It’s the way Socialist revolutions work. They always some name for the nation they want to get rid of. Something that will drive their people to fight. They whip them up, send them out, and watch the chaos that they want to unfold all so they can offer to fix it, if someone will just give them the power to do it. And that is when the true terror begins.

Remember that.

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Eight Billion?

by on December 11, 2025 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

We know of one billion in funds that were taken by the Somali groups.

And those who did the research say there is much more. They just scratched the surface and say there are probably billions more they have not found yet.

Some estimate that they took eight billion dollars.

That would mean nearly 2,000 dollars from each citizen in Minnesota.

I don’t know if these estimates are accurate, but this is very troubling.

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