14 August 2025

The Spirit Of Florida

Here's a petition asking Publix to bring back their hurricane cakes.

They discontinued them in 2022 after they became "controversial."

You know, some Karen felt bad about someone getting hit with a hurricane while the rest of us had a hurricane party.

It's really not an exaggeration that Floridians don't get motivated about a storm until it hits Cat 3.

Beer and Ice is on the preps list for most of the people I know.

You have to maintain a sense of humor about the stalking turtle.

Bland

You can live indefinitely on a diet of potatoes, cooked kale and whole milk.  It is nutritionally complete and has sufficient calories.

Would you want to?

On many forums when someone is discussing an old design, like the 1911, there's always at least one person who will chime in that they only own MODERN designs and don't have a cabinet full of useless relics.

First off, Sunshine, in the course of owning my safe full of useless relics; your "modern" design isn't mechanically all that different from a 90 year old gun.  The big change has been in materials.  Related to the materials change is a trend to make them easier to manufacture.  But they're still using the same tilt barrel short recoil action that Browning and Saive put into the Hi-Power.  And that came from eliminating the link on the 1911!

Still.

Where did this idea that gun ownership must be brutal and utilitarian come from?

My thinking about the post about the 1911's and Glocks that have slipped through my fingers reminded me of clinging tenaciously to the minimum for home and self defense.

I was forced to be utilitarian because I had to be.

But these people talk like being anything but is shameful and I don't understand it.

I've long held it's OK to own a gun because it makes you happy even if it's a useless piece of shit.

My .25 ACP collection has no real utility; but I think they're fun.

It is OK to have fun!

I wonder if these are the same people who have every penny planned out in advance and eschew having fun in their earning years because they're going to be rich and able to do anything they want when they retire young.

I've met a few of these people living in Florida.  You know what they do?  The same thing as before without a job to keep them occupied.  They don't know how to have fun so they sit in their well furnished, but sterile, McMansions and do... nothing.  They're bored and unhappy and don't understand why I'm so cheerful being a poor.

13 August 2025

Poverty Cycle

Nostalgia has driven me to repeatedly get a 1911.

My first one was my dad's Rem-Rand.  I regret trading that one for my Glock 21, and I keep that Glock just to remind me.  I like the G21, but it's no Rem-Rand M1911A1!

Number two was an AMT Hardballer.  I didn't really care for it.  Something was off about the feel and I sold it to a buddy.

Three was a Springfield M-1911 A1 GI.  The goofy lock in the mainspring housing bugged me, but not enough to swap it out.  I toted this gun for quite a while.  It got sold to a buddy when my CMP M1911A1 entered the chat.

Four is a Colt Gov't Model 38 Super.  My only Mk.80 lockword, and she shoots a dream.  This one got tinkered with a great deal.

Five is the mixmaster Ithaca M1911A1 I got from the CMP.

I've managed to get the number to two and stay there for years!

Huzzah for me!

Glock 17's slip through my hands a lot too.

I had to sell the first Gen 1 I got from Patch Rod and Gun club because of the circumstances of how I purchased it.  The dispensation to get it didn't extend to bringing it back into the states.

The second Gen 1 was a used one.  I think it was part of the same trade as the Rem-Rand.

My first Gen 2 went to AuntTheBat because she needed a pistol for home defense once we broke up and she kicked me out.

I went a long time without a 17 until the Gen 2 that's in my safe now showed up.

I almost got a Gen 5, but that got subverted into a Glock 45.

I am poised to get a Lipsey's Gen 1 Classic to fill the niche of "issue" guns that the Gen 2 fills right now.

It's nice that I haven't HAD to sell a gun for a long time to keep the utilities on and a roof over my head.

I am sure my mom tried to explain this stuff, but it didn't take until I'd made all the mistakes.

I'll Try This Again

There's a level of education and skills called a, "registered nurse," or RN.

There are jobs that require that level of education and skill.

There are also jobs that require that level of education, but not that level of skill.  These jobs can be performed by people with much lower levels of education, but have been banned from this job by the license and credential requirements.

Thus, a CNA trained person was able to perform a RN required job successfully enough to earn a promotion because the skills needed for the job were obtained through the education and training a CNA gets.  This was illegal because you need an RN to get the job and they lied about their qualifications.

Do you fuckwits understand now?

I know what an RN does.

I know there's lots of jobs in medicine that don't require an RN to DO the job, but do require an RN to GET the job.

If you think that license requirement means that lower levels of education cannot do the job you're the ignorant fools, not I.  To listen to some of you, no lives have ever been saved by an uncredentialed bystander who knew how to do first aid.

It's not a difficult concept.

Citing jobs and tasks that actually require the full set of RN skills does not refute my point at all.

They way you're citing it, though, convinces me more and more that the medical profession is not particularly well educated and is primarily concerned with gatekeeping rather than treating patients.

Plus your comments have been refuted by people I know in meatspace who are definitely credentialed as RN's, vs your imaginary existence and claims in the comments on a blog. 

And with this, the Aesop Flying Monkey Entertainment Network is signing off.

Regular programming will resume. 

Aesop

Tell your fucktard flying monkeys their comments aren't going to be published.

They only read the one post you linked to and think that's the totality of what I've said.

Plus!  All they've managed to do is convince me that RN's are all idiots and the world would not be substantially harmed if they all disappeared.

Maybe all y'all should stop coming here since I upset you so badly. 

12 August 2025

Eyes Crossed

Took Crispy IV to JT's for surgery.

He got the new fan installed and he only had to take it apart one more time for a missed ribbon cable.

Had three screws left over, but...  We found a home for two of them!

We're cautiously optimistic.

The old fan had significant resistance to spinning by hand until I loosened it up by forcing it.  It stayed loose, but who knows how long that would have lasted?

The proof is in the pudding, so we'll see if it starts locking up again over the next few days.

M.2 Differences

Back when I first bought DerpyPuter from FuzzyGeff for the princely sum of $1, I made a list of upgrades for it.

One of the things on the list was an M.2 2280 2tb drive to replace the 256gb drive it came with.

Glad I double checked something and discovered the 256gb drive is NVMe PCIe 3.0 and not SATA III.

Completely different pins!

The reason I wanted 2tb is because Crispy IV has 2x 1tb drives and that holds all the music and movies I like to have onboard.

Prices have come down a tad since I first did my research.

A 4tb M.2 2280 NVMe PCIe 4.0 drive is a mere $220 now!  Sure it will run a bit slower on my 3.0 interface, but that's a lot of storage for my needs.

To think, I almost bought a gun... 

11 August 2025

Committed

I finally got Crispy IV (a Lenovo T420S running Ubuntu 24.02 LTS) to commit to a failure mode!

It's been acting like a heat issue, but the fan's been working every time I checked and it would fire right back up after holding the power button down.

I got a LOT of dust out of it Friday evening and today I decided to pull the keyboard to look and see if the fan was clogged.

More dust removed and the fan appeared to spin freely.

Put it back together and...  "FAN ERROR" during boot.

The BIOS won't go past that, so it shuts off immediately.

Intermittent fan fail would cause the crashes I've been seeing.

Happily! I have a spare fan assembly for it in stock and JT is comfortable with taking it far enough apart to get at the fan.  Hint, the fan is the first part into the chassis, so it's the last part out if you need to replace it.

I'm also going to have him teach me how to move the Home folder from Crispy IV to Derpy.

Prescient?

I wrote this over 13 years ago.

Bidding War

Every so often I look around for a Gen 1 Glock 17.

An actual, vintage, 17.1 is very hard to come by and, usually, very expensive; so I end up looking at the Lipsey's Gen 1 Classics.

A couple weeks ago I found one with a penny start and not much bidding, so I put a max bid of $300 on it.

It went from $250 to $260 and it stayed there pretty much until the last half hour.

The last two bidders didn't get past my $300 until almost the last 15 minutes, then spent the next hour and a half running it up to just over $400 in $5 increments and resetting the clock to auction's end because of Gunbroker's 15 minute rule.

While $400 for one of these appears to be a decent deal, the bidding war reminds me of why I bid the way I do.  Put the max I'm willing to pay as my max bid and then let it ride, or not.

Because these two, "it's just $5 more," for another $100.

There's going to be around another $100 in fees, shipping and taxes too.

I learned about auction fever with my '91 Caprice.  I paid $8k for a solid $5k car because I couldn't let the other bidder win!  If I'd stuck to my plan, I would have paid $4,500 for a 9C1 and gotten a 350 instead of a 305.

But I learned something important that day.

10 August 2025

Red Dawn Trivia

Driving home from visiting my Dad's parents in Homeland, CA we happened to stop at a truck stop that had three helicopters packed onto flat-beds.

I was quick to spot the Soviet markings, but they were mostly under tarps.

There's so much military in the Southwest, we had no idea what they could be.  Real gear being tested?  Vis-mods for training?

Some months later, in a theater, I shout, "I saw those packed on a truck in a truck stop!"


Avenge Me!

Shake your AK over your head and shout, "WOLVERINES!" today is the 41st anniversary of the original Red Dawn.

Spanish Sounds Cooler Sometimes

"¿Dónde están los francotiradores?" is Spanish for "Where are the snipers?"

What I think is interesting is "tiradores" means shooter.

Sniper in Spanish is Frank shooter.

Or is it actually Franco Shooter?

Trying to find a handy etymology site that's in English for a Spanish word is harder than I thought.

The internet says:  The franco part is borrowed from French for 'free' which has something to do with 'free companies' which were civilian units not part of the main armies who mainly harassed the enemy.

I'm At A Loss

S&W just released a new version of the Shield, the Shield X.

It's like a supersized version of the Shield Plus.


But it's more similar to the M&P 2.0 9 Compact.

Here's a comparison.

The X is 0.07" longer, 0.1" shorter and 0.26" thinner, 3.7 oz. lighter.

Same barrel length and two fewer rounds with the flush magazine.  It will be a different 13 round magazine from a Shield Plus because of the baseplate filler.

GURPS stats are very similar too!

Thinner and lighter seems to be what you get for your money.  Might have to have Harvey see if it fits her, but the M&P 2.0 9 Compact IS our Goldilocks gun.

Off By A Month

Florida has declared guns and ammo tax free from September 8 to the end of the year.

I misread that as being August for some reason and was getting all excited.

DOH! 

09 August 2025

Braking Gnus

New information is coming from the USAF about the M18 pistol that "went off by itself" and killed that airman.

They arrested someone on manslaughter charges.

Probably going to arrest more since giving false statements is mentioned for more than one person.

This sure seems to change the story from going off by itself to I was playing with it and it went off. 

Baby Gate Update

Stuffing a pillow in the gap between the gates prevents Beeper from using it as an entry.

The gap, with the pillow removed, lets Harvey pretend I'm a prisoner and pass food through the slot.  We're easily amused. 

The gates with a small fan running in the peak of the afternoon does let the bedroom match the rest of the house temperature.

I'm still peeved at the AC company and have no forgiveness in my heart.

Especially after the finance company called asking about the scathing review we left for Graham Heating and Cooling.  Apparently Graham tried to dissemble to the finance company and that they did everything they were contracted to do...

Fine, I will accept that you did everything in the contract.  We fucked up by signing it when you appeared to be verbally confirming you understood what we wanted done.

The first clue we should have gotten that we weren't speaking the same language with this company should have been the job going from $1,000 total to $1,000 per register.

We talked to them about that estimate three times and never once got the impression that it was going to be per vent in the ceiling.

Now we know better.

I know I am sick of them saying we need to add yet another thing to the system every time they come out to do the annual maintenance that came with installation of the air handler and compressor.

Isn't it odd that we need a UV light in the air handler now that the duct work is done?

We've compared notes with friends and they're getting the same lines from their companies too.  Need new ducts, need a UV light, etc...

I need to add that Graham Heating and Cooling isn't actually the company that installed the air handler and compressor.  That was Crystal HVAC.  Crystal went under and Graham inherited their customers when they bought them out.

When we got the new system I asked the Crystal installers about the provisions for the UV lamp in the manual he'd left laying around for me to thumb through.  I was told, then, that if I just used the expensive air filters, I shouldn't need a UV light.

The OEM light assembly is just $200 from Amazon and looks like it will take all of half an hour to install.  A far cry from the $1,000 for the part and $1,200 for installation Graham offered me.  Though the tech did mention that there's $50 lights that work just as good, they just burn out more often than the OEM. 

PS: I notice that HVAC is ANOTHER barrier to entry license required career here in Florida.  Hmmmmmmmm. 

I No Longer Believe They're Trying

I watched a video from Mark Smith's 4-Boxes Diner youtube channel where he's trying to spin a unanimous 6th Circuit decision that machine guns aren't protected by the 2nd Amendment is a good thing.

The guy busted with the Glock Switch® is a scumbag.

The gist of the spin is that scumbags don't get good decisions and we're better off with a bad outcome because scumbag.

I think.

His delivery is hard for me to follow sometimes.

But I think he's wrong with regards to how I've watched the Supreme Court act.

If all of the circuits agree on something, they don't grant cert.

The 6th Circuit judges are decently good on gun stuff, and they say no machine guns.

That's ammo for the opposition, frankly.

You pretty much need a circuit split on an issue to get them to take a case based on something they haven't already made their minds up on.  Even then, there's no guarantee.

Watching some of these gun lawyers being happy with things getting set in amber with painting us into the "bearable, common and not dangerous" only firearms pisses me off.

Starting with the last.  Is gun.  Is dangerous.  So accepting the "dangerous" as means of disqualifying 2a protection just means that we're going to fight a subjective standard in every case.

Common pisses me off for two reasons.

First is the shortsightedness that means that we're never going to get newer guns if they can ban them before they can become common.  If these lawyers had been presented with this in the early 1800's we'd have never have gotten caplocks because caplocks were unusual and uncommon; but everyday, common, flintlocks would be OK.

Second is machine guns are unusual BECAUSE of the NFA, GCA and FOPA.  They'd be common if it were possible for people to get new ones because people are more interested in them now than they were in 1986.

Lastly, bearable should frighten you because it will become subjective.  What's bearable?  By one person?  What about cannon?  Can you ban tanks?

Considering we used privately owned canon in the Revolution, it makes me doubt the founders wanted crew served banned.

Arms means every deadly instrument of the soldier.  Last I checked, soldier meant more than just infantry.

Another bolster for arms being more than what you can carry is Congress' power to issue letters of marque and reprisal.  That requires privately owned, crewed and operated warships.  That's main body Constitution too!  Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11.

But even if we limit it to just what the grunts are lugging around, they're not carrying semi-automatic rifles.  They're carrying machine guns.

Tench Coxe is rolling in his grave. 

The Flying Monkeys

I tend to get two modes of operation.

First is when I explain why I'm talking about something then talk about it.

The rationale gets repeated as the subject and I get comments about how wrong I am about what I said.  Ignoring that this is just and explanation about what I went on to talk about...

These are the kind of people who read "Well regulated militia," and say there's no reason to have a personal firearm.

Two blogs in particular send the flying monkeys like this.

They read what they think I said without getting to the conclusion and castigate me in a way that ends up justifying my feelings on any given matter.

They comment with little tests to show how clever they are and how uneducated I am.  Tests that don't have any bearing on the conclusion I've come to.

My second mode of operation is just saying what I thought about something with little to no explanation.

Now the predominate comments demand that I explain.

My position gets posted to one of these blogs and the flying monkeys come here to explain to me why I am wrong and why I feel the way I do.

So far, they've never managed to actually hit my reasons for feeling the way I do.

But it's starting to feel like these two blogs don't do anything but read other folks blogs so they can shit on them for their followers to expand out like flying monkeys and shit in the comments.

Been here before, it dies off after a bit.

I don't even read those blogs, I just have started recognizing the monkeys.

Since I piss them off so much, they should stop reading here too. 

End Of An Era

I think they've been going downhill since they discontinued their free floppy disk service, but what do I know.


“AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet. This service will no longer be available in AOL plans. As a result, on September 30, 2025 this service and the associated software, the AOL Dialer software and AOL Shield browser, which are optimized for older operating systems and dial-up internet connections, will be discontinued.”

Bigger

The Traveller jump drive is essentially a fusion power plant and bank of capacitors.

I've found conflicting information, but it would appear that all of the jump fuel is consumed prior to jump.  Drop tanks are canon and they don't work otherwise.

One source says "about an hour" between jumps if you have the fuel.

So a Type S has to move 270,000 liters of liquid hydrogen in an hour.

At about 2m per second that needs about a 10" pipe.

I seem to remember that a jump can take place in a single 20 minute combat turn, so we're going to need a bigger pipe than that!

If we move it faster, just over 3m per second we can get away with a 12" pipe.  17" if we don't speed up the flow.

12" pipe fits with my mental image of how the engineering spaces look.

08 August 2025

80 Years

80 years ago, this very minute, Bockscar dropped Fat Man on Nagasaki, Japan; marking the last use of nuclear weapons in war to date.


We've been doing good not using nukes since then, but we've come closer than I'd like more than once.

Trivia for this day, Enola Gay was flying as part of the overall mission on a weather reporting flight over Kokura. 

Have You Considered Fucking Off?

Look, RN's in the comments, especially ones with prominent links to their business web pages in their bios, all you're really doing is cementing my opinion of your profession rather than convincing me that you aren't overeducated underachievers.

"I'm an RN," followed by a statement of how long you've been one and then saying something to the effect that I'm in error and missing that what I've been saying is what I've observed with my own, direct, senses.

What you are doing is called "argument from authority" and saying that I shouldn't believe what I've observed because you... dislike it?  Don't believe it?

But one thing I'm not doing here is lying.

Something you're not doing is convincing me I am mistaken.

You're almost literally using the "no true Scotsman" defense of your profession.

Actually, you sound a lot like cops claiming there are no bad apples... 

PS: The one commenter whom I know works medicine who's not being prick about it is Aesop!  Good on him! 

PPS: Harvey corrects that she was both a CNA and a CMA and is laughing at the RN's in the comments as they are being deleted.  She might even have a guest post in the near future to tell stories about how wrong the RN commenters are. 

If You're Going To Quote Me

Copy paste isn't that hard.

Just sayin. 

If you paraphrase, you don't use quotation marks. 

America Was Wrong About Ethanol - Study Shows

Mea Culpa

While trying to make a point, I didn't delineate fine enough.

In the world of medicine there's hyper fine gradations of "nurse".

Each with it's own skills, license and education requirements.

Then there's the job that a person is required to do and the level of nurse mandated to do it.

When I mentioned that my CNA relatives and RN friend agreed that the skill set to do the work is similar it was in reference to the job that the, now arrested, unlicensed former CNA was performing.

The home-health care job can be performed by just about any half intelligent, conscientious, and reasonably careful schlub.  The actual skill requirements to perform the job are very low.

The skill, education and license requirements are very high. 

But people doing the job have to be rated to do some serious shit that never comes up in the course of the job.

A CNA isn't trained to do RN stuff when the world is pear shaped.  I am sorry if I implied they had those skills when talking about barriers to entry.

But I think we can agree that you don't need to be certified to the level that RN's are to hand out little paper cups with pills in them.  Yet, in Florida, an RN has to pass the pills out to the lower rated folks to deliver to patients.

I we can also agree that it doesn't take as many RN's as are mandated to the work.  Especially since they justified having this level of education and skills as a "just in case" of pear shaped crisis. 

This also ignores that a practicing emergency room RN is living in a vastly different environment than an ACLF charge nurse or a home health care service nurse. 

The actual job that two RN's of my acquaintance do at an ACLF and a hospice, respectively, is sit behind a desk and surf the internet all night.  When something happens it's, essentially in two categories:  Sign off on what their minions did to fix the problem or call the doctor.  One of them BRAGS about how little they do.

The job these two are doing we called CQ, or charge of quarters, in the Army.  I don't think it needs an RN to do it.  Just like most home health.

Again, the person arrested with a CNA level of education was doing the RN job long enough to earn a promotion it was a routine background check that noticed the lack of certification for the job they were performing, not a failure to perform the tasks. 

Akschually

Akshually comments are now banned.

Start your own blog.

Akshually counts as off topic, really. 

Not Very Impressive

The Type S scout / courier from Traveller uses 20 dTon of liquid hydrogen in the course of a 2 parsec jump.

My mind had always envisioned giant pipes and bolted flanges to move all that liquid.

It might still need that, depending on how fast it uses the hydrogen, but if it's used up over the entire two weeks instead all at once, a mere 1/2" line will suffice to feed the drive.

I cannot remember if a canon answer is given. 

07 August 2025

Wait! I Know This One!

Could it be because the shooter is from the wrong demographic group to successfully press for more gun control?

Link to X because it was asked for.

Barrier To Entry

Read this article about a CNA with an expired license passing herself off as an RN.

The Lovely Harvey used to be a CNA and The Boy's godmother is a current RN.

Wanna know the difference?

It's not much.

Some prerequisite classes, a couple tests and a license.

They agree there's not much actual difference in the skills needed for the job.

It's a license requirement.

Harvey's mom was a CNA as well, and is old enough to remember when it was just "nurse."  All the subcategories of nursing started with delineations in responsibility.

Entry level had more scut work and less responsibility.

In many cases, no formal education was required.  People were trained by the institution.

I suspect that lawyers for malpractice insurers stepped in somewhere here and now formal education is mandated for all but the glorified janitorial work.

But, early on, the education was the same and experience was how you got the higher positions.

Now, you need additional formal education and licenses to even apply, making it more expensive to meet the prerequisites and thus requiring more salary to compensate for their investment.

I will bet you that my first aid training from The Army is sufficient to provide most of the care that this, arrested, former CNA did on 4,400 patients.

I speculate on this because I did that care for Harvey when she was recovering from her shoulder replacement.  Husbands are allowed to be unlicensed nurses on their wives with no formal education!  We had an RN on call for emergencies, but most of the actual care is simple and easy stuff.

UPDATE: It is important to note that the person in question was doing the job successfully and it was only a background check prior to A PROMOTION that got her busted.

Not Near Everything

I'll take misleading headlines for $1,000.


I read 'everything' and thought, "that's a capital offense in France?  Good for them!"

Sadly, they're just deporting him back to Morocco. 

06 August 2025

Thag Lurn

Did you know that the magazine release on a S&W M&P Shield Plus is reversible from RH to LH?

I did not.

But I do now!


I'd long wondered why there were two slots in the magazine if you couldn't reverse it.

This procedure is NOT in the owner's manual. 

05 August 2025

SLAP

Banana Ballistics fired some .50 SLAP into various thicknesses of mild steel.

 

Mild steel has DR 56 per inch.

Normal .50 BMG does 6dx2 pi+.  SLAP is APDS and GURPS: High Tech says that becomes 6dx3 (2) pi.

That's an average hit of 63, which should penetrate 126 DR, that should punch 2" of mild steel (DR 112).  But it didn't.

The 355gr projectile at 3,184.4 fps calculates to a "mere" 6dx2 (2) pi or 84 DR...

1.5" of mild steel has a DR of 84, so it should just barely penetrate with nothing left over to damage the target.  There's a bulge, but no hole...

SLAP sort of GURPS?

Clearly The Hero They Deserve

The New York Fucking City's 73rd Precinct's Facebook Page posted this picture:

Sharp eyes and quick action. While patrolling Brownsville, our Public Safety team stopped someone for a quality-of-life violation and uncovered this loaded firearm. One more off the streets, keeping our community safer.

Considering that I've (almost) got one of those in my pocket right now...

That's an M&P Shield, mine's an M&P Shield Plus.

But one has to commend the heroism associated with disarming someone for the temerity of wanting to defend themselves and doing something that millions of people do everyday perfectly legally in the Free United States.

Beeper Smrt

Beeper has figured out the gap between the two baby gates.


That did not take long.

The good news is Shadow watched her jump through the gap and just stayed where she was sitting.

That's an amazing amount of progress for our kitten who's afraid of her own shadow!

I've placed a pillow to block the gap to see if that deters or inspires Beeper to go over the top.

80 Years

80 years ago, this very moment, Enola Gay released Little Boy over the city of Hiroshima marking the first time a nuclear weapon was detonated in war.

Ironically, ground zero Hiroshima looks better than downtown Detroit today.


Interesting

This channel posts a lot of Russia is doomed stuff that has not, yet, come to fruition; but they continue to make decent points that deserve further investigation.

 

The assertion that they're not even spending China levels on maintenance for their nuclear deterrent is something to pay attention to.

China is kind of famous for not having the means to deliver much of its arsenal, on top of corruption that definitely hobbles its utility.

On paper the Russians have more nukes ready to fly than the US, but aren't even spending as much as France or the UK, whom have much smaller numbers of warheads and missiles?

One wonders, just exactly, how many of their delivery systems still work.

The mention of how old many of their ICBM designs are isn't necessarily valid.  Our main missile is the LGM-30G Minuteman, first fielded in 1970!  Our main missile is C&R eligible!  But we test ours on the regular, it appears that Russia doesn't.

Even A Stopped Clock Is Correct At Least Once A Day

A common refrain of minorities is that White people are fine with them as long as they act like White people.

The claim is it's racist to expect them conform to "white" society's norms.

But it's not, really.

How do we know?

Because an actual racist doesn't care how well the minority conforms to the norms.

The extreme example, of course, is The Holocaust.  A Jew could not be law abiding enough.  Jews could not be secular enough.

They could not conform enough.

I've experienced a disconnect a couple of times when I have to notice a friend is a minority.  Newt is not my black friend.  Newt is my friend.

We're friends because we have similar outlooks on life and compatible senses of humor with a lot of shared experiences.

His being a Jarhead comes up far more often than his skin tone.

A Black person conforming to the cultural norms of the US doesn't have problems, in my experience.

Cultures expect conformity from people who would live within them.

Cultures have a right to reject those whom will not.

Some cultures ARE better than others.

The American culture with its traditions of freedom and liberty is actually quite color blind.  The people who abhor those freedoms are generally at the core of attempts to make race and creed a central theme.  They do so to undermine the traditions of liberty.

All that can sound pretty damn racist.

It's no mistake that this speech was included in The Blues Brothers:

White men! White women! The swastika is calling you. The sacred and ancient symbol of your race, since the beginning of time. The Jew is using The Black as muscle against you. And you are left there helpless. Well, what are you going to do about it, Whitey? Just sit there? Of course not! You are going to join with us. The members of the American Socialist White Peoples' Party. An organization of decent, law abiding white folk. Just like you!

Sounds a lot like, "if you just join our society and act like us, everything will be fine!" doesn't it?

But it's not the same.  It's not directed at the minority to relax and join the majority.  It's directed at a majority to STOP the minorities.  It's to create division, not unity.  To prevent minorities from joining the greater society at large as equals.

Racists and bigots are often very good at convincing people of things.

But remember; that speech by the head nazi from Blues Brothers was given by a character shown to be an idiot at every turn.  They actually went to Wrigley Field before realizing Elwood had falsified his address.

Don't fall for it. 

If Mr Bean Can Refute Your Position So Simply

 


Old Memory

Something that came up a lot when I used to deal with college age people when I was far older than college age myself while living in a university town...

Seeing the bias in something but not being able to articulate it to someone who was lacking the perspective to see it.

I had noticed that NPR had a bias and I couldn't cite specific examples because I'd stopped listening when the bias became apparent.

To prove my point to their satisfaction I needed to have recent and blatant examples.

To get them, I would have had to subject myself to listening to that garbage again, so I declined to do so.

The advent of the internet made it worse.

Because after the internet I could find examples of the bias and cite them, but counters to those examples were provided by the places who were biased and since they fully vetted media with layers upon layers of fact checkers...  Fuck my lying eyes.

I do notice that the places that were making money pointing out the bias were taking screen shots.  I prolly should have done that instead of copying links.  Either the link would be dead or what I was complaining about would be edited.

Now that Trump is going through things like a scythe, I am feeling more and more vindicated about my observations from 10 plus years ago.  I say ten years because that about when I last talked to one of them.  The last of them...