V | Terminal Cruise

At the turn of the millennium, Microsoft released two operating systems with confusingly similar names, Windows 2000 and Windows Millennium Edition. If you worked tech support at the time, you could expect about half your calls to be from someone claiming their computer runs “Windows Millennium 2000”. While 2000 (which was really Windows NT 5.0) earned a reputation as being stable, ME (also called “Mexican Edition”) was the last gasp of the MS-DOS line. The Blue Screen of Death was practically a screen saver.

In 1971, Intel engineers Federico Faggin, Ted Hoff, and Stan Mazor unveiled the Intel 4004, the world’s first commercial microprocessor. Barely the size of a fingernail, this tiny silicon marvel contained 2,300 transistors and could perform thousands of operations per second. With that single chip, computing leapt from bulky machines to the human scale, setting off the microprocessor revolution that would give rise to personal computers, digital watches, and eventually smartphones.

In the Bible Herod asks where Christ should be born, and the wise men say, “In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet, “For out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.”

Herod seeks the life of the Child, so Joseph takes Him and Mary to Egypt? Why? …that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, “Out of Egypt have I called my son.”

Herod slays all the toddlers in Bethlehem. Why? Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, “In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.”

Finally when Herod is gone, Joseph is free to take Jesus and Mary back to Israel. They settle in Nazareth. Why? …that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, “He shall be called a Nazarene.”

Collect the whole set of Infancy Narrative Plot Coupons before your next Christmas Shopping.

Cabbage Hill near Pendleton, Oregon where the Rockies start.

In Apocalypse Now, one of the earliest and most telling signs of Colonel Kurtz’s unraveling is his decision to threaten resignation unless he’s accepted into the Special Forces. For a man groomed for high command it’s an act of deliberate self-sabotage. At the time, the Green Berets were led by a brigadier general, so by insisting on joining them, Kurtz effectively ensured he’d never rise beyond colonel. That quiet act of rebellion reveals the first fracture in his disciplined military mind: a genius turning away from hierarchy toward something darker and ungoverned.

In special relativity, two events separated by a space-like spacetime interval are so far apart that even light can’t travel from one to the other in time to connect them causally. Because of this, different observers, moving at different velocities, will disagree about which event happened first, or may even see them as simultaneous. This doesn’t mean causality breaks down, though: events that can influence each other (those with time-like or light-like separation) maintain the same order in every reference frame, preserving the universe’s underlying cause-and-effect structure.

The A-10 Thunderbolt II, affectionately called the Warthog, is one of the toughest aircraft ever built—a flying tank with wings. Designed around its fearsome GAU-8 Avenger cannon, it was built to survive the kind of punishment that would down almost anything else. Over the years, A-10s have limped home with shredded wings, burning engines, and even hydraulics shot out, forcing pilots to land using manual cable controls. Some have returned with gaping holes where parts of the fuselage should’ve been, a testament to the aircraft’s rugged design and the pilots’ sheer grit.

The Denisovans, a mysterious branch of archaic humans, were gradually absorbed into the modern human population. Like their Neanderthal cousins, they left only faint traces in our DNA, but those traces endure: up to 6% of the genome in some Micronesian groups carries Denisovan ancestry, a quiet genetic echo of a vanished people who once roamed the high plateaus of Asia.

On this day in 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I, the world’s first artificial Earth satellite, igniting the space race and capturing global attention. Exactly two years later, on the same date in 1959, the USSR launched Luna 3, which would go on to return the first photographs of the Moon’s far side a few days later, giving humanity its first glimpse of terrain never before seen.

On this day in 1965, Pope Paul VI became the first pope to visit the Western Hemisphere, arriving in New York to address the United Nations General Assembly. His visit symbolized a new era of engagement between the Vatican and the wider world, emphasizing peace, human rights, and international cooperation during a time of Cold War tension, and marking a historic moment in the papacy’s global outreach.

On this day in 1970, Janis Joplin, the powerhouse rock and blues singer died at just 27 from a heroin overdose, joining the infamous 27 Club of musicians whose lives were cut tragically short. Her raw, electrifying voice and fearless stage presence left an indelible mark on the late 1960s music scene. We sang along to “Me and Bobby McGee” on the school bus.

On this day in 1582, October 4th was followed immediately by October 15th, as most Catholic countries adopted the new Gregorian calendar introduced by Pope Gregory XIII to correct the drift of the old Julian system. The reform restored the spring equinox to March 21 and kept Easter in its proper season—but at the cost of ten vanished days. The change wasn’t universal: Protestant and Orthodox countries resisted for centuries, with Britain and its colonies finally switching in 1752 and Russia only after the 1917 Revolution.