The fruits of this process were what one would expect. Previously, the Michigan legislature apportioned its districts to account for existing county and municipal boundaries, producing legislative districts tied to real communities. At the behest of their “experts,” commissioners did away with this precedent, sacrificing the integrity of rural communities to prop up the population figures of majority Democratic districts in the name of “partisan fairness.” Unsurprisingly, Michigan Democrats flipped the state legislature and captured a majority of congressional seats during the 2022 midterms. //

Promote the Vote also received $10 million from the aforementioned Sixteen Thirty Fund. The initiative constitutionalized early and absentee voting, mandated state-funded ballot drop boxes, and permitted the private takeover of election operations.

The left’s interest in promoting absentee voting and drop boxes and their connection with ballot harvesting is by now well documented. More troubling is the initiative’s permanent establishment of private funding for election administration. //

The strategy of big liberal dark money in propping up VNP in Michigan is obvious: Destroy the viability of GOP candidates and resecure the state’s position in the “blue wall.” To accomplish this goal, use the initiative loophole and millions of out-of-state dark money under the guise of a “nonpartisan grassroots coalition” to circumvent the existing legislative body and dupe voters into delivering their redistricting process into the hands of leftist academics. Then, use the same tactic to achieve additional electoral reforms, protected from repeal by the state Constitution, solidifying a structural advantage for Democrats in the state’s legislature and congressional delegation. //

VNP’s success in Michigan is a stark warning of how the left is finding new ways to destroy whatever remains of our constitutional order. It is a strategy that can, is, and will be replicated nationwide. Welcome to the age of “nonpartisan” politics.

There’s a big difference between having to comply with the laws versus the censorship that existed under Twitter 1.0, suppressing the political positions that liberals didn’t like. Yglesias can keep spinning and getting ratioed, but he can’t argue away what happened before and what Musk has done for free speech.

For directories read permission means that the user may see the contents of a directory. Write permission means that a user may create files or folders in the directory. Execute permission means that the user may enter the directory.

On a Linux system, when changing the ownership of a symbolic link using chown, by default it changes the target of the symbolic link (ie, whatever the symbolic link is pointing to).

If you'd like to change ownership of the link itself, you need to use the -h option to chown:

-h, --no-dereference affect each symbolic link instead of any referenced file (useful only on systems that can change the ownership of a symlink)

On May 26, SpaceX shared an inspiring 2-minute video of its first-ever fully-integrated Starship test flight featuring spectacular views of Earth from Starship's onboard cameras, scenes from Mission Control, and spectators' excitement upon seeing the massive stainless-steel vehicle liftoff from the Starbase launch site last month, see video clip below.

Note that any city crossed by a rectangular grid can identify days where the setting Sun aligns with their streets. But a closer look at such cities around the world shows them to be less than ideal for this purpose. Beyond the grid you need a clear view to the horizon, as Manhattan has across the Hudson River to New Jersey. And tall buildings that line the streets create a vertical channel to frame the setting Sun, creating a striking photographic opportunity.

True, some municipalities have streets named for the Sun, like Sunrise Highway on Long Island and the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. But these roads are not perfectly straight. And the few times a year when the Sun aligns with one of their stretches of road, all you get is stalled traffic solar glare temporarily blinds drivers.

So Manhattanhenge may just be a unique urban phenomenon in the world, if not the universe.

Note that several years ago, an article in the The New York Times identified this annual event as the Manhattan Solstice. But of course, the word solstice translates from the Latin solstitium, meaning stopped sun, in reference to the winter and summer solstices where the Sun's daily arc across the sky reaches its extreme southerly and northerly limits. Manhattanhenge comes about because the Sun's arc has not yet reached these limits, and is on route to them, as we catch a brief glimpse of the setting Sun along the canyons of our narrow streets.

While we are on the subject, when viewed from all latitudes north of the Tropic of Cancer (23.5 degrees north latitude), the Sun always rises at an angle up and to the right, and sets and an angle down and to the right. That's how you can spot a faked sunrise in a movie: it moves up and to the left. Filmmakers are not typically awake in the morning hours to film an actual sunrise, so they film a sunset instead, and then time-reverse it, thinking nobody will notice.

Praise the Lord with us for I-TEC teammates and unexpected connections! This picture was taken in Brussels, Belgium. The five men on the left were on their way to Liberia, West Africa. The four on the right were heading back to the U.S. from Uganda, Central Africa.

Only God could orchestrate such a meeting!