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My toilet has been perfect for three weeks!
Not any more.
Got the Green Goobler main line clearing goop soaking now.
They say minimum of 30 minutes, but recommend overnight.
Thankfully, the house bathroom uses a different route, so we still have a toilet.
That means we can limp it along until we're not having to call the emergency guy and pay those rates.
With nothing else to do...
I took Gun Stats at the guns in this video.
GURPS: SEALs in Vietnam had the 5"/38, Bofors and Oerlikon, but I ran down the stats anyways.
And found an error in SEALs.
They used the stats for 20x110mm USN for the 20x110mmRB Oerlikon.
Here's what you need to change to make your stats right!
AP-T is 6dx2(2) pi++, Acc 5, Range 840/4,700, ST 27M, Rcl 3.
HE is 6dx2(0.5) pi++ linked 1d+1[1d+2] cr ex, Acc 5, Range 820/4,600, ST 27M, Rcl 3.
Now that I've amended my spreadsheet a bit...
These numbers are no longer valid.
The 16" High Capacity Mk.13 does:
6dx73(0.5) pi++ linked 6dx24[6dx3] cr ex.
Range is 17,000/39,000 (9.7/22.2 miles)
ST is 210M.
Rcl is 6.
The 16" Armor-Piercing Mk.8 does:
6dx57(2) pi++ follow-up 6dx12[6dx3] cr ex.
Range is 25,000/57,000 (14.2/32.4 miles).
ST is 218M
Rcl is 7.
USS Alabama with her shorter L45 guns firing the same rounds "only" gets:
16" High Capacity Mk.13 does:
6dx71(0.5) pi++ linked 6dx24[6dx3] cr ex.
Range is 17,000/38,000 (9.7/21.6 miles)
ST is 208M.
Rcl is 8.
16" Armor-Piercing Mk.8 does:
6dx52(2) pi++ follow-up 6dx12[6dx3] cr ex.
Range is 23,000/52,000 (13.1/29.5 miles).
ST is 214M
Rcl is 9.
USS Texas with her 14"/45 guns:
14" High Capacity Mk.19 does:
6dx72(0.5) pi++ linked 6dx20[6dx3] cr ex.
Range is 23,000/52,000 (13.1/21.6 miles)
ST is 202M.
Rcl is 11.
16" Armor-Piercing Mk.20 does:
6dx44(2) pi++ follow-up 6dx11[6dx3] cr ex.
Range is 17,000/40,000 (9.7/22.7 miles).
ST is 192M
Rcl is 9.
There's scanty information about Soviet and Russian artillery rounds.
I need the weight of the projectiles, type of explosive and weight of the filler.
I have this in abundance for Western rounds.
So I have given up on the internet and bought a copy of Janes Armour and Artillery, 97-98.
Since my primary focus is on WW2 and T2K, it should suffice.
I hope.
It wasn't super expensive, so fingers crossed.
During a routine inspection in 2026, museum staff uncovered a shocking secret hidden inside a WWII Panzer III tank that had gone unnoticed for more than 80 years. Beneath an internal floor panel was a 7.92×57mm Mauser round, the same ammunition used by the German MG 34 machine gun mounted on the legendary armored vehicle. The discovery stunned experts because the aging bullet was potentially dangerous and had to be carefully deactivated before being added to the collection. This rare Panzer III, one of only two surviving examples still running, carries a mysterious history dating back to the North African campaign and the Battle of Alam el Halfa in 1942.
So, a live round was rolling around under the floorboards for 84 years, and the lack of men in the UK caused a panic?
Potentially dangerous?
Maybe if you tried to swallow it. It's not like it's an HE round where the explosive's stabilizers have been slowly breaking down leaving something behind that makes nitroglycerine seem easy to juggle.
I love the line about carefully deactivating it.
In America a quick poll would have been taken among the workers to see who had a 98k and they'd have shot that round to see how badly the powder had degraded.
"Historian Ian Hudson said he could not definitely say the round was a wartime artefact but “it’s certainly very likely”."
Are you fucking shitting me, Ian?
A fucking historian doesn't know to look at the headstamp?
I am ever more convinced that we should have helped the Germans in 1918.
I did not save the link...
But it would appear that Flock's surveillance and its use by the cops was found to not be a violation of privacy because there weren't enough cameras in use to provide 100% coverage and thus the person surveilled could have routed around them.
There are Supreme Court cases holding that milder infractions are violations of our right to privacy. The recent one about geo-fencing is one.
It would appear to me, reading the tea leaves, that even one use without a warrant is a violation and Flock is digging it's own grave by pointing out how many cameras they have operating.
Someone is eventually going to tie a penumbra to these cameras from the cyberstalking laws and the "we did it to everyone" defense is just going to increase the number of counts in the charges.
Because while government can use the "we did it to everyone equally" defense, they're not allowed to do it to anyone without a warrant.
"We did it to everyone," is not a defense a private party can use when invading someone's privacy.
The Veterans of Foreign Wars is all in a tizzy about veterans benefits being cut.
They care about ALL of us now?
Because I remember, back in 1992, when what my paltry 10% service connected got me was dramatically reduced.
You now need to have a 30% serviced disconnected disability to get those benefits.
The VFW didn't give two shits about me back then.
The Cold War didn't count, see.
To see the power the VFW had, look at the difference in benefits Nam ERA vets get compared to anyone serving from the end of Vietnam to the beginning of the War on Terror.
I'm not opposed to them fighting this fight, but I remember when they didn't care about me. They still won't support me directly because my DD214 doesn't reflect my entire service.
There still isn't a single veteran's organization that represents all of us.
The smaller VSO's are geared more to discourage us from making claims. Ask me how I know. I am discouraged, they are successful.
If you're about to ETS, look at the dates CAREFULLY on the DD214 they ask you to review. You have that moment and 90 days after that to fix any errors. If you notice that someone typed 89 and not 90 as your separation date, and you notice in 01... It's a nightmare to get fixed inside the VA's system and you will NEVER get a new DD214 showing the correct dates.
"I was popping percocet like M&Ms when I ETS'd," is not grounds for missing the clerical error!
A company that just went bankrupt had a heck of a scam.
You send them money and they say you bought some gold or silver, which they hold for you.
As long as the music keeps playing, and there's chairs left, this works.
But one day the music stops when someone notices there was no actual gold or silver, just pieces of paper.
Whups!
I'd have never thought of this.
How's about you keep your citizens in your country where ICE has never had to shoot them?
Mexico's president wants to sue ICE for her citizen getting shot.
I think I like the cut of her jib. We should endorse punishing the nation that's enforcing its laws in accordance with their own legal system.
Time to sue Mexico back to the dark ages over arresting Americans who accidentally, but illegally, brought a firearm into Mexico.
Or, is that different?
L. Spraugue de Camp (1956)
Amended with Gun Stats... .600 does 9d+2 pi++ now.
.375 H&H does 8d+1 pi.
Popping the Rex in the vitals with the average damage roll of 33.5 points gets 31.5 to penetrate for 94.5 damage. A single consciousness roll from a HT 15 critter means you're going to have to keep shooting.
You need to do 106 to get a death roll out of one.
A second hit to the vitals gets you there.
The .375 rolls an average of 29 points, 27 penetrate for 81 points of damage.
Two, well placed, rounds of .375 H&H has enough medicine to take down the tyrant lizard.
SPOILER ALERT
I suspect the late Mr Holtzinger didn't hit the vitals even once. A hit to the body would only do 27 points of damage and three such shots are the same as a single vitals hit. A fourth would get to death rolls, but that HT 15 looms large if you're going for this big game at close range.
The Iranians never stopped firing so it wasn't really a ceasefire, ceasefire is no longer in effect.
The Iranians were lying? PERSIANS lying?
OMG! Did the sun come up in the East?
Is water wet?
Does fire burn?
Colorado State University has reduced their prediction from April.
They now say:
9 Named Storms
4 Hurricanes
1 Major Hurricanes (Cat 3+)
This is down from:
13 Named Storms
6 Hurricanes
2 Major Hurricanes (Cat 3+)
Isn't it amazing that parts that are warrantied for 5 years and 100,000 miles when the car was new are only good for a year and 5,000 miles when added later?
I have made a serious dent in the cannon list.
All the Kwk guns from 3.7cm to 8.8cm for Mr Mustache Man.
The 17 pdr, 20 pdr and L11 guns for the Brits.
All of the US 75mm and 3" guns.
Just about all the T2K guns for the US and Soviets.
A couple of the WW2 USSR guns for good measure.
One sheet per gun. 29 guns.
And because I was looking at tables in the Gun Stats pdf and doing a lot of copy-pasting...
I introduced a lot of errors.
Errors which were corrected when I figured out the IFS function!
Now it accounts for the three variables from bore diameter, two from velocity, one from the TL and if it's a smoothbore or not.
Save early. Safe often!
Your question was already answered in the linked article a few posts back.
Read the article hosted by the white supremacist and your questions will be answered!
Which is as nice as I can be about saying, "do your own homework."
If you search for every individual round, by name and case dimensions, Google's little AI scourer will give you the weight of a complete cartridge for WW2 German tank rounds.
I am still shocked that someone didn't put this on wikipedia in a nice, easy to read, table like was done for just about every other round I've been trying to punch into GURPS: Gun Stats.
Next up, the L11 120mm cannon for the Chieftain and Challenger.
The paper that was posted on the white supremacist site (much to the author's chagrin), and I can't find it posted on a non-racist site, focuses on how most African languages have no concepts we consider bedrock ideas in Western Civilization.
Without these concepts, you cannot be a true member of Western Civ.
The sooner you are exposed to these concepts, the easier it is to learn them.
And the question becomes the old nature vs nurture debate.
I believe that the average African-American can learn these concepts and be successful in American society.
I base my hypothesis on the fact that they used to be successful members of American society before the Democrat party actively hamstrung them.
In fact, it often seems as if every time racism is almost dead and black Americans are poised to become full members, some Democrat comes along and fucks it with a dick dipped in resin and rolled in ground glass.
I believe that race has nothing to do with their circumstances because the same failures are present in Appalachia. Thomas Sowell has mentioned the similarity more than once.
That similarity has the "fucked by Democrats" in common.
I was hoping that GURPS: Vehicles 2nd edition for GURPS 3e would suffice for getting ammunition weights.
It will not.
Using its formulas will give 106.7 lb. for a 120mm APFSDSDU round.
The M829 round is 41.2 lb. It's a 120mm APFSDSDU round.
Notice the problem?
Me too.
Science is. Science is often not what you want it to be, because the facts don't care.
I strive, desperately, to not be a bigot in my behavior and thinking.
I tend to reject the bigot's answers for things because their answers are trite and made to fit preconceived notions.
But there's a kernel of doubt.
The OG racists in America were southern slave owners.
The people most familiar with American blacks, over and over, described "childlike" behavior and attitudes.
I always chalked that down to a culture imposed upon them because: How much culture does a slave need to be a good slave?
They were not inculcated with Western Civ's values because those didn't help them be good property.
Because I think in science, I read stuff that has conclusions I dislike.
Like this. It's published by a thoroughly white supremacist group. Take it with a carton of salt. Remember what I said about trite answers fitting preconceived conclusions.
Just because I don't want the problems with American Blacks to be inborn and uncorrectable, doesn't mean I shouldn't consider it.
Science will not care if I don't want it any more than it doesn't care if a bigot does.
We're not going to do the research for real because it asks hard questions and the best solution could ultimately be extremely racist because, if that paper is correct, we'd have to, structurally, treat black people differently from white people.
That doesn't align well with "All men are created equal" in a document we just celebrated.
I'm doing Russian tank rounds now.
American rounds it's easy to find the weight of the loaded round, but hard to find the length and weight of the projectile.
Russian rounds have been the opposite.
Extensive data on the projectile, not much for complete rounds.
Of course, it's better than Nazi German ordnance, you can often find precise data on penetration values and be left wanting for how much anything weighs.
I am dreading doing France and the Brits.
When the Army realized that the M2 and M3 guns in the M3 and M4 tanks weren't going to cut it for most anti-tank purposes...
OK, they didn't. The M2 and M3 guns do exactly what they were supposed to do, and the Gun Motor Carriages were supposed to handle the stuff that was too heavy for the tanks.
So they made what we call "tank destroyers," or gun motor carriages.
The TD counterpart to the Sherman is the Gun Motor Carriage M10.
It's got a long 3" gun that's tailored to kill tanks. This is the M7 gun on an M5 mount.
Towards the end of WW2, they started to replace the M10 with the Gun Motor Carriage M18 "Hellcat". It too has a long 3" gun that's tailored to kill tanks. This is the M1 series of guns.
The tank destroyer concept started to wane after the war and we developed a light tank with a long, 3" gun that had a decent chance against a tank. This is the M32.
They all use the same round, right?
No.
No, they do not.
Despite all sharing the same caliber, they don't share the same case.
Frustratingly, The M7 and M1 guns share projectiles. The cartridges are named after the projectile so they share designations. 76mm HE M42 for the M7 is a different round from the 76mm HE M42 for the M1.
The M7 gun fires 76.2x585mmR.
The M1 series fires 76.2x539mmR.
The M32 fires 76,2x580mmR.
The manuals that ordnance issues doesn't really distinguish between the 76mm rounds and even forgets there's more than one cartridge length.
What caused me to notice was going through the rounds for the Lee/Grant and Sherman's 75mm M2 and M3 guns. Those guns both fire 75x350mmR.
But Ordnance doesn't specify that the 75mm Pack-Howitzer rounds are not the same.
The round that started my noticing was the 75mm M66 HEAT-T round and seeing how low the muzzle velocity was compared to other rounds fired by the Sherman. Even lower than the shorter barreled gun in the Lee/Grant.
This is because the pack-hog fires 75x272mmR! It gets a couple of rounds that the Sherman never got because it stayed in service a lot longer.
It's getting sorted.
I have also made my first set of stats for a NBC round. The M64 Chem round. Mustard gas! Not to be confused with the M64 Smoke and M64 HC Smoke rounds.
Ferguson, Missouri?
Isn't that one of those "fiery but peaceful" places?
It doesn't seem a very nice place to live.
The tragedy is it appeared she'd had a successful GoFundMe campaign to allow her to get a place outside Ferguson and was only at the BP station to get celebratory slushies for her kids.
Because it was balls hot and they figured it'd cause a minimum of debate if they were feeling heat-stroke coming on.
"Sign it and we open the windows!"
It would appear that SNT Motiv will be making a production facility in Louisiana and not just Americanizing guns that are mostly made in Good Korea.
Sadly, that means that new tooling needs to be bought and manned here in the states and that will make the K2S a lot more expensive.
Probably at least as expensive as a used DR200 is.
Shooting the 915 today reminded me that there's nothing wrong with many older guns.
You can get 17 round mags for it.
It's only a little heavier than a Glock 17.
You're not giving up anything, really, by carrying one.
There's scads of guns that still work fine and have enough beans to be competitive.
They may be used by the time we get to them, but that just means the previous owners ate any depreciation there is.
I've seen so many used, but unfashionable, guns with almost no wear on them going for about half what a new one would go for.
Several are in the safe!
The downside is parts support. The manufacturer might not support it any more.
But it's, mostly, not a problem.
The Lovely Harvey is getting more comfortable with her new Equalizer.
It also helps if I stop hovering.
After shooting we stopped at the Tarpon Springs Aquarium and Animal Sanctuary. It's touristy fun!
Then we hit Britton Guns and managed to escape without buying anything. Russ and Heidi both say "hi!" to Willard.
There are no consistent sources for the weight of complete tank rounds for Nazi Germany.
Worthless AI guesses are the projectile weights.
I test fired the S&W Model 915 with the curved grip and the two magazines for it that I'd replaced the springs.
I think it went well.
The curved backstrap is definitely superior to the straight one and recoil was very gentle.
I don't care for the sights on this second least expensive version of the S&W 3rd gen. They are not conducive to fast shooting, but I made due dew do.
One round failed to fully chamber and the round below it had its nose up the feed ramp. Not sure if that's a magazine problem or not. It's disappointing because it has a new spring in it and it'd suck to have to decommission it.
The 8.8cm KwK.43's Pz.Gr.40/43 will do 6dx16(2) pi++ out to 5,950/17,500.
That's got more reach than the same projectile from a Tiger E.
The 8.8cm KwK.36's Pz.Gr.40 will do 6dx13(2) pi++ out to 4,980/14.600.
Those punch 9.6" and 7.8" of RHAE respectively.
The 90mm gun on the T-26 firing a M82 APC-T round does 6dx10(2) pi++ follow-up 6d+2[4d-1] cr ex.
That punches 6" of RHAE.
That's our best armor piercing round.
On the plus side, the Tiger II only has 5.9" of armor on the front of the hull. That should only be DR 400, but it's sloped for DR 850 and the M82 round will ping... You need 6dx21(2) to get a Tiger from the front. We didn't develop a round that could do that until we filed the serial numbers off the Brit L7A1 105mm gun and called it M68.
On the down side, the T-26 firing that 90mm round almost has 4" of armor... It too is well sloped and gets DR 420. 6dx10(2) penetrates that.
On the gripping side, there were damned few cats of any flavor running about when the T-26 arrived to test out the idea of what would become an MBT.
ATF is adjusting their stance on NFA and fingerprints.
With special love for us with NFA Trusts.
Did the 76.2mm rounds today.
Did you know that East China had a long-rod APFSDS round for their modernized Walker Bulldogs?
I didn't.
I also discovered that tungsten is almost the same density as depleted uranium, a little heavier in fact.
I knocked out the 75mm German WW2 tank guns too. They were very considerate using the same projectile in three different length cases. Just had to change the velocity to get the stats.
The 75mm HEAT round they came up with in '38 is truly pathetic. At least by modern standards.
The Hl.Gr.38B only does 6d+1(10) cr ex with a linked 6dx3 cr ex.
The improved Hl.Gr.38C does 9d(10) cr ex with a linked 6dx3 cr ex.
6d+1(10) penetrates a mere 220 DR, just a tad over 3" RHAE.
9d(10) will get past 315 DR, or 4.5" RHAE.
While that's adequate for early WW2, I'd gotten used to Twilight and the M456's 6dx5(10) cr ex linked 6dx3 cr ex. That punches 1,050 DR or 15" of RHAE.
If I ran a campaign where this was available, the big question is will an NPC have one to confound the players, before a player adds it to their equipment list.
Moar dakka is always the goal of the player, but they often make quirky choices in arming themselves that interrupts achieving the goal.
The cannon part:
The missile part:
There are variants of the HEAT round that are identical in GURPS terms.
Same same for the Canister round.
These stats are for the M162 gun in the M60A2, but the M81 gun in the M551 is identical in game terms.
They're mostly identical in real terms, but the differences in mounting added up quick.
PS: Did you notice that M162 is double M81? The '60's did this a lot.
The M219 is simply M73 tripled. "Third time's the charm!" It wasn't.
In 1868 granting birthright citizenship to anyone born on our side of the line wasn't an issue because all you got was citizenship.
If you didn't get to work, like everyone else, you'd starve.
If you worked it was, relatively, simple to become a productive member of society rather than a burden.
It's an issue now because of the lavish, and unending, handouts and, as was pointed out in the comments, the penumbral right to bring everyone with even 1% consanguinity with you here to live.
The issue compounds.
Personally, I'm in favor of killing the handouts. We really can't afford them.
Ideally we only let the citizen stay and send their parents packing. I'm not sentimental about breaking up a family whose only goal is to punch out an anchor baby and start hanging from the welfare teat.
Especially now that we've seen how much fraud came with it.
I have used Gun Stats to make stats for all of the US issued 90, 105, and 120mm tank gun rounds.
Yes, I remembered the M58 gun on the M103 heavy tank.
75 and 76mm beckon...
Then it will be time to do the Soviet stuff.
Back here I had the damage for the 105mm M494 APERS round at 3d cut.
Gun Stats changes that to 1d-2 cut.
The 14 hits at 50 yards only does 2 per hit now and that's 42 damage.
Not a red-mist, but very unhappy with life.
10 consciousness rolls and 3 death rolls tends to make people grumpy.
A 16"/50 Rifle Mk.7 firing a 16" HC Mk.13 round does:
6dx80(0.5) pi++ linked 6dx24[20d] cr ex out to 16,160/37,300
16" AP Mk.8 does:
6dx51(2) pi++ linked 6dx12[20d] cr ex.
It's hilarious calculating these things in grains! 133,300,000 grains for the exemplar Mk.13 round.
Explosive D has an REF of 0.95 not 1.13, so that changed things a mite.
The standard US flechette is 1" long and 0.05" in diameter and weighs 13gr.
The tungsten ball in an M1040 canister round is 0.31" in diameter and weighs 73gr.
For some reason this was harder to find than it was the first time I looked it up.
The massive tax cut represented by increasing the homestead exemption will NOT make renting a house more expensive.
Cutting taxes on home owners doesn't increase the taxes on rental properties. Those remain the same as before.
In fact, there's language slowing down the rate they can increase the taxes on non-homestead properties from 10% to 5%.
That will help renters, not hurt them.
