ONE MORE TIME!

In my never ending quest to explain that the government in Starship Troopers isn't any more fascist than our very own...

Fascism is:

Any program for setting up a centralized autocratic national regime with severely nationalistic policies, exercising regimentation of industry, commerce, and finance, rigid censorship and forcible suppression of opposition.

First!  It's not an autocracy.  It's a representative democracy with a different eligibility requirements for both the candidates and the voters.  Not enough information is given in the text to determine how centralized government power is, but we can infer that it's not too different from 1959 USA.

No evidence is given showing that the federation is any more (or less) nationalistic than 1959 USA.

We have Juan Rico's own father as an example that the regimentation of industry, commerce and finance are decidedly not following fascism.

Emilio isn't a citizen.  He cannot vote.  He's, therefore, not a Party member.  Yet he owns a company that manufactures something.  He mentions, in passing, that his business is not on a war footing in a way that says that it's his decision.  He makes his own arrangements to leave the business to Juan should he not survive his eventual decision to join the Army; he even got to choose his own caretaker while he was away.

Free speech is mentioned in little different terms than we would in regards to censorship.

By the standards of the people attributing fascism to Starship Troopers, Stripes is also fascist!

Racism

The TLDW on this is the perpetrator blames the victims and police because they were racists.

Never mind the lengthy criminal histories of the siblings and extensive history of speeding, reckless driving and street racing.

The lack of remorse is a direct result of the race card working too well for too long.

There are racists in this case, and it's not the dead white people.

Scam

I've been reading in several places that the tank exchange places only give you 15lb in a 20lb tank of propane.

The local Home Depot wants $23 for an exchange and 3.6 gallons.

The local U-Haul sold me 4.5 gallons (18.5 lb.) for less than $17.

Because It Never Ends

It just hit me that we're three weeks from Election Day.

Almost snuck up on me.

Considering that it's been full campaign for...

For fuck's sake they've been in campaign mode since W was elected.

We used to get a couple of years off after every presidential election and the mid-presidential term House elections barely made the news.

Now it's all in all the time.

I want my peaceable years back.

Double Hurricane Reset

Going a couple days without the internet had the effect of making me remember there's lots of entertainment that doesn't involve being connected to it.

Despite using a computer to play the music, I've been sitting here doing pretty much what I was doing 40 years ago...

Listening to a playlist and reading a book.

The main difference is not having to have pre-made the mix-tape first.

Which means I need to actually get up, walk across the room, and remember what I wanted to blog about...

I find I've got a lot less material to blog when I'm not ramming my head against THE STUPID like I would be if I was scouring the intertubes.

Kinda relaxing.

Cover And Merge

Someone named Sable did a metalized version of "Just Dance" by Lady Gaga.

Someone else blended them together.

I rather like the result.

But They're Colonists Too

All the American Indian can say over us White people is they got here first.

They colonized the Americas from Asia over the Bering Land Bridge back before SUV's raised the sea level and made it the Aleutian Islands.

Humans are not indigenous to the Americas.  We did not evolve here.

Another thought about European colonization of The New World:

If it had not been for at least three back-to-back plagues (only one is European in origin) the Indians we're so concerned about today would not have existed.  They're the remnants of the survivors of those plagues.

Even more: Had it not been for Spaniards losing some horses, the plains Indian would never have risen to be what they were when French trappers and Voyageurs wandered into the area.

I doubt the horseless Indians of the vacant plains would have done any better than their Eastern relatives did against Western expansion.

I wonder, though, if the Aztecs would have collapsed on their own, or expanded North.

Prolly collapsed, they don't appear to have really recovered from the pre-European plagues.

Cahokia, for example, didn't survive to see the European diseases.  Their society collapsing is why the plains were vacant for the tribes which became the horse-based culture of the Plains Indian to occupy.

The Cahokia and similar societies are also, probably, why bison were so damn plentiful.  Like most agrarian cultures took a bat to the predator populations, leaving a relatively safe place for bison to breed.

Rowing My Own Or Not

Checking my records...  (read remembering).

I have had very few manual cars in my inventory.

I learned to drive on Mom's '76 Vega wagon.  5-speed manual.

The '73 Passat had a 4-speed manual.

The '83 Lynx had a 3-speed auto, first car with a locking torque converter!

Both Camaros rocked a TH-350, 3-speed auto.

The '86 Civic had a 4-speed manual.

The Biscayne had a TH-700R4 as a Caprice Classic and then a 4L60E later on.  Both 4-speed automatics.

The Precious had a 6-speed manual.

The Beast has a 6-speed automatic 6L80.

The Civic needed different gears than what it had.  I always wanted one between 2nd and 3rd.

Now that I'm old, I'm starting to appreciate the lack of pain from my left hip and knee in stop-and-go traffic.

I'm no good at being a car snob.

Better Make A FEMA Claim

Upon further review, we did not emerge from Hurricane Helene completely unscathed.

One of the downspouts failed, allowing the gutter to spew straight down.

We put a garbage can under it and it filled in about ten minutes from Milton.

I dropped the princely sum of $25 for a new section of spout and some straps to secure it to the wall.

As a bonus, it's finally being directed away from the patio instead onto it.  We should have fixed that years ago.

Build Sheet

We once sat down and figured out, exactly, what day in 1978 that Christine was destroyed.

It gave us no end of amusement to discover that was also the same day my 1979 Camaro Berlinetta was made.

I will be damned if I can remember that date, but it was funny at the time because The Silver Bullet definitely had a personality and she DEFINITELY hated Aunt The Bat (my girl friend at the time).

Ironically I sold her to Bat's boyfriend who let her languish.

I doubt he was aware of all the mods done to the suspension, and I hope he had to replace the brake pads on the rear.

Remember, I'd put a Jag XJ rear end under there...  I did not consider maintaining those inboard brakes when we did it.  I don't know if the calipers and pads were accessible without taking the entire thing back out.

After After Action

We're all put back together after Milton at Casa de McThag.

We even got our Halloween decorations up!

I felt bad that across the street is without power still while we have our garish lights on...

That bad feeling evaporated when several of our neighbors in the darkened section stopped by to tell us how relieved they were that we'd gotten our stuff out.

It turns out we're a local attraction that they look forward to seeing each year!

I am happy to be part of the healing with our display of normalcy.

Fucking Milton!

Because of the hurricane I missed Dead Che Day!

A victory for everyone everywhere!

57 years of being a good commie.

Yamaguchi Day

We've all thought about it.

 This one act probably kept Japan from going Socialist.

65 Years Of Sea Levels Rising

 

The angle is 90 degrees off from one shot to the other, but...  I ain't seein' no massive increase in sea level.

Are you?

Even better, the 2024 imagery shows that Bush Key has reemerged from the briny depths...

Checking stuff independently is how we counter the narrative.

Neither Is Front Page

The US just had two landfalls of some pretty massive hurricanes and neither is still on the front page of any, national, news site I've checked.

MSN was the only one that had any hurricane stories on the front page, but those disappeared when I shut off the location filter.  Isn't that odd?

I remember hearing about fucking Katrina for months.

Helene is already history and Milton a memory?

We're still digging out around here and, "Meh?"

Now The Floods

Most of the rain fell on places upstream from us, and it's flowing, or should I say overflowing, the river a couple miles from here.

It's crested already.

The roads that are closed every time it gets to this stage of flooding are closed.

We're well away from the flood area and not worried at all.

Prep Fail

I'm working on a GURPS character.

I forgot to copy the spreadsheet I'm using to the laptop from the NAS before we shut things down to save load on the UPS prior to the storm.

DOH!

If you're going to fail at a prep, forgetting an entertainment item is what you should forget.

On the plus side, I've learned how to silence the alarm on a Cyberpower UPS telling me that the power is off (I fucking know, you stupid machine) and all of the instructions for an Amazon Basics UPS call for more than one button or are just wrong about a double tap of the ONLY button does the trick.

We Have POWER!

We had a generator this time, so the return of the mains was a smaller thing than it might have been.

In fact, I was eating a waffle that The Lovely Harvey had just made... with an electric waffle iron, when the power returned.

Being the cynical Floridians we are, we waited nearly 20 minutes after the power came back before we shut the gennie down and plugged our stuff back into the wall.

Adding to the preparedness:  The in-laws have a generator now!  It was hard to find gas for it, but Home Depot had generators for sale and my father-in-law pounced on it.

He'd been borrowing Marvyn's spare Honda generator to that point and it felt nice to end that imposition.

He got to enjoy his new generator a whole hour before the mains were restored...

The new talismans list is to have ice in every cooler and a generator at every home.

Marv has two Hondas.  We have our Champion.  In-Laws have a... forgot the brand.

We're ready!

After Action Report

We've survived!

Power is still out, the trees the crew from Texas half assed cleared for Helene finished the job they'd started. 

The roof looks fine.  No leaks. 

The cute Halloween flags we hung on the fence gates provided enough wind resistance for then to force the latches. 

All in all, we came out fine.

Generator is making coffee and charging batteries as I swipe.  Cell phone connectivity only.

Is Same

Looking back at past and current hot-rods...

The '76 Camaro Type LT, affectionately known as "The Rust Monster" came to me with 235/60R14 tires.

The Beast has 235/50R18 tires.

That tickles me that they both have the same treadwidth; but are very different tires.

The Camaro's tires were 25.1" in diameter and needed 804 revolutions per mile.

The Beast's tires are 27.3" in diameter and need 740 revolutions per mile.

Too Soon?

I hear that the disaster response in North Carolina has been bungled so badly that even the dead aren't voting Democrat now.

Glad It's Not Me Sad It's Them?

Go hit someone else!

Ooooooh!  I hope they're OK.

Sitting here worrying about the people whom are getting the direct hit from my hoping that the storm wouldn't hit ME head on where I am...

Florida is strange that way.

Home And Looter Defence

Brenda and Valentine are the hurricane defense pair.

Brenda is handier, but Valentine has that extra couple feet per second and 5x magnification.

One is better at looters, the other better in the immediate AO.

I'm set for what comes, even if it's not as bad as originally feared in my AO.

Of course, if REAL looting happens, if I can see it, I can pretty much hit it.

Peace be upon Jack O'Connor.

A Talisman

In addition to me getting ice this time, Marv has made a plate of cookies.

It's worked before...

Optimism Increasing

At this moment, I am outside the cone of uncertainty!  Just barely.

With the track 36 miles farther north, peak gusts were expected to just get to 62 miles an hour, which we've survived before.

Still might be hard on trees and power lines, but I am thinking we're prepared for that.

Bonus!  We're expecting overnight lows in the high 60's afterwards.  That will make not having power a lot more survivable.

Confusing Guidance

Erin contacted me and wondered how to calculate her Droyne sport's mass.

The various sources mostly agree on the height range, but the definitive source for mass is GURPS: Traveller Alien Races 3 which does a good job of giving the height and weight, in 3e terms, for the standard sized Droyne.

The problem is the sport caste and warrior caste are bigger.

Sports are 50% taller.  Warriors are twice as tall.

I did some back of the napkin calculations and, assuming a constant form factor, got her a weight for her character.

4'-10" and 97.5 lb. (1.5m and 44.2 kg) using the stuff from 3e.

4e is not quite the same in the build chart.

Interstellar Wars says a Nugiiri (what the Vilani called the Droyne down rimward near Sol before everyone realized that all those enclaves of gray, bug-eyed sophonts were actually the same race, Droyne) should be 50% the height of a person, but using the ST 7 line ends up with characters who are too short for the racial range.

So I cheated.  They are 50% the average height for their ST+3!  That puts the height and weight in the correct ranges when you apply the skinny modifier.

Huzzah!  Solved for all time!

Well South

 

If this track holds it's as good as the news can get with this storm.  It keeps the surge out of the mouth of Tampa Bay.

It's bad news for people that have had too much of it lately, especially the Port Charlotte area.

Oddly, being on the North side of this storm is going to be worse for the winds thanks to the expected wrap around of shear and dry air causing disorganization to the South side of the storm.

We've been ordered to evacuate.  But to where?  With what?

I hate to break it to the local authorities, but we don't have the means to live anywhere but where we live.  We don't have the funds to plan a vacation let alone take an unplanned one!

But I know something the local disaster officials don't seem to.  The lay of the land.

We're not in a flood zone.  Our worry is wind.  We're not looking to get wind worse than Irma, which we survived just fine here, so...

The evacuation zones in Florida are clearly broken.  There's people who need to get out because of storm surge.  There's people who don't and they're both in zone A.

There's been ample evidence that the state and counties are not following their own rules for defining the zones thanks to regulatory capture from the insurance industry.

These zones have become politically defined not practically.

So people who SHOULD evacuate don't because they can see someone in the same zone who will be OK not evacuating.

They Come And Go

I once had three .45 ACP handguns...

Not anymore!  I sold the M&P 45C.

Now I just have, uh, three .45 ACP handguns.

Something's off about my math...

Cash Purchase

The place that I saw the .300 Savage, Shooter's World in Tampa, is teh suxxor for privacy.

I don't shop there very often.

They want your ID and phone number to make ANY purchase.  Regardless of how you pay.  And they are entering your info into their computer.

I don't know if they're actively sharing the data, but I've noticed that data collected is data shared by hook or crook.

There's so many places that, even if they ask for ID for ammo, are just glancing at your birthday and not entering anything on the computer.  Then they happily take cash.

Embrace The Suck

When you can't avoid the suck, embrace it.

Pretty sure this is gonna suck.