Scattered And Concentrated

I have a friend who is moderately afraid to come visit Florida because of Florida Man stories.

She's fully convinced that there's alligators in every yard.

Seeing a gator around here is uncommon enough we dive for a camera! 

FuzzyGeff recently was in San Francisco and didn't get a single hit on the bingo card for things I see breathlessly reported all the time about the homeless and druggies.

David Freiburger of Hot Rod, Car Craft and Roadkill fame has groused at people hating on the state he was born, raised and still lives in, California.

I know Florida best, and I think it's the same in California as it is here.

There's places you shouldn't go.

Places that are just bad.

What always messes with me about it is how sharp the lines between the good and bad places are.  Crime literally does not cross the street at the borders.

When I go looking, I found those lines in Los Angeles.  I found those lines in Miami-Dade.  I found those lines in Chicago.  I know where those lines are in my local area. 

There's people living perfectly normal, happy, lives in places that I'd consider a Hellhole because I only hear about the criminals across the line in their areas.

I should probably be less prejudiced. 

It's A Test Of Character

Sensitivity readers are a thing in gaming.

They walked over from video games and have infected tabletop role playing.

Pretty much all at once it seemed.

It's a pretty specific form of Karen where they play the tape slower and slower until, THERE'S A DIRTY WORD!

I do love the elaborate trap set in it.

If you don't care if Eskimos are offended by being exonymed...  You're insensitive and the bad guy.

You can't not care.

You MUST care and you must care CORRECTLY. 

What never factors into their decision that you need to be offended for the poor Inuit at being called Eskimos is it mattering.

They never consider the transaction.

What do I get if I stop using Eskimo and start using Inuit?

Aside: I have used the words Eskimo and Inuit more in this post than I have, combined, in my entire life.

If I keep using Eskimo to describe the native population of Alaska, how am I harmed?

Are they as harmed at being called Alaskans, North Americans or Americans?

Because they are Alaskans, Americans and North Americans.

All three terms are exonyms because they are in English. 

As for how this actually affects my life...  It doesn't.

I wasn't even aware that Inuit were offended by being labeled as Eskimos until someone at Steve Jackson Games decided to make certain they got sensitivity credit when they decided they didn't want to be offensive to the Inuit any longer.

Which brings us to the real point.

If you decide to stop being offensive, just stop being offensive.  It's its own reward.  Seeking a prize of recognition for it says you didn't do it because it's the right thing to do.

PS: This little debate makes a Homer Simpson line that much funnier,  "Lisa, vampires are make-believe, just like elves, gremlins, and Eskimos."  It's the Inuit and Yupik themselves who've insisted that there's no such people as Eskimos. 

I'm Out

I have given it my gamest shot but I am just not having fun at one of the local breweries any more.

It really got rammed home when the "free" monthly beer I get for being a member of their mug club isn't really worth coming in for any more because it's so fucking crowded and loud.

I might just be finding out how much money I've been spending at breweries if I stay home from now on.

It also means that will no longer risk bugging my friends with my discomfort.

Warts And All

Forgotten Weapons covering the French version of the Beretta 92 reminded me of a conscious decision.

There's guns I collect because I want to experience that gun.

I have decided that those guns will remain unaltered.

Well, mostly.  The Hi-Power got new stocks while retaining the magazine safety because the plastic stocks were ghastly and mismatched.

But my Beretta M9 keeps the safety-decocker of the FS rather than the just decocker of the G because my issue gun wasn't a G.

The decocker only is objectively better than the safety in that if I accidentally pull it down while racking the slide, I have not just disabled my pistol by putting it on safe unintentionally.

I've never done it, but I've seen it at matches.

This holds true of any pistol with a slide mounted safety.  S&W, I am looking at you.

Magazine safeties used to be something I scrupulously removed.

Now I keep them.

I remind myself that I bought the gun to experience it and the experience includes the magazine safety.

I also, for the most part, don't carry the nostalgia guns or intend to use them for anything serious.

The retro M16 clones stay locked up when we're hunkered down for hurricanes, for example, while the more modern versions of the AR are loaded. 

Two Things I Know Happened

There's two things that people (kooks, really) claim never happened that I am assured did happen by a simple test.

The Soviet Union agreed that they happened.

Those two things are the Moon landings and The Holocaust.

Why is the USSR agreeing they happened such a good barometer?

Because it was in their interest to show that they didn't happen.

I noticed, recently, that we're losing the significance of this as the memory of the Cold War is increasingly in us aging Gen-X minds. 

It Occurs

It hit me today, after The Boy's doctor's office called at 0800 that the main reason us night people resent morning people is not that they call at 0800.

It's that morning people are spent by the time us night people are functioning.

We call after lunch and they're just done for the day.

The resentment comes from the expectation that everyone be ready to respond when THEY are ready, but they don't have to respond when WE'RE ready.

When you combine this with the realization that Government hires morning people almost exclusively... 

Hockey Night!

Today the local Hockey team plays their first game of the season.

Eyes crossed for a positive start of the season. 

Ya Know...

"Christa Pike, living proof that socialized medicine doesn't work."

- As found on Arfcom. 

This Didn't Happen With Hangings

Christa Pike has, apparently survived two attempts at lethal injection.

What the actual fuck?

Say what you will about other methods, most people don't survive the second application.

Hanging is wonderfully good at this.

Ain't dead!

Wait.

The method I like is nitrogen flooding.

Just flood the executing chamber and wait.  No hazmat problems!

Date Night!

Harvey and I did Painting with a Twist tonight!

What it was supposed to look like is on the wall.  We went our own way.

We used phosphorescent paint so they can glow in the dark under black light.

Case Small Arms Ammunition M16A1 Rifle

I mentioned that the real deal was thin on the ground.

The reproduction market has delivered!

It's a little shorter than the universal pouch and subtly wider.

That's so it can hold four 20-round M16 magazines easily!

The markings are inauthentic, but that's good because we don't want anyone passing them off as the real deal.

The material looks the part, but is much more supple.

Pairs well with a Retro M16A1!

It Never Ends

I had a T-72B1V in my T2K conversion.

Why would the Venezuelan version of the T-72B1 be in Poland?

Worse, I had it wrong.

I meant the T-72BA which is a T-72B with Kontakt-5 ERA.

I had been calling the T-72B the T-72B1, but mentioned the missile system.  The B1 variant is the one without the missile system!

Confusingly, the V suffix, for vzryvnoi, is often used when explosive reactive armor is applied, such as the T-72AV and T-72M1V with Kontakt-1 ERA. 

I might even have been using the wrong references and what I meant was T-72M1 and T-72M1V not T-72B1 and T-72B1V.

Happily, it just doesn't seem to come up all that often.  The differences between T-72 variations doesn't matter almost all of the times they appear in the game because the players generally lack the means to attack them effectively.

It's clear I need to make me a whole document of these things to go with my Leopard I and Patton files. 

 

 

True

 

Not An RPG

World of Warcraft is not a role playing game.

It's a more advanced version of Gauntlet.

Fight me. 

We're Early

We, with the generous assistance of Marv, have done the main portion of putting our Halloween decorations out.

Normally we wait until October first, but this year that falls on a week day and we're impatient!

Every year it's a little different, and we enjoy doing it.

If Only She Knew

I am proud of myself.

I did not do what I normally do and join the argument offered me.

I guess I am not as complete a moron as I has assumed!

We were at the local brewery and talking with one of the owners about her Disney Princess® moment with some deer on a path behind her subdivision.

We cautioned that a doe can do some real damage if it decides to, and she was accepting of that.

I quipped that the white tail hoof rat is the most dangerous animal in the US.

Enter a third party.

She starts saying that Republican men are the most dangerous thing in America.

Huh?

If that's true she should be more careful around us, huh?

But I didn't even engage with her.

It's not worth it. 

Sensitivity

I think I figured out the creepy feeling I get about sensitivity readers.

They do not consider how something is meant, only how it MIGHT be taken.

Increasingly it's not even worry about how the person referred to might take it, but how an uninvolved third party thinks that the person referred to SHOULD take it.

Ten to one they never even bother to check with the people they worry about.

I am, just, old enough to remember the flap about adding American to Indian when referring to Indians.

I know several Indians and they are not offended by being called Indian, and they thought it was silly to worry about adding American to it when there's so many other things that matter to them more, or at all.

Indian might be an exonym, but they've adopted the term to describe them because they know it's not meant to be an insult.

Until SJGames started revising the Basic Set, I'd never heard that Eskimo was even an insult, let alone a slur.  It was simply a word for the people who were native to Alaska prior to Western Civ taking over.

In Canada things are different, and the populations that Americans would call Eskimos without hatred expressed or implied emphatically reject the word and wish to be called by their own names, such as Inuit or Yupik.  Why?  Because in Canada, they use Eskimo as an insult and slur (or so I have been informed). 

Which is a good an example as any that you can make every word an insult or slur if you say it right.

It's how you MEAN the word that matters, not how the word is taken.

Even dueling societies had the knowing of this!

But the people with the vapors are everywhere making sure they're offended FOR the people who don't have the common sense to be offended for themselves.

At least that's how they act and don't seem to catch how bigoted it is.

As if someone can't tell if they'd been insulted on their own or make a decision about the insult being something to be offended over.

There's a lot of folks I don't give enough shit about to ever feel insulted by anything they call me.

Their, "boos," mean nothing because I've seen what makes them cheer. 

Bloop

I've got Gun Stats stats for all the US 40mm grenades I can find.

Even a couple German ones!

A problem with Gun Stats is the area filled with smoke or gas is much smaller than published numbers would suggest.

I think this is because Gun Stats gives you the instantaneous coverage, but the real rounds burn for a while.

Up to two minutes for a smoke round.

The M651 CS round, for example, calculates to a 1 yard radius, but the specifications for the round says almost 7 yards.  But it's got a 20-30 second burn time, so that would let the cloud grow.

I learned about a new-to-me idea for smoke rounds.  The canopy version has an X shaped parachute that doesn't slow it down much, but is intended to snag in branches and hang your 90 seconds of smoke from the top of a tree.

Special thanks to Kevin Dockery who tracked down some pretty detailed information and put it on a web page! 

Phone Tag

Spent the morning on the phone talking to, almost, every department of Florida DCF and Medicaid finding out why they declined to fill The Boy's prescription to his semaglutide.

Four bots and two live people finally got us to...

The primary care provider didn't have the most recent set of blood work because, for some reason, Quest Diagnostics only sent it to his psychiatrist.

I *THINK* I got it sorted out and everyone pointed at the information they need.

Hot buns crossed.

I now await a call from Medicare, 15 minutes late at time of posting, to get that activated. 

Does She Think It Will Be Hard To Find Candidates?

Tennessee woman on death row demands an all female firing squad.

I think that Harvey is free that day. 

...By Then The Entire Glee Club Had Died

Early bird, worm, and all that.

Called the Social Security Administration to set up an appointment to get The Boy enrolled in Medicare promptly at 0800 EDT.

When I told the robot what I wanted, it (female voice) told me the phone number for Medicare and stopped doing anything but repeating that number. 

Call Medicare and their robot, male voice this time, keeps asking me for The Boy's Medicare number.  It, helpfully, informs me that I can find this number on the red-white-and-blue Medicare card I don't have because The Boy is not yet enrolled.

After doing this loop for a bit, Live Person® gets on the line and says I should call SSA.

DEEP MEANINGFUL SIGH

Call SSA with the same number as before and tell the fembot the exact same thing as before, but (somehow) this time it works and I get Live Person®!

She asks questions, I answer them.  She gets the account information up and informs me that I cannot do anything because everything is set up for Harvey to administer.

Luckily, she's right there to step in!

They ask her a barrage of questions and she answers.

NOW I can talk to them about the account and getting him signed up.

Live Person® tells me he's not enrolled and isn't automatically enrolled because he's on SSI instead of SSDI.  Well, he was supposed to be...

Now I have a phone appointment for tomorrow afternoon to set things up correctly. 

Sealed For Your Protection

This two-factor authentication bullshit is bullshit.

We're trying to get The Boy's Medicare started.  He's been on SSI well past the requisite period.

"Just log in!" everyone says.

How?

Apparently we already had a login.gov account made for him, but we're damned if we can figure out the authentication app for it so the code they're sending as the second factor is disappearing into the aether.

We don't remember setting up any authentication apps.  For all I know you have to have your app downloaded and ready to go and almost anything will convince the setup daemon you're good to go... and it sends the code to the account you didn't realize you'd specified and didn't have ready because they don't really explain the process when they tell you all you need is their name, SSN, place of birth and Medicaid number to get it all done.

They cheerfully explain that you can delete the account and start over if you've lost access to the authentication app.

We might just have to do that.

I'm going to try calling the phone number to make an appointment and see if we can't get this done in person.  Joy!

That'll be another fight with Harvey.  I don't know everything and the information is not kept so that I can find or use it.

Worth Your 31 Minutes

He echoes some things I've said.

 Why am I not shocked that two of his cited examples originate with white women?  He doesn't say liberal, but I suspect.

Equinox

It is officially fall! 

Tested!

The “universal” in the designation indicated that it held 2x M14 rifle 20-rd magazines, 4x M16 rifle 20-rd magazines, 4x M2 carbine 30-rd magazines, a bandoleer of 6x 8-rd M1 rifle clips, 8x M1 clips without bandoleer, 2x BAR or Australian L1A1 rifle 20-rd magazines (tight fit), 24x 12-gauge shotgun shells, 3x 40mm grenades (two nose down, one horizontally on top), or 3x hand grenades internally. M16 magazines were too short to conveniently withdraw, so soldiers inserted a field dressing or folded sock underneath to raise them. Some pouches were too tight and held only three magazines.

M16 20-rounders are irritating if you forget or forgo a sock or dressing in the bottom of the pouch, and are real pain if you stuff the requisite 4 magazines in there.  Don't forget to stagger them so there's something to grab!  Two of my pouches fit them easily, one is very tight.

The carbine clips magazines were easy.

In most of these alternate uses of the universal small arms ammunition pouch, access is kind of an issue.

For the Garand clips, the four clips in the bottom are kinda fiddly to reach.

Twenty four 12-gauge shotgun shells.

Three 40x46mm grenades

Three hand-grenades.

One!

Two!

Three! BWAH HA HA HA HA

This is addition to the two that hang from the dedicated loops for grenades on the side of the pouch.

I know that M14 (not shown) fit, metric FAL and G3 magazines also fit no problem two at a time.

2x Metric FAL

2x Steel G3

You can even stuff 3 in if your try.

Not tested, so far, are BAR magazines.  Accepting donations...

The Cops Aren't Coming

I said it during the defund the police campaigns.

I'm saying it again with the local politicians talking about the potential effects of Florida's proposed Amendment 3.

If the cops aren't coming, then the cops aren't coming.

That means that the normal people are free to act against criminals in a way unremembered since we delegated our police power to the people doing it for a living.

Criminals, you REALLY want the cops to come because the average person has no way to jail you and no motivation at all to hold a trial after catching you red handed.

Essentially it's a judge, jury and (literal) executioner situation without worries of the cops second guessing the decision.

Bring it, you tax fattened hyenas. 

Satire Site

The satire site that fooled me was able to do so because they are hewing close to the truth with regards to the attitudes and expressions of the local politicians they are satirizing.

They've another one about how the people of St Pete are demanding high-rise apartments on the water, green spaces, elimination of car access, blah blah blah with an interview of a "local person" who says they just want to be able to afford their rent.

This is because St Pete has been tone deaf over the issues of housing and traffic.

The best satire always has a kernel of truth to it! 

For Photographic Purposes

Anyone got two M14 and two BAR magazines they'd like to loan me so that I can take some pictures of them in an M1956 ammo pouch?

Except for 40mm grenades that's all I'm lacking; and air-soft dummy versions of those are on the way from Amazon. 

Further Confirmation

Further referencing this post:

Yes, you can fit 4x 30-round M1 carbine magazines into an M1956 Universal Ammunition Small Arms Pouch.

Hell, you can fit FIVE 30-round M1 carbine magazines in one!  It's not even a tight fit like four 20-round M16 magazines.

But Not YOU Peasant (Updated)

UPDATE: THIS WAS A SATIRE POST AND I FELL FOR IT HOOK, LINE AND SINKER. 

Found this on Facebook:

What is it they keep telling us?  If we have nothing to hide, we have nothing to worry about? 

ST. PETERSBURG — A leak involving the city's automated license plate reader network has allegedly exposed an extramarital affair between two high-ranking St. Pete officials after records documenting months of late-night travel were obtained by TMZ.

According to the leaked data, one official's vehicle made at least 17 late-night visits to the home of the other, frequently arriving after 11 p.m. and departing before sunrise.

Neither official has been publicly identified yet.

City officials responded to the apparent breach by ordering an emergency review of the Flock system and the privacy risks associated with storing vehicle-location data.

The review reportedly concluded that additional protections are needed for elected officials, senior administrators and other designated personnel. Under the proposed safeguards, registered vehicles belonging to qualifying officials would be automatically excluded from the system, with detections neither logged nor stored.

"No public servant should have to wonder whether their movements are being recorded, stored or potentially accessed by people they don't know," a city spokesperson said. "Elected leaders deserve a reasonable expectation of privacy as they go about their daily lives."

Officials stressed that the proposal would not affect the collection of data belonging to ordinary residents.

Local development advocate Graham Whitmore praised the distinction.

"There's an enormous difference between tracking ordinary citizens and tracking the people responsible for tracking ordinary citizens," Whitmore explained. "One is an important public-safety tool. The other is an alarming invasion of privacy."

Whitmore also rejected criticism that the policy would create a two-tiered privacy system, noting that officials are exploring a program that would allow residents to apply for similar protections starting at $420 per month, following a $69 application fee and background check.

"Nobody is being denied privacy," Whitmore said. "We're simply asking people who value it to help pay for it."

Officials declined to identify the individuals involved in the alleged affair, citing their ongoing commitment to personal privacy.

$420 a month to get the tier one privacy?

I have one.  Every single public official's address, all their phone numbers, all their email addresses and all their license plates published in a searchable database.

Why them?

Because they, literally, fight tooth and nail to get and keep the jobs they are elected for.

You wanna be in public and wield that kind of power?

Fuck your privacy.

Don't like being exposed like the unwashed?

I'm sure you have a degree to fall back on, or some work experience you can put on your resume, and get a job in the PRIVATE sector.

You suck on the Gubmint Tit, you let us know where you are at all times.

Fuck all y'all.

PS: Please enjoy the budget haircut coming with Amendment 3 you tax fattened hyenas! 

And I'm A Primary Source!

I watched a video about how bad primary sources are and remembered about how bad eye-witnesses can be...

And I'm sitting here seeing it from the inside.

I have conflicting memories of the Berlin Wall falling and where I was and what I was doing.

Records show that I was being treated for breaking my legs after a fall from the turret into a ditch.

But I remember seeing some AFN footage in the company day room.

Which makes me think command dithered a while before sending us to the battalion maneuver area in the tanks to sit and do nothing until I broke my legs. 

Heck, I can't even remember for sure if we'd finished transitioning from the M1(IP) to the M1A1(HA).  I'm pretty sure we had.  I'm pretty sure we'd even gone to one gunnery with the new tanks.

But I don't know like I did before.

It'd help a great deal if there was any admission on the internet that 3-34 Armor was at Panzer Kaserne in Böblingen from 88-90 with the 1st Infantry Division (fwd).

We're on this chart anyway!

I think my memory is correct about the transition because I also found this:

1st Infantry Division (Forward), Göppingen (Germany)

• Headquarters and Headquarters Company
• 3rd Battalion, 34th Armor, Böblingen, (M1A1 Abrams)
• 1st Battalion, 16th Infantry, Böblingen, (M113) <-- They'd begun changing to M2A1 Bradley about the same time as 1/4 Cav.
• 4th Battalion, 16th Infantry, Göppingen (M113)
• 2nd Battalion, 5th Field Artillery, Neu-Ulm, (24 × M109A3)
• 299th Support Battalion
• Troop A, 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry, (19 × M3A1 Bradley CFV, 3 × M113, 3 × M106A2, 1 × M577)(Boeblingen)
• Aviation Detachment, Göppingen, (2 × UH-1H, 4 × OH-58A)
• Company D, 1st Engineer Battalion
• Detachment 1, 101st Military Intelligence Battalion (Changed from Company D because Mr Garabaldi was actually there)

 But I needed outside information to confirm my memories.

But my incorrect memories would be quoted as a primary source by a historian... 

Upsetting The Apple Cart

So many of the stats of published guns in GURPS don't match what Gun Stats generates that I am tempted to do the slog and make Gun Stats compatible versions of all of them.

Especially in light of finding that shotgun pellets do more damage when calculated by themselves as opposed to calculating a group in a shotshell.

What else do I have to do? 

Confirmed!

In the quote in this post it says that you can stuff 8x 8-round Garand clips into an M1956 universal ammunition small arms pouch.

Confirmed!

Nifty!  Especially since we were still issuing M1's well into the late 1960's to Guard Units.

Arrr?

 ወዳጆች፣ በእርግጥም ዛሬ "እንደ ባህር ላይ ዘራፊ (ፓይሬት) የመናገር ቀን" ነው!

ነገር ግን፣ እውነተኛዎቹ የባህር ላይ ዘራፊዎች "እንደ ባህር ላይ ዘራፊ የመናገር ቀን" በሚያዘው መልኩ አይናገሩም ነበር።

ያ አነጋገር፣ ለዲዝኒው "Treasure Island" (የሀብት ደሴት) ፊልም ባደረገው ትወና ላይ ልዩ ድምቀት ለመፍጠር የወሰነው ተዋናይ ሮበርት ኒውተን የፈጠረው ነበር።

ይሁን እንጂ፣ የኢትዮጵያ ባህር ላይ ዘራፊዎች የሚናገሩት በዚህ መልኩ ነው!

The Preferred AR

Harvey's preferred AR is Kevina.

She's had zero problems shooting it.

Which is why Cheyenne biting her was a surprise!

Repop

Remember when I mentioned that the M1956 pouch was not produced in large numbers?

 

The wide world of reproduction has got you covered! 

Prolly more repops made than the real thing. 

Back On The Horse

Harvey took Cheyenne, the Platoon carbine, to the range to prove that she could!

We paid extra attention to getting the stock in her shoulder pocket and making sure she had it pulled hard into her.

25 yards with irons.

She says it still hurts, but not a horrid stabbing pain; more like someone yelling, "slug-bug!" then wailing one on you.

So I had her try Dottie!

That went a lot better!

25 yards with Vortex Spitfire AR

Dottie is heavier (8.8 lb.) than Cheyenne (6.8 lb.) and has an A1 stock vs a metal carbine stock.  More mass over more surface area means less "impact" on the shoulder.

I did some shooting with Dottie too, but at 100 yards.

I, uh, well...

I'm out of practice.  Still this is a much smaller group than my last outing.  4" at widest if you ignore that flier over his left shoulder.

I knew I was getting that flier when I pulled the trigger too.

Still, Mr Bones is having a bad day.  So is zombie Todd, come to think on it.

We've decided that Magpul makes a much better stock than Colt did in 1969 and that while she loves the Retro gun she's made, she's fine admiring how it looks rather than shooting it.

I don't take my Retro guns out much either, come to think on it.

The Headline I'm Waiting For

"We easily gained access to the device because it lacked viable encryption.  We have corrected that oversight!"

I was reading about how someone stole a Flock camera and managed to download much of the data onboard.

They mentioned a lot of the data was still encrypted and they couldn't access it.

But what I wondered about is if someone could steal the camera and change things so it reported healthy and happy to the mothership, but was actually not doing a gorram thing.

Then I wondered if this same someone could encrypt what they'd done so fully so as to force Flock to buy new hardware to fix it. 

Which Is Exactly Why I Liked In The Grey

"Pitting together charismatic stars in an underpowered caper, Guy Ritchie's In the Grey is a slick action vehicle whose lack of fresh ideas ultimately put its entertainment value in the red."

-- Consensus at Rotten Tomatoes.

Rotten Tomatoes says 52% for critics and 82% for people.

I generally like Guy Ritchie as a director and enjoy his films.

This was no exception.

The plot is laughably thin.  They telegraph what's going to happen so even the most dense viewer will see it coming.

I have seen this movie before.  Dozens of times.

I don't care.  I liked this movie when they did it in the 1980's.  I liked this movie when they did it in the 1990's.  I liked this movie when they did it in the 2000's.  I liked this movie when they did it in the 2010's.

Why wouldn't I like this movie now? 

Gator Crossing

The picture Marv was calling, "camera camera camera!" for:

Honestly, we don't see a gator every day.

One of our friends who lives near where this was taking says its name is Henry.