Well, technically...

Technicals are just a fun thing to think about because it's basically Mad Max engineering applied to real life and if it weren't for the restrictions and paperwork, the average American likely has the funds to make one. 

That, and it's amusing to see lesser countries employ them as a viable combat vehicle against things it has no chance of winning against. That isn't to say that they don't have a place on the modern battlefield/insurgency/police action, as they certainly do, but they are NOT a cure all, nor are they a substitute for legit hard cars or armored vehicles (or a good RPG for that matter). That being said, if legit official militaries are using/converting normal cars into technicals, it just smacks of desperation; see the Toyota War for reference.

So, I have to give a shout out to a couple of things I've seen recently, first being that it seems that converting crappy Volga sedans is the new low reached by Ukraine in the recent conflict there, as reported by The War Zone. It's a shame in that I don't think the Ukrainian government is worth fighting for, but I still think the sovereignty of the land and independence of the people are, so I really hope that this isn't a sign that they are crumbling (but they likely are).

On the other side of the spectrum, there's also the subreddit called r/shittytechnicals, which is just a hoot and a holler if you want to be entertained by just how desperate the world's forces can get and it never ceases to entertain me.

Pig & a Jelly Jar

The now iconic logo.

Time to give another shout out to a great local business that happens to be a fantastic eatery. Pig and a Jelly Jar has been around since 2012, and was founded by a woman named Amy Wanderley-Britt. She is constantly quoted as saying she wanted to open a restaurant with a southern flair, as she is from the south and stated the SLC area reminds her of the south in everyone's welcoming hospitality. From humble beginnings working as a McDonalds manager, she now has 3 locations for Pig & a Jelly Jar, and also runs other local restaurants as well.

There's a lot of good stuff on their menu, but what they are primarily known for are their breakfast and lunch offerings. I would personally say that they have one of (of not the) best examples of biscuits and gravy around, the only ones giving them a run for their money being Moore's Family Restaurant. Their burgers are also another stellar item on their menu, as well as their Beignets, which are hard to find in these parts. So go give 'em a try, I promise it's worth it.   

Sign outside the Ogden location.

Coit Tower

A view of the tower taken from Lombard Street. All pics sourced from Wikipedia.

Coit Tower is an integral part of the San Francisco skyline and has always been a staple of it's modern folklore. Located on Telegraph hill, it's (IMHO), a beautiful piece of art deco built at the height of it's popularity in 1933. 

Named after the famous Lillie Hitchcock Coit who was born in West Point, New York, in 1843, she moved to the San Francisco area with her parents. After they died, she inherited a large fortune, and like most notable people from the Bay Area, became a rather famous eccentric for her time. She was known for smoking cigars and wearing trousers long before it was socially acceptable for women to do so. She was also an avid gambler and would often dress like a man in order to gamble in male-only establishments popular in the area. 

A picture of Lillie Hitchcock Coit circa 1862. 

She also quickly gained the nickname "Firebelle Lil", as she loved to chase fires in the early days of the city's history. Before December 1866, there was no official city fire department, and any fires that broke out in the city (frequently due to all the wooden buildings), were extinguished by numerous volunteer fire teams in the area.

She sated that the pivotal moment in her life that enchanted her with the act of firefighting was when she was fifteen, she witnessed the Knickerbocker Engine Co. No. 5 respond to a fire on Telegraph Hill. Seeing that they were shorthanded and struggling to get the engine up the hill; she threw her school books to the ground to help, and called out to other bystanders to help in getting the engine up the hill to the fire. Ever since that day, Coit became the Engine Company mascot and eventually an honorary firefighter. She would always insist on going with the firefighters on every call, much to the chagrin of her parents, frequently riding with the Knickerbocker Engine Co. 5. She was notable for attending with them in all street parades and celebrations that they participated in as well as attending their annual banquets. 

Seeing it lit up at night is especially neat.

Not only was she active in assisting the local firefighting teams in performing their jobs, but she was also known for directly helping when volunteer firefighters were ill or injured, often visiting them in their sickbeds, and when one would die, Coit would send flowers and attended the funerals. She did this throughout the remainder of her life, and after her death, her ashes were placed into a mausoleum with a variety of firefighting-related mementos.

With her passing in 1929, she insisted in her will that one third of her fortune, amounting to $118,000 (over $2 million today) should "be expended in an appropriate manner for the purpose of adding to the beauty of the city which I have always loved." With that, two memorials were built in her name using that fortune. One of those being the famous Coit Tower, and the other was a sculpture depicting three firemen, one of them carrying a woman in his arms. The tower was commissioned by Herbert Fleishhacker (the same who made the pools I wrote about), who was the San Francisco Art Commission president and it was designed by architect Arthur Brown.

The other memorial made in her name with her funds located in the northwest corner of Washington Square Park.

Of course, San Francisco being what it is, not everything can be cool, especially in the 1930s when the ugly head of socialism was seeping through everything. So instead of leaving well enough alone by having a monument made for and in tribute to a pretty cool person, FDR had to implement a bunch of socialist art programs as propaganda and less than a year later, the tower had commie mural tributes painted all over it. 

Not only that, but because of all the dickheads doing the BLM riots that burned down all our cities in the time of the infamous commie coof virus, the city also appeased all the communists by removing the prominent statue of Christopher Columbus in June of 2020, that had stood outside the entrance of the tower since 1957. So screw those guys. Thankfully, we still at least have the tower itself to pay tribute to a pretty cool person. 

Sadly, no longer there.

In addition to the usual kind of post

I did go to the Hill AFB air show with the wife and my brother in law.  The show was good overall, with a surprisingly good display by both the F-35 and the Rhino. But, it was disappointing to see there was no display/demo for either the A-10 or the F-22, both of which just did a quick fly-by and left.  Also, the Thunderbirds were thoroughly underwhelming this year, and didn't seem to put on anywhere near as good of a show as I had seen from them in previous years. But, here's a crappy, grainy, cell phone photo of the legacy flight of the P-51D and F-35A that I took while there.

Dream Mine

With the recent adaptation of the book Under the Banner of Heaven into a show, the wife has been watching it intently. I haven't been watching it much myself, but I couldn't help but notice they included a few mentions of the Dream Mine in the show. 

A picture of the ore processing facility of the mine called the "White Sentinel" built in the 1930s. All pics sourced from the Wiki page.

Now, the show itself isn't too bad (or all that great), and it certainly is over sensationalized with needless tension and drama in parts that there doesn't really need to be, but because it's based on a true story, it does make that part of the show somewhat interesting from a historical perspective. But, this post is going to focus on the Dream Mine itself, which in reality, I don't believe had anything to do with the Lafferty case. 

Mid September of 1894 is when the mine was constructed by a John Koyle from Spanish Fork, Utah at the age of 30 in the town of Salem, Utah. He reportedly stated that he had a vision that same year in which the Angel Moroni brought him to a Nephite mine on a nearby mountain and instructed him to reopen the mine and dig new tunnels, and said that it would provide financial aid during an economic collapse, as well as contain treasures buried by the Nephites, including the sword of Laban, the Urim and Thummim, and the golden plates.

The mine struggled for many years, and the most money it made seemed to be on the stocks it sold, rather than anything it produced. In 1913, Apostle and geologist James E. Talmage examined some ore from the Dream Mine and reported to church headquarters that it was worthless. It was also an issue to church authorities who worried that Mr. Koyle's visionary accounts may have been made to encourage fraudulent investing. The LDS authorities issued the following statement at the time:

"The First Presidency warns the Saints against investing in worthless stock, even if promoters allege that they are guided by dreams and revelations…. Almost everyone has heard stories of how such and such has found a rich mine by following directions given in a dream, and many fondly hope for similar luck, but in most instances, it will be found on investigation, that such stories have little or no foundation in fact."

A 1913 Deseret News article from the church authorities concerning the mine.

Because of this and because of debts owed to the local church Co-Operative, the mine was shut down in 1914. However, in 1920, the mine was reopened with continuing efforts to locate ore, and over the course of the following decade saw the tunnels deepened to 2,200 feet below ground and facilities expanded to include the iconic ore processing facility pictured at the top. Not much was still found in the mine, and the only thing of note to be processed in all that time it was active was a small load of platinum which was worth about $103.03 at the time of 1936 (about $2,166 today). 

John Koyle was eventually excommunicated from the church in 1948 because of stating he was forced by the church to deny his revelations and he later died in 1949, with the mine subsequently falling into a state of disrepair. 

In 1962, the Relief Mine Company was founded by a couple of brothers to succeed the Koyle Mining Company, and continue assessment work and (hopefully) operations for the mine. They were quickly thwarted by a capstone that prevented progress in digging the mine, as well as a geological survey at that time found no trace of metallic minerals. Despite this, the mine company's board reported as recently as 2018 that there were 7,500 active stockholders, despite the stocks being sold at a higher rate than they were really worth. Today, there hasn't been any real work done there in some time, falling again into a state of disrepair and it is closed off to the public. 

Just a local news update

The South East Asian Pacific Rim is not exactly known for quality products outside of linen, fresh fruit, and electronics. However, the Rock Island Armory company is one that is known for some very affordable and good quality firearms being based out of the Philippines by it's parent company Armscor. They make a variety of products but they are perhaps most famous for making 1911s in every caliber you can think of that actually work right out of the box. 

So, as I mentioned in my mini-SHOT show review, I was pretty exited to hear that they are making a new manufacturing location down in Cedar City, Utah primarily for manufacturing their new VRF series of shotguns, if I'm not mistaken. 

The big news on The Firearm Blog is that they just opened the Cedar City facility with a ribbon cutting ceremony just the other day, and will be starting up operations soon. Hopefully it's a huge success for them, not only for the community in Cedar City, but to having more gun companies in Utah, and for continued success for a good gun company. 

Ride the wave

The new wave of new wave scene has some pretty darn good stuff out there:

Futurecop! - Into the Light (feat. Kabelle)

UMs: Whatnot

After making all the previous posts on here from the r/unresolvedmysteries subreddit, there were some that I came across after making the different categories of posts and/or just ones that I couldn't really categorize, so, here's some assorted stories you can read while listening to the theme song cover:

Yet another theory as to the identity of DB Cooper, but it does seem pretty plausible: 
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/s43bp1/could_john_a_k_ziegler_zegrus_be_db_cooper/

The Jersey watcher was a guy terrorizing a town in the 1920s with extremely detailed letters:
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/q2furi/what_happened_to_jersey_watcher/

A woman in Tallahassee, Florida calls the cops on a couple of well dressed man with a group of very unkempt children. Turns out there is a lot more to it than just a possible kidnapping:
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/k0pmz9/the_finders_of_lost_children/

The famous power substation attacks in San Jose 2013 remain unsolved despite being national news at the time:
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/ho953y/an_unprecedented_and_sophisticated_attack_on_an/

A seemingly deaf-mute man appears out of nowhere in 1955, Czechoslovakia, after being targeted by secret services for years, his identity is unknown to this day:
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/ekji4i/a_seemingly_deafmute_man_appears_out_of_nowhere/

Sniper Elite 5: two steps forward, one big step back

So, I did get the new Sniper Elite 5 game, and especially after having replayed the 4th entry in the series recently, the 5th one seems like a mixed bag. Don't get me wrong here, it's still a very enjoyable game with some welcome improvements, but it seems like it's nowhere near the level of polish and intuitiveness as the last one. 

First off, let's look at the pros: The maps are far bigger and far more open than any of the previous games by far. This also means they are far more populated, which also ups the difficulty, in that there are far more enemies to converge on you if your position is discovered. Certainly a welcome improvement. There are also a lot more opportunities in each map to create distractions, booby trap, sabotage, and sound mask your shots with them than in previous games. 

Another Pro is that some of the new shooting mechanics are also welcome improvements, as bullet travel time, bullet drop and windage are far more noticeable than in previous games. Another great feature is that there are more new ammunition types that have a much greater affect when using them. 

Another great pro is that they added more realistic properties to suppressors in the game by making suppressors a component that needs to be added to your gun either before a mission or at a workbench, as they cannot be added or removed on the fly, which is nice. The suppressors also still make noise that can be detected by enemies, and depending on the type and ammunition you use will affect the sound level they make and the range they can be detected at. Secondary weapons are also far more useful than in previous games as they can also be equipped with suppressors and be customized. The ability to use mounted and dismounted MG42s, is also a really cool addition. 

Okay, so on to the weapon customization, which is a pretty big give and take. It was certainly something that should have been in the last game, and a very welcomed feature here in this one, but there are some serious issues with it. As far as the good aspects, there are the suppressor properties mentioned, and there are also some really neat little historically accurate options to add to some of the guns that change the characteristics/properties of the guns and how you use them.

On the flip side of this is that there are also a lot of dumbass additions that make no freaking sense whatsoever.  First there are the attachments that affect stats for no reason whatsoever. Why the flying fudgesicle would a gun's stock or magazine affect my freaking rate of fire or damage? Why the hell are basic aspects to the gun not accurate and/or why don't they use real modifications that were available at the time? Why the hell are other guns crap being added to the wrong guns when they don't even have stuff that would have been actually available to them as mentioned earlier? This is horrendously bad considering a basic google search would have given the dev team some easy options to add instead of butchering the look and feel of the guns in the game, and would have taken less than 5 min to research. Note to the devs: It's not fun when you do that, it just makes you look like a bunch of lazy freaking idiots.

Then there are the blatant cons: The game is nowhere near as polished as the previous entries in the series. I can't tell you how many times I was frustrated by my character doing actions I did not want him to do or just not doing the thing I asked him to at all, get stuck or fall through the environment, blatantly not perform the action I wanted to quick enough, or somehow switch ammo types without me wanting to. To be fair, this had been an issue with previous games in the series, but it was far more noticeable this time around and I had recently played the last two games in the series, and I did not have anywhere near as much trouble with the controls in those games. 

Another con is the fact that the list of weapons you get access to is really freaking small. I understand they wanted some kind of unlock system, but with how few of weapons they have, it feels really restrictive and dumb. Especially when they start you off with some exotic experimental British rifle right off the bat, but with no access to basic rifles like the No4 or No3 SMLE, M1 Garand, MAS 36, or Mosin Nagant, NONE OF WHICH ARE IN THE FREAKING GAME AT ALL! I would gladly get rid of all the retarded, fictional weapon customizations, or the crazy experimental guns in favor of having more weapons, especially the basic, most readily available ones in the world at the time, you dolts.   

That's not all for the cons though. Now the series has always played a little fast and loose with historical accuracy, but this one seems to go all in on the woke crap. For example, in previous games they would still try to be somewhat historically accurate by using real programs, events, and technology, but simply sensationalize/ramp up it's effectiveness/impact/importance. But in this game there's a number of problems. First off, the story revolves around a black woman who is a French resistance fighter who does field ops better than you, which is pretty lame. Especially considering there were no notable black female field operatives in the French resistance that I'm aware of (note: plenty of intelligence gatherers, but no field operatives I know of). I was never overly invested in the story of the games, as even the last one was pretty dumb as they insisted you were working with partisans in Italy, but Italy never had partisan groups, only communists. So I guess historical stupidity is par for the course here, since they are already doing it with the weapons. 

Another minor gripe I have is that despite the maps being bigger and more populated, they feel far less interactable. In the last couple games, you could do all sorts of damage to the enemy even if it wasn't your objective. You could blow up artillery pieces, AAA batteries, trucks, and all sorts of bits to the environment if you wanted to, but now, it takes much more effort to blow up trucks, you cannot blow up AAA unless it's a secondary objective, and you have no ability to destroy all those artillery pieces everywhere. Another thing to tack on to that complaint is that you can no longer shoot out or break all the lights, with only some being able to be broken. This really kills some of the stealth elements, and replacing the throwable rocks with bottles was another stealth-breaking choice that just hampers the player compared to previous games. 

Lastly, there is the weird. Among the new features is an option to perform non-lethal takedowns on enemies and also the newly added non-lethal ammo. Now, usually I would say these are essential additions to any stealth-based game, but in this case I think it really defeats the point here. The game revels in the gore displayed when shooting and taking down enemies, as well as the fact that all your enemies are Nazis, so who in the hell are they appealing to with these (likely never used) features? I sure as hell never touched that stuff.  

Note that there aren't two thumbs here...

In summary, despite all my very heavy criticisms here, the game is still darn fun. But with the amount of stuff that's broken, and the fact that there's a much smaller armory, and less content outside of the much bigger maps, I'd wait until the game is on sale or they include all the future DLC in the base price rather than pay for it all now. 

Forgotten Films: Outpost (2008)

As I have said before, I'm pretty picky with my horror movies, and this one certainly passes the bar. It's an obviously low budget affair, but manages to do a very good job of it and has some pretty good actors in it to boot.  The most famous ones in it to me are: Ray Stevenson, Richard Brake, and Michael Smiley. It's also a fun blend of horror, alternate history, action, and sci-fi, which is a pretty good blend in my book and it's also has some pretty obvious and subtle references to some classic video games.  

The plot is pretty simple, but with details that were pretty unique for the time. A hodge-podge group of mercenaries are hired by a businessman to retrieve a piece of lost tech from an old WWII Nazi bunker in the middle of a modern active war zone (presumably in the Balkans). As the film goes on, and as they conduct their mission they start to experience odd occurrences, and find a man hiding in the bunker that may be more than he appears. It's not too heavy on developing most of the characters, and there isn't much more to the story than that, but it really does a great job of ramping up the tension and intrigue as the film goes on, and has a delightfully twilight zone inspired ending. 

Another interesting bit of trivia is that the film was something of a passion project for the creator, with he and his wife mortgaging their home to make about $200,000 of the $300k budget for the movie. The film was fairly successful, raking in over $460,000 in in it's release, despite having a very limited one. It also managed to gain a pretty big cult following and had made enough on rental/streaming sales to spawn a couple of sequels as well, but the less said about them the better. 

Anyways, despite the reviews being pretty consistently middle of the road for this film, I would give this one a big thumbs up and would encourage you to watch it. Anyways, since when have pro reviewers been right in recent history anyway, eh?

San Francisco Cable Car Museum

One of the old cable cars on display. All pics sourced from the wiki page.

San Francisco's Cable Car Museum is another great memory of my youth in the bay area.  I also had the opportunity to go back there again in 2004, perhaps the highest point of the cleanliness era for the peninsula before the dark times that are now. One thing I have to say about San Francisco is that no matter how crappy the people are there, there is always something really cool or interesting to see or do there no matter how long you stay (even permanently).  

The immense pully system is both impressive and reliable enough to be run today.

The museum itself is pretty darn awesome, with a plethora of info on the cable car system that started in 1873 to the most recent operations. There are also a collection of cable cars that date back to the original operations in the 1870s, but the big showcase there is the massive power and pully systems that were the heart of the cable car system. You really forget the grand achievement of engineering it was until you really see it in person, and you can do so when it is open most days at 10 AM to 5 PM, except holidays. 

A pic of the main entrance to the museum. 

In the same vein, some people forget that the very invention of the cable car itself was in San Francisco in 1869, with the intention of saving horses from being whipped to pull buggies uphill. Today, the number of running cable car lines have been drastically cut from their heyday, but are still running the remaining few lines consistently today.

It was a party!

An old pic of the resort. All pics from Jacob's site.

Just off of I-80, west of Salt Lake City on a very well traveled part of the freeway before getting to the Toole exit, is an often passed by and forgotten marker that denotes the first major American Independence day celebrations in Utah.  I in fact passed by it roughly a dozen times before even realizing it was even there. 

The marker was Placed by the Daughters of Utah Pioneers and it denotes the place of the first Independence day celebrations in Utah. As the plaque states, in 1851, 150 vehicles with 60 horsemen came here with a homemade flag for the celebration. In later years, a boardwalk was constructed as well as a rock home, over 100 bath houses, and steamboats for sailing the lake were based there for some years and it was known as a popular resort for some time.

Of course, Jacob Barlow has a far more detailed write up on it at his site with some excellent pictures of the site, marker and surrounding area. 

An old picture of the rock house that was already in a state of disrepair. 

Good thing they have cameras for this!

General Aviation is stuff that usually doesn't interest me too much, but when the War Zone had this on their site a while back, it really grabbed my interest as it's not something you see everyday. Behold, a business jet doing approaches to an aircraft carrier as they are the camera jets used for the filming of Top Gun 2:

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Maracaibo before Monday

Benny More - Maracaibo Oriental

UMs: The lighthearted side

Figured after so much crazyness I'd have to make a post with a little more of the lighthearted side of the spectrum of mystery. So here's an assortment of odd, funny, weird, dumb, or just plain silly cases I saw over time. Just put on some silly music such as this one or this one. Or, if you still want, you can just put on the great theme song cover again, 

Cap'n Crunch Freedom Crunch cereal, was it ever real? Does anyone really care? Apparently, the internet does:
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/ohw46v/the_elusive_capn_crunch_freedom_crunch_cereal_did/

Apparently stealing snack cakes has become a big criminal enterprise. I think they just misunderstood when someone said they need to steal some ho-hos:
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/qzyphl/who_keeps_stealing_little_debbie_snack_cakes_in/

Serial pooping is not only an issue but is still an issue when you catch people brown-handed on CCTV:
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/q6wa6x/who_is_japans_infamous_mr_poop/

The world's largest purchaser of glitter insists on remaining a secret, despite being a well-known industry. How odd. 
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/a8hrk0/which_mystery_industry_is_the_largest_buyer_of/

The mystery vending machine that continually stocks only rare or discontinued sodas in Seattle (hint: I bet they live in Portland):
https://www.reddit.com/r/nonmurdermysteries/comments/ekoco6/til_of_a_mystery_soda_vending_machine_that/

A really odd art project that asks people to call and leave messages describing their "weird dreams" to an automated line suddenly resurfaces recently in Salt Lake City, Utah:
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/ktp4wr/happy_valley_dream_survey/

Forgotten Fan Films: Prelude to Axanar

This one will be a bit longer than most of my posts on films, especially for a film that is known for being so short. It's also not really that forgotten, but rather, I don't think it is given the recognition for it's huge significance today and at the time. 

Basically, during the great drought of Trek shows before the garbage that is Disco, but after the nu-Trek Jar-Jar films released, there was a small number of fan studios putting out some high-quality Trek content. In particular, a new one was just starting and released a preview for what was to be a full length feature in a faux-documentary style. Thankfully the full preview is still available on Youtube:

Why was this such a big deal, you ask? Well, first off, instead of trying to re-imagine the original series era of Trek, this one faithfully recreates it. The Jar-Jar Trek was required to be different and was way too heavy on the gloss and lens flares, making everything seem fake on screen. On the other hand, Axanar tried to feel more grounded in it's sets and effects, giving it a more gritty feel. Unlike Enterprise and the nu-trek shows, it also wasn't trying to re-tread old ground, but was trying to flesh out something that had never been told first-hand in the trek universe before. As well as being faithful to established trek, it was also respectful to it's audience.

Naturally, because of these things, it was getting much higher viewing numbers than the new show that released at the same time, Disco. It was also getting a lot more fan hype and enthusiasm surrounding it, and the entire internet was praising it while using to compare to Disco and how trash that show is. 

So, naturally, because the boneheads in charge of CBS hate both Trek and it's fans, and have no business sense whatsoever, the lawyers started seeping out of the woodwork to swarm on Axanar like flies to a carcass. Because Axanar wasn't doing anything conceptually different than has been done with Trek fan-films in the past, CBS came up with new draconian restrictions on fan-films with the threat of legal action if it was breached, and handed cease and desist orders to the studio. That action had the affect of not only killing Axanar, but nearly all other trek fan projects going on at the time. 

I look back at this now and realize my worst fears at the time were completely right in that this was the first big blow to the Trek fandom and was the beginning of the end for Trek in general. Now Star Trek is permanently dead, never to be born again. 

The only place that Trek lives on is in a small community of the PC gaming sphere, despite the garbage that is Star Trek: Online. With the revival of many Trek PC games on GoG.com, and with the release of one of the greatest trek mods of all time, Armada III for Sins of a Solar Empire, there is a bit of a resurgence of classic trek fandom that lives on. Not only that, but little known to most people, there was to be a major mod project tie-in for Axanar at the time it released. 

The same team behind the Armada III mod were asked to help make this tie in, and they started work on it even before the final version of Armada III was finished, calling it Axanar: Strategic Operations. However, because of the CBS actions, this project was quickly cancelled. But the same team still couldn't be kept down and now have a similar project to carry on the original spirit and setting now called: Ages of the Federation: The Four Years War. It is well into an early build release and it is still undergoing development with additional releases expected soon. 

At the same time, the same team also announced a sequel to the mod that takes place purely between the Motion Picture and the TNG era, which is what I am most excited about, as it's my favorite era of visual style for Trek, but with not much exploring that time frame. So, all you real Star Trek fans who like stuff that isn't trash, go give 'em a look-see. 

Santa Queen

Santaquin, Utah is a little town with not much to it, except for the excellent eatery known as Santa Queen. There isn't much to the place, with only standing room only being possible inside, but it's certainly worth it as that's all that is usually left during peak times and a long line for the drive through as well. 

Pic ripped straight from their facebook page.

The place has a good assortment of burgers, hot dogs, chicken, sandwiches and salads on the menu, but the real prize here is all the fired potato products. Between their fries, seasoned fries, tater tots, and beer-batter fries, they have made a serious name for themselves. The place also has a near endless combination of dirty sodas and shakes that are also pretty good, with a changing list of specialty flavors featured every month. 

As I said, it's in a small town, but it's literally a straight shot right off of the Santaquin I-15 exit heading west and it's totally worth it. Unfortunately, they don't have a real website, but you can still check out their menu here and they also have a facbook page as well.

Anybody else nostalgic for the way PBS used to be?

This dipwad should know better.

Does anyone else remember a time when PBS was actually interested in teaching facts and how to be nice to other people? 

Remember when Bill Nye the science guy was actually teaching science and not make believe bullshit like the gender spectrum? 

Remember when Sesame Street was interested in teaching kids the alphabet and counting instead of shoving gay and AIDS ridden characters in their faces and tampons for no reason?

It's to the point that even Frank Oz says it is a shadow of it's former self, though I doubt for the same reasons I mentioned here. Though, when they think that cookie monster needs to be changed because his obsession over cookies is "problematic" you got bigger problems behind the scenes. Yeah, Disney isn't the only thing that needs to die, and if it won't, we need to kill it.

They even eff up cookie monster. Why?

Tanforan Racetrack

Buckle up people, this will be a long one with way more information to it than even I imagined, and I knew from the start it would be a big one. It also doesn't help that you cant talk about the history of Tanforan without talking human right abuses and politics, so you have been warned.

A pic of the original stands and track circa 1908. All pics sourced from Wikipedia (link at bottom). 

These days, it seems that the Tanforan Racetrack is little known outside of older equestrian circles or people who have lived in San Bruno for a while, but it's a place that has some very significant and interesting history associated with it.  Currently, there is no racetrack anymore, but rather a shopping center that has stood there since 1971, and is likely what most people today are familiar with. However, even that has closed this year as it will now be turned into a campus for tech companies and firms.

The history of it starts in 1899, the sole reason for the location of the facility was to circumvent a recent ban on gambling in San Francisco, which did not carry over to San Bruno at the time, to be as close to the city as possible. At the time of construction, the grandstands cost $35,000 to build, which in today's money would equal roughly $1,140,000. 

A pic of the original electric railway leading to the stands. 

The project was devised by a famous (at the time) racetrack proprietor, Edward C. Corrigan and got his principal investment from a couple of brothers in law named William H. Crocker and Prince Andre Poniatowski provided a majority of the funding to construct. They decided to mane the track after a man called Toribio Tanforan, who was the grandson-in-law of Jose Antonio Sanchez, who was the one responsible for the Rancho Buri Buri Mexican Land Grant that comprises what San Bruno is made of today. 

At the time, it originally had a grandstand with seating for 3000 and a total capacity for 5000 spectators, as well as a dedicated Southern Pacific train stop right in front of the grandstands. After opening, the facility had a rich history of racing not only horses, but was also host to dog shows and races, as well as car and motorcycle races, until 1911, when horse gambling was effectively banned state-wide. 

A pic of the first flight to ever take off from northern California in 1910.

Perhaps the most interesting thing to happen at the site was it's hosting to the San Francisco International Air Meet in late January of 1910, being the second ever such event in the United States, the first being held in Los Angeles just the week before. The festivities were delayed for a day because of storms, but upon the resumption of the meet, it was the first recorded flights ever in northern California. Influential aviator Ivan Gates was in attendance of that event and said it inspired him to begin his career in aviation. A subsequent meet was held the next year, with the military being enthusiastic participants with early warplanes, and the first ever aerial reconnaissance flight being performed there. The military also performed the first ever successful shipboard landing of an aircraft with a plane that had taken off from the 1911 exhibition at Tanforan. Afterward, a third exhibition was also held in 1912 as well. 

With the advent of World War I, the grandstand and stables at Tanforan were dismantled in December 1918, not too long after being established as a United States military training center in 1917. It was marked by it being renamed to Camp Tanforan in 1917 and was home to the formation a unit called the "Grizzlies", a volunteer artillery regiment officially known as 144th Field Artillery of the United States Army that trained there until being sent to San Diego later that same year. 

A pic of the training camp for the "Grizzlies", and I ain't talking soccer or hockey. 

The interwar period saw the track foreclose in 1918, but was then rebuilt in 1922 by Pacific Coast Jockey Club to see non-betting races return to the tracks. The reconstruction effort took a monumental $100,000 which equals out to about $1,620,000 in today's money. Later in September 1923, it was the host of a large barbecue and rodeo celebrating the Pony Express, saw horse relays from Stockton to Tanforan via San Jose and San Francisco, following the original express route. The 20s also saw additional car races, and there was even a boxing ring installed to host those events. Unfortunately, the facility could not be sustained without gambling and saw a continual loss because of operating costs, and there was a significant decline of events throughout the 1930s, the great depression likely not helping it's situation. 

The darkest portion of it's history comes in 1942 after the start of World War II, when it was named the Tanforan Assembly Center.  Executive Order 9066 created the internment camps for Japanese Americans and Tanforan was used as a detention center and processing facility for over 8,000 Americans of Japanese decent. The facility was reconstructed to intern 10,000 temporarily before the Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah could be built to permanently imprison them. The US government spent $1,147,216 at that time to reconfigure the facility, which equals to about $19,030,000 today, and was ultimately only in use for about six months.

As mentioned, the detainees were ultimately transferred to the Central Utah Relocation Center by train, which was a two day journey, usually in groups ranging from about 200-500 at a time. After all citizens were transferred, the facility was then repurposed by the US Army for "commando training" until it was handed over to the US Navy in 1943.

The Mochida family wearing identification tags in 1942.

At the time, an Army spokesman said, "there wasn't time—there literally wasn't time—to segregate the loyal from the disloyal." One administrative officer summed up his feelings about the detainees after three months of internment: "... no one can tell you what a Japanese is thinking. I know less about them right now than the first day I came here." You'd think that after saying that, the person quoted would realize the fact that the Army are the jackbooted, traitorous assholes in that situation, but common sense eludes so many people, even then.

As a personal aside, the generation that served throughout World War II (or born from 1901-1927), is often still called "The Greatest Generation", but despite the many sacrifices and achievements by those that lived in that time, I insist that they have also done just as many equally terrible things as well.  They oversaw some of the largest curtailing of American rights and freedoms, oversaw some of the worst human right abuses, censorship, and misrepresentation of history to future generations as well as enabled the infiltration of the US by communists and then tried to cover it up, many of those things being the source of many problems today. Future generations have had to pay for their choices and try to repair the damage done by those same choices as much as possible. We are still feeling the effects of those choices today, and still have yet to undo some of the injustices perpetrated during those years. But hey, George Takei will still viciously defend and vote for the political party that perpetrated that, so it all good, right? <==Insert heavy sarcasm here.

A pic of the line to the mess hall at Tanforan in '42.

In 1946 after the war, the site was again bought and reconstructed at a price of $2,000,000 (equivalent to $27,790,000 today), but was still retained as a training and staging area by the US Navy, which also caused some controversy and scandal at the time. Another scandal occurred in 1949 stating that corrupt  government officials under President Truman used influence to help provide reconstruction materials illegally. 

Ultimately, races did continue at Tanforan for some time until it's official closure by the California Horse Racing Board in February 1964 and was scheduled to be demolished. Before it could commence, a suspected arsonist caused an explosion and subsequent fire in July 1964, destroying the remains of the facility. 

The shops at Tanforan food court circa 2020, right before it's closure.

After the disaster, the Tanforan shopping center was erected in 1971 and was a major hub for the BART train as well. The shops there operated for 50 years until it's permanent closure in 2021. The land still houses a statue of Seabiscuit there and there are also two memorial plaques commemorating the victims of the relocation center that were erected in 1980 and 2007. Thankfully, despite new developments, it is planned to have a new, permanent statue to memorialize the relocation victims that is planned to be unveiled in May of 2022.

Sources: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanforan_Racetrack

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanforan_Assembly_Center

House of Aaron

I almost hesitate to call this history, as it's really just an odd bit of trivia, really. I suppose it'll be interesting to some people, so I'll put it here anyways. 

Utah is just a rich repository of cult-like and actual cult groups throughout it's history, and the House Aaron was really brought to the public consciousness by a 2005 publication by the Utah Attorney General's Office and the Arizona Attorney General's Office listing "extremist groups" that practice plural marriage. This outraged the leadership of the House of Aaron, as they vocally expressed their displeasure at being listed as such by Utah and Arizona when they do not actually practice it, and have stated that it was never a part of their doctrine. Utah and Arizona have since retracted their inclusion in the list of extremist polygamous groups. 

Yes, they have an official logo, and that is actually it. All pics sourced from the Wiki page.

Despite being started by a former member the LDS church, they don't consider it an offshoot or variation of the LDS church at all and doesn't include the Book of Mormon or any other LDS scripture as canonical.   Dr. M. L. Glendenning was the founder of the sect, which started sometime around 1944-45, after being ex-communicated by the LDS church, and they have a number of distinct teachings, doctrine and observations.

The official communal settlement of the sect is located in Eskdale, Utah, named after the same town/village in Scotland. The town was founded in 1955 by Dr. Glendenning as well, specifically to be a very remote, isolationist community for the House of Aaron.

A pic of Dr. Glendenning, founder of the House of Aaron.

As for scripture, current House of Aaron leader John Conrad states unequivocally that the Bible is "the undisputed basis of our doctrine and teaching." However, in 1978, the Levitical Writings was published, which is a compilation of 1944's Book of Elias, or the Record of John, 1948's New Revelations for the Book of Elias, or the Record of John, and 1955's Disciple Book, but the sect has stated the "Levitical Writings" is only mentioned and studied on occasion but is not used for doctrine.

For the sect, the sabbath is considered as Saturday (seventh day) with services being held on that day, priesthood is believed to be preordained, but not to be ordained in mortality, and believes in a similar (but somewhat different) philosophy to the Holy Trinity. 

Initially, there was a mandatory uniform to be worn within the commune: the men in blue slacks and shirts with "Aaron" embroidered in gold over the pocket and women in blue and white dresses with "Levi" embroidered on their small, white caps. However, over the past several decades, the community has slowly become more open to the local valley and surrounding areas, and has relaxed the dress code. 

Unlike many other sects/cults in the state, they are particularly notable for not really being embroiled in any kind of noteworthy scandal/controversy/crimes that I can find, so kudos to them for that, I suppose. Also, unlike a majority of offshoots from the LDS religion, they still have somewhere around 1500-2000 members, while a majority of them today are defunct/non-existent. Due to the longstanding isolationist nature of the group, there still isn't much known about them in public circles, but oddly, they do have on official site (that is somewhat unfinished) that you can go to here: http://www.houseofaaron.org/

Lazy Sundays at Vic Fontane's

James Darren - The Way You Look Tonight

UMs: Lost Artifacts/Civilizations part 4

Back again to another installment of one of my favorite categories of Mysteries, the Lost Civilizations/Artifacts. So throw on the best example of a cover of the famous theme and read on:

Some will say the council of Nicaea was inspired, (which it vary well may have) but there's no arguing that it also didn't bother to try to preserve that which was rejected from being included in today's Bible, and that which is was somewhat arbitrary. So, are there lost gospels that can still be verified? 
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/safxa6/in_the_evening_the_youth_comes_to_him_wearing_a/

Olivier Levasseur was a well educated naval officer turned pirate, who on the day of his public execution, reportedly threw a written cipher into the crowd exclaiming that his treasure could be found with it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/n8iujj/legend_tells_of_a_pirate_named_olivier_levasseur/

I believe I have mentioned the famous Amber Room here before, but it's just too interesting to not go over all the theories as to what happened after the Nazis took it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/qos6l4/during_wwii_the_nazi_army_looted_the_amber_room/

The Jackson Tennessee Hoard was a buried case of about 500 to 800 gold coins discovered in 1985 by city workers. But no one is still sure how it got there and who done it?
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/jftun6/how_did_a_hoard_of_19th_century_gold_coins_end_up/

The Sandby Borg is't an episode of Star Trek, but rather an Iron Age ringfort on an island of Sweden where archaeologists suspect a massacre happened. However, it appears there was little to no resistance, the bodies as well as valuables remained not looted at the time, and it was immediately inhabited again without the bodies being moved:
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/mdyyel/the_mystery_of_the_sandby_borg_ring_fort_in_sweden/