“Inside” is almost right.

On this solemn day, a glimmer of hope:

Hunters In Right Place, Right Time To Rescue Crashed Pilot Near Meeteetse
CowboyStateDaily | 9/3/24 | Clair McFarland

A series of delays placed a Black Hawk pilot and a former athletic trainer in the right place and time to rescue a wrecked and hurt airplane pilot from a fire outside Meeteetse, Wyoming, on Sunday.

When the pilot’s plane went down, it had sparked a fire in the trees around him.

Steve Atencio and J.R. Larsen were out looking for big horn sheep Sunday morning so they could fill Larsen’s hunting tag, the pair told Cowboy State Daily in a Tuesday interview.

Atencio is a Black Hawk pilot for the Wyoming Army Guard in Cheyenne and has a background in firefighting, while Larsen worked prior as a certified athletic trainer.

…

At about 10:45 that morning, both men heard a sputter, followed by a booming thump.

Atencio, who takes notice of aircraft, had seen a plane flying overhead moments earlier, but he wasn’t sure if the noise was connected to that plane sighting, he told Cowboy State Daily.

…

The flames started creeping toward the pilot. Larsen and Atencio knew they had to get him out of there, the latter recalled.

Atencio, a former firefighter, wasn’t just worried about the heat harming the injured man. He was also concerned about falling trees. Even then, branches were falling.

…

The two men helped responders secure the pilot onto a board and carried him gingerly downhill toward the helicopter. Then it loaded the injured man and flew away.

…

He also marveled at the odds of them being there in the first place. They were on a strange route, behind schedule, and happened to be standing on a hill out of their course when they first noticed the smoke.

“Nothing about where we were headed was part of the plan,” said Larsen. “For whatever reason, that’s where we were put.”

“They’re just hungry. And it’s raining cats and ducks!”

Walrus and I can attest to the fact that getting the keys to a car does not mean getting the car.

… The interns’ residence, however, is another matter.

Disclaimer: This is not me speaking. I know nothing about guitars.

I’ve got about a dozen guitars, four nice acoustics and the rest electric, including Gibsons, Ibanez, even a Ric 12-string. But the Strat is my go-to axe for anything from soft ballads to country pickin’ to blues to rock-n-roll. The Ibanez is for slamming, the Les Paul is for Southern rock/blues, etc. but when I carry one guitar to a gig, it’s the Strat.

Now that said, I got annoyed by the single-coil hum/noise, so I retrofitted a full set of DiMarzio humbuckin’ Strat replacements, only lost a tiny bit of the very top end single-coil shimmer, and they’re totally silent even in a room where everybody else is getting 60 Hz buzz.

I love my Dobro, I play slide with alternate tunings, Usually G or E, it’s awesome. I have a hound-dog resonator it’s acoustic/electric.

I’ve had probably 20+ amps over my 60 years of playing electric guitar, and IMO nothing beats a Fender Twin Reverb for overall great sound and versatility. If you need to knock people over, get a Marshall, they’re loud and fun. But a Twin is the gold standard as far as I’m concerned.

However, classic tube Twins are heavy as hell. I have two of them and I can’t get them upstairs any more. So I got the newer Fender “ToneMaster” series Twin, weighs half as much and I did A/B sound tests against my tube Twins and you really cannot tell the difference. Fender engineers get major props for that product.

Here’s a dude who takes forecasts seriously.

Kim Jong Un executes 30 officials over floods in North Korea that killed 4,000: report
NY Post | 9/03/24 | Ronny Reyes

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered up to 30 officials to be executed over their alleged failure to prevent massive flooding and landslides in the summer that resulted in the deaths of some 4,000 people, according to South Korean media.

An official under Kim’s regime said between 20 and 30 leaders in North Korea had been charged with corruption and dereliction of duty, with the state sentencing them to capital punishment, TV Chosun reported.

“It has been determined that 20 to 30 cadres in the flood-stricken area were executed at the same time late last month,” the official told the outlet.

Reports of the executions were not immediately verified by independent outlets.

The North Korean Central News Agency previously reported that Kim ordered authorities to “strictly punish” the officials after catastrophic flooding hit Chagang province in July, claiming about 4,000 lives and displacing more than 15,000 people.

The officials who were executed were not identified, but the report noted that Kang Bong-hoon, the Chagang province provincial party committee secretary since 2019, was among the leaders dismissed by Kim in an emergency meeting during the flooding disaster.

When you read or comment, that’s actually happening!