Archive of entries posted on 24th August 2020

Monday Night Open Thread

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I fell into a “Billy the Kid” rabbit hole on the Internet this past weekend, and found some videos and interviews that had information I hadn’t heard before.

For instance, did you know that Billy the Kid sometimes wore a dress? That, a new version of details of the killing, a new reason for it, and a few other tidbits were gleaned from a pair of videos I saw.

How much truth to them? Dunno. The person interviewed is the grandson of a man who was at the Pete Maxwell ranch on July 14, 1881, and helped bury Billy the Kid, so if the grandfather told his grandson the truth, and if the grandson (the interviewee) remembers it correctly, this is something I hadn’t previously heard. And, it actually fits — or at least doesn’t not fit — with items that are not in dispute.

Here’s the short version of the interview, which I found interesting.

[The YouTube]

If you want the full version, which includes a lot of stuff not related to the infamous Henry McCarty AKA Billy the Kid, you can see that here. It’s interesting in other ways, but takes over an hour.

Do you have something you’d like to share? A link? A joke? Some words of wisdom? A topic to discuss? It’s our nightly Open Thread, and you have the floor.

Forgot To Send Lawyers

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Florida. Again.

Customs Agents Arrest Pilots of Learjet Loaded with Weapons
Gordon Gilbert / ainonline / August 20, 2020

U.S. Customs agents—alerted about a suspicious business jet at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida—boarded a Venezuelan-registered Bombardier Learjet 55 (YV3441) on August 15 and found it loaded with nearly 90 weapons, 63,000 rounds of ammunition, and more than $20,000 in U.S. currency.

Re: the money: That’s it?

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers seized 18 assault/bolt action rifles with optics, six shotguns, 58 semiautomatic pistols, and nearly $2,700 in endorsed checks, in addition to the cash. Two Venezuelan national pilots were arrested and charged with smuggling cash and goods from the U.S., and illegally possessing firearms as aliens.

I imagine the investigators are still laughing over the endorsed checks.

The CBP raid occurred shortly before the aircraft’s planned departure. According to agents, the crew of the twinjet listed their destination as the Caribbean island of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, but the aircraft’s ultimate destination was believed to be Venezuela.

Authorities became suspicious of the aircraft after tracking its flight history over the last several months and noting the filing of a different tail number on flight plans.

Masterminds!

U.S. government authorities had tracked suspicious flight activity of this Learjet 55 before the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol raided the aircraft and found it loaded with nearly 90 weapons, 63,000 rounds of ammunition, and more than $20,000 in U.S. currency. (Photo: U.S. CBP)

Cool Graphic of the Day — Add This to the 2020 list

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Robotic Telescope Finds Closest Known Asteroid To Fly by Earth
Whitney Clavin, California Institute of Technology / August 19, 2020 / Phys.org

On August 16, the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), a robotic survey camera located at Palomar Observatory near San Diego, spotted an asteroid that had, just hours earlier, traveled only 1,830 miles (2,950 kilometers) above Earth’s surface. Designated 2020 QG, it is the closest known asteroid to fly by Earth without impacting the planet. The previous known record-holder is asteroid 2011 CQ1, discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey in 2011, which passed above Earth about 1,550 miles (2,500 kilometers) higher than 2020 QG.

Asteroid 2020 QG is about 10 to 20 feet (3 to 6 meters) across, or roughly the size of an SUV, so it was not big enough to do any damage even if it had been pointed at Earth; instead, it would have burned up in our planet’s atmosphere.

“The asteroid flew close enough to Earth that Earth’s gravity significantly changed its orbit”…

Huh.

That was about the same day that former FBI agent Kevin Clinesmith admitted forging an email for a FISA application to continue wiretapping Carter Page — and, by the FBI’s two-hop rule, Donald Trump, too — both during the campaign and after the inauguration. Maybe the whole trajectory of the attempted coup is changing.