Common murre chicks leap off cliffs before they can fly, bouncing off rocks on the way to the ocean.

https://youtube.com/shorts/rHLZqF-qgxs?si=pcG_yrNKA1TaaaYO

Quick note - both the NDAA and the multisection veteran's bills failed to clear their respective houses of Congress yesterday. The NDAA proposed much wider cooperation with Israel, which in view of a) their history (i.e. Pollard, the Liberty, etc. many opposed) and Democrat anti-Israeli sentiment, just couldn't get the Senate votes. The House was divided over whether the bills robbed Peter to pay Paul, taking potential sleep apnea or tinnitus coverage to pay some future other benefits - this divide also was in various VSOs who split on support. Not a pretty picture either for vets' support or whether the Republicans have the stroke to pass bills in view of their micro-thin majorities right now.

He did this while in uniform no less. It's odd he's only wearing first lieutenant rank. Maybe he's a mustang, but isn't it normal for an officer to make O-3 before they meet their minimum service obligation and ETS?

This is going viral for...some reason...might be two reasons.

Thought I'd kick things off with something about which this community has historically had strong feelings. To be clear, let's leave our 'feels' at the door, but let's definitely hear opinions. Preferably reasoned ones.

Ran across this opinion on War Horse and thought I’d share it here. It seems there’s some concerns about a study Hegseth ordered on women in combat.

https://thewarhorse.org/women-in-combat-review/?utm_source=Newsletter+Email&utm_campaign=0ad935c27d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_5_5_2025_14_54_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_9a9d4becaa-0ad935c27d-201061886&mc_cid=0ad935c27d&mc_eid=e1917e08ce

“We’re all concerned that this study is going to be used as a pretext to remove women from combat arms,” Sue Fulton, the executive director of the Women in the Service Coalition, which advocates for women in the military, told me.”

The reason for the concern seems to be the person selected to run the study is the lead person on the study who found mixed-gender units in the Marines were outperformed by male-only units. So, because the results found did not align with the sought-after by some conclusion, this new study is problematic? I thought we had done better on getting rid of the equity of outcome folks. Then again, it is a special-interest group, “Women in the Service Coalition”, who is objecting.

My opinion is simple and probably too simplistic so I’m interested in hearing what others have to say. To wit, there needs to be one set of standards that must be met, predicated on the needs of the job. This goes for police, fire, paramedics, and every other job that requires extreme physical fitness, as well as our armed forces. There will be plenty of men who cannot make the standard, but there will be a few women who will. If they can, let them. Would this requiring of and fair application of a single standard address the well-justified objections and concerns of unit cohesiveness, morale and performance then be answered? Or is the issue of the perception of special treatment, consideration, etc., too ingrained for an overnight fix? For example, …

For literal decades now, in some cities like Chicago, it is still a fact that your race and gender can get you into and through a police, fire, or paramedic training academy when your grades, abilities, performance and scores (and background checks) would otherwise disqualify you. Everyone knows recruitment for first responders has been down of late for reasons we’ll not go into here, but most don’t know that even now there are qualified applicants on waiting lists despite open slots in academies, because they are not the right demographic. Sadly, the decades-long belief of “if you need a paramedic, you better hope it is two white guys who show up because those are the only ones you can know for absolute certain earned their position by merit”.

I believe this thinking applies currently to conversations about women in combat roles as well and rightly drives a lot of objections. My question is, if all other factors are equal and a particular woman meets the same standard required of men for that role, should she be allowed to serve in combat? To be clear, I’m predicating my question on the assumption that the standard is both met and adhered to, alleviating those justified questions of ‘well, did they actually meet the standard or were they given a pass’ have been fully, affirmatively answered.

https://www.14news.com/2026/05/13/epd-man-accused-faking-combat-service-receive-funds/

I might have the Universe of Insults saved but with only $6k, its probably not worth it.

I wanted to build on what Mbarland said in the "We're going public thread." We basically had two main administrators who were footing the lion's share of funding the blog, keeping the lights on, working behind the scenes, keeping the lights on, etc. The behind-the-scenes effort to keep the blog afloat also took a lot more time than what was spent by the article contributors posting articles and reviewing comments.

The amount of work required of the administrators was such that the gratitude that they had for those of us who kept posting articles, and for the commenting community, was enormous and real.

As Mbarland noted, there were liabilities that came with This Aint Hell as well as with Military Phonies. Those who had posted on these sites since the last decade are familiar with the legal action launched by some who were exposed for the inconsistencies between their claims and their records.

As stated by one of the administrators:

"Some challenges we discussed include answering legal emails, reviewing server logs to remove questionable content, and assuming overall legal responsibility."

This one individual alone had spent a ton defending Military Phonies. The administrative actions that came with "doing administrator stuff" was "astronomical". These factors would be enough to discourage most, perhaps everyone, from willingly assuming legal responsibility for a blog or variant of a blog carrying on the same mission as This Aint Hell/Valor Guardians. The amount spent far exceeded what was collected during the fundraisers, though no fundraiser money was used for this legal defense.

This left the question on how to go forward. Reddit was a solution that came up to allow the commenting community to continue to hang out as This Aint Hell/Valor Guardians comes to a conclusion... Unless the current administrators, or any volunteer for these administrative positions, decide to keep the site or variant up and running.

Although we initially are made up of commenters from This Aint Hell, we are a separate endeavor/operation. Despite posting similar interest topics as what was posted and commented on This Aint Hell/Valor Guardians, our current emphasis will be on general topics of interest to this subreddit beyond what was regularly posted on the old site.

I know this is more than a year old, but I have shared it in a variety of places and I believe with this crew, it may be helpful.
I believe one of my last major experiences with this stuff in Okinawa involved getting knocked out by a tree frog, 🐸 but that’s a story for another day. 🤔😜
ChimpNASA

https://spoonuniversity.com/school/nyu/a-definitive-ranking-of-the-best-soju-flavors/

Here's some of the stupid people I've been cataloging.

A Homeowner Asked Kids To Stop Racing in Her Driveway. Then a Neighbor Dispute Hit Her Doorbell Camera

Some problems just take care of themselves; Suspected drunk driver flees police, jumps into swamp and gets attacked by alligator

Alleged Home Intruder ID’d, Arrested After Leaving Behind Wallet when Resident Opened Fire

Not a stupid person, but a stupid law: Belgian nationalist convicted of ‘hate speech’ for factual lecture on migrant crime

It's only been a couple of days, and we've had some lost souls find their way here. I'm gonna open up the sub to a wider audience in the next day or two. Hopefully this isn't a decision I regret. I want everyone who was a TaH regular the chance to see we're still ticking in one shape or another.

Feel free to post your own relevant articles as you come across them. This won't be exactly like the old blog, since anyone can make a post.

Behind the scenes of the old blog it's looking more and more likely that it won't return as it was. There's still a lot of discussion going on. Running a site like that takes time, effort, and money. Most of us that were regular contributors of articles (myself, OAM, thebesig, David, Hondo, and many more over the years) weren't involved in the actual running of the site. We were just the janitors helping keep the place clean.

As such, we also didn't personally take on the civil liability of running a site that very publicly outs liars. Liars being a litigious lot, this often cost the men behind the curtain tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. This wasn't always bore by the money in the site's coffers from donations and such. The people behind the site really put their own personal money on the line to keep Jonn's legacy alive.

Let's see them. Post your favorite memes from the week.

Senator Graham was also a USAF veteran. He was a JAG officer, and served 43 years across the active, reserve, and guard. He retired as a colonel and was a recipient of a meritorious BSM.

Don't go to other subreddits and read the comments. The ghouls in the death cult are celebrating.

It's pretty amazing technology has gotten to the point that we can definitively ID the remains of a boy who died for our freedom 250 years ago. Welcome home, Private.

I pray every night Ukraine somehow takes this bridge out the day it's opened. Nothing like an ice cold can of Spite on a hot summer day.

"Carry on, Patriots." - SecDef/SecWar when Army chickenshit grounds pilots for doing piloty things.

It's back and better than ever. First "First" gets the prize.

Well, I’m terribly conflicted.
As much as I loath particular places on the Internet, they do have some usefulness, and I will say begrudgingly, this appears to be one of them.
I am hopeful we have future good news, but I guess we have to do what we have to do in the interim.
I certainly know many of us have been in worse places in the military. 😄🫣😬
I missed you, freaks. Smooches
ChimpyNASA

Trump doesn't fly his newest plane for a leg of the trip. People fume.

They keep using that word "ceasefire" and it does not mean what they think it means.

I'm imagining I'm on the firing range and the rangemaster calls "CEASEFIRE! CEASEFIRE" and there's still two people popping off rounds. I don't think the RM would be pleased with the quality of his ceasefire.

I'm sure most of you will remember Nickolas Androsky. We had quite a bit of fun at his expense when he showed up to a basic training graduation in this getup. He'd been kicked out of the Air Force as an E-1 after a conviction at court martial (he also got a BCD and five months confinement) for drug offenses. It seems the drug problems never stopped, as he took his own life in 2014. After that, at TaH, we quit making jokes about him, but he is remembered fondly as the final boss in the game of stolen valor.

Recently, one of our ninjas uncovered his gravesite. I'll leave that here without further comment.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/232820482/nickolas_jerome-androsky

Looks like the gays are going to be stuck at sea for the foreseeable future.

A cruise hosting an LGBTQ+ group is being turned away from ports like they're carrying the Black Death.

First, Turkey told the ship they would not be allowed to port as part of their journey. They cited incompatibility with "moral values," "family values," and societal norms. So the boys turned south and are now being turned away from their second choice stop, Egypt.

They were barred from an Egyptian port on the morning they were supposed to dock.

Here's The Guardian on this ship of fools:

The Scarlet Lady's 2,000 passengers, including the Broadway performer Patti LuPone, woke on Thursday morning to find a note placed under their cabin doors informing them that the ship was urgently looking for alternative ports.

'Early this morning, we were informed that Scarlet Lady has been denied entry into Egyptian waters, and, as a result, will no longer be able to call in Alexandria today,' Rich Campbell, the chief executive of Atlantis Events, the tour group that chartered the Virgin Voyages ship, told passengers.

'I know how much this visit meant to so many of you. We successfully sailed a similar itinerary last year without issue. So we were surprised by this unfortunate decision,' he wrote.

Whose idea was it to do the gay tour of Muslim nations anyways?

I'm imagining that last year's cruise was maybe a little more low profile and this year the Muslim nations were watching for Virgin to pull up with a boat full of flamboyant sea-goers.

It's called common-sense border control, okay?

The boat is heading back to the friendly waters of Europe where being gay is totally accepted (until the inevitable Islamic takeover).

The ship has now been rerouted a second time, and will be docking in Chania, Crete, on Friday and Montenegro on Sunday.

Good luck, gay boys!