Social Aggression Vs Asocial Aggression.

 

By now y'all have seen the video of that white couple in Cincinnati that got set upon by that sub saharan nubian mob and got the crap beat out of them.  The cops finally snagged 3 of them at last reading and they are out on some shockingly low bail(Not surprised really, it is a minority democrat city afterall) but such violence is becoming more prevalent and I personally will not go downtown ATL except at daylight and that is reluctantly.  Because I know there are many "GFZ" in the city and if I have to defend myself against one of the protected class, it will not go well for me. so to use a I think it was Jeff Cooper that said it, I know my Dad did, "Don't go where stupid people hang out, and especially where crowds of stupid people hang out, they can turn into a mob before you know it and it will suck to be you."  

I got this article from "AOM" .  I saw the article and thought it would be pertinent to what is going on here.  I have commented that in the times gone past, 20 years longer or more people would just rob you, now they would kill you just for sport or "street cred". More people are borderline feral, they are totally soulless and will quickly use violence to support their desires.  Now with the violence that the antifa movement uses in attacking what they consider "hate speech", the violence that antifa uses is mostly "social violence" used to dominate, there is also the possibility that the violence can change from mostly intimidation to serious harm.  It is important to understand the dynamics of mob violence and how fast it can change.



Editor’s note: The following article was adapted from When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake by Tim Larkin.

Dulce bellum inexpertis. (War is sweet to those who have never experienced it.) —Pindar

You don’t have to look very hard on YouTube to find videos of long-suffering kids reaching their breaking point with bullies and finally fighting back. The scenes vary in geography, gender, and the size and age difference of the kids involved, but each scene generally goes down the same way.
The video picks up mid-conflict. The bully is in full aggressor mode: stalking after the victim, cutting them off, pushing them, taunting them, and getting in their envelope of personal space, sometimes looming over them like a beast. The bullying victim is folded over, trying to make themselves smaller. Or they’re turned to the side, as if subconsciously hoping the teasing will just go away. Sometimes they’re backed against a wall, as if they are hoping to melt into it.
Then, suddenly, there is a shift. The victim stops, stiffens, and bows up. There is going to be a fight. The bully is almost always caught off-guard when this happens. Bullies typically pick their victims based on the likelihood that they won’t fight back. The fight might happen right then and there, it might have to wait until after school. It doesn’t really matter, though, because once the bully’s victim has had enough and finally decides to defend himself, the decision ripples through the playground or the schoolyard like a shockwave. The other kids start getting super excited. If the fight is going down after school, it’s all anyone can talk about. They can’t wait. If it happens right there in the moment, the kids immediately encircle the pair chanting, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” In the lead-up to the actual physical confrontation, the bully will often start talking trash in an attempt to humiliate or intimidate and regain the upper hand in his relationship to the victim. If the victim responds, it’s to show that the bully’s taunts aren’t going to work this time. They’re going to have it out once and for all.
Fights likes these are instances of what I call “social aggression.” They are quasi-violent scenarios that stem from conflict and jockeying within the social hierarchy. I call them quasi-violent not because I don’t take them seriously, but rather because they don’t always involve violence as we understand it — sometimes it’s just talking or threatening — and they’re less about physically destroying the other person than they are about asserting social dominance, gaining some advantage, or elevating social status. That’s why people instinctively want to gather around and watch these types of conflicts, because they want to see what happens.
Kids get so excited about these playground fights because there is valuable social information to be gleaned from them. Both fighters’ positions in the school’s social hierarchy are in flux. The bully occupies a position of power, and when his target finally fights back, that means his position is being challenged. When it’s all over, will there be a change in social standing? Will the bully get his comeuppance and be reduced to a pariah and a laughingstock? Will his victim be elevated to the position of nerd hero or defender of the meek and helpless? Or will the bully get the upper hand and the social status remain the same? This kind of aggression isn’t exactly tolerated — it’s the kind teachers usually break up and punish, after all — but it doesn’t destroy the social order in the school, either. Afterward, the kids will be talking about it excitedly in the lunchroom for the rest of the week.
And then there is the other way these playground fights and bully takedowns can go. These are the kinds of incidents that do not show up on YouTube. The victim has had enough, but he has only stiffened and bowed up in his mind. He — and it’s almost always a he — has no interest in fighting back at the center of a ring of classmates. Instead, he opens his backpack, pulls out a revolver and shoots his bully in the head at point blank range. Do you want to guess what happens next? There is no excited chanting for a fight. No one is hoisting the bully’s victim on their shoulders and marching him triumphantly around the schoolyard. There is only complete and total pandemonium. Everybody runs and no one looks back. There is no social information to be gathered here.
That is the rough outline of any number of the school and workplace shootings that have dominated our news over the last fifteen years, and become (along with ISIS-style terrorism) the scariest, most urgent form of violence we face today. I call violence of this nature “asocial.” Asocial violence is violence that has nothing to do with communication or reshuffling the pecking order. Asocial violence is nothing like that: it doesn’t try to change the order, it tries to wreck the order. It’s the kind of violent interaction we instinctively run from — the kind in which there is only mayhem, death, misery, and horror. (The knockout game is asocial violence.) At the end of the day, all violence has the potential to be a matter of life or death. The difference with asocial violence is that death and destruction are not its by-products; they are its purpose.
It is essential we understand this distinction between social aggression and asocial violence right now. Social aggression is about competition; asocial violence is about destruction. Competition has rules; destruction has none. Social aggression is about communication — implicitly with status indicators but explicitly with lots of taunting and posturing. There is no talking with asocial violence. Open your mouth and you are likely to eat a lightning-fast punch or a jacketed bullet traveling at 2,500 feet per second.

How to Tell the Difference Between Social Aggression and Asocial Violence

If there is one reliable way to distinguish between the two kinds of violent encounter, it is the presence or absence of communication. If a man comes upon you from behind as you’re walking home from dinner and he puts a gun to your head and says, “Give me your wallet or I’ll blow your brains out,” that is fundamentally an act of social aggression. It may feel asocial, because you feel powerless when you’re taken by surprise, but how you feel has nothing to do with whether a situation is social or asocial. What matters is the intent and the action of the attacker. In this scenario, his primary motive is not to destroy, it’s to dominate. He’s using the threat of violence to make it easier to get what he wants. If the situation were asocial, if what he wanted to do was destroy you, you would not hear any words. You probably wouldn’t even hear the hammer cock before the trigger got pulled and the bullet left the chamber.
Social aggression doesn’t wear off after adolescence; fast-forward twelve years to a bar fight between rival fraternity members and the outline is the same. It’s still two guys exhibiting their inner-male aggression, thrashing, ranting, raving. It’s the silverback gorilla banging his chest. It’s the butting of rams’ heads. It’s the clashing of male grizzly bears. These are all bids for a kind of social status, and they’re all meant to be witnessed.
The schoolyard brawl and the bar fight aren’t usually life-or-death situations. Rather, they’re a form of primitive communication. It’s a social display that communicates, “I’m really agitated. I’m mad. I want to run this other guy off my territory.” And the other guy is responding, “I’m not willing to be run off my territory. I’m going to stand my ground.” The intent is not to inflict grievous bodily harm. It’s only to exert social dominance.
In these situations of quasi-violence, people rarely punch their opponent’s throat or kick them in the testicles or gouge out their eyes. They rarely try to inflict permanent damage. If you were to look at such a confrontation simply from the perspective of causing bodily harm, you’d call it wildly inefficient. I have studied video of countless epic bar brawls that have gone on for ten or fifteen minutes that left the combatants bloody and bruised, but also conscious, uninjured, and able to walk away. I’ve also seen guys beat each other senseless and then hang out afterward — like it was something they just needed to get out of their systems.
Many of us know how to act like jerks and add fuel to the fire, how to turn an argument into a shouting match that turns into a fistfight. It can be scary. It can be wrong. It can be extremely intimidating. But the aggressor is not deliberately trying to maim, cripple, or kill. He’s not trying to break down the social order, to sow terror and mistrust. The goal is to dominate, not to destroy. This is social aggression.
Asocial violence, on the other hand, is brutally streamlined. It’s quiet. It happens suddenly and unmistakably. It’s one person beating another person with a tire iron until he stops moving. It’s stabbing somebody thirty-seven times. It’s pulling a gun and firing round after round until he goes down, and then stepping close to make sure he has two to the brain, just to be sure. If you’re a sane, socialized person, thoughts like those can make you physically ill. That’s because you recognize them for what they are: the breakdown of everything we, as humans, hold sacred. Indeed, they are often a breakdown of the perpetrator of the violence themselves. They are no longer in control, they are no longer thinking rationally, they are no longer thinking at all. These acts represent the destruction of the social fabric. They’re devoid of honor. They’re acts without rules, where anything goes. That is asocial violence.

How to Respond to Social Aggression and Asocial Violence

So why am I harping on the difference? Because our responses to social aggression and asocial violence ought to be fundamentally different.
Social aggression is avoidable — and you should avoid it. You can choose not to participate. You can employ social skills to remove yourself from the situation, or to de-escalate it. It comes with big, flashing warning signs — loud, dramatic, and recognizable social posturing. You can see it coming a mile away. These sorts of problems can usually be handled with social tools that we all know how to use. We’ve all talked our way out of a bad situation. We all know how to calm another person down. We all know how to back down ourselves. If we didn’t, none of us would have made it this far in life. Similarly, threats of violence with a clear purpose — like a robbery — can be terrifying. But they remain social interactions, with generally clear demands and big, flashing warning signs of their own; the lines of communication remain open. When he says, “Give me your wallet or I’ll blow your brains out,” give him your wallet and live to see another day.
You can rarely, if ever, talk yourself out of asocial violence. You have no idea whether the movie theater you chose is the one where a shooter with a full arsenal will show up looking like The Joker and acting like Bane. You have no idea if your child’s school is the one where a deranged mind will decide to make his mark. Asocial violence doesn’t care about your social skills.
Negotiating with a serial killer is like arguing with a bullet. If it’s coming your way, words won’t deflect it. If somebody has decided to stab you to death, capitulation doesn’t appease them. It only makes their work easier. When it comes to asocial violence, if you have not been able to foresee and escape it, you must render your attacker one of three ways to survive: incapacitated, unconscious, or dead. Understanding and accepting that reality, then training to deal with these unlikely scenarios, will give you the confidence you need to quickly and calmly identify the difference between social aggression and asocial violence, while setting your mind at ease that you’ll be able to handle whichever comes your way — de-escalating where it’s possible to de-escalate, and fighting to save your life where it is not.

When the Rules Don’t Apply 

Though these kinds of conflict — social aggression and asocial violence — look and sound quite different from each other, our instinct is to apply the same set of rules to both, because our socialized minds don’t want to accept the possibility that the rare and unthinkable has found us, by no fault of our own. If we don’t have rules governing how we deal with the rare and unthinkable, then the rare and unthinkable can’t happen, right? Alternatively, we try to shove this unseemly business out of our minds by dismissing the distinction altogether: Why are we talking about this? Violence is violence; it’s all bad. We get ourselves into deep trouble when we take either one of these approaches, because you can’t play by rules that your attacker refuses to recognize even exist.
Rules, as a social construct, only work in a conflict when both sides honor them. Major League Baseball has a broad set of rules that generalize across the American and National Leagues. But when teams from each league play against each other during interleague play or in the World Series, they have to agree on which league’s rules govern or else the whole thing collapses. The idea that rules of any kind go away the second the other guy ignores them is generally unsettling and downright terrifying in the case of violence. But when you think about asocial violence through that prism, you start to realize that it’s a horrible mistake to use the same social contract that governs social aggression, to understand and navigate true asocial violence. During true violence, our usual social categories—good guy/bad guy, right/wrong, attacker/defender — cease to apply. These dichotomies are useful, but only before and after a violent confrontation has occurred. During the actual fight, they are utterly irrelevant, if not misleading and dangerous.
It is an issue of practicality in the most literal sense. In the midst of a violent encounter, to think merely of “defending” yourself — rather than incapacitating your opponent — is essentially to curl up in a ball and hope for the best. Waiting for your attacker to give up — or worse, expecting him to follow the rules — is, putting it bluntly, to risk participating in your own murder. Your only reliable course of action to save your life is to do what your attacker is trying to do to you, but do it more effectively and efficiently, and to do it first. To use the very same tool of violence.
And yet, as sane, socialized beings, we continue to drag our rules into these places where they don’t belong. We want to somehow keep everything fair, on a level playing field. This is why most confrontations involving real violence go terribly wrong for the good guy. We’re constrained by a litany of social rules while the asocial predator is bound only by the laws of physics. All he cares about is how best and most quickly he can do you grievous bodily harm and end the situation. He’ll stab you when you’re not looking. He’ll kick you in the throat when you’re down. If things don’t look hot for him, he’ll capitulate to get you to let go, then pull his gun and shoot you. He’ll use your socialization against you — he’ll turn the social rules that normally protect you from harm into his most powerful weapon. But all his weapons are tools that you can use in turn.
When you’re staring down the barrel of a gun (literally and figuratively) with a violent asocial predator on the other end of it, you must remember that this is not a movie or a video game or a hero fantasy. This is not high noon at the O.K. Corral. There is no Good, Bad, and Ugly — there is just ugly.

Social Aggression Can Quickly Turn Into Asocial Violence

In 2006, a young British lawyer named Thomas Pryce exited the tube station by his home. It was early January, about 11:30 at night. It was cold. Tom had just left a work function in London and he was hustling back to the flat he shared with his fiancée on a quiet street in an up-and-coming suburb of London.
On this night, he was followed by two young men in hooded sweatshirts who had robbed someone else earlier in the evening and saw Tom as another opportunity. They circled around in front of him and drew their knives, demanding his valuables. He quickly complied, handing over everything. If the incident had ended there, we might say that Tom used his social skills to escape an instance of social aggression. He saw assailants who, however intimidating and dangerous, were still offering a recognizable, if coercive, exchange — his possessions for his life, straight up — and he accepted the exchange. He kept quiet, offered no resistance, and gave up his property exactly how the authorities tell you to do it in a robbery situation like that.
Thomas was shaken up, but he kept walking home. Then the young men came back. This time, their knives were already drawn, their heads were down, and they weren’t saying anything. Thomas broke into a sprint, but they quickly overtook him and began stabbing him repeatedly, in the chest, the hip, the face, the hands, and the lower torso. He yelled frantically, “Why, why, why? You’ve got everything!” But they didn’t have everything. They didn’t have the one thing they needed once they realized he had seen their faces. They didn’t have his silence.
“He could identify us,” they said to themselves, according to the Metropolitan police who interrogated the men upon their capture, “we need to kill him.” That quick realization was all it took for those two young men to go from opportunistic robbers to cold-blooded murderers. Social aggression to asocial violence in the blink of an eye.
The lesson I take from Tom’s murder is how essential it is to understand the difference between the two types of physical confrontation. You need to be able to identify them in the moment, and you need to recognize that one can turn into the other very quickly when circumstances change. The kind of encounter that Tom endured initially — no matter how frightening it must have been — still presumed a kind of communication. He was in the kind of conflict that we can escape with our social skills: after all, giving up your belongings in exchange for your life is a kind of negotiation, even if it happens under extreme duress. If you can comply with demands, it means there’s still communication happening, which means there’s still a chance of getting out of there in one piece.
Unfortunately, the situation turned asocial very quickly, for reasons Tom could not have foreseen. The rules that he believed were governing his initial encounter ceased to apply when the two men returned. His attempts to communicate, to negotiate, to make sense of what was happening, all of it fell on deaf ears and was met only with more violence. His only hope lay in recognizing, quickly, what kind of situation he was in, and acting accordingly. In a phrase: using violence. By the time he realized the shift from social aggression to asocial violence — if he ever realized it — it was too late.
When escape was off the table, the only thing that could have helped him was a fuller understanding of the tool of violence and greater preparedness to take immediate action. Instead of turning to flee, he needed to turn and fight. Because when an aggressor doesn’t care about your reasons or your rules, and isn’t interested in having a negotiation, no other strategy tends to work. Especially when you’re outnumbered. Tom’s only hope was to inflict injury first. But before his survival depended on that, it depended on recognizing, as soon as possible, that he was not in a situation of coercion and communication, but in a situation of life-or-death violence.

Social Aggression and Asocial Violence: Know the Difference, and Be Prepared to Act Accordingly

Remember: all of what I’ve been explaining goes both ways. Just as there’s no way to de-escalate a situation of true, asocial violence, there’s no reason to escalate a situation of social aggression. We learn the difference between the two not only to prepare ourselves to fight for our lives when we absolutely have to, but also to prepare ourselves to wisely back down when there’s no need for a fight.

The Zeppelin Accident at Echterdingen and the Captured Spitfire and some musing from my time there in the 1980's

 

I was talking to a couple of my Army buddies and we got to talking about where we were stationed and I had recalled the "Zeppelin Monument" and the area.

 I was stationed at Stuttgart Army Airfield for 3 and a half years, I got sent there in 1987 after doing a tour with the 1st Infantry Division(FWD) at Cooke Barracks at Geoppingen. SAAF was a good place to be and it was a good tour and during that time we got sent to the Persian Gulf.  I used to run 10K a day, I would run parallel to the road then cut cross country and work my way back to the gate.  It took me a smidge over an hour.  I used to run past the memorial and I never stopped, I wish I had, but back then I always figured "one day" and as much of a history nut that I am that I didn't do that.  It is on my bucket list to go back to Stuttgart and check out my old haunts and see how things look and visit one of my friends that lives over there and works at the "FlugPlatz"   Here is some pics and information that I saw on "google" about the Zeppelin Monument. 

Here is the monument to the LZ-4 is at Echterdingen where the LZ-4 met its fateful accident.

LZ-4 Monument at Echterdingen. Photo credit: Undetermined

The memorial was erected in 1908. The monument is decorated with bronze plaques, a portrait of Graf Zeppelin on the front and a rising eagle on the back. In addition to the portrait an inscription reads: "Here Count Zeppelin landed for on solid ground for the first time on the 5th of August 1908." The inscription under the portrait reads: "He struggled long and hard with the Spirit of the Air Successfully vanquished the grim opponent. From a sea of flames he rose up More magnificent than ever before. To the pride of Germans he soared up courageous; To him is set in stone (the name) Count Zeppelin!" (thanks to Alastair Reid for the translation). The back shows a rising eagle and the inscription: "As through the dark clouds of the Aar rises to the golden light, so by tribulation and need the hero struggles to victory."
The monument is located at (Lat Lon) 48.681222 009.180318.(You can cut and paste this on "google Maps" and see a map of the location and the area.
 was pulled from its temporary mooring by a sudden storm and destroyed when its hydrogen ignited.

    While I was reading up on Echterdingen, apparently my post in the 1980's was a test site for the Luftwaffe, they experimented with a captured Spitfire.  I remembered seeing the flooded entrances to the underground bunkers that had tunnels connecting all the kasernes around Stuttgart to protect them from the Allied bombings. Apparently "Organization Todt" had filled a lot of the tunnels with explosives so rather than try to disarm all the various boobytraps, the allies just filled them with water.  They also hid a bunch of industry in the tunnels to protect them.  I recall going to the U.S Hospital in Bad Canstantt (We called it Bad C) and there were 4 stories above ground and 3 stories below ground and tunnels going to other kasernes around Stuttgart.  I never been in them, but that was the "rumor" anyway.  They did have the rooms stocked up in case of war with the Soviets.  I personally didn't have a good impression of the U.S. Army hospital at Bad C, a friend of mine was riding his bike and got into an accident with a German on the "Economy.  Well the German "Krankenwagon" took him to the hospital at Bad C, and he walked in under his own power, and the people there told him to just sit down and wait.  after several hours after being blown off by the staff at the front desk, he finally went to the front desk and told the NCO there, "I don't feel well" and passed out.  THey finally took him back and discovered that his liver was separated in the accident, and he bled to death internally.  His remains were shipped back to the world, we raised money so his German girlfriend/fiance could go with him to be buried.  His parents called their congresscritters and launched a "Congressional".  We were pissed.  I remember telling several of my friends, "if I get hurt, take me to a german hospital, I don't trust the quacks at Bad C".  the others said the same thing.   Funny, the things I remember.  I still know his name but I will not post it here.

And a WWII Story.

Spitfire Vb (EN830/NX-X) fell into German hands late in 1942. On November 18th while being flown by P/O Bernard Sheidhauer of the Free French Air force, attached to 131 “County of Kent” Sqn RAF, he and his No.1
P/O Henri de Bordas had been on a “rhubarb” (an RAF World War II code name for operations by aircraft seeking opportunity targets).
Making land fall at St Aubin sur Mer they picked up and followed the Caen to Cherbourg railway attacking several targets along the way. During the mission they were met by flak and purposely avoided Carentan because of the concentration of flak in the area.
Over the small town of Ecausseville, de Bordas lost sight of his partner, he continued to circle for as long as he could, but to no avail. He returned to Westhampnett. Scheidhauer’s aircraft had suffered some sort of damage and started to lose fuel. By mistake he headed west instead of north, after crossing a stretch of water he sighted land which he mistakenly thought was the Isle of Wight.  Picking out a suitable field he place his aircraft down into a wheels up landing. Coming to rest in a field of turnips close to Dielament Manor, Trinity.
Climbing from the aircraft he was met by locals who informed him of his navigational error, he was in fact in German Occupied Jersey and not the Isle of Wight.  Scheidhauer tried to destroy the aircraft, he attempted to acquire some fuel to set fire to it, but there was none, he smashed the instrument panel as best as he could and gave away various items of equipment to the gathering crowd of locals.
The Germans arrived after about 20 minutes and he was taken prisoner, ending up at Stalag Luft 111. He was later murdered by the Gestapo for his part in the ‘Great Escape’.

En830 was dismantled and shipped to mainland Europe. It reached Echterdingen without guns and ammunition, with the gun ports closed. The radio equipment had been replaced with ballast, but it still had its original Merlin 45 engine. Several flights were made by Daimler-Benz pilots before conversion was attempted. A decision was made to replace the instruments and the entire electrical system with standard German equipment, because the Luftwaffe used a 24 volt system, whilst the RAF used a 12 volt standard.
A 3.0 m. diameter Bf.109G propeller was added, together with the carburetor scoop from a Bf.109G.
After a couple of weeks, and with a new yellow-painted nose, the Spitfire returned to Echterdingen. Pilot Ellenreider was the first to try the aircraft. He was stunned that the aircraft had much better visibility and handling on the ground than the Bf.109. It took off before he realised it and had an impressive climb rate, around 70 ft. (21 m.) per second. Much of the Spitfire’s better handling could be attributed to its lower wing loading.

The Spitfire’s wing area was about 54 sq. ft. (5m²) greater than that of the Bf.109. The Messerschmitt was faster at low altitude, but at 11,000 ft. the speeds evened out. The DB 605A engine gave better performance, according to the test group, than the Merlin, which was rated 150 hp below the DB 605A. It gave this “MesserSpit” a ceiling of 41,666 ft. (12700 m.), about 3,280 ft. (1000 m.) more than a Bf.109G with the same engine and 5,166 ft. (1475 m.) more than that of a Spitfire Mk.V.
After a brief period at Rechlin verifying the performance data, the modified Spitfire returned to Echterdingen to serve officially as a test bed. It was popular with the pilots during and after work hours. MesserSpit career ended on 14th August, 1944, when a formation of US bombers attacked Echterdingen, wrecking the Spitfire. The remains of the Spitfire Messerschmitt hybrid were scrapped at the Klemm factory at Böblingen

"How to use Bear Spray Effectively"

 I had preloaded this,   I used to go hiking in my younger days and when I was doing Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts, I had Bear Spray with me, just in case, we also made a lot of noise, as a rule, Bears will avoid people, I also taught hiking and backpacking classes and some of the stuff I taught wasn't strictly B.S.A. specifications.  I told them the B.S.A way, then I also told them, when you are out on the real world, the lawyers are in their offices and you are on your own.  I told the adults it is your choice, but I also carried...This

   I have a "Smif" 686 .357(The one on the right)with speed loaders I would carry.  It would be for both 2 and 4 legged critters.  I told the people in my classes, " when you are on the Appalachian trail or whatever you are, your personal safety is your own responsibility.  not everyone you will meet is a good person.  I'm not telling you to carry, but it is your decision."  I luckily never needed it and the kids never noticed it on my gear.

A link I pulled off the News in my home State.

Campers Attacked in North Georgia, Dad's throat slashed.

     I shamelessly clipped this from "Art of Manliness"

     

An important part of manhood has always been about having the competence to be effective in the world — having the breadth of skills, the savoir-faire, to handle any situation you find yourself in. With that in mind, each Sunday we’ll be republishing one of the illustrated guides from our archives, so you can hone your manly know-how week by week.

Earlier this month, 71-year-old Donald Zimmerman was jogging near Pillar Mountain outside of Kodiak, Alaska. He was surrounded by berry bushes that were just starting to fill out, and he knew that encountering bears was a possibility, which is exactly why he carried bear spray.

He saw the bear out of the corner of his eye just before the attack. Zimmerman was mauled before he had a chance to pull the spray out, but during a brief break from the violence, he managed to uncap his spray and deploy it, scaring the bear away. Officials say the bear spray saved his life.

While bear attacks aren’t predictable (nor common), the outcome when victims use bear spray is. One study found that spray stopped “undesirable behaviors” in 92% of cases. And among people who carried bear spray, 98% were uninjured after having a close encounter with a bear.

The bottom line is, bear spray works. But like all tools, it takes practice to use it effectively; you shouldn’t just buy a can, stick it in your pack, and never consider how to use it until a 700-pound grizzly is upon you. 

Bear spray is much like normal pepper spray, but it typically sprays much farther and for a longer period of time. Training to use bear spray is imperative if you’re headed into bear country. Luckily, many of the companies that manufacture bear spray also sell inert training cans, so you can test out their functionality before you hit the trail. One of the things they’ll tell you is to store your bear spray in a hyper-convenient location where you can access it quickly — like holstered on your belt; you don’t want it buried inside your pack when you need it.

Monday Music "Clocks" By COldplay

This was supposed to drop last week, but Real life got in the way.

 By now y'all have seen the controversy at the "Coldplay" Concert, my wife asked me who they were so I pulled up a song I heard from them years ago that I have saved in my stash of songs on my phone and played it for her.  I told her that they have been around close to 30 years.

     The One that Started it...

The Meme gold that it generated...

Coldplay are a British rock band formed in London in 1997. They consist of vocalist and pianist Chris Martin, guitarist Jonny Buckland, bassist Guy Berryman, drummer and percussionist Will Champion, and manager Phil Harvey.They are best known for their live performances, and their impact on popular culture through their music, advocacy and achievements.

The members of the band initially met at University College London, calling themselves Big Fat Noises and changing to Starfish before the final name. After releasing the extended play Safety (1998) independently, they signed with Parlophone in 1999 and issued their debut album, Parachutes (2000), featuring the breakthrough single "Yellow". It earned a Brit Award for British Album of the Year and a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album. The group's follow-up, A Rush of Blood to the Head (2002), won the same accolades. X&Y (2005) completed what they considered a trilogy. Its successor, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends (2008), received a Grammy Award for Best Rock Album. Both records topped the charts in more than 30 countries and became the best-sellers of their respective years globally. Viva la Vida's title track was also the first song by British musicians to reach number one in the United States and United Kingdom simultaneously in the 21st century.

Coldplay further expanded their repertoire in subsequent albums, with Mylo Xyloto (2011), Ghost Stories (2014), A Head Full of Dreams (2015), Everyday Life (2019), Music of the Spheres (2021) and Moon Music (2024) drawing from genres like electronica, R&B, ambient, disco, funk, gospel, blues and progressive rock. The group's additional endeavours include philanthropy, politics and activism, supporting numerous humanitarian projects and donating 10% of their profits to charity. In 2018, a career-spanning film directed by Mat Whitecross was released for their 20th anniversary.

With over 160 million records sold worldwide, Coldplay are one of the best-selling music acts of all time.They are also the first group in Spotify history to reach 90 million monthly listeners. Fuse listed them among the most awarded artists, which includes holding the record for most Brit Awards won by a band. In the United Kingdom, they have three of the 50 best-selling albums, the most UK Albums Chart number ones without missing the top (10), and the distinction of most played group of the 21st century on British media. In 2021, "My Universe" was the first song by a British group to debut atop the Billboard Hot 100. Coldplay have two of the highest-grossing tours of all time and the most-attended.The British Phonographic Industry called them one of the most "influential and pioneering acts" in the world,while the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame added A Rush of Blood to the Head to the 200 Definitive Albums list and "Yellow" to the Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll exhibit.In 2023, the group were featured on the inaugural Time 100 Climate ranking. Despite their popularity, they are considered

                           Album Cover "A Rush Of Blood To The Head"

"Clocks" is a song by the British rock band Coldplay. It was released on 17 March 2003 by Parlophone in the United Kingdom. It was written and composed as a collaboration among all the members of the band for their second album, A Rush of Blood to the Head. The song is built around a piano riff, and features cryptic lyrics concerning themes of contrast and urgency. Several remixes of the track exist, and its riff has been widely sampled.

The record was initially released in the United States as the album's second single on 11 November 2002, reaching number 29 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number nine on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. It was then released in the United Kingdom on 17 March 2003 as the third single from A Rush of Blood to the Head, reaching number nine on the UK Singles Chart. Music critics praised the song's piano melody, and it went on to win Record of the Year at the 2004 Grammy Awards.

"Clocks" is considered to be one of Coldplay's signature songs, and is often ranked among the greatest songs of the 2000s and of all time. In 2010, the single was placed at 490th on Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list. In 2011, NME placed it amongst the "150 Best Tracks of the Past 15 Years"

Video Link

I am unable to get the Video player to upload, so the best I could do was embed the link, will  try to correct the problem this afternoon.

A music video was filmed in support of the song. It was directed by British filmmaker Dominic Leung, and shot at Docklands' ExCeL Building in London.It features the band performing the song, with a laser show, in front of a staged audience, mostly local college students. Stage effects and blue-red light transitions give the video a surreal feel, while a stoic crowd make up the audience. Martin has maketradefair.com scrawled on his left hand for the video to promote fair trade between countries and corporations, which can be seen at various moments throughout the video, especially when paused while he is playing piano at the 3-minute, 22-second mark. The website became defunct in 2004.

Quick thoughts on the Obama pushing the "Russia/Russia/Russia" Hoax

 

My apologies, I went on a sudden trip to EAA in Oshkosh for my employer and I was a bit busy to post.

I will post a rant I have been percolating later.

As much as I would like to see President Obama "Perpwalked" for this scam Trump 1.0 was crippled for the entire term, and the donks used this to win the midterm and immediately launch impeachment hearings after impeachment hearings and thanks to a sycophantic media, the drumbeat was pushed incessantly "Trump-Russia" I am a realist, it ain't gonna happen. He is untouchable, what I would like to see is all his flunkies go to Prison, stripped of their pensions and trappings of power and prestige as a reminder and a warning to future generations that somethings come at too high a price. And when a future president asks his/her cabinet to do the same thing, they will look to the examples of Clapper, Comey, Rice and every other person that facilitated this farce and say "Nope, nada, ain't gonna happen, I will not go to prison because you didn't like the results of an election.

What Happened to TWA?

What prompted this post?  Well Yesterday I was part of an "Honor Guard" my employer does for all Veteran remains that transition at the ATL hub. we render honors, it is a respect thing, I have been doing this for about 6 years now.  Well anyway, we were on the tarmac and I happen to see this "Taxi" by...

    It caught my by surprise, and I quickly whipped out my camera/phone and took a picture of her.  I thought it was really neat from a nostalgia standpoint.  And yes I did a bit of research, American bought out TWA assets during her last bankruptcy.

I got this article from "Market Realist"

Source: Getty Images

Trans World Airlines (TWA) used to be one of the largest airlines in the country and a pioneer in commercial passenger travel. What happened to TWA?

Deregulation of the airline industry, several accidents, shoddy management, and three bankruptcies led to the demise of TWA. The airline was sold to American Airlines in January 2001, after filing for its third bankruptcy, and eventually dissolved.

Source: Getty Images

Billionaire Howard Hughes used to own TWA.

TWA got its start in 1930 with the merger of mail carrier airlines Transcontinental Air Transport and Western Air Express. The airline's original name was Transcontinental & Western Air, and it changed to Trans World Airlines in 1950.

In 1939, eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes bought TWA. Hughes owned the airline for 27 years, and he's credited with expanding TWA's international service into Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

Despite Hughes' wealth, TWA struggled financially because banks wouldn't lend to the airline while Hughes was at the helm. In 1960, when TWA was facing bankruptcy, Hughes gave up control of the airline. A few years after Hughes' departure, TWA went from reporting a net loss of $38.7 million in 1961 to a net profit of over $50 million in 1965.

TWA grew in the 1960s.

The 1960s were a good time for TWA. It became the first airline to introduce in-flight movies and acquired the Hilton hotel chain and Century 21 real estate company. By 1969, TWA became the top transatlantic airline globally and beat out rival Pan Am.

Deregulation hit the airline industry hard.

TWA was on a high when the 1978 Airline Deregulation Act threatened to put a dent in the airline's success. Deregulation in the airline industry caused TWA to consolidate its routes around its largest hub at St. Louis Lambert International Airport.

"Deregulation set fire to the industry," former TWA executive Jerry Cosley told St. Louis Magazine in 2006. "Every carrier had the same problem then as now, and nobody in the industry has yet solved the riddle: How do you compete while effectively managing your costs? The fixed-cost burden—labor, leases, fuel, all variables that management cannot control—ate us alive."

Source: Getty Images

A corporate takeover was the beginning of the end for TWA.

Many people think that TWA's real downfall can be attributed to the corporate takeover by financier Carl Icahn in 1985. Icahn was able to gain majority control over the airline after TWA employees objected to a sale to Texas Air Corporation, whose owner was a known union buster.

Icahn had a reputation for buying and breaking up companies, which he eventually did with TWA. The first nail Icahn put in the coffin for TWA was taking the company private in 1988. Then, in 1991, he sold TWA's London routes to American Airlines for $445 million.

"It became more and more apparent that Carl was not interested in growing the airline but in using TWA as a financial vehicle to acquire wealth for himself," former TWA pilot Jeff Darnall told St. Louis Magazine.

In 1992, TWA was forced to file for bankruptcy and Icahn was ousted from the airline a year later. However, he wasn't done damaging TWA. When Icahn left, he arranged to have the airline give his company, Karabu Corp., tickets at a 45 percent discount off regular fares. The "Karabu deal" reportedly cost TWA an estimated $150 million annually. In 1995, the airline filed for bankruptcy a second time.

TWA had 84 accidents over the years.

TWA's history of accidents and incidents also played a part in the airline's demise. Over the years it was in business, TWA aircraft were involved in about 84 incidents. The first airline accident to gain media coverage was the 1942 crash of a plane carrying actress Carole Lombard. Lombard, her mother, and 20 other passengers were killed.

The worst accident was in 1996 when Flight 800 exploded over the Atlantic Ocean on a flight to Paris. All 230 people on board were killed in the explosion, which was caused by a spark from exposed wiring. TWA was scrutinized for having one of the oldest fleets in the airline industry.

Source: Getty Images

TWA's last flight was in December 2001.

TWA never fully recovered from the negative attention after the Flight 800 accident. In January 2001, the airline filed for bankruptcy again. American Airlines bought TWA and continued to operate it under its existing name for a while. However, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001 hit the airline industry hard and TWA officially dissolved. TWA's last official flight was in December 2001.