She Handles

We've a local road that's good and twisty.

I've long been the kind of hot-rodder that builds the car to handle rather than for the 1/4 mile.

Although all I've done handling wise to The Beast is fix the suspension, it's shown itself to be wonderfully sure footed.

The gigantic Brembo brakes from the previous owner's mods are a bonus to handling too.

Tonight I left a C6 Z06 in the dust on this twisty road.

He's a friend and he doesn't DO twisty roads from what I've seen.  He's modded his Vette to be very quick in a straight line and ignores the handling potential.

It means that I can get ahead and stay ahead despite fewer horses and more mass.

Once I'd gotten back on normal roads and set the cruise to 5 over, it took him 6 miles to catch up.

Bwahahahahaha!

For Entertainment Purposes Only?

Colion Noir tries to put a game face on it and insist on complete coverage.

But Donald really did say that guns are for entertainment purposes when he mentions the more important reasons.

Ooops.  That's a soundbite that we're going to be hearing a lot.

The thing is, he didn't really answer the question.

Explain his policies to the parents of the victims of school shootings.

I can explain it.

The reason your kids are dead is because people like the questioner demanded that schools be gun free victim zones where the criminal could shoot as many children as he wanted while the police impotently stand a safe distance away, in effect facilitating the murders.

That millions of Americans own guns that are identical to these murderous criminals is irrelevant to school shootings.  Millions of Americans don't shoot anyone every day.

Yes, I am getting fucking cold blooded about this.

It comes from being continually blamed for the failings of others.

High Middle And Low

Fantasy role-playing often has trouble with feudalism.

The games were written by egalitarian informed authors for an egalitarian audience.

Fantasy is right in the name of the genre.

Traveller is where I first noticed some of what I later learned.

Nobles in a feudal society can mete out justice without consulting a higher authority.  All the way up to and including the death penalty.

Only under very specific circumstances will their decision even be questioned, let alone challenged.  Judge, jury and executioner is the noble who can give justice high and low.

You get a lot for a simple dice roll in Traveller.  Your points can go a long way in GURPS, depending on if the GM has considered something I pondered a while ago.

The implications always hit me when watching The Four Musketeers when Athos, as the Comte de la Fere, sentences Milady to death without a trial.  He's empowered by his title to do so.

It's not really so clear cut in real life, there are, of course, rules for when a count can sentence someone to death.  Milady de Winter is a very clear cut case of someone, whom once caught by someone with the powers to do so, can be executed without trial because she's had her trial and condemnation years ago.

But in gaming...

A GM will have to spend a lot of time and effort figuring out the checks and balances of the society they've created and communicating it to the players.

I've played in several worlds where I understood the feudal power structure better than my GM and where they ended up deferring to MY judgement about it when they should have been telling be how their world differed from medieval France.

Beautiful Mess

The new, French, version of The Three Musketeers is beautifully shot, wonderfully acted, gorgeous camera work.

And it's a jumbled mess.

The divide the party and hopping back and forth needs more connecting tissue.

I found myself constantly focusing on remembering who is who and where they are and not paying attention to the closed-captions and having to rewind sections.

Reading a movie sucks, but this one is worse.

Worth the slog, but not twice.

Never mind the costuming and weaponry are about 100 years more recent than the setting...

Traveller vs Ogre

I've had a vision, in my head that an Ogre cybertank was the ultimate, invincible armored vehicle.

Without nukes they cannot penetrate the armor of a Third Imperium grav tank.

The fusion gun of the grav tank needs a lucky hit to penetrate the frontal armor of an Ogre mkVI, but it can.

If the Imperium uses proper combined arms tactics, and the Imperial Army normally does, then the most effective weapons the Ogre have will be nullified.

A battlefield nuclear damper field will put a... um... damper on the effectiveness of the normal nuclear projectiles from the primary and secondary guns.  Even without this protection, the VRF gauss gun on point defense mode is prolly sufficient to keep nukes from being effective.  The point defense X-Ray laser is even better at the job.

We'll just ignore the meson gunned artillery units that even the thickest bi-phased carbide armor can't stop.  A perfectly intact Ogre without a mark on it and no brain...

This assumes the Imperium wishes to land troops.

They could drop things from orbit.

Lots of rocks out there to drop from orbit.

The Emperor doesn't LIKE dangerously radioactive glass balls in Their Imperium.

Dangerously radioactive glass balls don't pay much in the way of taxes and are hardly a reward when you create a new noble and grant them a fief.

Again?

The Army is looking to find a replacement for the venerable Chinook.

Does SIG make helicopters?

They've been trying to replace the CH-47 since I was in the Army.  It never ends well.

Should Have Kept His Head Down

Apparently a criminal who hacked the Securities and Exchange Commission's X account got hissef caught by searching for, "How Can I Know for Sure If I Am Being Investigated by the FBI?"

Ooops.

It probably wasn't the Google search that got him.  They prolly were on to him and we know about the search from their monitoring.

A rare case of the FBI doing what we think we're paying them to do!

I Have A Better Plan

Failed Presidential Candidate John "Three Purple Hearts" Kerry considers the 1st Amendment a problem in combating "disinformation."

First off, WOW!

Saying the quiet part out loud that loudly is amazing.

Remember when Democrats were the staunch defenders of the 1st Amendment and the Republicans were the theocratic censors?

Me too.

But I have a 1st Amendment friendly solution to "disinformation."

Critical thinking.

I know we don't teach that in school anymore because people who are even passable with critical thinking are difficult to dupe.

Our current form of government simply cannot have a population that's difficult to dupe!

I'd love to see our public schools teach the Three R's for the first few years, with rigid pass-fail no-advancement grading; then progress to teaching personal finance, critical thinking and civics.

You want all that squishy, touchy-feely social studies crap: Go to college and pay for it yourself.

The public teat should only be dispensing useful citizens.

Beeep Weeeeet Booop Weet

I wonder how many times R2-D2 tried to warn people that Darth Vader was actually Anakin Skywalker before just giving up because only C-3P0 could translate and Threepio kept getting his memory wiped.

Why Do We Do It

It's been a topic of much conversation lately why do we Floridians live in a state that keeps getting hit with hurricanes?

That's why!

A perfect day.

We get a lot of them, actually.  Starting about this time of year and running into late spring, Florida has gorgeous weather.

In my 27 years of living here we've only had three storms that were noteworthy; here on the Sun Coast.  The typical named storm isn't as bad as a line of thunderstorms in the Midwest.  The Midwest gets one of those, at least, once a week.  Most of the named storms that hit Florida aren't above Cat 1, and people don't realize just how localized the damage is from bigger storms.

Ian devastated where it hit.  We didn't even lose power.  Milton was bad in Sarasota, but not so much here a mere 60 miles away.  Helene was far worse for North Carolina than here, despite being much further inland than I am!

In those same 27 years, the Midwest has gotten 27 winters.  The fun parts of winter are far exceeded by the bad parts and I am sick of the bad parts.  Yet I still own an ice scraper for my car...

Bleeding Hearts And Artists

I, sometimes, wonder if the accusations of fascism towards Starship Troopers is the thundering realization on the accuser's part that they would be excluded from citizenship.

Not many veterans in the Hollywoodland landscape or press rooms.

WE wouldn't get to vote or have any direct say in how the government was run?  But we're the highly educated (HA!  Not actors!) elite!  Any system that keeps US from being an actual elite must be fascist!

Even I would be excluded from the franchise, I took a medical before my term was completed.  I think, though, that if my vote was on the line I would have demanded alternate service for that last year (as is my right under the system shown).

I don't let it worry me.

I am constantly amused and worried that the things that are often cited in Starship Troopers as being fascist are present in our current mode of government, and the critic cannot see what they're doing.

So much for highly educated.

"Like most intellectuals, he's intensely stupid." -- Marquise de Merteuil

Stupid Idea

I am fascinated with the idea of an overhead cam, underhead valve engine.

And I don't know why!

Such an engine would suck.

It's still an interesting engineering exercise though.

ONE MORE TIME!

In my never ending quest to explain that the government in Starship Troopers isn't any more fascist than our very own...

Fascism is:

Any program for setting up a centralized autocratic national regime with severely nationalistic policies, exercising regimentation of industry, commerce, and finance, rigid censorship and forcible suppression of opposition.

First!  It's not an autocracy.  It's a representative democracy with a different eligibility requirements for both the candidates and the voters.  Not enough information is given in the text to determine how centralized government power is, but we can infer that it's not too different from 1959 USA.

No evidence is given showing that the federation is any more (or less) nationalistic than 1959 USA.

We have Juan Rico's own father as an example that the regimentation of industry, commerce and finance are decidedly not following fascism.

Emilio isn't a citizen.  He cannot vote.  He's, therefore, not a Party member.  Yet he owns a company that manufactures something.  He mentions, in passing, that his business is not on a war footing in a way that says that it's his decision.  He makes his own arrangements to leave the business to Juan should he not survive his eventual decision to join the Army; he even got to choose his own caretaker while he was away.

Free speech is mentioned in little different terms than we would in regards to censorship.

By the standards of the people attributing fascism to Starship Troopers, Stripes is also fascist!

Racism

The TLDW on this is the perpetrator blames the victims and police because they were racists.

Never mind the lengthy criminal histories of the siblings and extensive history of speeding, reckless driving and street racing.

The lack of remorse is a direct result of the race card working too well for too long.

There are racists in this case, and it's not the dead white people.

Scam

I've been reading in several places that the tank exchange places only give you 15lb in a 20lb tank of propane.

The local Home Depot wants $23 for an exchange and 3.6 gallons.

The local U-Haul sold me 4.5 gallons (18.5 lb.) for less than $17.

Because It Never Ends

It just hit me that we're three weeks from Election Day.

Almost snuck up on me.

Considering that it's been full campaign for...

For fuck's sake they've been in campaign mode since W was elected.

We used to get a couple of years off after every presidential election and the mid-presidential term House elections barely made the news.

Now it's all in all the time.

I want my peaceable years back.

Double Hurricane Reset

Going a couple days without the internet had the effect of making me remember there's lots of entertainment that doesn't involve being connected to it.

Despite using a computer to play the music, I've been sitting here doing pretty much what I was doing 40 years ago...

Listening to a playlist and reading a book.

The main difference is not having to have pre-made the mix-tape first.

Which means I need to actually get up, walk across the room, and remember what I wanted to blog about...

I find I've got a lot less material to blog when I'm not ramming my head against THE STUPID like I would be if I was scouring the intertubes.

Kinda relaxing.

Cover And Merge

Someone named Sable did a metalized version of "Just Dance" by Lady Gaga.

Someone else blended them together.

I rather like the result.

But They're Colonists Too

All the American Indian can say over us White people is they got here first.

They colonized the Americas from Asia over the Bering Land Bridge back before SUV's raised the sea level and made it the Aleutian Islands.

Humans are not indigenous to the Americas.  We did not evolve here.

Another thought about European colonization of The New World:

If it had not been for at least three back-to-back plagues (only one is European in origin) the Indians we're so concerned about today would not have existed.  They're the remnants of the survivors of those plagues.

Even more: Had it not been for Spaniards losing some horses, the plains Indian would never have risen to be what they were when French trappers and Voyageurs wandered into the area.

I doubt the horseless Indians of the vacant plains would have done any better than their Eastern relatives did against Western expansion.

I wonder, though, if the Aztecs would have collapsed on their own, or expanded North.

Prolly collapsed, they don't appear to have really recovered from the pre-European plagues.

Cahokia, for example, didn't survive to see the European diseases.  Their society collapsing is why the plains were vacant for the tribes which became the horse-based culture of the Plains Indian to occupy.

The Cahokia and similar societies are also, probably, why bison were so damn plentiful.  Like most agrarian cultures took a bat to the predator populations, leaving a relatively safe place for bison to breed.

Rowing My Own Or Not

Checking my records...  (read remembering).

I have had very few manual cars in my inventory.

I learned to drive on Mom's '76 Vega wagon.  5-speed manual.

The '73 Passat had a 4-speed manual.

The '83 Lynx had a 3-speed auto, first car with a locking torque converter!

Both Camaros rocked a TH-350, 3-speed auto.

The '86 Civic had a 4-speed manual.

The Biscayne had a TH-700R4 as a Caprice Classic and then a 4L60E later on.  Both 4-speed automatics.

The Precious had a 6-speed manual.

The Beast has a 6-speed automatic 6L80.

The Civic needed different gears than what it had.  I always wanted one between 2nd and 3rd.

Now that I'm old, I'm starting to appreciate the lack of pain from my left hip and knee in stop-and-go traffic.

I'm no good at being a car snob.

Better Make A FEMA Claim

Upon further review, we did not emerge from Hurricane Helene completely unscathed.

One of the downspouts failed, allowing the gutter to spew straight down.

We put a garbage can under it and it filled in about ten minutes from Milton.

I dropped the princely sum of $25 for a new section of spout and some straps to secure it to the wall.

As a bonus, it's finally being directed away from the patio instead onto it.  We should have fixed that years ago.

Build Sheet

We once sat down and figured out, exactly, what day in 1978 that Christine was destroyed.

It gave us no end of amusement to discover that was also the same day my 1979 Camaro Berlinetta was made.

I will be damned if I can remember that date, but it was funny at the time because The Silver Bullet definitely had a personality and she DEFINITELY hated Aunt The Bat (my girl friend at the time).

Ironically I sold her to Bat's boyfriend who let her languish.

I doubt he was aware of all the mods done to the suspension, and I hope he had to replace the brake pads on the rear.

Remember, I'd put a Jag XJ rear end under there...  I did not consider maintaining those inboard brakes when we did it.  I don't know if the calipers and pads were accessible without taking the entire thing back out.

After After Action

We're all put back together after Milton at Casa de McThag.

We even got our Halloween decorations up!

I felt bad that across the street is without power still while we have our garish lights on...

That bad feeling evaporated when several of our neighbors in the darkened section stopped by to tell us how relieved they were that we'd gotten our stuff out.

It turns out we're a local attraction that they look forward to seeing each year!

I am happy to be part of the healing with our display of normalcy.

Fucking Milton!

Because of the hurricane I missed Dead Che Day!

A victory for everyone everywhere!

57 years of being a good commie.

Yamaguchi Day

We've all thought about it.

 This one act probably kept Japan from going Socialist.

65 Years Of Sea Levels Rising

 

The angle is 90 degrees off from one shot to the other, but...  I ain't seein' no massive increase in sea level.

Are you?

Even better, the 2024 imagery shows that Bush Key has reemerged from the briny depths...

Checking stuff independently is how we counter the narrative.

Neither Is Front Page

The US just had two landfalls of some pretty massive hurricanes and neither is still on the front page of any, national, news site I've checked.

MSN was the only one that had any hurricane stories on the front page, but those disappeared when I shut off the location filter.  Isn't that odd?

I remember hearing about fucking Katrina for months.

Helene is already history and Milton a memory?

We're still digging out around here and, "Meh?"

Now The Floods

Most of the rain fell on places upstream from us, and it's flowing, or should I say overflowing, the river a couple miles from here.

It's crested already.

The roads that are closed every time it gets to this stage of flooding are closed.

We're well away from the flood area and not worried at all.

Prep Fail

I'm working on a GURPS character.

I forgot to copy the spreadsheet I'm using to the laptop from the NAS before we shut things down to save load on the UPS prior to the storm.

DOH!

If you're going to fail at a prep, forgetting an entertainment item is what you should forget.

On the plus side, I've learned how to silence the alarm on a Cyberpower UPS telling me that the power is off (I fucking know, you stupid machine) and all of the instructions for an Amazon Basics UPS call for more than one button or are just wrong about a double tap of the ONLY button does the trick.

We Have POWER!

We had a generator this time, so the return of the mains was a smaller thing than it might have been.

In fact, I was eating a waffle that The Lovely Harvey had just made... with an electric waffle iron, when the power returned.

Being the cynical Floridians we are, we waited nearly 20 minutes after the power came back before we shut the gennie down and plugged our stuff back into the wall.

Adding to the preparedness:  The in-laws have a generator now!  It was hard to find gas for it, but Home Depot had generators for sale and my father-in-law pounced on it.

He'd been borrowing Marvyn's spare Honda generator to that point and it felt nice to end that imposition.

He got to enjoy his new generator a whole hour before the mains were restored...

The new talismans list is to have ice in every cooler and a generator at every home.

Marv has two Hondas.  We have our Champion.  In-Laws have a... forgot the brand.

We're ready!

After Action Report

We've survived!

Power is still out, the trees the crew from Texas half assed cleared for Helene finished the job they'd started. 

The roof looks fine.  No leaks. 

The cute Halloween flags we hung on the fence gates provided enough wind resistance for then to force the latches. 

All in all, we came out fine.

Generator is making coffee and charging batteries as I swipe.  Cell phone connectivity only.

Is Same

Looking back at past and current hot-rods...

The '76 Camaro Type LT, affectionately known as "The Rust Monster" came to me with 235/60R14 tires.

The Beast has 235/50R18 tires.

That tickles me that they both have the same treadwidth; but are very different tires.

The Camaro's tires were 25.1" in diameter and needed 804 revolutions per mile.

The Beast's tires are 27.3" in diameter and need 740 revolutions per mile.

Too Soon?

I hear that the disaster response in North Carolina has been bungled so badly that even the dead aren't voting Democrat now.

Glad It's Not Me Sad It's Them?

Go hit someone else!

Ooooooh!  I hope they're OK.

Sitting here worrying about the people whom are getting the direct hit from my hoping that the storm wouldn't hit ME head on where I am...

Florida is strange that way.

Home And Looter Defence

Brenda and Valentine are the hurricane defense pair.

Brenda is handier, but Valentine has that extra couple feet per second and 5x magnification.

One is better at looters, the other better in the immediate AO.

I'm set for what comes, even if it's not as bad as originally feared in my AO.

Of course, if REAL looting happens, if I can see it, I can pretty much hit it.

Peace be upon Jack O'Connor.

A Talisman

In addition to me getting ice this time, Marv has made a plate of cookies.

It's worked before...

Optimism Increasing

At this moment, I am outside the cone of uncertainty!  Just barely.

With the track 36 miles farther north, peak gusts were expected to just get to 62 miles an hour, which we've survived before.

Still might be hard on trees and power lines, but I am thinking we're prepared for that.

Bonus!  We're expecting overnight lows in the high 60's afterwards.  That will make not having power a lot more survivable.

Confusing Guidance

Erin contacted me and wondered how to calculate her Droyne sport's mass.

The various sources mostly agree on the height range, but the definitive source for mass is GURPS: Traveller Alien Races 3 which does a good job of giving the height and weight, in 3e terms, for the standard sized Droyne.

The problem is the sport caste and warrior caste are bigger.

Sports are 50% taller.  Warriors are twice as tall.

I did some back of the napkin calculations and, assuming a constant form factor, got her a weight for her character.

4'-10" and 97.5 lb. (1.5m and 44.2 kg) using the stuff from 3e.

4e is not quite the same in the build chart.

Interstellar Wars says a Nugiiri (what the Vilani called the Droyne down rimward near Sol before everyone realized that all those enclaves of gray, bug-eyed sophonts were actually the same race, Droyne) should be 50% the height of a person, but using the ST 7 line ends up with characters who are too short for the racial range.

So I cheated.  They are 50% the average height for their ST+3!  That puts the height and weight in the correct ranges when you apply the skinny modifier.

Huzzah!  Solved for all time!

Well South

 

If this track holds it's as good as the news can get with this storm.  It keeps the surge out of the mouth of Tampa Bay.

It's bad news for people that have had too much of it lately, especially the Port Charlotte area.

Oddly, being on the North side of this storm is going to be worse for the winds thanks to the expected wrap around of shear and dry air causing disorganization to the South side of the storm.

We've been ordered to evacuate.  But to where?  With what?

I hate to break it to the local authorities, but we don't have the means to live anywhere but where we live.  We don't have the funds to plan a vacation let alone take an unplanned one!

But I know something the local disaster officials don't seem to.  The lay of the land.

We're not in a flood zone.  Our worry is wind.  We're not looking to get wind worse than Irma, which we survived just fine here, so...

The evacuation zones in Florida are clearly broken.  There's people who need to get out because of storm surge.  There's people who don't and they're both in zone A.

There's been ample evidence that the state and counties are not following their own rules for defining the zones thanks to regulatory capture from the insurance industry.

These zones have become politically defined not practically.

So people who SHOULD evacuate don't because they can see someone in the same zone who will be OK not evacuating.

They Come And Go

I once had three .45 ACP handguns...

Not anymore!  I sold the M&P 45C.

Now I just have, uh, three .45 ACP handguns.

Something's off about my math...

Cash Purchase

The place that I saw the .300 Savage, Shooter's World in Tampa, is teh suxxor for privacy.

I don't shop there very often.

They want your ID and phone number to make ANY purchase.  Regardless of how you pay.  And they are entering your info into their computer.

I don't know if they're actively sharing the data, but I've noticed that data collected is data shared by hook or crook.

There's so many places that, even if they ask for ID for ammo, are just glancing at your birthday and not entering anything on the computer.  Then they happily take cash.

Embrace The Suck

When you can't avoid the suck, embrace it.

Pretty sure this is gonna suck.

Putting It Out There

Saturday, Shooter's World in Tampa had several boxes of .300 Savage.

I, manfully, resisted and did not buy any.

I got some 5.56 ammo instead.

Slightly Better Track For Me

Going far enough south of me that our level of preparedness will suffice.

The problem is the spaghetti models are all over the place.

Eyes crossed.

It's Just Evacuation Once Again Running Away With Me

When we bought this place, we were Evacuation Zone C.  The border with B ran down the middle of my street.

West was B, East was C.

At some point, the line got moved to my fence in the back yard.

This year, I note, the line is in the middle of the next street East of me.

Our elevation above mean sea level did not change.

What changed was the flooding the next street West would get.

That was caused by developers WAY upstream from me putting impermeable houses and streets and drainage systems in that fed into the waterway downstream from me.

Exacerbating the problem was neglect in clearing the channels in the rivers that we drained into in the next county over.

And the local drainage system assuming that nothing had changed since 1969 when my 'hood got built.

Since 2019, they've addressed and fixed all that.

But since we had flooding that got within X distance EVER, we're downgraded.

I don't think we're gonna evacuate.

This doesn't look to be carrying the surge needed to get to us.

I can tell because I have a topographic map!

The people who make the zone boundaries don't.

There's places in that C zone that are lower than me and more directly attached to a waterway that could get water to them.

Hunkered Down

Got gas in Moxie and The Beast.

Got all our gas cans filled with gas.

Got the shutters on.

Even have a deck of cards.

Got 8 books left in a series I'm reading.

Got everyone's meds except Harvey's weekly shot and we don't need it until Friday.

Hopefully the Legos I ordered will show up tomorrow so I have them to build if the power's off.

I Am In This Picture

And I don't like it!

At least they're showing it Cat 2 or less at landfall now.

A lot depends on a cold front coming down from up North.

If it makes it in time, it shoves it south of where I am.

If it doesn't make it all, we get the rough stuff.

New Information

A while ago I speculated about why the T-64, T-72, T-80 and T-90 would, routinely, have catastrophic ammunition fires.

The Cheiftan has a chat about that.

The ammo scattered about the turret and basket unprotected and among the crew would do it.

Sons Of Vandals

There might be a shit ton of overlap on the Venn diagram about how the outlaw biker clubs got started, but the film The Bikeriders remind Harvey and I far more of the Sons of Silence than The Vandals in how they got going.

The book is most definitely about The Vandals.

The film doesn't seem to be.

Slam Fire

This is really me writing it down so I can remember it later.

Normal rate of fire fore a pump shotgun in GURPS 4e is 2xn.

Guns like the Winchester 1897 and Model 12 don't have a trigger disconnector so they will fire just by pumping the action.

That's RoF 3xn.

It's in the description of the 1897 in High Tech 4e on page 105.

Magic

Just like you can't play a character who's smarter than yourself, you can't portray technology past your understanding.

I've watched a lot of ultra-tech space settings where the GM kept presenting problems that would be definitively solved by technology listed in the game.

One of the most famous fiction examples is how Star Trek conveniently forgets all the replicator and transporter accidents.

The two most important words in science are, "that's odd," and NCC-1701 sure found a lot of them.

Not least of which is a fountain of youth.

Since I played Traveller the most, it's where I see tech concept blind spots most often.

You don't even have to get to Traveller TL 14 to make some of the errors and I blame Hollywood.

If you encounter a back-pack nuke ticking away, how do you disarm it?

Hollywood tells you that you have to find the red wire.

I says light it up with your rifle.

The explosives surrounding the core might still explode, but they will do so asymmetrically and no fission boom.  If it's a fusion bomb, you've made sure it's not going to get fusing.  You're going to have a problem with explosively scattered fissile materials now, but not near as spread out as if you'd let it go high-order.

Starting about Traveller TL9, they don't even bother with the fissile materials!

Gravitic technology is sufficient that you use artificial gravity to collapse your fuel to fusion pressures.

The minimum size to do this gets smaller and smaller as tech advances and for a bomb or warhead, you are skipping the hardware that siphons off power from the unit, and keeps it from exploding.  Exploding is the point.

But it shouldn't make them less susceptible to being bashed on to the point they don't work anymore.

Getting something to fusion is difficult.  Slight asymmetries cause failures to go boom.

How did I conceptualize all this?  Having a high-school education and being resistant to math when you have a, no shit, doctor of astrophysics and two people who do calculus for fun in your gaming group means your assumptions about a tech WILL be challenged.

Physics is, regardless of how you achieve them.  Traveller technology is astonishing on many levels.

How the meson gun MUST work is a terrifying level of control over subatomic particles.

But back to the Traveller TL 12 equivalent to a backpack nuke.  It's going to need a powerpack (some sort of super-science insane rate of discharge capacitor) to fire off the gravitic node that collapses the fuel, holds it for a swish then lets it go.  Ripping that pack off the side of the node-core means no-boom.  It might discharge spectacularly, but it doesn't detonate.

Likewise, a couple light armor piercing explosive rounds into the node will keep it from forming a symmetrical wave-front and no boom.  It might not be a good idea to stand next to it as it collapses from it's brief attempt to be degenerate and then fly apart again when the powerpack tries to fire the node...  But it will be a much smaller explosion than firing correctly.

But the point is... it's easier to keep nukes from going off than to get them to go off.

Ideally, you separate the powerpack from the node without the pack discharging.  Demolitions, Engineer or Jack of All Trades skill should get you there.  Mechanical or Electronic should get a roll with penalties.

Dangerous, no skill required, methods are chancy, but are better than letting a nuke go off.

Old Grognard

I, jokingly, commented on a Traveller session that Erin participated that the Aslan player's pronunciation of Trokh (Aslan primary language) was atrocious.

I said he had an atrocious accent, riffing on the old meme of someone not being able to speak French well because of their accent.

It hits me that I've been doing Traveller a LOT longer than they have.

I knew it was Trokh without looking it up.  Just as I know the most common Vargr language is Gvegh.

I started in 1979 with little black books and kept up with it through MegaTraveller.

I translated both LBB Traveller and Megatraveller to GURPS 3e.

Then GURPS: Traveller.

Then translating that into 4e.

Then GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars.

I corresponded with Loren K Wiseman when he was still Traveller line editor at SJGames.

I have watched the setting develop from nothing to the crunchy mass today.

I have not done much with Mongoose's version of the rules.

But the setting remains the same.

It amuses me that the Aslan's player has no idea who I am or how long I've been at it when they replied.

But I'm only teasing.  It sounded like he's got the essence of being an Aslan male in command from listening to the session.

Tricking The Technology

The internet is the phone here.  That's true most everywhere now.

When the power goes out, the internet provider provided box has a battery to make sure we can still call out.

That battery lasts for days.

But the box kills the internet after 15 minutes.

So we have the battery box plugged into a battery backup to make it think the power is still on so we retain internet.

This is paired with UPS's on the routers.

We got almost 2 hours of internet with a dying UPS.

I'd like to upgrade that capability.  I'd love to get 24 hours of up time without touching the generator.

Historocity

The 2023 version of The Three Musketeers (Part 1, D'Artagnon) is set in 1625.

There sure are a lot of flintlocks in 1625 France.

Even worse than on a c1600 Dutch privateer trading vessel (cough cough Shogun).

The weaponry in this new version of Dumas' work is decidedly 18th century, and so is the costuming!

There are ample paintings of many of the historical figures to guide the filmmakers...  But, nah!

17th century costuming is... elaborate (and expensive).

Even so, they missed on how elaborate the 18th century stuff was as well.  The 1988 version of Dangerous Liaisons is an excellent example of getting the costuming right.

But no, let's have everyone dress like a commoner from a century too late.

When Richard Lester does a better job with weapons and costumes...

But with that out of the way, was it any good?

I cannot say if the new version is closer to the book or not; it's been too long since I've read it.

I will say it was a good version of the story.  I enjoyed it a lot.

Eva Green did well as Milady.  Francois Civil was a decent D'Artagnon and Vincent Cassel a solid Athos.  Aramis and Porthos are present, but not prominent.

I liked it, and look forward to seeing part 2.

Rebuilding

The tried and true APC BX1500G battery backup lasted for two hours when the power went out on Thursday.

It appeared to come back to life on Friday but, alas, on Sunday it shut off and displayed error code F02.

I cycled the power and it appeared fine until early this morning.

Same F02 code at 0330, 0430 and 0500.

Time for something different.

We've had the APC for years and years.  I've replaced the batteries three times, the first time in 2013!

Wal Mart opened at 0600, and I got a replacement.

So far, this is our only casualty from the storm.

Branch Color

According to this page, purple is fair game for the magic branch in 1899.

I had planned to have the magic branch be purple with silver piping.  But reconsidered.

The piping color is the color of the branch they're assigned to.

Purple with yellow (yellow orange if you wanna get technical) for cavalry.

Purple with white for infantry.

Purple with red for artillery.

Purple with cadet gray for commissary.

Purple with emerald green for hospital/medical.

Purple with crimson for ordnance.

Purple with buff for quartermaster.

Purple with black for signal corps.

Branch insignia are a lightning bolt crossed with a star tipped wand.

There are a bewildering array of non-commissioned officer ranks that appear to be outside the chain of command, like specialist or tech ranks.

Commissary sergeant is a thing.

There were still color sergeants in the US Army in 1899.

Step Into The Light Already

Today is Jimmy Carter's 100th birthday.

You can quit now, Jimmy.

What Good Has Come From Them

Extortion and greed are all I see when I hear "union" and I fail to see any benefit to having them around.

As a customer of the places they extort, all I see is increased cost and decreased quality.

USW 8888 got a large raise and a 5-year contract in 2022; now we're hearing that they didn't do a significant amount of welding correctly.

Who won there?

The people who unload the ships are on strike on the east coast.

Who, besides themselves, is this helping?

They want MORE and can extort the entire nation to get it.

They're fucking everyone else.

Then their leadership donates to the Dems and...

Just not seeing the upside to unions for anyone not actually in one.

Triple this for anyone in a public employee union like teachers and cops.  Nowhere is the corrosive effect of union membership more visible.

Done Fucked Up

I noticed right away that Chief Hagen had not read an important part of 870.044.  That'd be the reference, "pursuant to s. 870.043.

He quotes most of 870.044...

Title XLVI CRIMES

Chapter 870 AFFRAYS; RIOTS; ROUTS; UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLIES

SECTION 044Automatic emergency measures.

---

870.044 Automatic emergency measures.—Whenever the public official declares that a state of emergency exists, pursuant to s. 870.043, the following acts shall be prohibited during the period of said emergency throughout the jurisdiction:

(1) The sale of, or offer to sell, with or without consideration, any ammunition or gun or other firearm of any size or description.

(2) The intentional display, after the emergency is declared, by or in any store or shop of any ammunition or gun or other firearm of any size or description.

(3) The intentional possession in a public place of a firearm by any person, except a duly authorized law enforcement official or person in military service acting in the official performance of her or his duty.

Nothing contained in this chapter shall be construed to authorize the seizure, taking, or confiscation of firearms that are lawfully possessed, unless a person is engaged in a criminal act.

History.—ss. 4, 5, ch. 70-990; s. 1401, ch. 97-102; s. 2, ch. 2006-100.

That part I've highlighted is important (h/t Erin).  But far more important is what 870.043 says about WHEN you can evoke 870.044!

Title XLVI CRIMES

Chapter 870 AFFRAYS; RIOTS; ROUTS; UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLIES

SECTION 043Declaration of emergency.

---

870.043 Declaration of emergency.—Whenever the sheriff or designated city official determines that there has been an act of violence or a flagrant and substantial defiance of, or resistance to, a lawful exercise of public authority and that, on account thereof, there is reason to believe that there exists a clear and present danger of a riot or other general public disorder, widespread disobedience of the law, and substantial injury to persons or to property, all of which constitute an imminent threat to public peace or order and to the general welfare of the jurisdiction affected or a part or parts thereof, he or she may declare that a state of emergency exists within that jurisdiction or any part or parts thereof.

History.—s. 3, ch. 70-990; s. 1400, ch. 97-102.

Where's the riot, Chief?  870.044 isn't for just any emergency, it's for a specific kind of emergency.  More along the lines of reining in the KKK or "mostly peaceful" protesting.

I think Donald has stepped in it here.  GOA-Florida is on it and we have a statute that lets us sue government busybodies who get gun stuff wrong.  They don't even get to hide behind their office.

FFS, I'm not even a lawyer and I keep discovering just how ignorant cops and elected officials are about the law. 

Mystery Prepping

There are things we do to get ready for hurricanes that confuse my father in law.

I, belatedly, bought 100 lb. of ice for our two big coolers.

He was all, "what do we need that for?" when we had Marv's generator charging up the fridges.

He's not getting that the point of laying in this stuff is to have it when you need it.

Getting it before you need it is how you have it when you need it, because everyone else will be realizing they need it at about the same time.

So we get ice.

So we stock up on insulin.

So we have several days of shelf stable grub.

So we have jugs and bottles of potable water.

So we have ammo and loaded magazines.

So we top up all the fuel containers.

You might not get the luxury of getting more indefinitely.

But father in law's disconnect really hit when we tossed the ice, unused.

"Why did you buy all that if you weren't going to use it?"

Well, cooler #1 all melted because you didn't check to see if the lid was secure.

Cooler #2 didn't get cleaned before ice got put into it because my helper just started dumping ice...

I would have used the ice in those coolers to mix drinks if some simple precautions were taken!

Like A Scorpion It's My Nature

I did it again...

A female friend was venting and I was trying to fix the problem.

Ladies.

Don't bring us a problem you don't want solved.

Solving problems is what men do.

We wait for the opportunity, it's the main thing we bring to the partnership.

Don't get mad at us.

Don't say shit like, "now do you see why we're angry all the time from keeping shit bottled up?"

Because I'm going to reply with something like, "I figured you'd be happy getting the problem fixed!"

We are baffled by the idea that you just want to vent about a problem and leave it unresolved as long as someone will listen to the complaint and be sympathetic.

We're showing sympathy, we're offering to fix it.

I know you know how I respond to hearing about the problems of people I dislike.

It's isn't an offer to fix it, is it?

Neat!

I don't shotgun much so this innovation slipped past me.

Interia action:

Nifty.

Simple and elegant.

The place that introduced me to the idea was complaining about the price of such guns, so they must be expensive too.

Another Old West Gunwriter Passes

Phil Spangenberger has left the chat.

2024 has been rough on the people who wrote about cowboy guns.

Mike Venturino was just a bit ago, back in June.

You Can Tell A Democrat Is In Office

Information is trickling out about how bad Helene hit Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina.

Here's some footage from Erwin, TN.

That's pretty bad.

This storm and its effects would be 24/7 front page on all the news web sites if a Republican was president.

I remember Katrina coverage and lack of Ian coverage and now, lack of Helene coverage.

Well, I guess the less the press covers it the faster and more fully the area recovers.

You Only Get Points If It's An Actual Problem

 The GURPS Basic Set Vol 1: Characters, on page 144 says:

Missing Digit  

-2 or -5 points

You are missing a finger or thumb.

Missing Finger: Gives -1 DX with that hand (only). -2 points.

Missing Thumb: Gives -5 DX with that hand (only). -5 points.

I know a couple of people missing a finger who don't appear to be affected by it at all.

Some races are depicted with fewer fingers than humans and aren't given this disad.

It hit me that if it's not affecting you, you don't rate the points even if you don't have a finger where it should be!

Take the -1 for the quirk and make note your left pinky is gone.  No DX penalty, but you might get some social stuff from people going, "where's your pinky?"

I've met a couple of people who are REALLY freaked out by a missing digit too.  They were physically sick from the person who was missing that right ring finger.  <-- That missing finger is a warning about lathes and jewelry, by the way.

Prep Odds

No, we did not have a generator.  Harvey has lived her for 39 years and I for 27, we've never needed one.

We've wanted one, but the odds of NEEDING one were still quite low.

Prolly going to buy my buddy's so he can upgrade though.

I've never owned a rain gauge.  I just never had even idle curiosity about how much it rained.  Plus I'd probably forget to check/reset it making it useless.

We forgot to load up on ice this round, that was a mistake.  Colored by the lack of likely direct effect (accurate forecast) and a history of the power staying on; we got complacent.

Harvey thinks she was awakened by someone trying the front door at 0430 Friday.

I was just settling for bed, so hopefully she was hearing me.

When I was sitting out in Moxie charging phones and USB battery packs between 1200 and 0400 I did see a lot of people walking around the neighborhood.  It didn't look nefarious, mostly looking curious about how the area had fared.

Yes, I had a gun on me.  No, it was not a pistol.

Bless You Mr Carrier!

At 2:30p we had the generator my buddy graciously loaned me hooked up and running the fridge.

At 5:30p we got a notice from the power company to not expect restoration of service until 11:59 Sunday evening.

There had been trucks in our neighborhood all day, so I figured that we wouldn't have to wait that long, but Harvey decided to plan for the worst and knowing that another day of this without power would kill Harvey's mom...  We started looking for hotels that still had vacancies.  None.

We immediately started moving Harvey's mom down here where the power is and moved the unused window AC unit with her.

A couple extra fans and the window unit in the kitchen window made a huge difference in comfort, even if it was small in measurable temperature.  Humidity reduction, YO!

Pretty much the moment we got her situated...  The power came back on.

7:30p today, you will note, is literally days before the expected restoration.

27-1/2 hours without power.

I know people who've gone much longer, but this is our personal record.

It's verra nice to have the electrons flowing again.

The Waiting Is All

Got a buddy coming down from Ocala with his generator! 

Except for the power being out, we're doing great. 

Power will prolly be restored the second he pulls into the driveway.

We got off light. 

I wish I'd thought of throwing my air mattress into the back of Moxie last night instead of this morning!  Would've been a lot cooler.

Sitting In The Dark

Something that comes to mind, sitting here in the dark is how few lumens you really need on your weapon light when your eyes are acclimated to the dark. 

Gunwriters keep telling us we need more, but they're going from a well lit space to dark and back in short order at their gun schools.

I don't think they've really thought this through while listening to law enforcement biased trainers.

This Sucks

It could, of course, be much worse.

Power has been off since 4pm and they have a message about conditions being unsafe for the linemen.

I'll wait, I want them to go home safe.

But it sucks to sit in the dark without so many amenities.

Everyone Knows It's Windy

 

It's kinda brisk out there.  Got a good gust a bit ago and the power cut out for about a minute.

A lot like Irma, in fact.

Huge

 

We're under it already.

Waves of off and on rain until the winds get here tomorrow morning.

That House Rule Is Looking Better.

A while back I decided to change the damage of .40 S&W from 2d+2 pi+ to 2d pi+ because .40 S&W just didn't seem to outperform 9x19 or .45 at all.

Running the numbers for 10mm underscores my wisdom.

3d-1 pi+ of 10mm ACP ball will do 2-17 raw damage with an average of 9 which will become 3-26 points (avg 14) to the target's hit points.  Hollow points get upped to 3d-1(0.5) pi++ which takes the same raw damage to 2-32 points delivered (17 average).

As written, .40 S&W ball does 4-14 raw (avg 9) doing 6-21 (avg 13) once the bullet size mod is applied.  Hollow points up that to 2d+2(0.5) pi++ for 6-26 (avg 16).

As I've modified .40 S&W 2d pi+ does 2-12 raw (avg 7) with ball ammo delivering 3-18 (avg 10) after size mod.  Hollow points do 2d(0.5) pi++ for 2-22 (avg 12).  <-- This is identical to .45 ACP, which is how the ballistics gel and FBI testing looks.

Stalking Turtle

Our favorite local weather personality, Dennis Phillips, calls hurricanes "stalking turtles" because of how slow they come on.

Track is a bit West of last post, which is good for me in SW Pasco.

To show how large this thing is, though, the first rain band just whipped over us.

Helene is going to cover the entire Eastern Gulf and be messing with all of West coast Florida.

Rain predictions are fairly light for this system, which is excellent news because the storm surge is expected to be atrocious.  Going to be a lot of flooding in lower areas than me.  West of US19 is going to be hurting.

When I moved down here... 27 years ago almost to the day, West of 19 was called "the wrong side of 19" because of the flooding issue.  And they let it get built up.

We'll see how they fared in 48 hours.

1700 Update:

I'm Curious

I'm not sure I'm $100 curious, but what's a Pelican case running nowadays?

2nd Amendment Bourbon.

I've never heard of this brand, but the box caught my eye.

Tracking

We're going to get strong tropical storm level gusts most likely.

The local weather guy is going all in on the doom and gloom of losing electricity.

I hope not.  We've been very lucky in that regard with storms, so eyes crossed that it continues.

Non-Subjective

We can quote numbers all day, but they're meaningless unless we have them in GURPS terms!

1911 in .45 ACP does 2d pi+, out to 150/1,600 weighing 2.8/0.5 lb. with 7+1 shots and Rcl 3.

In 10mm it does 3d-1 pi+, out to 290/2,300 weighing 2.8/0.4 lb. with 8+1 shots and Rcl 4.

2d pi+ will do an average of 7 points of raw damage and deal 10 points of damage to the torso.

3d-1 pi+ will average 9 points of raw damage and deal 13 points of damage.

More damage, more range, lighter magazines, more shots... WIN!

But...

Skill 15 shooter, Acc 2, 7 yards.  No aim, so I don't know why I mentioned the acc...

-3 for the range so 12 or less to hit.  Average roll of 10 gives 1 shot hitting out of three for both guns.  10mm still in the lead.

A 9 gives 2 hits with .45 and a 6 gives 3 hits.

10mm needs an 8 for two hits and a 4 for three.

That recoil number be serious, yo.

Both have a 74.07% chance to land the first round.

So a 1911, in this case has a 9.25% chance at all three rounds, and a 37.5% chance for 2.

10mm has 1.38% for all three and just 25.92% for 2.

Three hits with .45 does more damage (30 average) than two hits of 10mm (26 average).

But wait!  There's MORE!

.40 S&W does 2d pi+ too.  It's recoil number is 2.

It's going to hit with one round on a 12 or less (same 74.07%), two rounds on a 10 (50%) or less and all three on an 8 or less (25.92%).  10mm Kurz gets all three rounds for the same die roll as .40 S&W Long gets just two.  3x2d pi+ > 2x3d-1 pi+  Oh, the .40 S&W gun is going to be lighter, usually with the same capacity.

Still more!

9x19mm does 2d+2 pi.  Average hit is 9 raw points and 9 damage.  It's recoil is also 2, so the same chances to hit as .40 S&W but a bit less damage.  9, 18 and 27 for one, two and three rounds respectively.  3x 2d+2 pi > 2x 3d-1 pi+.  9mm guns are even lighter than .40 S&W and usually carry more shots.

And this, at the end of the day, is why 10mm languished while 9mm is in just about everyone's holsters.  The slight edge in damage from .40 S&W is somewhat nullified by the extra number of shots the 9mm gets.

Then there's 9mm being a lot cheaper per shot.

I still WANT a 10mm ACP though.  Just gotta decide how long I wanna save for one and how sexy a beast it will be.  Colt Delta Elite and S&W 1076 lead the pack for sexy.  Rock Island and Glock lead on affordability.  Real insanity happens with finding a SIG P220 in 10mm.  But that way lies madness because I'd want to have a P220 in .38 Super too.  Peak insanity is finding a Bren 10.

I kind of am leaning at a 1911 in 10mm so I can have all three rounds that are "native" to the 1911.

Inducements

"We get the CIB!"

I get to drive the tank.

"We get to wear an infantry blue shoulder cord."

I get to fire the gun.

"We get our branch color in a surround of our branch insignia."

I don't have to walk anywhere.

Just sayin'...

Oh, and we finally got black berets like every other tanker.  Y'all just ticked off the Rangers.

The Paul Harrell Analysis

I believe this is the first of Paul's videos I ever watched and it was searching about the FBI shooting that lead me to it.

His absence is felt every day.

 

 

 

Knowing Exactly What I Want To Do

Making a Sergeant of Mages for Sabers and Sorcerers...

Christopher Harrington.

He's a movement college only mage.

I have to decide if I want to keep going with requiring a soul-jar athame to be a mage or not.

It makes the character a lot more complex using GURPS to keep track of my characters.

In many ways making a complete new system for "Old Magic" was easier than doing what I have in my head.

I have a clear vision.

Just writing it is easy, I want it to work in GURPS too.

I'll figure it out.

A mistake I made with the athame is it might require you to have on your person to keep your magery.  Need to double check and fix that, if so.

Mixed Blessing

We're now outside the cone of confusion now!

But the storm is supposed to be a lot bigger.

Going to be sporty West of US 19 in my AO.  I don't live there...

Already Paid For

The made for TV movie about the FBI shootout in Miami, "In the Line of Duty: The FBI Murders," is available for streaming on Amazon.

At no additional cost because we plunk down for Prime.

It's not a great movie, but might show that shootout as accurately as can be expected from actors and the restrictions of the media.

They, at least, got the FBI's guns right.

Preps Laid In

The only decision left is to buy plywood or not.

Father in law is still new at this, he'll prolly get a couple sheets and grab some for us too.

The current predictions put it off shore from here, so we get some wind and rain, but not too bad.

Fingers crossed that holds.

It Keeps Coming Up

The ammunition used by the FBI in Miami and how it affected ammo development keeps inspiring. 

I love how one of his conclusions mirrors something I've said to Willard.  The new stuff is slightly better than the old stuff.  If you have old stuff, there's no reason to throw it away.

I've mentioned the FBI's ammo selection myself. 

I also realized in this that I was supposed to have deferred to my "better" when they confronted me.

They don't read here any more, I don't think.

PS: Ogive really is pronounced oh-jive.  French loaner word.

Falling Down

I agree with the Graybeard.

It's still fucking Summer here on the Gulf Coast.

Though, once the sun goes down we can tolerate sitting on the back porch under the ceiling fan.  I cannot say we could do that in July.

Maybe once the stalking turtle in The Gulf gets done next week we'll see a real cold front and some cooler temps.

THEY Get To Have Nuke Plants?

Microsoft is going to get to use all of the output from Three Mile Island, but we scumbag unwashed normies have to use wind and solar to recharge our government mandated electric cars?

Why can't we all use nuclear power?

Oh, the same fucking morons who are forcing us to abandon perfectly functional technologies for unreliable boondoggles.

There's nothing wrong with internal combustion cars.

There's nothing wrong with burning coal or natural gas to make steam to spin turbines.

There's never been anything wrong with using fission to boil water to spin turbines.

I cannot shake the idea that the entire impetus behind EV's is control and keeping us within a small circle around where we live.

Even worse, you can disable EV charging remotely where you can't stop someone with a fossil fueled vehicle from storing a meaningful quantity of fuel to escape that small radius.

I stopped feeling paranoid about this watching one paranoid conspiracy theory after another turn out to be valid in 2020.

Have I Mentioned Postmodern Jukebox?

It's hit or miss, but the hit really HITS.

When Americans Get Serious

I love videos of the Sprint missile.

But something that hit me watching these vids...

It's almost getting kinetic kills.  In 1975.

A high-explosive warhead with annular blast fragmentation would suffice.

NOPE!

W-66 nuke warhead!  2kt of airburst hate.

Radar and guidance didn't get worse since 1975.

Every time the Sprint comes back into my consciousnesses I am struck with the conviction that the whole idea of Reagan's "Star Wars" strategic defense initiative was wholly valid and within our technological grasp.

It was treaties, not capability, that killed most of this stuff.

Capabilities which have risen from the ashes of state department interference of late...

Where Do They All Come From?

FuzzyGeff and I speculated about where some "off list" magic items could come from in GURPS.

We started speculating from my wondering how someone without magical aptitude would go about learning a spell.

If you can't cast it, how do you know you learned it?

Learning by rote apparently works, but you've no way to test it.  I can also see people who are learning this way wasting a lot of time as the casting is "telephoned" to death.

Well, you CAN test it.  A high mana zone.  Anyone who knows a spell can cast it in a high mana zone as long as the spell itself doesn't require magery as a prerequisite.

This jogged my memory about very-high mana zones.  In a very high mana zone you don't get charged fatigue for your casting.  It would seem ideal for enchanting as the energy expended is replenished as fast as it is used.  Quick and dirty enchanting for large items for the win!

Except...

A normal failure in a very high mana zone is treated as a critical failure and a critical failure is much, much worse.

Which brings us back to strange and unusual magic items you add to your character sheet with points rather that G$.

They're a by product of these failures, occasionally.

"Where'd you get that neat item?"

"From the magic shop, in a basket labeled, 'contents of crater,' why?

Post Not Found

I came up with a witticism.

It was way funnier in my head than it was in text.

Somethings don't survive translation to words.

And you know it's bad if it doesn't live up to MY standards.

Doing Wrong Because It's Legal

What is it with the left side of the aisle?

Over and over when talking to them about politics I keep bumping into the excuse, "it's not illegal."

 

If whether it's illegal is your only social compass, it's no wonder you cannot understand right and wrong.

 

Unethical and immoral don't always overlap illegal on the Venn diagram.

 

If you won't do right unless someone threatens you with violence, then you aren't a very good member of society. And don't kid yourself, arrest is violence.

 

The worst part is abdicating your morals and ethics to The State to decide. The State is the least trustworthy arbiter of right and wrong ever created!

 

But, just to bring it to Full Godwin levels, no laws were broken when Germany rounded up millions of people and murdered them.

 

No laws were broken when Stalin starved millions of people.

 

No laws were broken when Mao did away with millions of his people.

 

No laws were broken when the Khemer Rouge ran the killing fields.

 

Honestly, if you don't have a healthy mistrust and fear of the government, you're a fool.

 

Don't be a fool.

 

PS: A reason that many people who study the atrocities I listed have a somewhat adversarial relationship with the cops is when push comes to shove: The cops enforce the laws that say to load the box cars to the death camps. This has happened with only one, possible, exception. Denmark.

I Want To See A Comparison

Watching Banana Ballistics and thinking...

I want to see a cost and performance comparison between the new 6.8x51mm XM1186 and old fashioned 7.62x51mm M80A1 and M1158.

The reason I ask is if the $16 a shot round isn't the general issue round, it's not going to be what the troops are going to have in their belts and magazines should war be declared.  It'll be the whatever the ball round is.  I asked around to see how many of my buddies who were still in, or recently got out if they'd seen any M1158 and none of them had.  M80A1 was getting to be common over the older M80.

Everyday .277 Fury (the civilian 6.8x51mm) doesn't really show much, if any, improvement over .308 (civilian 7.62x51mm) in the same way that .270 Winchester doesn't show much over .30-06.

If the ball version of the new round is the everyday issue then we'd have been better off with the exact same rifle using the ammo that's already in the inventory and stocked deep.

Serial Disasters Plus Successes

Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a patty-melt after 2pm in and around my AO?

Thursday turned into a three hour ordeal involving places closed for emergencies, fucking karaoke and bingo callers at 95 dB!

Success was ashes in our mouth because the acquired patty melt was merely "meh."  Worse, there was a place blocks from here that has one on their menu.

By the way, restaurants, if you have burgers and a reuben on your menu, you have all the ingredients you need to make a patty melt.  Put one on your menu!

We finally got the Halloween/Christmas LED strings hung and wired.  They look great!  Thanks to a great degree to Marv for the wiring even if I did the mindless labor of hanging the strings.

The Honey-Do's sure cut into blogging time.

It's Funny Because It's True

 X video.

Every Gun

Finally got some reading about the latest on the guy who was staking out Trump's golf course.

The media, as usual, called it an AK.

Sure looks like an SKS in a polymer stock with one of those atrocious 30-round magazines.

Gee, another Democrat supporter with an SKS?

That reminds me to mention the Bernie Bro who shot Representative Scalise with an SKS.

I know the media wants us to forget that the only people using violence for political gain are from the Blue team.  So they want us to forget that it was a Bernie Bro who did the shooting.

Git Er Done

Re-doing our LED Halloween/Christmas light strips.

Hanging them in a better position than last time and making the installation pretty instead of just pragmatic.

82 and humid is still draining.

Doing it one strip at a time.  Using a lot more clips and screws than I originally estimated.

6.8x51mm Special Purpose Is Expensive

$15.70 for the special purpose whiz-bang armor piercing round.

$2.73 for the more conventional ball round.

Uckfay!

By way of comparison 5.56x45mm M866A1 is $0.47 a round.

Prices on 6.8x51mm is expected to get lower as economies of scale kick in.

I'd also like to point out that 113gr at 3,000 fps is NOT 2,700 ft-lb.  It's 2,261.

A1 Reversion

I was looking at the dates and noticed that BAE should not have been able to buy H&K in the T2K timeline because H&K was going gangbusters in that timeline.

Even with the BAE buyout, the L85A2 and L86A2 dont' happen until 2000 or so.

Too late for T2K.

So the Brits go to war with the A1 version.

C'est la guerre.

Who Had 'Felon In Possession - AGAIN' On Their Bingo Card

The would be assassin of former President Trump was a felon?

Felons aren't allowed to possess firerarms.

I was assured by Sarah Brady on down that all we needed to do was pass laws and the criminal behavior would instantly stop.

Therefore Ryan Wesley Routh must be innocent!

It's impossible for him to have possessed the gun because it was illegal.

The magical aura of illegality should have prevented him from touching the gun, and burned his hands if he persisted.  Sarah promised!

Unless...

Laws really only affect the law abiding who weren't a problem without the law already.

PS: It appears that his felony was even a gun charge.  Man, I feel safer.

Missed It

Friday was an important day.

It was the 20th anniversary of the expiration of the Federal ban on cosmetic features in firearms.

It was also the 30th anniversary of the implementation of that ban.

This Could Be Good

I am cautiously optimistic.

But I doubt it will head where I want.

An Honorable Alternative To Military Service

When I say the USAF is not the military, I cite today.

15Sep47 is the Air Force's ETS date.

After your exit the service date, you are no longer in the military.

I have to admit, their NFA collection is way more impressive than mine.

Happy Birthday, Zoomies!

108

Today marks the 108th anniversary of the first use of tanks on the battlefield at The Somme.

Death before dismount!

UAW And Caterpillar Part Two

The minimum wage is always $0 an hour.

It doesn't matter if your contract says you get $70 an hour plus benefits if you get zero hours because the plant is closed.

Title reference:  Back when Caterpillar was almost the entire construction equipment market, the UAW demanded a big raise.  The company said they could offer a raise, but only about a third of what was demanded.

So the union went on strike.

Caterpillar said to them, we can't afford what you're demanding, we'd go out of business.

So they started shutting down plants and letting orders go.

Pretty soon customers started buying imported construction equipment and once those companies got a toehold, Caterpillar's market share contracted dramatically.

The workers decided they'd starved long enough and accepted the 1/3 as big raise.

Caterpillar pointed out that market share contraction and offered them jobs at all at much lower rates than before the strike.  With fewer hours and some plants would remain closed.

Bravo, UAW.  Bravo!

Bonus: Try finding any information about this strike on the internet!  I remember it happening because my step mother's brother was a union worker at Caterpillar.

On Strike For A Bad Look

When the company you work for is under a microscope about the quality of your workmanship, it's not a good time to demand a 25% raise.

IAMAW voted to strike at Boeing because they didn't get a 25% raise.

No word if the union is at loggerheads about the inclusion of "how to secure a plug door" class.

Quality control at Boeing is in miserable shape and that's the fault of the people on the production line who just decided to go on strike.

They don't deserve a raise.  Honestly, I'll bet Boeing wishes they could fire a bunch of them, but once you're unionized the NRLB decides if you can shit can the dead wood.

"I'd do my job better if I got paid better," is bullshit.  It's what they're saying.