After 36 years serving Erie’s west side, Pony Express could shut its doors by the end of year — not because of poor business, but because the U.S. Postal Service has pulled the plug.
On Oct. 1, USPS officials removed all postal equipment and signage from the store at 1903 W. Eighth St., ending a decades-long contract that allowed the locally owned shop to operate as an official USPS location. The move followed a termination notice issued in late May, giving owners David and Terry Grab 120 days to wind down its USPS services.
Grab said the USPS provided a written statement clarifying that the contract termination was not due to performance. Rather, USPS determined that nearby postal facilities could fully absorb the community’s needs without Pony Express…
This is an interesting talk on ancient civilizations we heard about in school but ended up not knowing anything about.
There are a number of suspected causes for the collapse of these Mediterranean/Middle East civilizations, two of which are climate change and “Sea People” invaders.
Climate change was temperature REDUCTION back then!
The author states all the suspected causes for Mediterranean/Middle East collapse are present today. The Sea People today, he says, may be ISIS and their brethren. Can you think of another sea people candidate that causes mischief?
The author states we would not be where we are if these collapses had not occurred and spurred change. This ties in neatly with Thomas Sowell’s “Conquests and Cultures: An International History”. Conquest often eventually results in advancement for the conquered.
I’ve been running a little experiment the past 10 days. I carried two phones everywhere: my Google Fi device and my GrapheneOS device.
Every night, here’s how the batteries compared: • Google Fi: about 5% left • GrapheneOS: about 50–75% left
What’s going on here? Am I really using the Google Fi phone 2–4x more?
Actually it’s the opposite. My GrapheneOS phone is my daily driver. That’s where I use Signal, Brave, podcasts, audiobooks, email, camera, notes, calendar, my language app, and other things.
Meanwhile, on my Google Fi phone, I’ve installed exactly two apps: Signal and Google Maps, and I also use it as an internet hotspot. I deleted as many preinstalled apps as I could without breaking the phone, but there are countless ones I can’t remove.
At first glance you might think the hotspot is what’s draining the battery. That’s certainly a factor, but for context I turn the device to airplane mode (and shutting off the hotspot) whenever I’m not using it.
Even with “aggressive battery saver” enabled and hours in airplane mode, the Google phone churned through its battery like crazy.
The fact that the Google phone’s battery still dies so quickly is revealing. Battery drain can actually be a useful indicator of how private your device is. Some of this comes down to deliberate privacy choices, and some of it comes from the inherent design of each operating system.
Why Battery Drain Is a Privacy Clue
Battery life is a rough but useful proxy for what’s happening under the hood. If your phone is dead by dinnertime even when you barely use it, something else is doing the work. And “something else” usually means: • Background services constantly phoning home • Analytics trackers collecting usage data • System-level apps pinging servers even when you think they’re off • Push notification frameworks that keep connections alive 24/7
That invisible activity not only kills your battery, it shows how much your phone is reporting back without your consent.
President Donald Trump reacted to a report that found there had allegedly been 274 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents in the crowd during the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. He wants “to know who each and every one” of the agents in the crowd were and “What they were up to.”
In a post on Truth Social, Trump noted that the reports findings were “different from what” former FBI Director Christopher Wray had “stated, over and over again!” Trump’s post came after a report by the Blaze found that the “FBI has acknowledged it had 274 plainclothes agents” in the crowd that day, after the agent had refused to “disclose the level of its presence at the Capitol.”
“It was just revealed that the FBI had secretly placed, against all Rules, Regulations, Protocols, and Standards, 274 FBI Agents into the Crowd just prior to, and during, the January 6th Hoax,” Trump said. “This is different from what Director Christopher Wray stated, over and over again! That’s right, as it now turns out, FBI Agents were at, and in, the January 6th Protest, probably acting as Agitators and Insurrectionists, but certainly not as ‘Law Enforcement Officials.’”
“I want to know who each and every one of these so-called ‘Agents’ are, and what they were up to on that now ‘Historic’ Day,” Trump added. “Many Great American Patriots were made to pay a very big price only for the love of their Country. I owe this investigation of ‘Dirty Cops and Crooked Politicians’ to them!”
Trump continued to say that Wray “has some major explaining to do.”
“That’s two in a row, Comey and Wray, who got caught LYING, with our Great Country at stake,” Trump added. “WE CAN NEVER LET THIS HAPPEN TO AMERICA AGAIN!”
Per the Blaze, a “senior congressional source said the number is not necessarily a surprise, since the FBI often embeds countersurveillance personnel at large events.”
One of the last few U.S. presidents ever to venture to report on the the problem of the military industrial complex. A top general before he took office, he saw how the U.S. had turned into a military economy, with always the need to find enemies in order to keep the gravy train rolling. During the cold war it was the Soviet Union and any countries that wanted a socialist economy. Then it was to be the “terrorist countries.” Now, it’s Russia, and China, Iran, and BRICS countries in general. The excuse? To bring freedom and democracy, to vanquish tyranny and protect the “free world.” The results? Death of millions, a large percentage of which are civilians, and the violations of sovereignty of countries around the world, and the privation of people at home.
The irony is that when Cold War I ended, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA were so panicky over having lost Russia as their official enemy, they were suggesting that they could help fight the drug war as their new mission. And so here they are — with their new official enemies — drugs and drug lords in Latin America.
The end of the Cold War in 1989 provided a fantastic opportunity for a major reset in relations between the American people and the people of Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and other nations that US officials had long designated as official enemies of the United States. For almost 45 years following the end of World War II, US officials had inculcated a mindset of deep fear among the American people — fear that the Russians, Chinese, and other communist nations were coming to get us.
It was all one great big racket designed to justify the conversion of the US government from our founding governmental structure of a limited-government republic to a national-security state, a type of totalitarian-like governmental structure that wields omnipotent powers, such as the power of engaging in state-sponsored assassinations.
Fear-mongering, propaganda, and indoctrination are central to a national-security state governmental structure. The national-security state must convince the citizenry that there are scary enemies coming to get them so that the citizenry will continue to support and embrace the national-security state governmental structure and the ever-increasing power and taxpayer-funded largess that is necessary to sustain it.
The racket worked almost perfectly. Americans fell for it hook, line, and sinker. “The Russians are coming!” people cried. “The Reds are everywhere!”
One big exception was when President Kennedy achieved a personal “breakthrough” after the Cuban Missile Crisis by recognizing that the Cold War and the anti-communist crusade were nothing more than one great big racket.
What stands in the way of this humane legislation is a stubborn belief, held by a small but influential group, that no one should receive financial compensation for the hard, time-consuming, and stressful work of donating a kidney. But that view ignores a central truth of American life: self-interest, when properly aligned, can serve the greater good. Adam Smith, in “The Wealth of Nations,” described how individuals pursuing their own benefit can, through an “invisible hand,” promote the welfare of society as a whole. Rewarding the act of saving strangers’ lives is not a distortion of values; it is their fulfillment.
The kidney shortage is the best kind of problem. It is solvable. And the solution is in Congress right now.
In today’s divided political climate, it is rare to find a policy that saves both lives and money, uniting people across the spectrum. The End Kidney Deaths Act (H.R. 2687) is one of those rare bills. It is bipartisan, pragmatic, and popular.
To solve it, we must focus on a practical, data-driven approach to one of the most urgent crises in American health care: the shortage of kidneys for transplant. More than 90,000 Americans are waiting for a life-saving kidney, and 25 people die each day while on the list. Over the last decade, around 100,000 Americans have perished waiting.
The good news is we already know the solution. What is needed is the leadership from Congress and the President to bring it across the finish line.
This is not a partisan issue.
The Act would dramatically increase the number of living kidney donations. Living donor kidneys last about twice as long as those from deceased donors and provide better outcomes for patients. Yet only about 6,000 people donate each year, and that number has barely budged in 25 years. The bill offers a refundable $10,000 annual tax credit for five years, $50,000 total, to individuals who donate to a stranger. That one policy change could save up to 100,000 lives and reduce taxpayer spending by $37 billion over the next decade. Imagine filling the Caesars Superdome and then adding 17,000 more lives. That is the number of Americans who would be saved.
The financial case is just as strong as the moral one. The federal government currently spends about $50 billion a year on dialysis, roughly one percent of total tax revenue. A kidney transplant costs far less, restores health, and allows patients to return to work and family life. Every time a patient transitions from dialysis to a transplant, taxpayers save an average of $500,000. Few bills before Congress can claim to both save lives and save money on this scale.
Public support is clear. Four national surveys have found that Americans favor compensating kidney donors, and four separate surveys of physicians show similar support in the medical community. Most Americans instinctively understand the fairness of covering the real costs donors face when they step forward to save a stranger’s life.
MCViewPoint 