Little Gems

Watching Downton Abbey has me thinking...

How much of this can I apply to Traveller?

The GURPS status nut is a rough one to crack.

The servants have a clear pecking order, and it's enforced outside the service quarters.

But it's entire encapsulated in status 0-2.

Nobility is simpler, but it starts at 2...  But a knight will still outrank the head butler.  Both are status 2.

The head butler of a Status 5 count will be of higher status than one of a Status 3 baron, both will still be status 2.

Then there's the matter of other things.

This has come up before in speculating about social status.

What comes with the higher status?

Because a Baron can dispense justice.  A noble is tried under different rules and uses different courts than commoners.

Different laws apply as well!

Does a baron have to buy legal enforcement powers and legal immunity as well?

While a landed noble will have an estate that belongs to the title and can't be sold for personal needs, such estates generate wealth that can.  Does that wealth come with the social status or does our noble have to purchase the correct level of wealth?

There's much to consider.

Oh By The Way

That there are some violent bigoted transsexuals out there who are demanding vengeance against...  Everyone who isn't fucking crazy;

DOES NOT MEAN THAT EVERY TRANSSEXUAL IS WANTING THAT AND IS DESERVING OF BEING PUNISHED FOR IT!!!

Try to remember what we keep saying we believe.

It's easy for me to remember, because I actually believe it.

Individual rights and liberty's corollary is just blaming individuals for their own actions and not blaming them for superficial relationships with others.

If we blame a group, we have to prove the group was actually promoting the crime and the individual did the crime because of the directions of said group.

To be really specific.

Blame the piece of shit in Tennessee for murdering those people and don't blame, say, Erin.

That they are both trans doesn't mean shit with regards to the crime.

Erin is innocent of murdering anyone, so Erin isn't deserving any blame. 

So when start advocating that "something" be done, don't be like the gun control groups and say ANYTHING is something, therefore we must do THAT.

Let us not respond to bigotry with more bigotry.  Even though it would be EASY AS FUCK.

Liberty isn't easy.

Nor is it clean and simple.

We want to be friends at the end of this, if we can, because we're going to have to live with each other.

Vengence?

Since I'm the one who seems to be pointing out the nastiness...

Way back when...

I remember when the bent needed to hide they were of the LGB persuasion.

To fail to do so would lead to being fired, shunned and in some places and times assaulted.

That this was wrong was pointed out, and it's now generally accepted.

Laws were repealed.  Laws were passed.

People learned that they had queer friends.

People discovered that it didn't actually affect their friendship.

In short, the LGB folks won.

Trans and generic Queers made the same arguments and joined the victory lap.

At this point LGBTQ people have achieved the same rights as everyone else, as is just.

But we straight folk need punished?

For what?

For the actions of others in my case.  I've been a supporter and defender of LEGBTQ rights for decades.  Longer than some of these crybullies have been alive.

But, go on.  Harden my heart against you.

Guess who isn't harmed by returning to the injustices of the past.

That's right.  The straight people whom you have deemed deserve your divine retribution.

I gots to tell you, the average person is getting fed up with being called all manner of bigot AFTER conceding that minorities deserved the same rights as everyone else and helping to secure those rights.

It should be obvious, but if the homophobic, misogynist, racist hetronormative patriarchy was REALLY in charge...  There would not be any minority rights at all.  It'd just be white, straight men's rights and fuck the lot of you.

How do I determine this?

First in a representative democratic republic, you need a majority to get people elected and laws passed.

Those laws (and amendments) were passed because you made a solid, logical, argument.

So vengeance now?

You do know how vendetta works, right?

OK, you do your vengeance thing.  You kill a few people.  You win now?

Nope.

You convince the majority that you're too dangerous to have around.  At least to have around uncontrolled.

Maybe you get to wear a little pink triangle on your coat to warn others...  Congratulations!  You made Nazis out of normal people!

Erin has talked about how some of this kickback is already happening.

She's missing who's really to blame about it, though.

But this sort of thing keeps happening and all the concessions that minorities deserve rights always seems to result in white straight people having fewer rights than the minorities and constantly being told what scum we are.

We're not scum.  We wanted you to join us as equals.  No more, no less.

But you seem to want that existential fight.

Blacks seem to be after it.

LQBTQ seems to be after it.

Because, you're bigots.  No better than the toothless Klansman.  No better than a Nazi Brownshirt.  No better than a Chekist.

Perhaps we were wrong about you.

What you're really going to end up doing is fucking the people that you claim you are advocating for.  They're not like you.  They're actually happy being equals.  The mistake they're making is letting you speak for them.

That's not a smart thing to do when provoking the wrath of a Western Civ.

I don't want it to come to it.  But I don't get to decide on this one starting.  The fools are running the show.

That's Good News

The VA is not taking the Congressional Budget Office's idea seriously.

I worry, though, that this is an idea that will appeal to the likes of AOC and it will fester for a while.

Dear Hollywood

The command to the archers is, "loose," not, "fire."

Bows are not guns.

Telling an archer to, "fire," is telling them to light the flaming arrow.

It's Really Just A Switch

When trying to plan out the wiring for my fog lamps, I got all confused.

The confusion stemmed from reading the explanations of others on a car forum who, in hindsight, clearly did not understand what they were doing.

I completely forgot how to make a circuit.

Happily, Marv was there to explain things to me and I remembered what a relay really is.

It's a switch.

So you wire what you want to be activated by it as if the relay is a switch.

Then you wire it's little coil into a, different, switched circuit.

Et viola!

The explanations of how to do that on the forum really hurt my brain.

I Can Stop School Shootings

Ban schools.

Done.

See how simple that was?

It also has the benefit of wiping teachers unions off the face of the earth.

Not Misgendering

Once a scumbag decides to murder children it no longer gets the courtesy of being personed.

It doesn't have a gender because it is a thing.

Things don't have genders or pronouns.

Yes, I do this to insult the worthless scum who murdered six innocents.

I hope they are insulted as they writhe in the torments of whatever afterlife they find themselves in.

Nashville Is Not Uvalde

 Body cam of the scumbag being stopped has already been released.

Clicky here to see.

Assault immediately is the successful way of stopping a mass shooter.

Nashville Metro seems to know that.

Good shoot.

Blade

An item on the mustering benefits in the LBB Traveller era was the "blade".

It's a "hybrid knife weapon with a heavy, flat two-edged blade nearly 300mm (11.8") in length, and a semi-basket handguard."  It's listed as Traveller TL3 and tares 350g (0.8 lb.)  Cr50.

It's mostly associated with the Imperial Marines.

GURPS is a bit cagey about defining knives so as to not step on the toes of preconceptions and keep things flexible.

I think a large knife with an open-frame basket hilt fits the feel correctly.

TL3; Blade; sw-2 cut or thr imp; C, 1 or C; -1 parry; $50; 1 lb.; ST 6.

See Low Tech 4e p.67 and Low Tech Companion 2 p.15.

It's neat to see that the prices align between two different games published 30 years apart!

Timing

There was a pro-gun bill in the house to neuter the ATF's pistol brace ban scheduled.

It has been delayed.

I need to make a foil hat, because a newsworthy mass shooting happened just after it was scheduled.

I'll Say It

The school shooting in Nashville has something that others didn't.

A political goal.

Murder with a political goal has a name.

Terrorism.

The crazy branch of transgenderism has moved into the terrorism camp.

It's also a hate crime, but since the person doing the hating is the "good kind of hate" there will be no mention of this aspect in the news.

Sadly, people on "my" side will not bother to filter at all and blame any person advocating for trans rights as a terrorist; just as they now blame all trans people for the barbaric mutilation of children.

In its way, it's like blaming all white people for the KKK, even the white people standing with the blacks.

Yum!

If you watch the movie The Menu and don't walk way wanting that cheesburger, there's something wrong with you.

And you SHOULD go watch it.  It's excellent.

But that burger!

It's dirt simple and delicious.

Basic instructions are here.

The chef they hired has said in an interview that you should NOT overthink it.  The cooking is more important than the spices and sauces.

That hot, flat surface and chilled balls of meat are the secret.

It lets the outside get crusty and the inside to remain juicy and the correct temperature.

The chef said the spices they used was the cheap "steak seasoning" from any grocery store.  That's what I used.  Using about twice as much as I thought I'd need came out better.

For sauce, Harvey and The Boy went with the 50/50 ketchup and mayo from the link.  I made something from Bold A1 and mayo.

It might not be the best burger I've ever had, but it's certainly the best burger I've ever made.

And I can do it at will.

So Much For That

I've been reading, over and over, about how the cisnormative are assaulting and murdering wholesale the trans community.

I read the news and it's not a cisnormative person who shot up a school and murdered six people, including children.

Once again; It's not me or my side in this tiresome debate that's murdering people.

I was trying so hard to be reasonable and warn people too.

I guess it won't matter soon.

Thanks Blogger

The spam filter went from like 325 comments to 550.

But hardly a new message.

Going through the pile, I found comments that I am certain I approved over the years had suddenly been marked as spam.

I fixed it, but...

A Long While Ago

A while back, when I was just relearning to walk and still thought I'd be an aerospace engineer, I got back in touch with some friends from high-school.

This is significant in my support of LGBT because half of them turned out to have been gay as long as I'd known them.

Hanging out with these friends introduced me to their friends and, thus, I met a lot more gay people.

Iowa State University created a concentration of LGBT (though it was just LGB back then).

One evening one of the, as we affectionately called her, bull dykes didn't show up to play her half-elf.

Turns out she was in the hospital.

She ended up there for coming out of the women's room at a gas station and some asshole decided she was a dude because of her build and haircut.

He and his buddies beat her almost to death.

I don't cotton to that.

But it's an example of actual violence against someone who's gay because of how they look.

Lately, though, I've been reading about "violence".

More, accurately, it's just being rude.

Bad manners don't cause any lasting damage.  If words can break you, you're breaking yourself.

It's OK to be upset when someone is rude to you.  You can be angry.

But it's not actually violence.  It's not even similar to violence.

The media is wanting to warp the language again.

It's a bad kettle of fish to open because once it's accepted that language is violence, fighting words returns to play and we get valid self defense claims for bad words.

Though, people were a lot more polite when they knew they'd get physically assaulted for being rude.

Still Got It

I did some shooting myself on Friday.

The Grand-Puissance and I still get along wonderfully.

I still marvel at how small the HP is compared to other wonder-nines.

I Feel Protected And Served

The local Chevron had the best price on Top Tier gas today.

They shut the place down at night, but leave the pumps running.

Tonight I was accosted by a homeless dude.

He was pushy, but not TOO pushy, but he started attacking the ice machine while I was leaving.

I decided that the cops needed to be informed, but didn't know the non-emergency number.

But I spotted a deputy at a traffic stop.

Apparently, we unwashed peasants are to NEVER approach a Kingsman while they are protecting and serving a speeding ticket.

I have never wanted to scream, "Fuck you too, cocksucker!" in my life and not actually screamed it.

OK, Pig, tell you what:  Would it have been better for me to have shot the fucker and then dialed 911?

Because I will bet good damn money that dispatch would have said words to the effect of, "stop traffic enforcement and proceed to homicide at..."

Threatening to arrest me for "interfering with a traffic stop," when my opening line was, "Excuse me, Deputy, can I speak with you when you're done?"

I am tempted to get political about this.

Maybe it's time for a different sheriff.

Foggy

Got the fog lights finished!

First the ugly.

Used an existing relay bracket to mount the new light relay.

I cut up the light harness I bought to use this relay instead of the POS that came with it and to extend the wires so that it would actually reach where I wanted to hook it up to.

It cleaned up nicely.

 Now the results!

Lights off:

Lights on:

I wired them so when the key is off, the lights are off too, that way I can't kill the battery by forgetting them.

Overreach

I think that the LGBTQ movement is suffering from the same problem with success that MADD had.

They'd won their war, but kept fighting.

Having won, they went on to demand ever more, and moved past what was reasonable.

The response to this sort if thing is, "you wanna be unreasonable?  I'll show you unreasonable, HOLD MY MOTHERFUCKING BEER!"

And we're going to be right back where we started forty years ago when the smoke clears; except there will be a memory of when "normal" people conceded to the reasonable arguments of the LGBTQ community only to watch it snowball into madness.

How did it go so wrong?

You dragged people's kids into it and made the cardinal mistake of psychological assessment.  Your personal experience is not universal.

You also aligned yourselves with pederasts.

The answers you're giving to reasonable questions from parents aren't convincing and sound evasive.

You sound like you you're supporting grooming a child to think that being molested is normal.

THAT is why you're seeing the negative response.

It could probably be salvaged, but most of your information is coming from liberal sources and not bothering to talk to conservatives who support your rights.

They would much rather run the cart over the cliff than admit that us filthy cisnormative folks have a point (or rights of our own for that matter).

Also, when you discuss being made into a second class citizen, you do realize that by asking for and receiving rights that cis people don't have has already made second class citizens of them.

I'm a radical.

I'm all for rights for everyone.

But the same rights for every person.

People's rights, not women's, men's, straight's, bent's, white's, black's, etc...

You don't have any more rights than I do, and you don't have any less than me.

I'll fight for that.

And that will segue into the nasty side of things.

It's something that commenters have talked about here when I defended trans people having rights the same as everyone else.

Being trans is an abnormality.  Any deviation from the norm is an abnormality, it's not a moral judgement.

It can be expressed as a mental disorder, but a non-debilitating and high-functioning one.

The reason you're getting such extreme pushback from the normies is the stated goal to impress this abnormality onto children in a manner outside parental control.

You started making moves to exclude parents from the rearing of their children.

Worse, the impression you're doing is, literally, conversion therapy!  With the conversion of someone who was naturally going to grow up straight being converted to trans.

I am sorry.  While I still support LGBTQ rights, this is where I get off the bus.

Firewall Back

I have the G8 headlight switch installed and wired.

 

I took a 12v hot-in-run wire from the abandoned in place up-fitter harness, connected it to the, also abandoned in place, siren harness.

This brings the wire through the firewall via a factory grommet and gives me a nice weather-tight plug under the hood.

Using that same siren harness I ran another wire back to the switch, added a pin to the connector and that will provide a switched ground for relay.

I temporarily connected the relay and had Harvey close the switch.  The relay clicks!

Just like it's supposed.

Next I need to extend my light harness back to where the relay will reside and connect power and ground to it.

Then we wait for fog!

How Safe Is It?

The Vilani use a gauss rifle that's near identical to the 4mm the Terrans use in performance.

6d+2(3) pi-

That averages to 23 points raw damage.

Thanks to the armor divisor, that will penetrate 69 points of DR.  The down side is whatever makes it through the armor is cut in half.

Terran torso armor comes in at DR 75, so you're relatively safe.

Extremities are far more vulnerable.

Soldiers should keep their heads down.  The infantry combat helmet is pathetic with DR 27.

I can see the space combat helmet being substituted.

I'm also considering statting out a heavier infantry helmet because when you arms are better protected than your noggin, your confidence wanes.

The Terran Marine laser rifle doesn't penetrate near so well with its 6d(2) burn.

It will only cut through 42 DR on average, but it's recoilless.  That matters in zero G.

WTF Motorola?

The Edge Plus doesn't have a 3.5mm headphone jack.

No biggie, I thought.  The Z3 didn't either.

With the Z3 you just used a USB-C male to 3.5mm female and you were good to go.

Not with the Edge+!

Plugging the headset in via the adaptor gets, "Analog audio accessory detected.  The attached device is not compatible with this phone."

There's no manual, but the "help" section on the phone has, "3.5mm to USB-C adaptors with analog headphones are not supported."

Spif!

Now what?

I'm trying some different adaptors, but it looks like I'm going to need digital headphones.

Harvey has a pair, but wrong USB plug, so I need an adaptor for that too.

Nose Wet Coat Shiny

Grappled with the VA this morning.

I am suspiciously healthy.

All my numbers but bad-cholesterol are excellent.

So, of course, we focused HARD on that.

I'm marginal enough that she's not pushing statins at me, and we've scheduled some sort of scan to check how choked my arteries are.

Yay.

Technologic

Why the file transfer didn't move all the files I had in that folder... I have no idea.

But I sure noticed them missing when I went to check my notes for what filter and weight oil to get for The Beast.

5W-30 Dexos1.  TWO FUCKING GALLONS OF IT!

Bubba's truck needed six quarts of the same weight.

$10 a quart, folks, for the Mobil 1.

Shooted All Day

Got Wendy to the range to try out my M16A4 clone and the Remington 870.

Because she's all of 6 inches tall, those are awkwardly long guns and she needed some coaching to get up on the sights like she's supposed.

With the A4, due to my explaining it wrong, she did put a round into the sound deadening baffles in the ceiling.

After some assistance from the RO we got her hitting the target and getting everything in the -0 circle at 7-yards.

The 870...

Talked her into getting it in her shoulder, gave her a single round to shoot and, BOOM!

Cackles of laughter!

She liked it!

Three more rounds were consumed with her pumping for herself.

Fun was had by all.

Later, The Lovely Harvey and I hit the range and I put a few down the Hi Power's pipe.

Her pattern is getting tighter each time and she's got the most bored and disinterested brass dance developed.

"Oh, this appears to be hot."  Plucks it out, tosses. "I shall return to shooting."

Busy Day One Done

Lots of appointments and things going on to occupy my day today.

At least as much going on Friday to suck up time as well.

Get to talk to my doc at the VA.

Going shooting with my adopted niece, Wendy.

Prolly at least two other things in there.

Maybe even breaking some bread with Willard.

Talk among yourselves and check out the sidebar if I don't make it back in a timely manner.

Fucking Veterans

It's a tradition!

The Congressional Budget Office has proposed making veteran's disability payments contingent on a means based test.

Not just the vet's income, but household income.

Sure, you're fucked up, but your wife has a good job...

I will gladly sacrifice my disability check every month if we change ALL other entitlement programs to an able-body test.

Sure, you don't make any money NOW punching out kids, but there's nothing physically keeping you from holding a job, so NO SOUP FOR YOU!

That'd nuke welfare like Jupiter hitting at 0.9c.

Take half the non-discretionary budget with it too.

Shouldn't Work

When comparing Antifa to the Brown-Shirt or the Bolsheviks or the Chinese Cultural Revolution the people who are advocating for such National Socialist policies keep mentioning how few members it took to topple the government and implement their socialist utopia.

(Assuredly it will be different this time because REAL socialism has never been tried, right?)

What they're forgetting is Germany, Russia, China, Cambodia et al had something besides the socialism in common.

Disarmed citizenry.

That's not true in America.

It's also true that there are enough firearms in the US owned by people who have been worried about FEMA deathcamps since Bill Clinton was interviewing humidors that any real movement to topple the republican form of democracy in the US in favor of socialism complete would meet armed resistance.

Especially once those arms are outlawed.

"Shiny, let's be badguys!" would be the reaction.

Considering that I like indoor plumbing, electricity and ample food; I don't want socialism or a war to stop it.

Grumble

After spending five hours waiting for the old phone to back-up to the cloud before proceeding...

The third step in activating the new phone was to plug it into the old phone to transfer the apps, data and settings directly.

THAT only took about half an hour.

If the printed instructions had given even the slightest indication that was going to be the case I wouldn't have wasted my time on the damn cloud.

Because of the endless march of OS updates I lost my favorite puzzle game.

I lost my cute Nixie clock time display.

I lost my rimshot and sad trombone buttons.

Dammit.

I'm checking to see if I can get different versions of those apps.

It's irritating because I've had them since I had a Droid 2.  Paid for the Nixie clock!

Yes I Am Aware

I know one of the goals of the elimination of cops, courts and prisons is so that our modern brownshirts can operate with impunity.

What they're forgetting, ironically while screaming about minority rights, is what the word "minority" means.

Go look for the memoirs of George Armstrong Custer for a treatise on being a minority in a firefight.

I'd also like to remind them that the menshiviks lost.

The situation they're creating is "fight or die" with the majority.

The 3%ers are correct at how few people it takes to win this once the fight is joined.

Many of them are eager for the fight, and are waiting for the modern brownshirts to achieve their goal of getting the government out from between them.

I don't want this fight.

It ends with subjugation for the minority and a lesson to NEVER take the boot off that neck EVER again.

It pisses me off that we keep coming ever so close to eliminating this shit and the left keeps picking fights to keep the hate flowing.

Fucking Programmers

New phone arrived.

Step one is backing up old phone to a cloud.

Printed instructions in the box say to go to Google 1 and stab the "backup now" button.

There is no "backup now" button.

Google, apparently, changed the interface and it just does that when you open that page now.

It doesn't tell you that's what it's up to, you have to notice that the GB used line is getting bigger.

Irritatingly, it's prioritizing the files that I can move myself and not moving apps, contacts, messages and such which don't move by moving a folder.

GRRRRRRRR.

Verizon's Cloud seems to be doing the same thing, but faster and with more space to do it in.

Mutter mutter mutter.

It's spring, sir!

That Did Not Mean What I Thought It Meant

I'd been sitting here thinking that "blood libel" meant an insult that required a deadly reply.

I am glad I wasn't using it in casual conversation or used it incorrectly on the blog.

I am equally glad of my habit of looking things up before using them in a sentence.

Using anti-Semitic language might make people think I'm a Democrat.

I Know This One

After defunding the cops, they want to eliminate prisons.

There was once a time where many places didn't have professional law enforcement nor jails to incarcerate any criminals captured.

I believe the technical term for the law enforcement was "posse" and the traditional punishment was hanging.

OK, liberals, I'm game.

I don't think you're thinking this through at all.

I think I should remind you of something very important before we return to "frontier justice" and vendetta.

Modern law enforcement has been protecting YOU from the people you are doing a yeoman's job of pissing off.

It's a fear of cops, courts and prisons that's at play here; not a fear of you or your brown-shirtesque mobs.

Because without cops, courts and prisons you're going to find yourself on the wrong end of something dealing death.

Helping To Make A Lawyer Rich

Florida Carry has a couple of lawsuits out against FDLE.

I put my name in the hat.

Since my arrest I have only had two background checks take fewer than hours to come back.

One took days.

The lawyer looks to get 1/3 of anything collected.

The other 2/3 is subject to their fees.

I'm not going to get rich from being in the class, but the real point is to get FDLE to start doing things correctly.

Associated With Dunning Kruger

I don't think I've read something about Dunning Kruger stated thus...

Everything must seem simpler and clearer when you're unaware that there are things that you don't know.

They don't know there are known unknowns and cannot comprehend that there are not just things that you don't know you don't know but there are things that you cannot know even if you are aware of them.

The more aware you are of the unknowns and the uncertainty, the less clear the universe becomes and the more cautious you get.

That caution makes them think we don't know what we're talking about when we make statements which are certain.

Because there are topics where all the knowns and unknowns are accounted for.

Wishing it were otherwise doesn't change it.

Beast > Precious

On the way home from Orlando yesterday, I encountered some torrential rain.

All I had to do to deal with it was to hit the wipers.

This, historically, not true of The Precious.  Looking back, it was probably a harbinger of the accident that killed her.

Hitting that kind of rain in The Precious meant slowing down to 50 or slower because she would hydroplane.

No brand of tire seemed to take care of the issue.

The Beast?  Just drives through the water.

I think it's inherent to the contact patches and masses.

If (A Big If) Trump Is Arrested Tuesday

Don has asked us to protest.

After seeing what happened to the J6 people...

Here's all Don will get from me:

He's got the money to fight the charges and perhaps even counter sue to get the people who falsely accuse him.

He should probably have been dropping defamation and slander suits all over everywhere by now, actually.

Triple Nerd Score

Went, or tried, to go to the Orlando Brick Convention today.

It was a pleasant two hour drive to get there.

Met a friend at a nearby eatery and had fun BS'ing before we went to the venue.

Whereupon we were confronted with Gun Free Victim Zone signs and metal detectors.

So I returned to the car and let my friend and his wife go in without me.

I brought my Kindle, so no biggie.

They bought me something though!

There's an entire industry of high-quality custom mini-figs, including molding their own parts.

Lego has neglected Captain Rex and the genuine minifig is very expensive.  You can get the above for a lot less and it's more accurate to the character from the show too.

Huzzah!

Despite the hiccough with the metal defectors and my refusal to enter the victim zone, I had a great time hanging out with my friend and his wife.

Recoil Therapy

The Lovely Harvey is, slowly, making progress.

She's been fighting a pull to the left since her clearance to start shooting again.

We theorized that she's over-gripping with her right paw because she still can't feel it well.

So I had her slow down and squeeze slowly.

She repeated this pattern with two more magazines.

We think there might be some trigger jerking and flinch still going on, but I am so very proud of her for making solid progress.

When we first started back to the range, she was missing the paper with a few shots.

Then she started tightening up and missing the silhouette.

Then she was perforating the left side of the silhouette.

Now she's doing as pictured!

I took my Gen2 Glock 17 out and she put a mag through it too.  She did her first brass dance.  Did real well, put the gun down right away, then started digging for the spent case.  Just like you're supposed to!

Afterwards, coffee!

What A Chore

My Motorola Z3 is finally giving up the ghost.  I only get about a day's worth of battery any more.

So I went to my carrier's store to get a new phone.

Despite this being the only reason for having a brick and mortar store...

I gave up trying to get a phone from the store.

The first problem was an utter lack of information about the phones displayed with them.  I know what brand each section of the display held, but not the names of the phones.

I give the drone, Astrid, credit for trying to save me money; but I didn't come in to get a new plan.

I came in to get a phone.

The straw that broke the camel's back was the increasing amount of small fees that kept accumulating as she ran her worksheet.  $230 at the time of my departure to walk out with a phone.

The wait while she stabbed at her phone and her tablet gave me time to realize that it wasn't clear which version of the phone I really wanted.

So I said, "if you pitch a new plan, I'm walking."

She replied, "the discounts are attached to this new plan..."

So I just walked off.

The manager materialized.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"I came in here for a phone and I'm getting a pitch for a new plan.  I didn't ask for a plan, I asked for a phone!"

Once I got home I got on Verizon's AWEFUL web page to see what they sell.

Motorola Edge+ (2022) is what I'm getting.  For $110 plus a monthly payment for a couple years (don't judge, this is how I buy phones).

New phone will be here in a few days and I don't have to pay the multiple convenience fees for someone else to do something I know how to do.

Must Be Over The Target

While I don't think that the free carry permit scrap is enough for me when combined with the Florida Sheriff Association's pork...

It's a step in the right direction and proof arrived in the form of Prevent Gun Violence Florida protesting the tiny loosening of the law.

Nice to see that.

Mine Arrived

Got my KE Arms order today.  2.5 weeks from order to door.

Not impressed with the service.

Stormtroopers

In Traveller: Interstellar Wars the Terran Confederation Marines and the infantry of the Terran Confederation Army wear full suits of body armor.

Marines wear TL10 Space Armor with the Space Combat Helmet.

Soldiers wear TL10 Combat Hardsuits and Combat Infantry Helmet.

Both have DR 75 to the torso and DR 45 for the limbs.

The Marines have the better cover with DR 60 to the head and brains with DR 45 to the faceplate.  Soldiers get DR 27 to the skull and DR 18 to the faceplate.

The Marines are lugging more weight around with 45 lb for the suit, 7 lb. for the helmet plus 2 to 10 lb. of air tanks for 8 to 36 hours of operation on internal air.

Soldiers armor is 35 lb. for the suit, 5 lb. for the helmet and they don't carry an air supply, relying on filtration in the helmet's facemask.

The Army prefers the 4mm Gauss rifle.  6d+2(3) pi- and 60 shots in a handy 8.5 lb. package.  Sighting is via a heads-up display in the helmet.  The Marines use the 4mm and a laser rifle.  6d(2) burn with 83 shots from a D cell pack.  8 pounds for the gun, plus 5 for the power pack.

Basic load for the Gauss gun is 5 magazines including the one in the gun.  The laser gets just three packs, often using non-rechargable cells for double the number of shots.

Because the Terran Confederation is from Earth and Star Wars exists...  Except for the color, the armor looks Stormtroopery.  I like the look of the Phase 2 Clone Trooper.

Watching Star Wars: The Clone Wars and The Bad Batch makes me itch to get this down.

And In The End It Doesn't Even Matter

When you distill things down, there's not a whit of difference between any of the various 155mm HE rounds in GURPS terms.

Though...

The M107 HE round has 15.4 lb. of COMP-B or 14.6 lb. of TNT as a filler.

The M795 HE round has 23.8 lb. of TNT.

The newer round should do more than the older one.

The table says 6dx22(0.5) pi++ for getting hit with the projectile.  The linked explosion does 6dx8 [6d] cr ex.

According to the formula in High Tech 4e p.415:

14.6 lb. of TNT should do 6dx7.64 cr ex.  <-- This is the round in the table.

15.4 lb. of Comp-B should do 6dx9.29 cr ex

23.8 lb. of TNT should do 6dx9.75 cr ex.

Those get rounded to 6dx8, 6dx9 and 6dx10 respectively.  The steel case is good for 6d cut fragments from both.

The M107 is a TL7 round and the M795 is TL8, so they'll get marked as TL7 HE and TL8 HE and I'll make the newer round more expensive.

Damn Commie Bastards

Twilight: 2000 did a decent job of peering into the murky crystal ball that was Soviet equipment in 1985.

How could they have known what the Russians were up to when the CIA was having a bit of trouble too.

I saw what the CIA had in '89; we was ignorant.

There's a whole family of 152mm guns and ammo that came to service around that time that should be in the game instead of the old Akatsiya and D-20.

It looks like the new tubes use the same projectiles, but have abandoned the old 547.5mm rimmed case.

No Sign

The pin and detent I ordered from KE Arms is still missing in action.

They claimed it shipped first class mail on the 9th.

Ten days from ordering to claiming it was shipped.

Six days from when they claimed it was shipped to today...

The post office is slow, but first class from Arizona isn't a week long trip to Florida.

The lesson is clear.

Bugler Sound The Charge

I learned about propelling charges for the 155mm howitzer this morning into the wee hours.

We've been using the same bags for decades.  If it's not broke, I guess.

Howitzers are different from tank guns in that you can tailor the charge to the shot.

I haven't sussed out the details of it, but...

Howitzer ranges are broken into 'zones'.  Conveniently enough they're numbered 1 to 8 from shortest to longest.

Ye Olde powder charges come in two bags.  Green and White.

The green bag is the M3A1 and is, unequally, subdivided into five sections numbered from 1 to 5.  Those numbers correspond to the zone.

The white bag is the M4A2.  It, too, is unequally subdivided into five sections numbered from 3 to 7.

In the early '70's we added zone 8 to the mix and a red bag M119.

Rocket assisted projectiles created a need for a bag that would light the rocket so we added a zone 8S and the M203A1 (no relation to the under-barrel grenade launcher).

"Whooptydoo! But what does it all mean, Basil?"

Take your basic M107 high explosive shell, add a M577A1 fuse and shove it into your M185 cannon on your M109A4.

The lowest number on your propelling charge is the base charge and has a pad of black-powder which is readily lit by the primer you inserted separately after closing the breech.  The lack of that BP pad on the other charges in the bag will keep you from using them later.

To fire in zone 1, you take apart most of an M3A1 charge and just use the section marked '1."

That will lob the 96.7 lb projectile 4km at a muzzle velocity of 211.8 m/s if you elevate the gun 673.6 mils.

Adding more sections increases the muzzle velocity and the range.

M3A1 Zone 1, 211.8 m/s, 4km, 673.6 mil.

M3A1, Zone 2, 237.7 m/s, 5km, 722.4 mil.

M3A1 Zone 3, 277.4 m/s, 6.5km, 690.4 mil.

M3A1 Zone 4, 318.5 m/s, 8.3km, 760.9 mil.

M3A1 Zone 5, 374.9 m/s, 9.8km, 717.2 mil.

M4A2 Zone 3, 292.6 m/s, 7.2km, 734.9 mil.

M4A2 Zone 4, 336.8 m/s, 8.9km, 736.8 mil.

M4A2 Zone 5, 393.2 m/s, 10.3 km, 756.1 mil.

M4A2 Zone 6, 475.5 m/s, 12.4km, 758.4 mil.

M4A2 Zone 7, 565.4 m/s, 14.8km, 760.3 mil.

M119 Zone 8, 684.3 m/s, 18.1km, 781.5 mil.

Or, translated to normal measurements... (rounded a bit)

M3A1 Zone 1, 695 fps, 2.5 miles, 37.89°.  4,374 yards for GURPS.

M3A1, Zone 2, 780 fps, 3.1 miles, 40.64°.  5,468 yards for GURPS.

M3A1 Zone 3, 910 fps, 4 miles, 38.8°.  7,108 yards for GURPS.

M3A1 Zone 4, 1,045 fps, 5.2 miles, 42.8°.  9,077 yards for GURPS.

M3A1 Zone 5, 1,230 fps, 6.1 miles, 40.3°.  10,717 yards for GURPS.

M4A2 Zone 3, 960 fps, 4.5 miles, 41.3°.  7,874 yards for GURPS.

M4A2 Zone 4, 1,105 fps, 5.5 miles, 41.4°.  9,733 yards for GURPS.

M4A2 Zone 5, 1,290 fps, 6.4 miles, 42.5°.  11,264 yards for GURPS.

M4A2 Zone 6, 1,560 fps, 7.7 miles, 42.7°.  13,561 yards for GURPS.

M4A2 Zone 7, 1,855 fps, 9.2 miles, 42.8°.  16,185 yards for GURPS.

M119 Zone 8, 2,245 fps, 11.2 miles, 44°.  19,794 yards for GURPS.

I think these are the max ranges.  More powder at a lower angle might get less range, but a faster delivery.

For Twilight: 2000, what happens to the unused sections?  I'm not even sure what happens to them today!  Put them back in the can for recycling?  The gunner has a table to use them up as needed?

Dunno.

But T2K will be using them and probably making separate BP pads to allow ignition.

The BP pad is 3 oz. of black-powder.

The breakdown of charges in the M3A1 are Charge 1, 1.3 lb.; 2, 0.4 lb.; 3, 0.7 lb.; 4, 1.3 lb.; and 5, 1.8 lb.

The M4A2 are Charge 3, 3.2 lb.; 4, 1.2 lb.; 5, 1.9 lb.; 6, 3.2 lb.; 7, 3.6 lb.

Since both bags use M1 powder, you could easily mix and match to get the correct charge for your shot.

This is more complicated than I'd wanted it to be, but I think I can make it clear in the conversion handout.

I also hope I can find this level of detail for the 122mm and 152mm Soviet ammunition.

I have far more detail than is needed for fuses.  That's going to end up being representative of the three main types and skipping the 20-something variations of "mechanical time, super-quick" there are.

PS:

I have not included the M231 and M232 modular artillery charge system (MACS) bags here because they're too new for T2K.

1x M231 equals M3A1 zone 3.

2x M231 equals M4A2 zone 5.

3x M232 equals M4A2 zone 7.

4x M232 equals M119A2.

5x M232 equals M203A1.

Don't mix M231 with M232: BAD!

Now For 155mm

I am going to have to add some rules for artillery to my T2K conversion.

Howizters use separate fuses and powder bags.

Have to make a generic version of each for the guns.

Never Made

There's two kinds of ammo that's not on my tables any more.

First is the stuff that you wouldn't find with the gun in Poland in the year 2000 during T2K.

Second is the stuff that never got developed, and was unlikely to be developed, despite what GDW thought in 1985.

25mm Bushmaster ammo has some ammo which was developed that I need to think about.  The US didn't buy APFSDS, Canada did.  There's Canadian gear in the main rulebook.

I should probably add the Coyote and Bison to the vehicle list if I include the Canadian 25mm ammo...

Found The Problem

If you're having trouble with staying logged into Google so you can comment; it's because most browsers block third party cookies by default.

You need to whitelist Blogger and Blogspot to get it to remember your login.

Exactly how to do that depends on your browser.

Polishing The Cannon Balls (Literally?)

The intertubes is neat.

I've, at my fingertips, information that was classified or wildly speculative in 1985 when Twilight: 2000 was first published.

Some of those wild speculations came to naught.

Some of them came to naught because the Soviet Union collapsed.

I'm going through cannon ammunition for my GURPS conversion now and I found a couple of fun 120mm rounds.

XM943 STAFF (Smart Target Activated Fire and Forget).  It's a smart round fired from the main gun which guides itself over the top of the target, firing an explosively formed projectile into the roof as it goes over.

The project ran to 1998 before being cancelled.

With the money taps still running wide open for a cold war that ran until 1997 when nukes flew...  The M943 could have seen service.

Next, Israel has developed a less-than-lethal 120mm tank round.

!!!

It's like a flash-bang on steroids with a load of plastic flakes for a shotgun-like pattern for good measure.

I've got to make a few revisions.  We went with ball bearings instead of flechettes for the canister round historically, for example.

Executive Legislation

I don't think this is as breathlessly bad as Fox's headline makes it out to be.

It's going to end up in court as another process is the punishment.

EO's are powerful, but they cannot change the letter of the law, and the courts have been consistent about that.

The inventory of an FFL becomes the property of the holder as a non-licensee and it becomes no different, legally, from any other large collection being sold.

Changing the definition of "in the business of" to mean "selling anything at all" is almost definitely going to result in a ruling of being constitutionally vague once the punishing process is finished.

I think, thanks to Bruen, we're tantalizingly close to being able to say that the entire '68 act is unconstitutional in a way that sticks.  The EO overreach cases with bumpstocks will further cement that if the government wants something to be illegal, it's going to have to go through congress; and not legislated from the executive branch.

Nobody is more surprised than me that I have become an optimist.

Make A Better Movie

I think something needs to be put out there with regards to actors and actresses being upset that they didn't win an Oscar.

They appear to be upset that it was a white person who won.

There appears to be an expectation that they should win every time because they are not white.

Two things stand out about this.

First: They're not even a plurality of the roles.  Dare I say it, they're in the minority.

They're demanding that they be considered disproportionately to their number.

Somehow that's not racism.

Second:  Perhaps they should consider selecting better roles in better movies.

The actress in question did a great job, but at the end of the day it's just another check off the boxes same movie they've been doing for years.

I like Angela Basset.  She's done excellent work.  She probably should have been nominated for "What's Love Got To Do With It."

"Wakanda Forever" wasn't worthy of an award for "best supporting actress" even if she rocked the role.

The best actor in a shitty movie doesn't win awards.

I hope she gets the role that earns her that crummy statue.

Going Light

Because the KE Arms KP-15 lower was specifically designed to be lightweight and for that reason it's the choice for the What-Would-Stoner-Do rifle...

It's seems appropriate to compare Olive and Tabitha.

Olive is a 16" mid-length gas system chambered in 5.56x45mm NATO with a 1:7 rifling twist.

Tabitha is a 20" rifle-length gas system chambered for 5.56x45mm with a 1:12 rifling twist.

Weights are broadly similar with both weapons loaded with a 30-round magazine, with Olive's 7.5 lb. edging out Tabitha's 7.8 lb.

But Tabitha doesn't get any heavier because there's no good way to mount optics or lights.

Olive gains another 0.7 lb. when you add the Primary Arms SLx Microprism and SureFire X300 light.

The 20" barrel should be pushing the pills at a higher velocity, but I've never measured it.

They both balance well.

They both shoot about the same for me, 2 MOA, on average, but I'm a bit faster with the optic.

That's more my eyes than the gun.

Neither has any problem accepting a bayonet.

The rifling twist changes what rounds can be fired, but the local ranges are starting to ban the M855 stuff and forcing us to use 55gr stuff that's just fine from the 1:12 tube.

Olive likes ADI F1A1 ball better than PMC X-Tac M193.  Tabitha has been happy with just about any 55gr fodder I've given her.

They're so very similar and different.

Well Do It Then!

Florida State Representative Chuck Brannan is upset that the unwashed peasants aren't dancing for joy at the scraps we're being handed in his Florida Sheriff's Association pork and pander bill.

I guess we were supposed to fall to our knees in gratitude that we'd save $50 every seven years on a carry permit and ignore all the spending in the bill being lavished on the county level law enforcement.

He first started getting upset with us pro-gun types because we caught him out about it not actually being the constitutional carry that he was selling it as.

He's getting really butt hurt at all the people calling his office and demanding that open carry be legalized.

He's threatened to pull the bill over it.

Go for it, you RINO putz.

I think I can see the pro gun path forward and it begins with defanging the Florida Sheriff's Association.

67 people have a veto power on all pro-gun legislation.

The FSA has long been the roadblock to getting freedom restored.

One way I'd love to see them defanged is to make it illegal for an elected official or state employee to employ, directly or indirectly, lobbyists.

11th Circuit Tea Leaves

The 3-judge panel ruled that Florida's under 21 gun ban was constitutional.

Circuit judges Robin S Rosenbaum (Obama) and Charles R Wilson (Clinton) plus middle district Florida judge Anne C Conway (Bush I) wrote the unanimous ruling.

Judge Conway isn't even an 11th Circuit justice!

There's 9 more active and 9 more senior judges on the circuit.

So far we've not heard from the other active judges, but at least one has interrupted the panel's ruling for a polling of the judges.

Video explaining it:

 Of the 11 active judges, one is W's, one is Clinton's, three are Obama's and six are Trump's.

Brownell's Wins!

No sign of the order from KE, but the Brownell's order showed up today.

Parts installed, mission complete.

The KE order will become spares.

Tires Are Fair

I am sure Lucas did it on purpose, but the 1971 version of Hot Rod Lincoln was recorded by Commander Cody.  After decades of listening to Doctor Demento, I should have put that together on my own!

AuricTech Shipyards pointed it out for me.

I don't have a Lego V-12 Model A, so he'll have to put up with a T-Bucket.

Charlie Ryan's car:

The original song:

Phase I Commander Cody On A Budget

 

Take one of the spare visors and the legs off a 212th Reg from your 75337 AT-TE set.

The backpack from 75345 501st Clone Troopers Battle Pack.

Arms from one of your spare rebel pilot figures.

Add to the clone officer from 40558 Clone Trooper Command Station.

Et viola!

 With the Phase II version from 75337.

This Might Cost Me

The P320 might be turning into a white elephant.

Had I any willpower at all, I would have left it as Willard gave it to me.

But he knew.  KNEW!  That I would start tinkering.

I am seriously doubting his parents were married.

ModGuns makes a fixture that allows you to drill the kidney shaped hole into the fire control unit and add a thumb safety.

Since my interest in the P320 began with wondering about getting an M17 or M18 clone, and those have safeties, it's only logical that I steer this way.

$140 bought together.  Edit to add:  So far I have managed to resist ordering it.

I've A Theory

The controlling cartel handed over five henchmen to law enforcement over the killing of two Americans and kidnapping of the two other people they were with.

I've a theory.

This little kerfuffle pissed off a lot of people.

If there's something that the world understands is pissing off America is dangerous.

Fucking with America isn't often dangerous, we don't get pissed off about it most of the time.

But the American, "we're going killing because we're pissed about 9/11," response rests in the bones of a lot of nations and organizations about what happens if America gets mad.

Coming on the heels of the Mexican president blaming the victims for the US appetite for drugs...

It's a moment that's poised to turn into nation-building from Brownsville to the Guatemalan border.

I, for one, have said that if Mexico can't get its shit together with regards of pawning it's unwanted on our welfare system we should move America as far south as it takes to stop the influx.

KE Arms Ahead On The Back Stretch By A Nose

Yesterday morning, Brownell's mailed me the tracking number for the KE Arms parts I ordered.

Yesterday afternoon, KE Arms mailed me that they'd mailed the parts priority mail without tracking.

Brownell's tracking number did not show movement until this afternoon, and USPS says Monday.

If KE Arms got it in the mail yesterday morning, there's an off chance that it could be here Saturday.

Beating Brownell's by one postal day with a week's head start is nothing to brag about.

Notsofast Giudo!

A three judge panel of the 11th Circuit ruled that banning gun sales to 18-20 year olds was Constitutional.

Normally, the plaintiffs have to appeal to an en banc, and if that don't work, the Supreme Court.

However...

The other judges in the circuit can declare an en banc review by asking for a poll of the judges in that circuit.

This appears to be happening in NRA v Bondi.

Disappointing

The show, Wednesday, is disappointing.

It is not creepy, kooky, mysterious, or spooky and is altogether lacking ooky.

It's a formulaic high school murder mystery with characters stolen from a different property.

I will gut it out to the end, but there's no rewatch potential and no desire for a sequel.

It's A Race!

I ordered a hammer pin and selector detent from KE Arms on Monday, February 27.

It is still showing as "approved - pending shipping".

It has had this status since Tuesday, February 28.

Getting fed up, I decided to do a test.

I ordered the same parts from Brownell's on Tuesday, March 7.

Today, Thursday, March 9, Brownell's sent me a tracking number.  It's not active yet, but they're usually good about getting it in the mail once they print the label.

KE Arms' status has not changed.

To quote Marv, "When Brownell's beats you, you know your shipping sucks!"

The Problem (And Talking Through It Out Loud)

I'm brainstorming and spitballing here.

UNLESS THEY ACTUALLY KILL SOMEONE THERE IS NO 'CIDE'!

Not homicide, not suicide, not democide, not genocide.

The "genocide" against The Left's trans agenda isn't actually killing anyone.

No, not even you.

What's surprising is how The Left's characterization of the issue is being taken at face value by many people who'd go outside to check if The Left said, "the sky is blue."

Why do you trust these proven liars now?

The opposition to the agenda isn't founded in eliminating LGBT rights of individuals.

It's founded in eliminating proselytizing from government institutions.

The analogy here isn't The Shoah.  The proper analogy is convincing a Methodist to become a Catholic using public schools to create new Catholics over the objections of their Methodist parents; then lying that they are doing it.  But this is not Methodisticide!

The Left is lying, they ARE trying to create new LGBT people from children and keeping them from naturally growing into straight people.

Opposing THIS is not a bad thing.

BUT!

There are people who will naturally become LGBT as they grow up.  We should let them.

Allowing them to be themselves won't hurt you.  Honest!

BUT! (again)

The naturally part has to happen.  Don't force or train kids to be LGBT, don't force or train kids to be straight.

Most especially, GOVERNMENT should not be involved in the teaching of children in this matter one way or the other; especially at the exclusion of one side from the debate.

If your son wants to wear a dress and stops responding to their given name; you, as a parent, should probably figure out why.

It could genuinely be a phase they're going through.

It could genuinely be gender dysphoria (though if it's before puberty this is VERY unlikely).

It could be that they're being punished for being cisnormal and rewarded for aping being LGBT by someone with, dare I say it, an agenda.  There doesn't even have to be a punishment if the rewards are lucrative enough to the child.

Positive and negative reinforcement are real, folks.

Muddied And Confused

I am besides myself.

I do support LGBT rights as individual rights.

I also oppose the LGBT agenda that is being presented as mandatory by The Left.

That you can stake this position out is testimony to how fucked up the situation is.

It is not helped in the least that genuine bigots exist and are using opposition to The Left's agenda as a mask for suppressing individual rights.

To the point that you almost cannot say you oppose this agenda without being accused of being against the individual's rights.

The people most affected by the policies which are enacted by this agenda's success or failure will have the most sensitive whiskers to how these policies will impact their lives.

It's an uncomfortable place for a pro-liberty and freedom person to be in watching both sides of the aisle demand less liberty and freedom.

There's a lot of work to sussing out what any given speaker means when they talk.

Are they talking about eliminating individual rights because they're secretly speaking for their invisible friend who demands the death of Teh Gheys?

Are they talking about opposing the suppression of individual rights which accompanies The Left's agenda.

Because straight white cisgender people have rights too.  (Aside, notice how cisgender is practically a slur?)

Why wouldn't they get pissed off at their rights be violated so that another groups preferences can be elevated over theirs?

Both The Left and The Right have a lot to learn about not fucking the other side's rights while maintaining their own.

And I am fed up being between them as they fight.

Range

There was a time when I didn't shoot past 25 yards.

It was mainly because of a lack of range at the range.

In the before time, even with access to 100 and 200 yard ranges at the Ames, Izaak Walton Park, I rarely shot past 50.

For some reason, I've started to stretch my legs at 100 at the local range.

Actually, I've been doing it for a couple years now.

I'm having fun.

As one should at the range.

Some of my rifles are better than others.  The ones with scopes where I can see what I'm doing...

Go figure.

Analogy

The Veterans Administration is like a DMV run by people who've never driven a car.

Overabundance Of Options

The shorter dust cover on the Wilson Combat grip module prevents me from using the X300 light which has been my mainstay since... a long time.

Marv recommended the, cheaper, TLR-3 and it works great!

With the TLR-3 you have to choose the appropriate key that puts the light in the right spot.

For a normal SIG, that'd be Key E.  That's also the recommended key for an M&P.

That puts the light a bit too far forward on the Wilson module, so I started experimenting.

The C key, recommended for Glocks, puts it where I want it!

Huzzah!

Because Anti-Gunners Say So

The Florida Senate president, the name doesn't matter because this happens every time, says that they don't support open carry because the Florida Sheriff's Association doesn't support open carry.

I guess it's a good thing they supported permitless carry and a pile of pork to go with it or we'd just get the pork.

I am thinking that what the pro-gun organizations should is pull our support for a bill that's such a dumpster fire of police pork.

Does that make them cannibals?

I am so entirely sick of this refrain.

Doesn't matter what the people want as long as the LEO orgs are the real power.

ZAP!

The Boy's phone did not survive HULK-MODE the other day.

Shattered the screen bad enough that most of it remained black.

Which gives rise to, "what do I do with it?"

New phone is up, so decided to destroy the old one.

In the process of bending it in half I got a fat orange arc and a zap noise.

The phone was warm to the touch for about an hour... sitting in the driveway where it wouldn't hurt anything.

Metal Snobbery

It's not really a huge statement to say that all of your magazines are made from steel.

Virtually all magazines are.

Even Glock, which is a steel liner encased in plastic.  There's a company making larger capacity Glock magazines by ditching that encasement and just making a steel body that's just a bit wider.

There's darn few steel AR magazines.

Chris Bartocci went through what was available a couple of years ago.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Most non-plastic AR magazines are aluminum.

I'm not really that impressed with H&K's magazine.  It's heavy and doesn't really work any better than the USGI or PMAG.

And that's what I care about.

Does it work?

The Amend-2 doesn't appear to work.  But the Hexmag, Lancer and PMAG do; despite being plastic.

I'm someone who remembers Orlite and Thermold.  Those weren't good at all.  They also cemented the idea that plastic AR magazines were junk.

Interestingly, the OG Thermold isn't that bad, Canada's attempt to sharpen their pencil on manufacture led to a magazine that didn't last.

It's not the "plastic" per se.  It's what kind of plastic and the design of the magazine that matters.

Utreon Embed Test

Let's see if this works!

Eyes crossed!

Looks good on my end!

Now all Utreon needs to do is to keep the URL the same so that it will still be here years from now.

Full30 didn't manage that.  Several embeds to them go to something entirely different.

It Makes It Hard To Support Them

I needed some parts for Brenda.

KE Arms is the source of those parts, and I wanted to support them in their legal battle.

So I ordered direct instead of through Brownell's.

A week ago.

They didn't hesitate to take the money...  That took two days.

So five days since they took my money and nobody has bothered to drop my parts into an envelope.

For an item listed as "in stock."

Mushy Selector

If you have a KE Arms KP-15 lower and your selector is vague because you used normal, everyday, standard selector detents and springs...

Here at MarvCo. we have a solution for the first 255 callers!

Take a pellet from a #6 shotgun shell and place it between the spring and the detent and it takes up the difference in length between the KE Arms version and the normal, everyday, standard part.

Operators are standing by.

The Day The Unbearable Light Went Out

A toast for the departed, Carroll "Lex" LeFon Capt USN (Ret).

11 years.

We miss you.

GNGICS

Edit to add:  If we MUST have a background check to make sure people are allowed to have guns, this is what I propose.

The Go-No-Go-Instant-Check-System I have envisioned is simple.

It's a list of the disqualified.  Edit to add: Names and unique ID number since there's so damn many people named Smith and Patel.  Never mind Gonzales...

Put in a name that's not on the list, it returns a "GO!" response.

Put in a name that's on the list, it returns a "NO GO!" response.

And that's all it needs to do.

Then make it accessible to anyone.

Optionally it can keep some stats of responses given and whether or not to report that a forbidden person to the cops.

I'd keep it mandatory for an FFL to use it to make a sale, and optional for private sales.

Notice that I'm not recording what was sold, where it was sold or mandating any record keeping on the part of the buyer or seller.

I think this is as anonymous as you can make a system that checks to see if someone is prohibited.

I think I would also indemnify a seller who uses the system and gets a "GO!" response from being prosecuted for selling a gun to a prohibited person.  That'd encourage its use by private sellers.

Another option is adding a subroutine for NFA stuff.  With a valid "GO!" you can then enter the serial number of your item and pay the taxes.

Once the system is up, I'd also require that all 4473's be destroyed.  The trace system has proven useless since it was implemented and is a greater danger to the citizens than a boon.

I'd Like It To Be Less Traceable

Cam Edwards suggests a tax credit for getting firearms training to assuage the worries of the gun-grabbers that without a class requirement to get a permit; the permitless toters will be opening the blood taps and flooding the streets.

I suppose it's not any more traceable than getting a permit is now.

But it galls me that it can be traced.

Not so much that I didn't get the permit, of course.

I'm certain I'm on "the list" already and before moving to Florida.

But why jump into a situation to be tracked once you've finally gotten out of another?

I have a suggestion, though, about the training.

Start teaching it to everyone in high-school.  Maybe even middle-school.

Add it to the physical-education curriculum.

But that doesn't much help the people who're long outside the primary education system, does it?

The cost of just giving the training away is trivial compared to the rest of the Pentagon's budget and, amazingly, it's something Congress is authorized to spend money on in the actual text of The Constitution!

Arming and training the militia.

It'd mean creating something I've long thought we should replace that NICS system with anyways.

An instant go-nogo check system that only gives a thumbs up or thumbs down response and doesn't record thumbs up transactions.

Get the thumbs up, you get the class for free and now you're trained militia!

Wins for everyone!

We could even have multiple levels of this training.

I mean, if it's so important that people be trained, shouldn't it be important enough to make it available to anyone who can own a gun for free?

That 3R Policy

What I am proposing on my "Readin', 'Ritin', 'Rithmatic" plan is that no child learns ANYTHING else from the school until they've got those three down.

No history.

No chemistry (you need math for this, so...)

No social studies.

No history and moral philosophy.

I think I'd add that once we have them up to speed with 3R the next mandatory steps are critical thinking and economics.

If you don't think our darlings can handle this, purchase you a copy of "Literature Reader, Sixth Year" by Leroy E Armstrong.  I have the kindle version that Jerry Pournelle annotated.

Kids are a lot more capable of learning than we often give them credit for.

We're not demanding they learn to their capacity any more.

A decent proof of this comes from "The Civil War Diaries," which consists of letters written by soldiers during the Civil War.  Modern colleges don't have people who can write so well and the one-room school house is where these authors learned.

A one room school, paid for and staffed by the local community.  Often on a per student basis.

A teacher would want more students because more pay!

The older kids were expected to help the younger (or slower) kids in learning their lessons and that helped cement the lessons in the older kids minds.  It was a good system, really.

The problem is that it doesn't scale up well.  Even so, dividing the kids into similar sized classes by advancement worked just fine for years until someone decided that local districts couldn't decide for themselves what to teach and an ever expanding raft of things pushed the 3R's to the side as if the 3R's weren't important to understanding the rest of the dross.

I will never say that the kids can't understand it, but they need to be properly equipped to do so before being exposed to it.

That will mean reverting to harsher standards.  That will mean honest grading and holding kids where they're at rather than letting them advance to stay the same age as the ones who learned.

Even if little Johnny never leaves the 2nd grade.

5.7x28mm Craze

Sure seems like we went from one or two 5.7 pistols to everyone makes one really damn fast.

I really don't know why.

But, I am sure you came here for the GURPS perspective and I will not leave you wanting.

We have official stats for the FN Five-SeveN.

2d+2(2) pi- when using the armor-piercing SS190.

Average hit of 9 points which is going to punch DR 18 and do no damage on the other side.

Modern, concealable, vests are DR 12/5* (higher DR vs pi and cut, flexible).  So the average hit will punch and have 3 pts penetrate which deals a whole point to the target.  It's better than nothing.  Ball and HP don't penetrate at all!

But you, the unwashed and un-anointed civilian aren't supposed to have SS190 AP ammo.

Damage should be 2d+2 pi- for ball.  Though it's fast, it's light.  Average hit on someone in a t-shirt is going to reduce their HP by 4.

Using a hollow point ups it to 2d+2(0.5) pi.  Worse than ball 9mm because it won't punch armor (not even if you roll max damage); but the average hit on clothing will deliver 8 to the HP pool.

You do get a lot of chances to do some damage, so...

As always, remember that GURPS is a GAME and while its firearms performance is often eerily parallel to the real world, the real world is a much harsher place with regards to getting hurt.

Prerequisite

I will concede to the "trangender genocide" camp that we should let the kids learn about being trans and it's OK to explore their sexual identity...

If.

If.

IF: 

IF! 

Our wee little bairns can read, write and do math BEFORE we start their journey of discovery.

After interacting with many public school teachers, we've nothing to fear about our kids learning about LGBTQ stuff before college.

And I'm totally serious.

A passing grade in the 3R's before Jenny or Johnny learns anything else.

Full stop.

This is the way to make sure the LGBTQ "trans genocide" people are happy AND the rest of us get what we want too.

Once they can read, write and do arithmetic, the rest is substantially gravy.

I'd be a real dick and make sure they know "opportunity cost," before they could truly be said to know arithmetic.

Once you have that concept, it's hard to make someone who can't function.

Even if they have testicles and wear a dress.

I'd much rather have someone with testicles in a dress than someone who can't do algebra and punches out six kids on welfare because "Catholic."  Especially a "Catholic" who never darkens the sidewalk outside a church, let alone the door.

The Death Of The Drobo

When my Drobo decided to roll tits up, it apparently corrupted more than a few of my files.

I am finding them here and there.

For the most part, I've got a back up or can replace them.

It's just irritating.

Having a back up does you no good if save the corrupted file.

Lil Mac

The Lego minifig I use to compare ammunition size is ME!

I've got everything shown!  I should LARP up and have Harvey take a pic of me posed like my mini.

Insurmountable Security!

The media server is now on a different router than the one what came from our service provider.

No, I don't really believe it's more secure than before.

The two things I get from this is:

1. Better placement of the new router means better connection in the further reaches of the house, especially the back porch.

2. Machines connected to the old router's wifi are denied access to the media server by default.

The second is the "extra" security because we honestly don't trust Harvey's IT department to not let something get onto her work computer that erases my decades of work converting Twilight: 2000 to GURPS.

PS: Thanks JT!

But They Aren't Serious

 DeSantis says he'll sign real Constitutional Carry, but...

The RINO super-majority will never put it on his desk.

Still, gonna keep calling and writing emails.

Depth Of Field

Took a pic in response to being asked what are my favorite oddball or obsolete cartridges.

Two pics, actually, because I played with the aperture to see the effect on depth of field.

I always think that's neat.

Oh, and my favorites are 6.8 SPC, .300 Savage and .30-40 Krag.

Excellent rounds that have gotten rare and expensive after once being common and popular.

Newspaper Protection Act

Florida bill wants to register bloggers.

How's about "fuck you"?

Text of the bill.

At the end of the day it's a waste of time because this will be killed under 1st Amendment grounds pretty much the day they pick to have it take effect.

I love how they explicitly exempt newspaper websites from this.

Bite me you cocksucker.

Long Taper

A while back I converted the M951 light on Valentine from incandescent to LED.

Malkoff promised 1.25 hours plus a taper period for continuous use.

Just after Battery Day I found some 123 batteries which were past the expiration date.

Since I wasn't going to trust them for reals, I decided to see how long they'd run the M951.

The light went out after about 2 hours, dimming significantly at about an hour.

The bell of the light was quite warm to the touch, but nothing you could brand with.

OTS Solution

E-7 looking to replace the E-3.

The first time I saw an RAAF Wedgetail I thought, "why don't we get some of those?"

Apparently the answer was inertia, because we're getting some of those.

The 707 based platforms are just running out of life.

Bittersweet seeing them go, but it's time.

Sad that we weren't as pragmatic about using an existing solution when it came to tankers.

The KC-767 would probably been a better solution than the fight against joining service the KC-46A has been giving us.

It Was Like Six Posts Ago!

Remember when I said I figured out writing on my own and didn't really learn the rules?

It leads to a constant fight that the point I'm trying to make is completely missed by a the reader.

Probably because I'll circle back on something, without linking, to something I've touched on before.

My synapses know what I'm on about, but...  These odd symbol things might not convey it.

The point about gun school is they do a very poor job of telling the buyer why they should purchase the clinic.

Beyond learning for learning sake, what good will the clinic do you?

The two I attended would have been very good for a 2-gun match.

Limited application in repelling looters.

The secondary point is the gun-rags apparently being of the opinion that you MUST have graduated such a class AND have insurance to even consider owning a gun.

I don't dismiss the clinics because my vast combat experience informs me that they're full of shit.

My combat experience isn't vast, for one.  Describing it as "extremely limited" could be considered bragging!

I don't think they're full of shit, for another.  I learned things that I still use in them.

Willard has far more words on the usefulness of these classes.  His experience is far more germane than mine.  Unlike me, he was there to fight rather than having a fight pressed on him.

Where I rail against these clinics is in the idea that they be mandatory and how vague they get about what they will be teaching.

Glad I Left Them Turned On

I get a schoolgirl titter going when someone I've heard of drops by and comments!

One never knows who's reading my scribbles.

It's Almost Research

The vast differences between today's egalitarian America and medieval Europe is hard to convey to gamers.

For the most part, I simply made the societies in my fantasy settings almost as egalitarian as the one we're living in.

I learned about how feudal societies worked, but the players would always vapor lock when I tried to apply it.

Later on, when reading about Europe in the run-up to The Great War, the vestiges of feudal society were still running on.  It's fascinating reading about rich commoners and dead broke barons.

I noticed that Downton Abby is on Prime, and It's fascinating seeing the social divisions in Georgian England.

I've long toyed with getting a fantasy game set about the same frame.

Adventurers are almost universally commoners because being noble costs valuable points.

The very role of an adventurer creates a strange niche in such a society.

As disruptive as the mercantile classes getting wealthier than the nobility as far back as Elizabeth I.

First We Hang All The Lawyers

I can see that the lawyers are writing the permitless carry bill...

HB543 is a train wreck according to this.

Deference To Expertise

Channeling my inner Willard here.

Have you ever noticed how many expert trainers have absolutely zero time in an actual gun fight?

Because they are universally bad at explaining what their class contains before one actually attends, you've got no idea where they got their ideas.

Something they are universally good at is convincing people who get paid to write to publish articles telling people to attend their class.

Being generally more comfortable with my autodidactic ways, it took someone else paying for it for me to actually go to a class.

I noticed a couple of things wrong at the carbine classes I took.

What about cover and concealment?

Nothing.

A lot about being a better shooter and getting faster about it.

I took the classes with the shit I had and ALICE gear worked just fine.

To read about it, I'm going to die for sure because I didn't drop substantially more money on my gear.

By the way, ALICE web gear has a handy belt for a canteen.  The chest rig/plate carrier doesn't.  That mattered down by Myakka...

While speed is nice, it's not paramount.

What's that old line?  Slow is smooth, smooth is fast?

It's related to "a steady pace wins the race."

The articles advocating for these, expensive, clinics (they aren't really schools) always talk about the split times and being on the clock.

I will not say that the classes I took were useless.  I did learn something from them.  I even learned some stuff they were trying to teach!

If you have the means and the time, go ahead and take one.

But...

What they tend to teach is more geared to a 2-gun match.

In my experience anyways.

If they're teaching you something for use after a hurricane wipes out the area, they and the gun writers are not conveying that information to you before you attend the class.

Never forget, the same group of people advocating universal training and insurance also extolled the virtues of the Colt 2000.

Always be skeptical of the press, even "our" press.

Wrong Circuit

The Trump era bumpstock ruling has been found unconstitutional in the 5th circuit.

Doesn't help me in Florida because it's the wrong circuit.

There's potential there to go nationwide, but that will leave getting the state law repealed or struck.

Subject Before The Predicate Put

This here bloggin' thing is writing.

I guess I write as a hobby?

That it is intelligible at all is more from me putting my head down and just doing it.

But I don't know the rules.

I must have learned them, but I don't know them.

It's like a musician who cannot read sheet music but still plays acceptably.

On One Condition

So, Mr Zelenskyy has said that NATO, in particular, the US must send troops to fight the Russians.

I have one condition.

Something we should have done after every foreign adventure.

You drag us into a war, we keep it when we're done and it's American after that.

Not ONLY is the land American, but so shall your children and grandchildren be American.  Reference my thoughts on the melting pot for how I plan on doing that.

You want us to fight for it, we get to keep it when we're done.

Don't want that?

Learn to win your own fucking wars.

You keep running on about this and I think that the US should learn how to make 152mm gun tubes and rounds and see what Russia will pay.

Oooof

Army Times is a "bit" critical of the XM5 program.

Notable quote: "The slight increase in ballistic coefficiency between the 6.8x51mm and 7.62x51mm cartridges neither justified the money pumped into the program nor does the slight increase in kinetic energy dumped on target."

Waco D+ 30 years

30 years ago agents of the ATF decided it'd be a good idea to assault David Koresh's place near Waco, Texas.

It did not go as scripted as "plan" reverted to its primary definition, "a list of things that doesn't happen."

It ended in a fire and many deaths.

The date of that fire led to more deaths two years later when the Alfred P Murrah federal building was truck-bombed by Timothy McVeigh.

To this day there are questions unanswered about the 28Feb93 raid.  There is speculation that spins into tinfoil hat conspiracy land...

But after Wu Ping Cough, conspiracies are sounding a lot more reasonable than they did thirty years ago.

I Actually Knew This One

The tachi was the primary combat sword of the Samurai until the 15th century.

The tachi and o-katana are even different enough from a katana to get different stats in GURPS.

"Katana" in Low-Tech is actually a tachi or o-katana.

"Late-Katana" is the shorter side-arm sword, or a true katana.

That's A Lot Of Hate

Scott Adams is in hot water for noticing something we're not supposed to notice.

In a Rasmussen poll some African Americans were asked, "Is it OK to be white?"

While 53% responded that it was...  26% said that it wasn't and 21% said they weren't sure.

Rasmussen is saying this represents how African Americans feel about white people with a ±3% margin of error.

So on the outside 23% of black people in America don't think it's OK to be white.

That's 10.3 million people who don't think it's OK to be white.

Almost 1 in 4 black people, demonstrably, hate white people.

Scott Adams said to get away from black people because, as a whole, they've become a hate group.

The numbers Rasmussen has published supports this conjecture.

Maybe there's more context, polls do a horrible job of actually getting people's true feelings about things.

But it's a data point that shouldn't be ignored just because the data is unpleasant.

By the way, the KKK has, maybe, 8 thousand members.  And I say maybe because it's rife with undercover agents trying to bust them.

The fucking Klan is considered a threat worth keeping full of undercover cops, but 10+ million people isn't?

The times sure be interestin' ain't they?

Vague

 

I was curious as to why the selector on Brenda was soft and vague, but the one on Olive was crisp and precise.

My first thought it was something about the selectors, but swapping them showed it was something else.

It's the detent.

The one on the left is from Olive and is the KE-Arms sourced one.  The one on the right is a standard detent from a Palmetto State Armory kit.

It's long been known that the spring pocket in the KP-15 is deeper than a normal AR lower and pistol grip.  The KE-Arms version makes up for that extra depth.

WHY the pocket is deeper... dunno why.

Good Idea

A nuclear power plant is identical to a fossil fuel plant from the steam lines to the generators.

The difference is how the steam is made.

That means that any coal or natural gas plant is already a 2/3 complete nuclear power plant.

I know it will work because the power plant North of here used to be nuclear and the powerhouse was converted to use steam from natural gas when Duke fucked up a refueling and cracked the containment doing maintenance when it was offline.

The turbines don't care what boiled the water.

The big barrier to adding a reactor and such to an existing plant is not technical.

It's political.

It's an embedded bureaucracy that's intended to make the construction so expensive that a profit will likely never be realized.

If I was president, I'd simply declare it a national defense item and start putting the same reactors as the Navy is using in subs and carriers (whichever design is appropriate) and have the damn Navy run them and slip around a couple of EPA regs because the DOD is exempt.

Only through super-human restraint would I not invite protesters to participate in protecting the environment from radiation personally.  I guess they could volunteer, I would make sure the seats were VERY comfy.