That's Gotta Be A Record

I've been reading Joel Rosenberg's "Guardians of the Flame" series since it first came out in 1983.

I'd missed "The Road Home" (1995) when it was published and have only purchased and read it recently.

However, I did purchase the next book, "Not Exactly the Three Musketeers," in 2000 when it hit the shelves in paperback.

I just finished reading it for the first time last night.

It took me almost 30 years to get around to reading the last book in the series with the original cast and I owned the next book in the setting for almost 25 years before reading it!

Wow.  Just wow.

GM Never Stop Being You

 

These four speakers are identical.

Holden assigned each one a different part number based on where it will be mounted in the car.

Is it any wonder they went bankrupt?

Of note: the paper speakers from GM are 4Ω, 20w.  That's probably peak wattage too.  They were replaced by 4Ω, 540w peak, 180w RMS.

Holden did not brag about the power of their stereo in their sales literature.

So You've Woken Up Undead

In the GURPS: Technomancer setting, being a lich or vampire means you're legally dead.

You don't have niceties like rights.

I don't have a lot of sympathy for a lich, you can't accidentally become one of those.  It's a choice and it comes with doing some nasty things to remain unalive.

But vampirism is a contagious disease.  A vampire could be the victim.

Legally, a murder victim.  "The victim testifies that..."

And once you've fully cooperated with the prosecution to convict destroy the vampire who created you; you get destroyed as well.

That led to some mind games.

If you wake up a vampire, you don't want to die (again?).  But you're not a bad person.

Can you run a moral vampire?

There's no dodging the human blood thing in this setting.  You need to get your sustenance from a sentient host.

There's nothing that says you need to drain someone completely.

But the contagion is carried by the vampire's saliva.  So to keep from infecting your supplier, you'd need to extract the blood mechanically.  It's not defined in the rules or the setting if this is OK.  The GM would have to decide how the Uncontrollable Appetite works.  The vampire might have to take the blood directly for it to sate them.

That'd make it nearly impossible to a moral vampire, because every meal leads to the chance of "birthing" another vampire.

But the survival instinct is strong...

Let There Be Tunes

Old, paper, speakers out:

New, polypropylene cone material and nitrile butadiene rubber surrounds with a silk tweeter, speakers in!

Loaded up The Lovely Harvey and The Boy for a test drive and they report a big difference in the sound.

"Coooool!" quote The Boy.

I think the adding a speaker to the center channel makes the most difference.

They're Democrats They Will Find A Way

FEC is looking hard at the $96 million the Biden campaign has on hand and if it can be moved over to Harris.

First glance says, "no," but we're talking about Democrats.

First glance says that just $2,000 can be moved directly to Harris' campaign and the remainder can be donated to the DNC, where it will be used just like it was hers.

That's Where You Get The Bad Guys For Your Story

This isn't just about bad guys.

A world where you can put your adult mind in a child's body is going to have a different kind of porn and kinks than our own.

If I was GM'ing, they'd be the creeper bad guys the players were trying to stop.

Let them decide if they're doing it for moral or legal reasons.

The Duncanites in Transhuman Space, particularly the Red faction would be where you'd go to participate or purchase such pornography and it's the obvious destination for someone looking to put a stop to it.

The sky is the limit on what kind of bot or bioroid you put a mind into.  Some places don't recognize you as a person anymore and there are varying degrees of rights a person who's moved their ghost has.

Furries are going to be actual furry creatures, not just suits.

But what's "fun" about talking about some of this technology are people who've already made a decision about their personal morality as if it was current rather than speculative tech.

Traveller, in the Interstellar Wars era, already has the medical technology for full, down to the genetic level, sex changes.  Gender dysphoria as a medical/psychological condition is fully treatable with a cure!  Multiple cures, actually.  The sex change makes the body match what the mind sees.  There's also stuff to make the mind see their body as it is.

There's folks who've made up their mind that one solution or the other is wrong and anyone seeking the wrong cure should be punished somehow.

In the game too.

Oh Ick

Something that occurs to me when I'm reading any of several science fiction settings, but in particular Ghost in the Shell and Transhuman Space, is the opportunity to change bodies.

There is no technological or physical limitation, most of the time, what form that new body takes.

Which makes me think there's going to be pedoroids.

A completely of-age ghost inside an undeniably child body.

There's some moral problems with this, of course, but does this society have enough of a problem with that to prohibit it?

There's some "libertarian" belter nations in Transhuman that would be fine with it.  After all, the person inside the toddler body is a fully informed adult.

And some of these artificial bodies are 100% biological.  That means fully informed adult in child body can do porn.  They can put that porn up for sale.  Possession of that porn isn't, technically, child-porn; but, also, it most certainly is.

Will it be illegal in your setting?

Ofharvey Serves

Honey do project:  Hang new curtain rods.

Mission accomplished!

Cookin'

The Lovely Harvey gave me a block of instruction on how to make tenderloins.

First, you gotta tenderize the pork-loin.

Then you grind down an entire box of crackers to a coarse meal.  I used a plastic mixing bowl as a mortar and a soup bowl as a pestle.  It works faster than lots of methods, but it's still tedious.

Dredge the meat in beaten egg then shake in a bag of cracker meal.

Give it a swim in boiling peanut oil and...

Iowa delicacy!  Comfort food level 10.

Schrodinger's President

There is a house in Delaware that might, or might not, house a living US President.

It cannot be determined until someone opens the house to make observations.

200 Watts!

I have added a speaker to the center of the dash in The Beast!

The Aussie radio has been set up for it since the day I bought it, I was just dragging my feet getting one in there.  The default Australian setup is a center speaker in the dash, tweeters in the outside corners of the dash and a speaker in each door.  The front doors and tweeters are driven by the same channels.  There was an option for rear deck subwoofers.

I'm going with a coaxial in the center dash and coaxials in all four doors.

There were no wires from the connector to the speaker, so I had to buy the terminals for the connector and run wires from the box to the speaker hole.

That means removing the passenger shin-airbag and glove box.  I'm getting better at it, but still needed to look up where the last two of seven screws holding the box in were.

The Lovely Harvey says she can hear a big difference.  To my bad ears, it's simply noticeable.

But noticeable in a good way.

It's a 200w, and 70w RMS.  Being run by a 30w radio.  The radio that came with the car was just 15w, so there's that!  The door speakers will be 540w/180w RMS).

The NVX brand NSP speakers are well liked by the Caprice PPV community, and the Aussie silverbox will never overpower them.

Speakers for the doors finally came off back-order and should be here Friday.

Preference Falsification

Borepatch is calling it a "preference cascade" but that term is a blurring of information cascade and preference falsification.

They're really intertwined concepts.

I've been hoping for whatever we're going to call it to hurry up and happen already.

I think we came tantalizingly close with the Tea Party, but we fucked up and let it be mainstreamed by the same people who were the other side of the coin of those we wanted removed from meddling with our lives.

I don't think we're vulnerable to that this time around.

I don't think he's wrong either.

Something shifted.  It's almost palpable.

It Never Ends

Moxie has decided that she needs both front brake lines to match.

The passenger side got replaced a while ago.

The driver's side announced it was done today.

The things I do to keep the unrivaled power of that flat-plane crank and all wheel drive.

But Can I?

They say to never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake.

They say to not stop your enemies from destroying themselves.

They are silent on popping popcorn.

I need a ruling here.

Say Hi To Dianne In Hell

Sheila Jackson Lee is dead.

Good.

Supply And Demand That's It

The Beast is a relatively rare car.

The parts supply comes from just as rare a car that didn't make it this far.

There are a few people who have the means to purchase several parts cars and are selling those parts.

They're being accused of being scalpers.

Nope.  Just businessmen.

They are also being acclaimed as being helpers.

Nope.  Just businessmen.

They're not really part of the community of enthusiasts keeping these things running.  Essential, but at an overlap of the Venn diagram rather than being within it.

The truth that I keep having to explain, over and over, is something is only worth what someone will pay for it.

It comes up when someone doesn't want to pay what everyone else is paying for something.

It comes up when someone is upset that nobody wants to pay what they're asking for something.

There's a lot of butt-hurt out there.

Suitable For Home Defense

Brenda with the D-60.  10.2 lb. as shown.

D-60 Deets

I took apart the D-60 to see the guts!

Simple to take apart and put back together.  It needs periodic cleaning.

I also timed loading the thing.

With strippers and an UpLULA: 3 minutes 33 seconds.

With loose rounds and an UpLULA: 2 minutes 22 seconds.

With loose rounds only: 4 minutes 55 seconds and a VERY sore thumb.

For some reason the strippers will stop with two rounds left and the ratchet won't drop the stack so you end up fiddling around and wasting seconds.

Standard 30-round PMAG Gen M3:

With strippers and an UpLULA: 20 seconds.

With loose rounds and an UpLULA: 1 minute 20 seconds.

With loose rounds only: 52 seconds.

Delousing

The cats have been given their wormers and a fresh application of flea stuff.

Linens is washed.

Surfaces are cleaned.

Fingers crossed.

Without A Thought In Its Pretty Little Brain

Despite being much larger than us, a T-Rex's brain is about the same size as ours. 

The average person takes the average 7.62 round to the CPU, we're dead right there.

10 HP, 24 points of damage to the skill, 22 penetrate and 88 points of damage is done for a clear auto-death.

But a Rex is a 53 HP monster.  The same 24 hit only gets 20 to penetrate and 80 points isn't even enough for a death roll!

I need to dig into the rules and find the disadvantage that makes them more vulnerable to a brain-hit because 80 points is enough to liquefy a brain this size.  They're not cetaceans with brains in proportion to their scale.  Or pachyderms.

Packing

I just noticed that I got my first Florida carry permit back in 2005.

Wow.

Turns out to have been a life changing thing.

Partying

The raison d'etre for political parties is to find, and nominate, a candidate who most represents your personal political views.

The theory being that a given party will consistently reflect the mores of the people who get together and support it.

I've seen a lot of commentary about changing from closed to open primaries to select candidates.

It's a double edged sword.

A closed primary means that only people who took the time to register as a member of that party can vote to choose a candidate.  It also means they give up the opportunity to chose a candidate from the another party.  Commitment.

An open primary lets anyone vote for any candidate.

In practice, open primaries have not gotten us better candidates, what they've done is eliminate decent candidates by supporting candidates who couldn't beat the other team.  The spoiler effect in full force.  It's a formalized version of how Bernie Sanders keeps getting elected.

You don't get the best conservative candidate by letting liberals choose who gets to be the conservative candidate.  You get the conservative least able to compete with the liberal candidate.

But none of this matters when we have the problem described in this video:

Note: The author of that vid has a solution (in a different video) he likes that I don't think will work better.  First past the post is the worst way of doing an election; except for all of the other ways.

Libertarians, take note, you need to take over a party to win and you need to take over one of the big two.  Socialists captured, gutted and killed the Democrat party; libertarians should do the same to the Republican party.

35 Miles Per Gallon

35 mpg now!

35 mpg tomorrow!

35 mpg forever!

(How's that for an inflammatory way to say it?)

Now that Chevron Deference is nuked, let's do the EPA.

Did you know that the fleet average fuel economy, as defined by law, is 35 miles per gallon for model years 2010 through 2020?

For 2021 through 2030 it's the maximum feasible fuel economy.

No definition beyond that.

So Biden's economy killing EPA standards have no definition in black letter law.

Without the power of Chevron, the lawyers for the automakers are going to have a field day saying that going past the current rating is infeasible.

Fingers crossed!

Parasites

Flea season is bad this year.

While our cats aren't outdoor kitties, they do have the, screened in, back porch.

It would appear that fleas can get through the screen.

With the fleas it seems came tapeworms.

Both are fairly easy to cure, but the double whammy sucks.

As does the scouring of the house and cleaning of the bedding all at once.

Good thing I fixed the washer, huh?

Quote

I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill them with a terrible resolve.

-DEI

I Should Whine Like A Bitch And Rage

On my mortgage, I paid Primary Mortgage Insurance until we'd paid 20% of the note.

That's because property values were pretty flat when we were doing it.

Turns out a lot of folks are getting their PMI nuked because they own a lot more of their property than they expected thanks to property values going up.

This is where I'm supposed to condemn the people who benefit from something I don't and paid for.

Nope.

I am happy for them to have gotten over.

PS:

In case you're curious how this works...

You borrowed on a $90k house that's now valued at $180k, you own 50%.

The Picture Is Coalescing

It's an interesting vid on what might have been going on.

 

 

Tiny Shift

I was a little too excited to change out my lug nuts, apparently.

I removed all five lugs from the wheel before installing the new ones with the car flat on the ground.

The cone seat of the lug doesn't have the ass to lift the car and recenter the wheel, which will shift a little even if you don't see or hear it.

So I jacked up each corner and removed and reinstalled the new lugs with the wheel off the ground this time.

The vibration from the slight off center is now gone and I'm back to the tiny vibration from two tires being a tiny amount out of round.

Axel F

We watched Axel F the other night.

We enjoyed it a lot.

It's nostalgia based, but the call backs were lots of fun and we enjoyed them immensely.

We missed Ronny Cox, but all the other regulars were there.

Dunno The ROE

That picture of the counter-sniper team is showing them looking at the shooter.

Apparently the crowd had been yelling for law enforcement to come look at the shooter they'd spotted getting into position.

A police officer might have climbed up the shooter's ladder and got a good look down a muzzle before he dropped back under cover and got on the radio.

That gave the counter sniper team his rough location and it appears that they were forced to wait until something happened to shoot.  Which is probably why the shooter got taken out so quickly.

But it makes you wonder why the Secret Service wasn't already tackling Mr Trump as soon as the word got out that someone very suspicious was on that roof.