Big Stick Physics

Two years ago, we dodged a bullet.

July 13, 2026 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

FINAL REPORT: The Secret Service Missed Opportunities to Prevent and Disrupt the Attempted Assassination of President Trump on July 13, 2024 (REDACTED)

Two years ago today, a George Washington-level miracle or good fortune saved presidential candidate Trump from being assassinated.

How did the Secret Service get so shitty? It must have taken decades to degrade so thoroughly. You’d think every president would make sure the Secret Service upheld the highest standards.

The final report of the incident by the Department of Homeland Security, Office of the Inspector General, explains what went wrong and how to fix it.

That afternoon, the assassin, Thomas Crooks, flew a drone over a crowded event to survey the area. The Secret Service had no idea. That’s nuts.

This is a bad idea.

July 12, 2026 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

FCC Approves Reflect Orbital’s Space Mirror Satellite That Astronomers Hate

Despite a flood of objections, the FCC has approved a startup’s plan to launch a controversial satellite that’ll use a giant mirror to reflect sunlight to Earth after dark.

This technology is designed to heat up the planet by adding energy. If anyone ever cared about global warming, they should be talking about this.

I’m not very smart. I got a B- in Electrodynamics. There are people way smarter, but this should be obvious to anyone.

Who has been eating my hibiscus?

July 11, 2026 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

Sparky isn’t a hard worker.

July 9, 2026 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

Choose the best Odyssey.

July 8, 2026 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

The controversial movie, The Odyssey by Christopher Nolan opens in a little over a week. He made some casting decisions that are provocative, along with his choice to use the Emily Wilson translation.

It’s not obvious why the translation makes a difference.

This Reddit post provides an explanation for why the translation matters. A sample passage of The Odyssey is provided from several different translations.

She seems like a sporty traveler

July 5, 2026 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

Fitness influencer banned from flight for attempting to board ‘naked’ amid record-breaking heatwave

Edda Elisa, a fetching fitness influencer from Germany, was denied entry on a Lufthansa flight after a gate agent allegedly accused her of being “naked” as a “catastrophic” heatwave plagues Europe.

Elisa is fetching, but time and place do matter.

The gate agent is maintaining standards for public behavior, and Lufthansa should back her up.

Let’s be honest.

Happy birthday to us.

July 4, 2026 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

Be the person your dog thinks you are.

That’s my advice for people, and for countries. This is America’s 250^th anniversary. Everybody else is saying something about it, so I thought I should. I’ve got nothing profound, just a bunch of little thoughts.

Sparky’s perfect storm.

July 3, 2026 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

A brief, intense storm rolled through, and when that was over, fireworks started. It was probably Independence, along with patriots in the neighborhood.

Nort Stream incident wasn’t our fault.

July 3, 2026 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

German prosecutors accuse Kyiv of ordering 2022 Nord Stream sabotage

Kuznietsov allegedly entered Germany via Poland on 4 September 2022 using a forged Ukrainian passport, the prosecutors said.

Shortly afterwards, he is alleged to have boarded an ocean-going sailing yacht with the other members of the group. The vessel had previously been chartered from a German company in Rostock using fake IDs, according to the prosecutors’ case.

Kuznietsov and his accomplices allegedly transported large quantities of weapons-grade explosives to a site near the Danish island of Bornholm and the group “affixed explosive devices fitted with timers to the gas pipelines running along the seabed”.

Authorities have specific information about how the mission was conducted, so it sounds legit. I’m glad the US had nothing to do with it.

The Nord Stream pipeline supplied half of the natural gas that Germany needed, so blowing it up was a devastating attack on German infrastructure. If Germany had not abandoned it’s nuclear power plants after the Fukushima disaster, their energy supply would not be so vulnerable.

Sparky was spooked by a chipmunk.

July 2, 2026 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

This morning, Sparky came into the bedroom to hide in the closet. He was concerned about something.

Sparky isn’t the type of dog that smells cancer or sees dead people, so if he is disturbed, it’s usually for a mundane reason. From bed, I could see that the weather looked sunny and clear. That left the possibility that Sparky had taken a shit in the house.