Kitty Détente

Shadow does not flee at the mere sight of Beeper being carried past her now.

She did seek the place she sleeps as a shelter when Beeper was placed on the other side of a glass door, though.

Once she'd sheltered there, I opened the door and Beeper is roaming the house with all the doors open.

I expect some fur to still fly, but this is feeling more like normal kitty politics than the "You will DIE!" stuff we had for a while.

Beeper is very neurotic about Shadow.

We theorize that she was kicked out of her previous home because she couldn't adapt to a new pet and she's still carrying the trauma of being abandoned.

Bear?  The Bear abides.

When Beeper and Shadow get too serious, he will utter a growl that sounds like a GAU-8 and the girls STOP.

Bear does not want justice.  Bear wants peace.

The Plot Thickens

That air carried Standard SM-6 I mentioned a month ago?

It's got a designation.  AIM-174B.  That's an air-to-air missile.  The one pictured is inert, no warhead, no motor; you can tell from the blue bands.  I think this one is for separation testing.

The War Zone has a whole article on it.

Phoenix 2.0?

Primed

Stumbled across this link in a debate about .45-55 being a rimfire round.

The internal primer just makes them look like rimfire rounds.

But read that link, it's fascinating.

We Fear Change

Basic poverty keeps me from being an early adopter.

This has saved me from a thing or three.

Occasionally, I'm just late to the party.

I'd have bought a Colt 2000 or a Remington R51 the day they hit the shelves if I'd had any money at the time.

Happily...

Well, the gun rags are all a quiver about this new Rost Martin RM1C.

It's a plastic framed striker fired 9mm.

Again.

How many is it now?

It looks like a screaming deal with a sub-$500 MSRP.

But so's a S&W SD9 2.0, it's sub $400.

I'm jaded.

I've watched the new hotness come and go too many times.

I got a S&W M&P because they were the hotness, just in time for all the gunwriters to switch back to Glocks.

Nothing wrong with either.

There's prolly nothing wrong with the RM1C.

But I can also remember when the P320 was teh hawtness.  Then they started going off on their own.  Bet the Army is happy they skipped field trials, huh?

But I want this new gun to make it.  We need more successful American companies, not fewer.

We don't need American companies importing rebranded foreign guns neither.

Unnecessary Tech

I spent far too long trying to figure out why the shutter sound on my phone's camera wasn't working.

There's a switch for shutter sound that did nothing.

In the Multi-Volume tab there's a switch for "Auto-Mute" which "automatically mutes apps based on usage patterns."

What fucking usage pattern indicates that I want the shutter sound off when I have selected it to be on in the camera app?

I hate this trend of putting the settings for a single thing in 15 places.

Practical

Going from regulation to law is going to make some interesting practical changes.

The law says that the FFL cannot sell to a prohibited person.

The law says that a prohibited person cannot purchase or possess a firearm.

The law says that NICS has to be done 922(t).

The laws don't say what information has to be collected from the buyer.

The law would be satisfied with attesting that, "I am not a prohibited person," and submitting to NICS.

Here's where the wheels come off.

The law doesn't tell us how to tell one person from another when we submit to NICS.

Congress punted this to the regulatory agencies to figure out.

Now that punt is invalid.

They've got some work to do if they wanna keep their intrusive threads in the purchase of firearms.

Deregulated

With Chevron repealed and the wave of lawsuits coming...

It removes a lot of power from being concentrated in and around DC.

I wonder if this will cause the people snuggled up to the Federal teat to seek other centers of power.

It'd warm the cockles of my heart to see them get real jobs.

I'm Old Enough

I am old enough to remember the attacks against President Reagan because of his age and presumed mental decline.

Accusations that Nancy was really in charge.  Or VP Bush.

Where are these voices now concerning President Biden?  Where are the accusations against Jill?  Or Kamala?

I can see them here and there, but they're different voices.

They are not skits on Saturday Night Live.

They are not full page editorials in Newspapers.

They are not given significant air time on shows like 20/20 or 60 Minutes (are those shows even still on?).

Never mind that Ronnie's decline happened after he left office, it didn't happen noticeably while he was still president.

I had my doubts about Joe back in 2020, but footage of him talking then compared to now is stark.

A case could be made that the people putting him forward to run are committing abuse of the elderly and infirm.  A felony in Florida.

It staggers the mind.