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Jet5

Best of the Web: US Navy helicopter and fighter jet from USS Nimitz crash in 'separate incidents' in the South China Sea, right as Trump flies over region

Audry Jeong, Isabelle D'Antonio
CNN
Mon, 27 Oct 2025 09:20 UTC
nimitz helicopter
© Seaman Edward Jacome/Digital/USS NimitzAn MH-60R Seahawk takes off from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz during flight operations in the US Central Command area of responsibility.
A US Navy helicopter and a fighter jet both crashed in the same half hour on Sunday during separate routine operations over the South China Sea, with all crew members safely rescued, the Navy's Pacific Fleet said.

The Navy has launched an investigation into the cause of both incidents that occurred over strategic waters seen as a potential flashpoint for global conflict.

US President Donald Trump called the back-to-back crashes "very unusual" and raised the possibility of a fuel problem while speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, en route from Malaysia to Japan on Monday.

"They think it might be bad fuel. We're gonna find out. Nothing to hide, sir," Trump said in response to a question.

The Navy said on social media that a MH-60R Seahawk helicopter went down around 2:45 p.m. local time "while conducting routine operations from the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz." Search-and-rescue crews rescued three crew members, the Navy said.

About 30 minutes later, an F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter also crashed while conducting routine operations from Nimitz. Both crew members ejected and were safely recovered, the Navy said.


Comment: See also:

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Blackbox

Best of the Web: The Quest for Truth: The Tangled Web of Epistemology

Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Postcards From the Edge of Reality
Sun, 26 Oct 2025 17:55 UTC
epistomology laura ai graphic philosophers
From ancient philosophers to modern crises, how do we know what we know?

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned once or twice in my recent posts that I've been planning to write about epistemology. It sure has been on my mind a lot for the past few weeks and the more I look into it and think about it, the more complicated it seems.

We recently had guests - a young couple - and, over supper, I was asked what I was working on. I said that I was thinking about - not actually working on - epistemology. The husband and wife looked at each other and exchanged some sort of silent communication which she then explained. Apparently, her father, a professor at a university, has been writing a book about epistemology for the past 40 years. I thought, 'holy frijoles!' I worked on the research for my book on early Christianity - off and on - from about 1982 until it was finally completed in 2020. That's only 38 years and I'm satisfied with the work I did on that. But this poor guy -the father of our guest- has been working on epistemology longer than that and is still laboring with, apparently, no end in sight.

So, I did a lot more thinking and poking into the matter. Naturally Grok got a real workout with me sending it out to fetch data to help me think even harder. I am no longer surprised that someone can work on this topic for 40 years with no end in sight.
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Cloud Lightning

Best of the Web: Slow-moving Tropical Storm Melissa, soon a hurricane, brings death, floods to Caribbean


Al Jazeera
Sat, 25 Oct 2025 10:15 UTC
mmmmmm
The slow-moving, but punishing, Tropical Storm Melissa that has already killed four people is threatening catastrophic flooding across the northern Caribbean as it strengthens towards Jamaica.

Melissa is expected to become a major hurricane, possibly by later Saturday or Sunday, before making landfall across central Jamaica on Tuesday, with forecasters warning the system could dump up to 89 centimetres of rain (35 inches) across Haiti.

The storm's crawling pace - moving at just 5 kilometres (3.1 miles) per hour on Friday - means Jamaica could endure hurricane conditions for more than 72 hours, while southwestern Haiti faces what forecasters describe as life-threatening flash flooding.

Three people have died in Haiti, including two killed in a landslide in Port-au-Prince and another struck by a falling tree in Marigot, officials said. A fourth person was killed in the Dominican Republic, where another remains missing.

Jamaica's Meteorological Service principal director Evan Thompson told The Gleaner that residents should brace for a "double effect" as the hurricane's eye passes over the island, with the strongest winds hitting from opposite directions on either side of the centre.

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Heart - Black

Best of the Web: Israel flipped out and killed 45 Palestinians after running over their own bomb

Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin's Newsletter
Sun, 19 Oct 2025 00:00 UTC
Israel flag saluter
© Unknown
In today's news, Israel's stupid fucking genocidal rapists ran over an unexploded ordnance from their own evil carpet bombing campaign, blamed Hamas for the explosion, started bombing the fuck out of Gaza again, killed scores of civilians, said they were once again cutting off aid to the enclave, and then quietly backed down on urging from Washington.

Rather than report that Israel violated the ceasefire agreement as blatantly as any agreement could possibly be violated, the western press have been referring to this as a "test" of the ceasefire. Killing Palestinians is so normalized and accepted as a baseline expectation in the western press that CNN called it the "first major test" of the ceasefire after Israel killed people in Gaza every single day since the ceasefire agreement was signed.

I hope the "WHY AREN'T YOU CELEBRATING?" crowd have gotten their answer by now. We weren't celebrating because we know more than you. We've actually been paying attention, so we know Israel is going to seek out every excuse to kill Palestinians and torch this fake "ceasefire".
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Tornado1

Best of the Web: Tornado strikes suburb of Paris, killing 1 and injuring 9 more

Emily Blumenthal
The Telegraph (UK)
Tue, 21 Oct 2025 08:35 UTC
tornado paris france
At least one person died when a "mini-tornado" tore through the northern suburbs of Paris.

The extreme winds began just before 6pm local time on Monday and affected about a dozen towns in the Val-d'Oise region of France. Nine people were injured, four of whom are in a critical condition.

Philippe Court, the head of the local authority, declared the "violent, sudden windy episode" to be a "mini-tornado".

The gusts were so strong they tore off roofs and toppled three cranes. One fell on a centre for disabled children and another on a house.

Videos filmed in Ermont, a village about 20 miles north of the capital, showed the cranes swaying violently in the wind before falling as debris flew through the air.

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Question

Best of the Web: 'Something from space' slams into cockpit of United Airlines flight from Denver to LA

Kerry Harrison
Orbital Today
Mon, 20 Oct 2025 22:14 UTC
plane space debris pilot injury
United Airlines Flight 1093 was flying from Denver to Los Angeles when the captain reported hitting space debris at 36,000 feet, forcing a diversion to Salt Lake City. The Boeing 737, carrying 140 passengers, landed safely on Thursday following visible damage to the cockpit windshield and a minor injury to the pilot's arm.

Photos shared online show cracks across the cockpit glass and small fragments scattered inside the flight deck. Aviation social media account JonNYC was the first to report the pilot's theory that orbital debris was responsible.

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Star of David

Best of the Web: Israeli soldiers brag they 'buried and burned' thousands of tons of aid as famine took over in Gaza


The Cradle
Fri, 17 Oct 2025 20:07 UTC
children gaza aid trucks
© Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu/picture allianceTrucks carrying food aid and fuel, accompanied by a UN team, pass through the Kerem Shalom border crossing on Wednesday, October 15, 2025.
Rights groups say Israel has been carrying out a 'deliberate campaign of starvation' in Gaza

Over the past two months, the Israeli army has buried or burned more than a thousand truckloads worth of humanitarian aid in Gaza, including food, medical supplies, and bottled water, amid the ongoing starvation of Palestinians in the strip, Israeli broadcaster Kan reported on 17 October.

"We buried everything in the ground, and we even burned some of the things," said an army source. "Even today, there are thousands of packages waiting in the sun, and if they are not transferred to the Gaza Strip, we will be forced to destroy them too."

The humanitarian aid, which had spoiled while standing for many weeks on the Palestinian side of the Kerem Shalom crossing, was allegedly not distributed because the mechanism to do so is not functioning.
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HAL9000

Best of the Web: The Behavioral Architect

Eko
Eko Loves You
Tue, 14 Oct 2025 23:32 UTC
graphic silhouette figure red blocks lonely
How Nikita Bier spent a decade perfecting psychological control on teenagers — and now deploys it on everyone at X

"Rethink Democracy."

That was the tagline for Politify back in 2011. A Berkeley student project that went viral during the election. Four million users in one month. National media coverage. A feel-good story about using technology to help voters understand how policies would affect them.

Nikita Bier was 22 years old when he discovered something profound: Americans vote against their financial self-interest more than any other nation in the Western world.

Most people would see that as a problem to solve. A gap to bridge with better information and education.

Bier saw it as an opportunity to exploit.

Because what he actually learned from Politify wasn't just that voters are irrational. What he learned was that "rhetoric supersedes logic when systems are complex enough that ordinary citizens don't have hours to understand them."
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Star of David

Flashback Best of the Web: Following the money: Where does Israel's Qatargate scandal stand?

Bar Peleg
Haaretz
Thu, 15 May 2025 22:51 UTC
players israel qatar scandal
© Boaz Arad, Gideon Markovich, Moti Milrod, Facebook profile/Illustration: Aharon ErlichTop to bottom: Gil Birger, Jay Footlik, Eli Feldstein, Israel 'Srulik' Einhorn, Yonatan Urich
A former Mossad official, a businessman-turned-conduit, an Israeli-owned British firm, and a World Cup marketing campaign: all the routes through which Qatar tried to influence Israel's top office

Almost six months have passed since Haaretz exposed the connection between Qatar and close associates of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Dubbed the "train at the gate" case by the police - a wordplay on the Hebrew word for locomotive, katar - the affair only seems to keep expanding.

New angles and suspects have been emerging in the scandal, which reveals troubling ties between the Persian Gulf emirate and Israel's most powerful office. Here are the main points of the affair: the facts that have been permitted for publication, the suspects being investigated, the players involved and their connection to Netanyahu.

Some background:

Comment: The Israeli government appears shot-though with corruption. As they say, the fish rots from the head.

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Bad Guys

Best of the Web: Pekka-philia: disgraced porn profiteer turned pro-Ukraine 'disinfo expert' could face legal action

Kit Klarenberg
The Grey Zone
Mon, 13 Oct 2025 13:37 UTC
Pekka Kallioniemi
Faux disinformation expert Pekka Kallioniemi gained notoriety by smearing critics of the Ukraine proxy war. Since being unmasked for peddling pornographic representations of minors, Kallioniemi has been caught promoting fraudulent KGB documents to slander a journalist as a Russian spy.

In October 2024, mainstream Canadian defense journalist David Pugliese suffered "the political equivalent of a drive-by shooting," according to a local publication called The Walrus. Citing alleged KGB documents, a prominent lawmaker accused Pugliese of being a longstanding Soviet/Russian spy during a parliamentary hearing on "disinformation." Those files turned out to be blatant forgeries, but parliamentary privilege insulated the accuser from a defamation suit.

However, the same protections do not apply to a self-proclaimed "disinformation expert" named Pekka Kallioniemi, who simultaneously promoted the fraudulent material.

Comment: This is a good example of a psychopathic individual.

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