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Cruise Missle

Best of the Web: Russia hammers Kiev with massive barrage likely including Oreshnik hypersonic missiles

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Sun, 24 May 2026 19:03 UTC
oresnik strike Kiev russia ukraine
© Times of IndiaScreen captures of Russia's massive strike on Kiev, May 24, 2026 in retaliation for the bombing of a children's school in Lugansk.
Russia answers Kiev's attack on the Starobelsk school

Less than two days after President Vladimir Putin vowed revenge for a Ukrainian strike that hit a secondary-school dormitory in the Russian-controlled Luhansk oblast, Russia unleashed a massive, multi-weapon barrage on Kiev early Sunday, one that apparently included the rare use of Oreshnik hypersonic ballistic missiles.


Comment: Putin vows revenge for Ukrainian attack on Lugansk school dorm

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Tsunami

Best of the Web: Severe flooding across central and eastern China after record rainfall of 5.5 FEET in 3 days - at least 25 killed, 20 missing (UPDATED)

Liu Boqian
China Daily
Sun, 17 May 2026 18:56 UTC
mmmmm
Heavy rains swept across central and eastern China over the weekend, hitting provinces including Jiangxi and Hunan, with more downpours expected.

The National Meteorological Center (NMC) forecasts that over the next three days, heavy rainfall will gradually move eastward and southward.

Since Friday evening, torrential rain in Ganzhou city, Jiangxi, has raised river levels and caused localized flooding. Shangyou county was hardest hit, especially Dongshan township, where rising waters disrupted electricity and water supplies, submerged streets and swept away vehicles.

By 4:30 pm Saturday, the county government had relocated 1,147 residents across a number of townships. No casualties or missing persons were reported, according to local media.


Comment: Update May 19

The Independent reports:
At least 12 people were killed as torrential rains continued across southern and central China on Tuesday, with widespread flooding that also closed schools and businesses, and disrupted transport and power supplies, authorities said.

China's weather agency maintained elevated orange alerts on Tuesday for heavy rain and severe stormy weather, warning that the huge precipitation system has entered its strongest, most destructive stage.

The China Meteorological Administration (CMA) said areas of Jiangxi, Anhui, Hunan, Hubei, Guizhou, Guangxi, Guangdong and Hainan faced a high risk of rain-related disasters, including landslides, flash floods and severe urban flooding and waterlogging. Authorities said they ⁠were launching emergency responses in several affected areas.

Many residents in Jingzhou, a city in central Hubei, were knee-deep in water and able to catch fish swimming in the streets, according to images posted on Chinese video platform Douyin.

Some cars were nearly completely submerged on roads surrounded by residential and commercial buildings.

Torrential rainfall hit the upper reaches of the Baishui River, part of Xuan'en county, with precipitation reaching 292.6mm. The rainstorm caused river water levels to surge rapidly, inundating multiple homes along the Baishui River. Some houses collapsed, while roads and communication services were disrupted.



At least eight people were confirmed dead after a pickup truck carrying 15 farm workers fell into a flooded river in China's southwestern region of Guangxi amid heavy rain, state broadcaster CCTV reported. In ‌separate incidents, three people were killed by flash floods ‌in a low-lying village in Hubei, while another person was killed in southern Hunan province, CCTV said.

Torrential rains also battered Shimen county in Hunan province from 7am Sunday, leaving one person dead and two others missing as of Monday evening, according to Xinhua.
Update May 20

Gulf Today reports:
Death toll reaches 25 in China rain, 20 more missing

The death toll from heavy rains across central and southern China since the weekend has risen to 25, state media reports showed Wednesday, with 20 more people still unaccounted for.

Natural disasters and extreme weather events are common in China, particularly in the summer, when some regions experience intense rainfall while others bake in searing heat.

Several areas across China have been hit by "record-breaking rainfall" in recent days, state-run broadcaster CGTN said, triggering school and work suspensions as well as allocation of relief funds.




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Rainbow

Best of the Web: Very rare ice halo in Sicily, Italy on May 15


SpaceWeather.com
Thu, 21 May 2026 12:04 UTC
mmmm
Experts call it a "suncave Parry arc." Usually, you have to go to the Arctic to find one. Last week, however, Marcella Giulia Pace saw the rarity in Sicily.

"On May 15th, I was in my garden, surrounded by the quietness of the Sicilian countryside, when, lifting my eyes to the sky, I saw an extraordinary halo display," says Pace. "With my camera in hand, I began running along the country road beside my home, searching for an open field that could reveal the entire composition."

The luminous network included a circumzenithal arc, a supralateral arc, a suncave Parry arc, an upper tangent arc, a 22° halo, a parhelic circle and a sundog.

"As I ran, the complex display kept transforming before my eyes," says Pace. "The greatest surprise came when I saw a Parry arc forming above the upper tangent arc--the rarest phenomenon of all!"

Suncave Parry arcs are exceptionally rare because they require sunlight to pass through column-shaped ice crystals suspended in a very specific, improbable, and unstable alignment in the atmosphere. They were first recorded in 1820 by William Edward Parry while icebound off Melville Island in the Canadian Arctic.

"The entire spectacle lasted only twenty minutes," she says. "Then thicker clouds slowly advanced, covering the sun and dissolving one by one all the arcs that had transformed my sky into a mosaic of light and ice."

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Star of David

Best of the Web: Israel Uber Alles: Rep. Massie 'loses' Kentucky primary - Trump's 'MAGA' purge continues

Jesse Bedayn, Dylan Lovanand, Kim Chandler
Arkansas Democrat Gazette
Wed, 20 May 2026 09:27 UTC

Comment: We're being asked to believe that the electorate is upset at Massie for forcing the release of the Epstein Files...


thomas massie kentucky primary
Kentucky U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie lost his Republican House primary Tuesday in another test of President Donald Trump's power over his party after he handpicked challenger and ultimate winner Ed Gallrein to oust the incumbent.

The result showed the president's persisting influence over GOP voters, adding to a growing number of Trump-backed primary challengers to defeat Republican lawmakers who angered him in his second term.


Comment: Yep, that's Gaetz, Taylor-Greene, and Massie gone - the core of the 'MAGA Caucus' in the House.


Also Tuesday, in Alabama, former Senate race rivals U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville and Doug Jones are headed to a rematch in the Alabama governor's race.

Comment: Trump's feeling good about his 'victory', so he's popped up on X to gloat (and been heavily ratio'd and excoriated in the replies):


He only dislikes vote-rigging when it doesn't go his way.

Massie's concession speech: witty, gracious, human:


But so be it. Live like Massie - build your own business, house, farm, community, etc. Ditch politics. Observe the circus, but don't become 'active' in it. It's a rigged game for psychopaths and their sycophants.

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Snowflake Cold

Best of the Web: Europe's mid-May cold trough digs deep: ENSO swamps the attribution machine

Cap Allon
Electroverse.substack.com
Thu, 14 May 2026 10:02 UTC
Keraunos puts the cold pool at 500 hPa at -32C (-26F) over western and central Europe on May 14.

For May, that ranks as the fourth-coldest such setup in 30 years of record-keeping. The benchmark remains May 2012, with ERA5 reanalysis coming up with -33C (-27F).

mmmmmm
© [Keraunos]
A deep upper-level trough is locked over the continent, with blocking over the North Atlantic allowing polar air to drive far south. That cold air aloft is steepening lapse rates, destabilizing the atmosphere, and turning mild spring air at the surface into showers, hail, thunder, mountain snow and frost risk.

The cold is already showing up.

In Croatia, Puntijarka on Zagreb's Medvednica has recorded May snow for only the sixth time since observations began in 1981.
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Bad Guys

Best of the Web: Racing toward "Absolute Zero"

Alex Krainer
alexkrainer.substack.com
Wed, 13 May 2026 14:48 UTC
net zero carbon emissions dystopia
© World Green Building CouncilOwning nothing and being happy
It's very real: the Epstein class is dead serious about 'getting rid of the poor people,' and creating an Orwellian totalitarian society.

Last week, a British farmer reported that he received a letter from the government, informing him that,
"... by 2030, there is to be a 50% reduction in farmed animals. And by 2050, 100% - zero farm animals systems in place. And guess who's signed up to that? Yes, the two biggest arseholes in the world: Starmer and Bill Gates. What more proof do I want, and I've got it in writing. So it looks like their little takeover is coming along nicely for them, but unfortunately we've now got the document. So... let World War 4 commence. We don't need to be at war with Russia, we're going to create our internal one."

Comment: Well, it's not like Gates has been hiding his agenda:

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Light switch

Best of the Web: Inside Israel's AI targeting system: How data from a phone become a death sentence

Nabih Bulos
LA Times
Mon, 04 May 2026 20:35 UTC
israel targeted assassinations
© Chris McGrath / Getty ImagesParamedics and civilians rush to a building hit moments earlier by an Israeli airstrike on April 8 in Nabatieh, Lebanon.
The buzz of the Israeli drone was constant that day, and every time Ahmad Turmus looked up, it seemed to be circling over him, like an all-too-patient bird of prey.

So when the phone rang as he was visiting family one Monday afternoon in February, Turmus wasn't too surprised that the person speaking accented Arabic was an Israeli military officer.

What surprised him was the question.

"Ahmad, you want to die with those around you or alone?"

Turmus, according to family members interviewed, answered with one word before hanging up: "Alone."

The targeting of Turmus, which Israel acknowledged, demonstrates how, time and again, its military has mastered an intelligence war for which Hezbollah appears to have no answer.

Ever since the spectacular pager attacks of September 2024 — when Israel remotely detonated explosives hidden in pagers carried by Hezbollah members — foot soldiers, support personnel, field commanders, chiefs of staff and even a revered secretary general have been felled by a targeting system powered by artificial intelligence.

Comment: The above is a sanitized version of what is taking place in Israel-occupied Palestine and southern Lebanon, placed within a context of 'hand-wringing over where the moral threshold for killing terrorists ought to be'.

In reality, Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization, and, more importantly, Israel is not using this 'kill chain' solely for targeting its political opponents.

An American journalist in Lebanon, Courtney Bonneau, not only reports about such linking of AI to cell phone locations to armed drones, she lives the experience daily, because she has a drone circling over her head, like a real-life 'sword of Damocles', threatening to exterminate her at any moment:


For reporting on Israel's invasion of Lebanon.

Bonneau lives, for now, perhaps thanks to her passport, but Israel has no 'threshold' barring it from exterminating Lebanese journalists, just as it didn't for Palestinian ones in 2023-2025, and has recently begun expanding its 'extermination dataset' to emergency workers like ambulance drivers (responding to Israeli drone strikes against civilians).

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Snowflake Cold

Best of the Web: May blizzard buries the Russian city of Noyabrsk

Nau Weather News
YouTube
Tue, 12 May 2026 09:46 UTC
mmmmm
Unusual snowfall was reported in the southern Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region, Russia, on Sunday, May 10, 2026.

Wind gusts reached 23 meters per second. A high alert status was declared in Noyabrsk.

Traffic was also restricted on regional highways in the Noyabrsk, Muravlenko, Gubkinsky, and Purovsky districts.

Drivers were advised to avoid traveling outside the city.

Public transportation was also suspended in densely populated areas.

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Biohazard

Best of the Web: Trump's deadly trap: By rejecting Iran's proposal, US enters a strategic nightmare with no escape


PressTV
Mon, 11 May 2026 19:13 UTC
Trump Iran deal war
© PressTV
In a theatrical move that fooled no one, US President Donald Trump rejected Iran's comprehensive plan to end the war he illegally imposed on the country 70 days ago.

The US president postured as a victor, dismissing Tehran's proposal with the bluster of a leader who expects capitulation. But the reality on the ground tells a starkly different story.

By every measurable metric, America is the defeated party in the asymmetric war that was imposed on Iran amid the nuclear talks in Geneva on February 28. And his rejection of Iran's terms in a social media post has not opened new options for Washington, but it has only trapped the US in a deadly three-way crossroads from which there is no easy escape.

Trump's rejection of Iran's plan, which was submitted early on Sunday through Pakistani mediators, is a grave strategic error as Americans hold no winning cards.

Iran's proposal: Fundamental, natural, and uncompromising

Iran's plan to permanently end the war was never meant to please Washington. It was designed to restore justice, recognize strategic realities, and secure Iran's undeniable rights after the unprovoked military aggression against the country and maritime banditry.

The core elements of Iran's proposal are not maximalist. They are rooted in natural and fundamental principles that any nation subjected to unprovoked aggression and holding the upper hand would rightfully insist upon:
  • War reparations - Payment of damages and reparations by the aggressor for the destruction inflicted on Iran's infrastructure, economy, and civilian population.
  • Management of the Strait of Hormuz - Recognition of Iran's sovereign control over this vital waterway, based on the mechanism already announced by Tehran.
  • Lifting of sanctions - The complete removal of all oppressive and illegal sanctions that have targeted the Iranian people for decades.
  • Release of frozen assets - The return of billions of dollars of Iranian assets illegally seized by the United States.
  • Permanent end to the war - A cessation of hostilities not only against Iran but also against the entire resistance front, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and other allied forces across the region.
None of these demands is unreasonable or impractical. They are the basic entitlements of a nation that has been attacked, bombed, and subjected to economic warfare for nearly half a century. What Iran is asking for is not special treatment but justice.
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Black Magic

Best of the Web: The UFO Question: Demons and High Strangeness

Adrian Soler
The Unz Review
Tue, 28 Apr 2026 19:33 UTC
costa rica ufo map photo
© Sergio LoaizaCosta Rican National Geographic Institute, September 4, 1971
Demons Out! When I was a young boy, my family often enjoyed watching and laughing at televangelists — especially Ernest Angley, who would regularly cast out demons for us on TV. Suffice to say, demons were considered a humorous component to my slight evangelical upbringing, not something to be considered seriously. Chevy Chase captured the zaniness perfectly in Fletch Lives-The Preacher

J.D. Vance-Aliens are Demons

Tucker, too

Turns out, lots of quite well-known people, and several commenters on The Unz Review believe these UFOs are demons. I would like to take a stab at seriously looking at this possibility.

There is a version of the UAP problem that is safe to discuss in polite company. It involves military pilots seeing objects that outperform known aerospace technology, radar systems confirming what the pilots saw, and a government that has spent decades lying about its level of interest in the subject. This version has congressional hearings, credentialed witnesses, and the imprimatur of the New York Times. It is, in the vocabulary of the national security establishment, a technology problem — something unknown is operating in controlled airspace, and the responsible question is what it is and who built it. Being alarming without being embarrassing is a considerable advantage. Senators can engage with it. Defense contractors can orient toward it. Journalists can cover it without their editors pulling them aside for a quiet word.

Comment: Simply stated, we're not on top of the food chain and Hyperdimensional Overloads are in charge of this farm that is our present reality. See also:

Unveiling the Hyperdimensional Control System: Elite Divisions and the Path to 2030

Unveiling the Unseen: Exploring AI Hallucinations, Schizophrenia, and Hyperdimensional Realities

Theodicy vs The Terror of History and the Impersonal Cosmos: Unveiling the Control System

Aliens Are the Demons We've Always Feared: Unmasking the Hyperdimensional Threat Hidden in Plain Sight

Demons, Aliens, and the Blind Spots of Belief: Why Knowledge Trumps Dogma in Unmasking the Hyperdimensional Threat

Echoes of the Hyperdimensional Matrix: Demons, Disclosures, and the Theology Trap

High Strangeness 2nd Ed Cover


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