Posts
All Comments
It happens every time I try to use the word, 'asterisk'.
I try to spell it asterix.
It's wrong and spellchecker catches it, but suggests, 'aster ix,' 'aster-ix,' 'aster,' and 'testatrix.'
Considering that 'asterix' is the most common misspelling of 'asterisk', you'd think that spellchecker would suggest it, no?
OK, TikTok, why are murderers, sex offenders, and pedos censored with a little asterisk?
It's not so we can't figure out the word.
It's not like those three words are like the dread CENSORED.
Are you worried that murderers, sex offenders and pedos will be offended by being associated with illegal aliens? If that's so, why aren't gang members, human traffickers, fentanyl dealers and drunk driver's censored with a little '*'?
I keep reading about 9mm 1911's.
When I look into it, they're not actually 1911's, they're double stack 9mm that look like a 1911, but have almost nothing in common with one.
That sounds like another gun...
The more things change, the more they stay the same?
Ye Olde Grande Pussiance ticks a lot of the same boxes as a some of these newer guns do; plus style!
Update:
While I was referring to the current fad of 2011's, Willard is correct that a Star Model B is the true 9mm 1911.
And it's as close to the 1911 mechanically as the current crop of 2011's so it still qualifies by their standards!
Ray Donovan, despite being entertaining, has some serious problems with police procedure, evidence and forensics.
Ray is a fixer.
He's the guy who makes problems go away for the rich and famous in LA.
If only he was fucking better at it...
His boss, in a fit of rage, kills a former lover with a fire-poker.
Ray and his crew clean up the scene for the boss and create a false trail that the ex-lover stole a bunch of money and fled the country.
Someone who Ray had previously fucked over figured out Ray was involved.
This guy then gets into Ray's storage unit AND FINDS THE FUCKING MURDER WEAPON BEING STORED THERE!!!!!
He threatens Ray's boss over it and blackmails him into accusing Ray of committing the murder.
Boss's daughter doesn't back the accusation and tells the, truthful, story that Dad had murdered his lover.
Boss goes jail, happily ever after!
What about that whole accomplice after the fact and hiding the body and sanitizing the crime scene to hide evidence?
Ray and associates are still guilty of that!
Isn't that something the cops should look into? We never see anything suggesting there was a bribe or an exchange of favors.
FFS!
Don't even get me started on an earlier episode where Ray's daughter was laying in the back seat of an SUV when the driver and front passenger were shot at close range. The killer didn't notice her and she snuck off. She was covered in glass and blood; but forensics didn't notice that the back seat wasn't?
He's right, you know.
Watching shows on Paramount Plus means getting commercials.
One that's in high rotation has a 1LT Nuña (I might have spelled that wrong) talking about how it gave her lots of opportunities and blah blah blah.
One of the pictures of her in the montage is her in a West Point uniform.
What bugs me about the commercial is how much this first LT has ballooned.
Don't female officers have PT standards?
Considering she's a ring knocker, she can't have been active duty for very long, so she gained that weight fast!
Or she hasn't been a very good officer and has been in almost the max allowed time for "up or out" and she's almost out.
Neither seems to be a good spokesperson for the service to me.
Crispy might be on its way out.
Three lock ups for no reason.
Darn it, I like that computer.
I am shocked, however, at just how affordable newer versions of the T-series have become.
A bigger screen might be nice.
Crispy's main job is to play the same five movies at night to give my brain something to focus on besides what's going on my head so I can sleep.
Related: Going through another bout of my periodic nightmares.
Derpyputer has been my daytime surfing machine. I need to get serious about upgrading the drives so that it can take over fully.
It seems like celebrities die in clumps.
Hulk Hogan is gone.
This one is different for me because I met him once when I was living in Minnesota.
The AWA guys owned a cabin on the same lake as my dad's buddies and they were all at one of the taverns on a poker run we were doing.
Not like we was friends or anything, but they were a fun group to be around for a couple hours when I was a teenager.
I should really make an entire series about this.
Watching Ray Donovan and the foley artist seems to think that a revolver's cylinder has a ratchet in it.
The characters open the action and spin the cylinder and it makes a bike coasting noise.
At least most of them are not slapping it back closed. Progress!
A long while back I learned to touch-type.
I've noticed that it's a little frustrating changing from one machine to another around here because the keyboards are different.
I've been using Derpyputer for most things lately and I need to really pay attention to get the password right on Crispy because of the small differences in key spacing and action.
Am I the only one who has to make the adjustment?
I mentioned a bit ago that Cylinder & Slide was going out of business.
I missed that they found a buyer and they would be staying open!
That's awesome news!
Tamiya Shunsaku passed away on the 18th.
I am quite the connoisseur of his company's fine products.
Fair winds, sir.
An Airman in Wyoming is dead from an apparent unintended discharge of an M18 pistol.
Someone is taking this seriously.
I seem to recall that Remington was, essentially, bankrupted by the legal battles over fewer unintended discharges with the Model 700 than Sig is having with their P320 series.
S&W should make sure they can handle the volume of a military order of flat-dark-earth M&P pistols because it's looking like we might just be seeing an M19 competition soon.
My 10 year old Primary Arms PAC5X has developed a flaw in the reticle.
It's at the bottom of the ranging scale on the right. That blob is supposed to be a line that you put at the feet of a man-tall target to figure out the range.
It doesn't intrude on the aiming point, but it's there.
Primary Arms has gone to a lifetime warranty, like their nearest competitor Vortex; but this scope pre-dates that.
I'm not even sure I should bother them.
In preparation for flea treatment, we weighed the kittens.
Bear: 14.0 lb.
Beeper: 9.2 lb.
Mist: 7.0 lb.
Shadow: 9.2 lb.
It should be noted that Bear is not fat, he is just a BIG cat.
July 19, 1969:
Update: All instances of "June" have been replaced with the correct Homeline dates in July. The management of Infinity Unlimited would like to apologize for this oversight.
I have the Lego of both Apollo 11 and Eagle.
Every year on July 20, I think I should build the LEM because I can find space for it.
I still wish they'd made a Columbia in the same scale.
PS: I think this year is THE year.
My unit didn't have any M16A1's when I got there in early '88. We only had M3A1's and M1911A1's to go with the M60A3(TTS) we were getting ready to send off to Turkey.
All of our rifles were M16A2's. We got them the same day the M1(IP) showed up.
Mine, or rather the one assigned to my tank, was a Colt.
I replicated it in semi from an 80% lower.
It's interesting that we had a mix of Colts and M16A1 lowers made into A2's from kits. I remember the gray lower Hydramatic M16A2 that went with A-22.
Colt only held the contract to make them for two years, thanks to the UAW. FN wasn't having labor issues, so they got the contract they still hold to this day.
This one is USAF issue at MacDill in 2007. Thanks to the unnamed Airman who let us take a pic of the logo. I am not sure if it looks gray because of the light or if it actually was gray. My memory says it was black.
While I maintain that the AC people fucked us with our new, up to code, ducts and the lack of air flow into the master bedroom:
Some things they said to alleviate the the problem have helped.
First re-aiming the little blades on the vents so they blow out into the room more along the ceiling than wide open and dumping straight down.
Second was giving more space around the uptake and filter.
Both have improved the overall cooling, but from about 1830 to about an hour after sunset I CANNOT have the door to the bedroom closed. Which is awkward because I have to keep Beeper and Shadow separated. We'd actually be OK if we could leave all the doors open.
A bonus feature of rearranging around the uptake has been Bear returning to being a bed-cat for Harvey and her being able to sleep better.
But I am >< this far from getting a window unit for the bedroom.
The captain of the boat was arrested for boating under the influence.
HOW GORRAM'D DRUNK YOU GOTTA BE TO HIT A PARKED AIRCRAFT CARRIER?
Especially one that doesn't leave it's parking place.
I've heard tell that the USAF has decided to make some changes to their uniform policies.
As with many things, the reaction from the most affected the best part.
I'm sorry, Snowflake, despite the joking around from the more senior services, the Air Force really is a branch of the military.
Uniforms and wearing of them uniformly is part of the deal.
Miami Herald trying to deny Darwin His due.
It really is about education and people not knowing how trains work.
We've become so used to everything having a dozen warning labels and having padding that we forget that there's things that will bite you if you stop paying attention.
Playing on the train tracks is one of those things.
It will also sort itself out if you give it time.
It will be hardest on the slowest learning, but that's how it goes.
When making a what-if, or alternate history, the dates things happen become important.
Big history stuff is pretty easy.
Little shit, like what goes into the equipment list for the players...
Like when did the M4 and M5 RAS's get adopted and enter widespread service?
That changes the weight on the M16A4 and M4 carbine.
That stuff matters to the character's encumbrance.
An M16A4 rocking USGI A2 style handguards is 8 lb. 4.6 oz. with a loaded aluminum USGI magazine. No rear sight. No optics.
Changing to a RAS M5 without any grip panels or vertical grip makes it 8 lb. 10.3 oz.
Add a typical set of panels and a vertical grip and you're at 9 lb. 1.2 oz. We still haven't added an optic or lights!
A detachable carry handle adds 8.8 oz. The Army's Matech rear sight is 3.4 oz. and leaves space for an optic.
The M4 is a similar story.
An M4 with the pre-SOCOM weight barrel is a svelte 7 lb. 2.8 oz.
With a bare RAS M4 that rises to 7 lb. 5.7 oz.
With a some panels and a grip; 7 lb. 9.7 oz.
Don't forget your sights!
How much does your M16A4 weigh in Twilight: 2000? Is the RAS even available and issued widely before Thanksgiving 1997? Heck, was the M16A4 even available?
Let's start with the rifle.
The M4 carbine's NSN dates from October 1993, so no problem with it being around.
An M16A4, in homeline, was first issued in July 1997. The NSN was first issued in November 1993. With more money flowing because the Cold War™ never ended in the T2K universe, it's at least plausible that the A4 makes it to general issue before the nukes fly.
Now the handguards.
The NSN for the M5 RAS is first issued in February 1998, so probably too late for Twilight. The M4 RAS NSN is from August 2002, so WAY too late.
Optics for T2K are even more restricted by history.
The ubiquitous Aimpoint Comp M2 (aka M68 CCO) isn't available until 2000, but the contract was let in 1997 in Homeline; so it should be available for the same reasons as the M16A4.
SOCOM issued the Trijicon TA01NSN from 1995.
The Elcan M145 is probably the "most likely" magnified issue optic for T2K. It is known to Canadians as the C79 and civilians as the Spectre.
Anyone else think it's ironic that parolees have, as a condition of their parole, a mandate to avoid the criminal elements of society and nearly always have a requirement to live in a half-way house for a period of time after release?
A half-way house that will be filled with their fellow parolees, who are from the criminal element they are supposed to avoid...
Jacob from Widener's sent me this link to a neat pocket-history of the M16A2
Of note are the photos being taken with a film camera! I even stole one from the article so you get some incentive to go look at the rest.
Nikon F3, which, I think is period correct for an issue M16A2!
Pretty sweet, I think.
1902 – Willis Carrier creates the first air conditioner in Buffalo, New York. This should be a national holiday.
h/t Mostly Cajun
Harvey and I binged Squid Games this past week.
We enjoyed it a LOT!
So much we did season 3 in one sitting.
I recently read a complaint from Hollywood that when they make original stuff, nobody watches it.
If it was as entertaining as what Korea is making, I think more people would.
I noticed that the "no guns" sign on the local bowling alley was no longer on the door this evening.
Kewl!
We noticed, and ignored it, last year for The Boy's Special Olympics practice sessions.
Not sure when it disappeared, but it's nice to see that it's gone.
Normally, I wouldn't give a place with such a sign my business, but it's for The Boy and it didn't stop us from carrying.
Concealed means concealed, yo.
80 years ago today the Trinity event occurred.
Homeline got the most boring version of this event.
I am absolutely certain that people are sick of being on eggshells around me.
I can fix that!
Just as the show I was streaming got to the good part...
No internet connection!
Lasted about half an hour.
Mutter mutter mutter.
One of the felines, probably Shadow, moved the home-defense carbine in it's ready rack and managed to turn on the light sometime today.
Thankfully I check it very frequently.
New batts installed and all is well.
A recurring theme in small arms development is the production line for the gun that's getting long in the tooth is long gone.
At about the same time as project AGILE was running with early AR-15 R601's a couple of the supporting Special Forces guys said that it really didn't offer a big improvement over the M2 carbine.
OK.
Let's make more M2s then!
Where'd the tooling go?
Inland went back to making car parts.
Underwood went back to making typewriters.
Rock-O-La went back to making juke boxes.
Quality Hardware went back to making tooling.
National Postal Meter went back to making postal scales.
Standard Products went back to making car parts.
Saginaw went back to making car parts.
IBM went back to making office equipment.
Only Winchester kept making guns and they returned to their pre-war commercial catalog and had five years of pent-up demand to satisfy.
There wasn't an M1/M2 production line left in 1964.
Colt, on the other hand, had production capacity available and was, not only, tooled up to make the AR-15, but was actively trying to get someone to buy them in quantity.
The rest is history.
The little side search into the origins of the rapier led to a rabbit hole about whom, exactly, could wear a sword for social occasions.
In short, you needed to be a gentleman; or noble at all.
Commoners were forbidden.
Yes, the prohibitions on open carry are THAT old!
Since all roads lead to gaming...
Fantasy settings are, normally, based on a medievalesque Europe.
Medieval Europe was feudal.
But, rarely are adventurers nobles.
Sumptuary laws would matter in such a place.
Commoners are not allowed certain arms in most of Europe. There are a couple of specific sword designs that slip through loopholes in these laws; the Germanic gross-messer (large knife) is one such.
Lawrence Watt-Evans' fantasy setting of Ethshar has a prohibition on wizards doing anything to extend the life of a noble. No healing, no curing of diseases, no spells of youth or immortality.
Social status starts to matter a lot when these sort of conditions are applied.
And the players would HATE it!
One of the iterations of William the Landless caused all kinds of headaches for my fellow players because I'd paid for the social status to be a baron. There were things I got to do they weren't because of my noble status. Not least of which was the right to dispense high and low justice!
It got us out of trouble a couple times too. Producing that signet and telling off the local men-at-arms was handy.
But the idea that I could order them around and my commands would be backed by the law really pissed them off.
A different noble character got me in trouble with the GM for dressing down his girlfriend's character for her temerity of calling my character in familiar terms.
Carl had responded to our question, during character creation, if his world used normal, historical, fuedalism with, "yes."
We couldn't have unwashed peasants acting our equal, now, could we?
Rapiers, by the way, come from a Spanish sword called 'espada ropera,' or dress sword.
They come from side swords, Italian for rapier, 'spada de lato de striscia' is "strip side sword." Strip referring to the width of the blade.
It becomes a rapier instead of a side sword when the blade narrows enough.
Generally, the hilt needs to get fancied up too to be considered a "real" rapier, but there are side-swords and back-swords with equally elaborate hilts.
Wikipedia has a little snippet about where the word rapier comes from.
The narrowing of the blade made them lighter for the same length, thus easier to lug around in social situations.
Some people noticed that you could get more length for the same weight as the old side swords and became tripping hazards at parties.
Eventually the "same length but lighter" school prevailed and the small-sword was invented.
Talking with FuzzyGeff about Pathfinder and I noticed, again, that it has a rapier.
In the real world, rapiers don't come along until well after guns are commonplace on the battlefield, mid 16th century.
Their development happens about the same time as the processes that allow for there to be steel plate armor.
But do you need guns for them to be developed.
The "fencing" weapons all come the idea that your opponent isn't wearing armor.
Armor that was, mostly, abandoned because of firearms.
Firearms that aren't any better than crossbows that didn't spur people to stop wearing armor; at least according to the stats in the game.
GURPS gives more realistic guns and thus you can see why someone wouldn't want to be wearing something heavy and uncomfortable that didn't do much to protect them.
Pathfinder? FuzzyGeff informs me that if you get a crit hit with a gun, it's pretty spectacular, but otherwise, it's the same as a crossbow for damage and rate of fire.
Crossbows, in the real world, didn't spur the abandonment of armor, despite there being some that can punch all the way through the knight, saddle and horse if fired downward at an angle like you'd see if they were firing from a wall.
I'm old enough to have been issued both an M1911A1 and an M9.
I remember reading, literally, decades of gnashing teeth about it too.
By the time we had the M9 competition we needed new pistols. I saw our arms room and it was only other units getting their new M9s that let us get the pick of the litter for our .45's.
New M1911A1's had two big problems in 1979 and 1984. They would be expensive and they weren't in NATO compliant 9x19mm.
By 2014 when we started noticing the M9's were getting worn out there was a real effort to get upgraded versions of the Berettas beyond the already issued M9A1.
Beretta put forth the M9A3 further updated to M9A4.
But but but modular...
Looking at a couple of places, it doesn't look like the M9A4 and M17 are all that different in price out there on the commercial market despite there being a commercial version of the M17 that's about half the price.
I just wish the military could internalize the nugatory value of a pistol and just pick one.
No special requirements. No features that will never be utilized (like modularity*).
There's almost nothing about a pistol that needs more than a large commercial-off-the-shelf purchase.
If you did that you could also buy American. I'd much rather see Ruger or Smith and Wesson get the money than a subsidiary of a foreign company.
Even more, I would like to see us buying designs again and then bidding out the manufacturing. Colt, after all, didn't make most of the M1911A1s. I completely understand why that won't fly, but it'd be nice.
All of this is coming to my mind because, with all the problems the P320 is having in LEO and government agencies, I can't help but wonder if the M19 is around the corner.
I would really think it would be great if S&W could get that contract and put the military back in the M&P name.
We could even stick with the M9A1. Beretta still makes them. The M9 is actually still in service.
* If they were REALLY embracing modularity there wouldn't even be an M18 designation. There'd just be the M17 and several barrel, slide and frame combinations for the armorer to make the unit's guns from.
I'm reading a lot about about P320 issues and I remembered something.
The New York trigger for Glocks.
Cops drawing their pistols by the trigger isn't even a gun problem, it's a user problem and Glock had a fix for it in a very short time.
I don't think they even needed to be sued to figure out the heavier trigger to alleviate the issue.
It doesn't feel like Sig is taking the issue seriously.
That perception can affect a decision to buy.
I think that people are losing their minds harder with Trump Derangement Syndrome than Bush Derangement Syndrome because Trump is actually doing something.
We have a local version with DeSantis, he's making bold moves and they don't know how to handle it when they dislike them for being the wrong party AND they're bucking the status quo.
Because the hated republicans were only allowed to maintain the status quo when they were in power, never to reverse the ratchet.
A while ago, Shadow was kind enough to knock my Lego Atredes Ornithopter off the dresser.
Like all such events, it broke apart into its component parts spectacularly.
Because the wings have a folding and flapping mechanism, it was not a simple matter of just putting it back together because the linkages were now loose and misaligned.
I'd have to take it even more apart to start back to reassembly.
So I put it off for months.
Tonight I decided to, finally, put it back together.
I got it all the way to mounting the wings when I noticed I had parts left over.
Structural parts.
I needed to take it apart almost as far as when I started to get those pieces back in.
But it is back together and placed where the cats don't go.
HUZZAH!
The VA pushes Gabapenten hard when you complain about any kind of chronic pain.
I get suicidal ideation at low doses, so it's not for me.
Turns out, I might have dodged a bullet with it.
I'm flakey enough on my own!
The Left keeps forgetting that, for the Right, violence is binary and not a continuous variable.
When they finally find the Rubicon and cross it I don't think they will care for it.
And I won't feel sorry for them. Ample warnings have been given.
What really bugs me is how often in the last five years that the whackiest conspiracy nuts have been the most accurate about what's going on.
It's like using the National Enquirer for daily news.
Your party is in a city and you decide to have a random encounter, so you consult the table on page 191 of the OG Dungeon Master's Guide and roll "Harlot."
That's all well and good, you think, but what KIND of harlot does the party encounter?
The table on the next page has you covered!
Harlot encounters can be with brazen strumpets or haughty courtesans, thus making it difficult for the party to distinguish each encounter for what it is. (In fact, the encounter could be with a dancer only prostituting herself as it pleases her, an elderly madam, or even a pimp.) In addition to the offering of the usual fare, the harlot is 30% likely to know valuable information, 15% likely to make something up in order to gain a reward, and 20% likely to be, or work with, a thief. You may find it useful to use the sub-table below to see which sort of harlot encounter takes place:
01-10 Slovenly trull11-25 Brazen strumpet26-35 Cheap trollop36-50 Typical streetwalker51-65 Saucy tart66-75 Wanton wench76-85 Expensive doxy
86-90 Haughty courtesan
91-92 Aged madam
93-94 Wealthy procuress
95-98 Sly pimp
99-00 Rich panderer
An expensive doxy will resemble a gentlewoman, a haughty courtesan a noblewoman, the other harlots might be mistaken for goodwives, and so forth.
There's a table for virtually any kind of encounter in the DMG...
Bullpup rifles have their list of practical problems.
But they sure do look kewl!
Aly and Kaufman LLC makes an interesting lower receiver that mates with a BRN-180 upper.
Considering the L85A1 was, originally, based on the AR-18, it makes sense that you can adapt an AR-18 based upper to a bullpup lower.
It's $980 for the lower kit as shown. $850 for an appropriate BRN-180 upper. $26 for the flash-hider. $75 for the, coming soon, pistol grip that's closer to the real deal and $160 for a set of irons that look like a non-SUSAT equipped gun.
I'd put a Primary Arms SLX 5x36 on it for another $330 and skip the irons.
I read a snippet about the reliability of the British L85A1 that gave a mean rounds between failure of just 95 rounds.
The US M4 carbine MRBF is 500.
That got me to wondering how that translated to a GURPS malf number.
The M4 gets the default TL6+ malf number of 17; which means it malfunctions on a critical failure.
The L85A1 gets a malf number of 16.
Are those 500 and 95 rounds between failure?
So I asked FuzzyGeff who's better with the maths than I am. Any errors in the math as shown here are from me transcribing them incorrectly, I am sure.
A malf of 16 corresponds to a MRBF of just more than 20 rounds!
A malf of 17 corresponds to a MRBF of almost 52 rounds.
What the actual fuck?
But that's just firing single shots and both weapons can fire 3 rounds per roll in semi-automatic fire.
That raises the MRBF to 62ish and 155ish each.
Still WAY below spec.
It also illustrates that the "so unreliable millions of pounds were spent to fix it" rifle was holding to the default normal reliability standards in GURPS.
Even more fun... This is per roll.
In full auto the L85A1's GURPS MRBF raises to 269.4 and the M4 to 775.7.
This underscores that GURPS is a GAME and not a simulation.
Making things less reliable than real creates more drama and excitement.
FuzzyGeff found a quote: "And once again, Probability proves itself willing to sneak into a back alley and service Drama as would a copper-piece harlot." that sums it up really well.
I have misophonia.
Shit you don't notice drives me batty.
Watching videos or listening to some podcasters is like this for me:
"The GASP thing we're talking about GASP here SMACK is the sounds GASP made by them trying SMACK to GASP breathe and seem to SMACK always have sucked their GASP cheeks in when they GASP pause dramatically GASP between sentences."
The mic picks this up because they put in the wrong place or have the settings wrong.
This is not the least reason that I prefer to read rather than listen to someone drone on about a topic.
Another, informative, YouTuber, Mark Smith of the Four Boxes Diner's delivery drives me nuts as well.
He will emPHAAAAAAAAsize a word in his repetitious style and it's like nails on a chalkboard for me.
Ironically, actual nails on a chalkboard doesn't trigger me at all.
The FBI has released a report on the P320 going off on its own. PDF warning.
Interesting, if dry, reading.
The conclusion is that it can go off by itself if everything lines up correctly, and that can happen during a normal day's duty for an officer.
This sure looks like something:
How many LE agencies have dropped the P320 now?
I wonder how long the M17 and M18 are going to last with this bad press.
Never mind the troops honest opinions of the M7 are starting to get attention too.
Hookers and blow only get you so far, eventually you need to make a product that works.
I have a pdf file of the complete GM microfiche for the 91-96 Chevrolet B-Body parts list.
It's a truly wondrous document if you have one of these cars.
A buddy is going through tribulations with The Car Formerly Known As The Biscayne SS.
He ditched the drum brake rear end for a disc brake rear.
When he had that done he also upgraded to strange axles and a super-duper gear style locking differential.
Three years and 4k miles later things went pear shaped and one of the axle seals failed and all the fluid took the opportunity to depart containment.
When they were pulling things apart, they discovered the axle bearings were of the "axle-saver" style and not the standard type.
My buddy indicated he purchased new bearings with the new axles and gave them to his mechanic, Mike.
Mike has since stated that the bearings that my buddy provided were "loose" and he replaced them with what was found in the tube all fallen apart.
Which brings us back to the parts list!
You could get two different kinds of brakes and three different diameter ring gears in the 91-96 Caprice/Impala.
There are several housings to account for it, but there's only two axle bearings to deal with.
One is for wagons using the very common 8.50/8.625" ring gear 10-bolt and drum brakes.
The other is for all other applications.
I wonder if my buddy got a set for a wagon which is expecting larger diameter axles and that Mike didn't check and just assumed the loose was because of worn surface on the new axle.
I am watching from afar.
I am fascinated how Pam Bondi went from having that list on her desk, just needed some redactions before she could release it, to "there is no list."
Somehow I think that the conspiracy people are more accurate than the official version and the conspirators are Streisand Effecting themselves.
Just because the Democrats aren't getting anywhere with their gun control in Florida, doesn't mean they're not trying.
They file their bills every year and they don't make it out of committee any better than pro-gun bills do.
Those repeated attempts and their grandstanding about it is why I can't trust them.
Failing and trying aren't the same thing and I won't relax just because they're failing.
What really worries me is how many of the "Republicans" up Tallahassee way used to be Democrats as recently as a single election ago. I don't believe they've had an awakening and think that Republican values are their values now. I think they changed parties because the Dem brand is so tainted they wouldn't have been elected or re-elected if they'd kept the branding.
A Democrat governor demanding gun control could most certainly sway some (maybe even enough) RINO's to get gun control passed.
I watched Governor Scott do it, and he was nominally pro-gun, after Parkland.
Imagine how bold they'd be with a Dem governor!
So yes, I do believe that the Democrats absolutely cannot be trusted because of their positions on guns.
Yes, I believe that they are still trying to ban guns, because they ARE trying to ban guns. They just suck at it.
So I don't hate DeSantis, like the bartender does.
I don't hate JD Vance, like the bartender does.
I would vote for either of them over ANY Democrat we're likely to see running for president.
DeSantis and Vance don't worry me.
Kevin shares US v Rock Island Armory.
The Central District of Illinois dismissed the charges and the government did not appeal.
Read the whole thing.
It's something.
It's not dicta.
The suits over SBR, SBS, and AOW have a precedent in this case.
Veddy intresting.
I can be nice.
I can be polite.
I can never darken the door again.
You tell me how I should just suck up the tyranny, I can just not bother to come by and pay for the goods that keep you employed.
A pity.
I will miss the place.
I cannot wait to see how the protests against immigration in Mexico are different from protests in the USA against immigration.
Because the Mexicans will surely have the moral position and we 'Mercians won't.
I do so love watching them spin hypocrisy in a manner that the normies can spot.
GURPS is not a simulator.
It's a tabletop role playing game.
A game.
Yet, it's been remarkably accurate about the effects of firearms.
I've been doing "Will it GURPS?" for longer than I've had a blog because the first two editions explicitly called out a "reality check" and if what you were doing was impossible in the rules, but worked in real life: Reality trumps the rules!
That, alone, might be why I like GURPS so much to keep dabbling with it despite not playing more than a handful of sessions in 30 years.
My recent dive into .30 Carbine underscored it a bit.
A typical person has 10 hit points. After taking 10 points of damage, they have to start checking to see if they pass out from the wounds. After taking 20 points of damage, they have to start checking to see if their wounds killed them.
We have anecdotes of people hitting Chinese soldiers and getting no results from those hits.
I think I've managed to recreate the scenario with the rules.
The cold and underpowered ammo at longer ranges needs many hits to disable a 10 HP person inside the rules and seems to match reports from the battle.
The numbers I have for the underpowered ammo drop .30 Carbine down into pistol cartridge power levels and we have ample examples from police shootings that it can take many hits to stop someone.
The real problem will be breaking it to the players that their ammo is compromised and nobody has any extreme cold experience to tell them they're taking a penalty to their Guns/TL (Rifle) skill.
"Bloody murder!" they will cry!
Old Radar Tech dropped some estimated numbers for the degraded .30 Carbine performance and it's spot on the same as .30 Super Carry.
Ouch.
I found one, ONE, forum entry claiming that a 1950's lot of Cartridge, caliber .30, Carbine, ball M1 was loaded to 1,600 fps. Minimum spec. is 1,900; ideal is 1,990.
Update: 1,600 fps drops us to pi- territory
That gives us 3d+1 pi-. 4-19 raw damage with an average of 11 which is halved after penetrating armor.
With a 7% velocity drop because of the cold, we're at 3d pi- (3-18, avg. 10).
Against a normal, human, target that's going to take a few rounds to stop someone with DR 1 winter gear on. 2 to get consciousness and 4 to get death rolls.
Remember, though, out past 330 yards, damage is halved.
That's 2-9 (avg 5) for the 1,600 fps stuff and 1-9 (avg 5) for the 1,488 fps.
That's TEN solid hits, on average, to get to a death roll.
I've found a few anecdotal accounts where troops were engaging at 400+ yards.
You're not going to see your impacts at that range on clothing and with the sights not agreeing with the bullet's path, you're probably not hitting either.
The right drugs will give high pain threshold and the cold will also numb the recipient of the round to cause even good shot placement to the torso to be ineffective.
But let's take them at their word that they saw the impacts and hit where they were aiming. It'd be blind luck too. The bullets would be hitting low because of the cold with up to spec ammo and even lower with the underpowered stuff. 7 to 10 inches at 100 yards. 28 to 40 inches at 400.
Even with high pain threshold, an average hit of 11 to the torso will get 10 to penetrate which gets reduced to 5 and that will get the bad guy to 5 HP and they continue to charge!
Nailing them in the vitals will get 30 points delivered and two death rolls.
Past the 1/2D range, though, it will take ten average hits to get a consciousness roll on torso impacts and two to the vitals to get death rolls.
Now that we've gone through all that...
When did the Korean war end? 1953.
I know a bit about the US Army supply chain and I'm not thinking it's likely that the 1950's vintage ammo that's been tested understrength made it to the troops, even if it was made during the three years of fighting. The Army tends to FIFO their stuff.
Got a comment suggesting that M1 Carbine ammo in Korea wasn't up to snuff.
I can't find the information they're citing, but the looking for it did turn up some interesting stuff about cold weather and ammo performance.
An Army publication for snipers (FM 3-22.10, Sniper (Dec 17) referenced in this link) says the round will impact 1" lower at 100 yards per 20°F the temperature is below the temperature when you zeroed the gun.
FM 3-22.10 pg. 4-147. The change in the point of impact is best determined by referencing past firing recorded in the sniper data book. As a rule of thumb, a 20-degree increase in temperature will raise the point of impact by one minute; conversely, a 20-degree decrease will drop the point of impact by one minute.
And that's with a spitzer shape, not a round nose; like the .30 Carbine!
Chosin was -35°F and if the troops had zeroed on a nice 75°F day there's a 100 degree difference, or a 5" change of impact at 100 yards. 10" at 200. 15" at 300...
That's assuming the cold soak didn't weaken the springs so bad the hammer doesn't hit hard enough to set off the, now, less sensitive primer...
Norma published a video showing that .30-06 lost velocity as it got colder.
Room temperature average velocity is 2,625 fps.
28°F ammo is 2,575 fps. (1.9% drop)
0°F ammo is 2,532 fps. (3.5% drop)
Norma specifies 2,772 fps. for this round from a 24" barrel, so we're also seeing the effect of losing 2" of barrel in the test.
2,772 gets us the bog-standard 7d pi from .30-06.
2,625 drops it to 7d-1 pi.
2,575 gives 6d+2 pi.
2,532 gives 6d+2 pi.
A 3.5% drop in velocity for an M1 Carbine goes from 1,990 fps. to 1,919.5 fps.
That drops it from 4d+1 pi to 4d pi. Still plenty of energy to penetrate winter clothes.
Losing another 3.5% to get to Chosin temps (baseless extrapolation here) gives 1,850 fps and 4d pi.
With these numbers one cannot help but concur that the troops were missing their targets.
There's a couple of sources that mention the Chinese troops were drugged to the gills. I've written about another case of bad shot placement and drugged up opponents before: Juramentado.
The M1 carbine's .30 round cartridge does 4d+1 pi. That's 5-25 points of raw damage with an average of 15.
According to High Tech p. 64, winter clothing can provide DR 1 at the GM's option.
That will mean that .30 Carbine M1 ball will easily punch it, doing 4-24 points of damage (average 14).
That's certainly enough to knock someone down.
But let's say that a Chinese winter coat is heavier stuff than mere winter gear.
Reinforced padded cloth armor gets DR 2. 3-23 points penetrate (avg. 13).
What about the theory that ice on the outside of the coat somehow provided more protection?
Ice is DR 3 per inch. So, maybe DR 1 for a good coating of the stuff? Still getting 2-22 through (avg. 12).
Still enough to get them unconscious if they blow their HT roll on a body hit.
So, I think we can say that all those troops were missing their shots rather than doing damage.
Even the rare hit on the web gear or ammo pouch doesn't account for enough DR to completely protect them with the persistence of the myth.
Shots past 330 yards get half damage. 2-12 (avg. 7) raw.
Even through the heaviest theoretical coat and ice, 0-9 (avg. 4) will penetrate; but 1-11 (avg. 6) is most realistic. It'd take a couple of hits at that range to drop them, but with the low recoil of the carbine, it's doable.
The M2 carbine will do the same.
Assuming that the damages GURPS, I think we can dismiss the myth that the winter gear of a Chinese soldier in Korea was stopping rounds.
It's a 9' tall, 650ish lb. orangutan. Maybe 700 lb.
Being the geek I am, I calculated the things ST from its weight.
17 or 18.
How strong is a normal orangutan?
I remember them being a lot larger, like 300 lb. for a male.
Nope.
Just 165 lb. on average for a GURPS ST of 11. About the same as a chimpanzee.
Gorillas are 400ish lb. and rate a ST of 15 in case you're curious.
Rounding out the great apes is we humans at ST 10.
Please notice the quotation marks around, "the carbine couldn't penetrate a Chinese winter coat."
Why would I put those little bits of punctuation on that?
I'm fully aware that most of those "failures to penetrate" were almost certainly from missing.
It's not an obscure theory.
I'm speculating about the whiz-bang fancy new sights they added after WW2 are to blame because they can be fiddled with.
I've seen people pull the peep all the way to the longest range setting because it sets higher and that makes them easier to see without squishing your cheek down on the stock.
But that also means your shot is going to go high at close ranges.
This adjustment isn't present on the original rear sight. You get two settings, just like the M16A1.
Then there's the windage adjustment knob. Get a bored soldier playing with that and forgetting where it was when zeroed and you're missing to one side or the other.
I figured this out on my own because the German winter gear isn't significantly thinner than the Chinese stuff and the Carbine was well regarded enough to retain in service and keep developing after WW2...
When you get a catalog in the mail, add up the value of all the things you're not buying.
That way you know how much you saved.
If you simply don't buy the things without adding up how much they cost, you're not saving anything, you're just not spending money.
You feel way more smug with a value assigned to it!
The gravel belly is sort of the military equivalent to the Fudd.
Its why a bullet-proof rear sight on an M16A1 was changed to a fiddly one on the M16A2.
But it's older than that.
You should see the complicated sights we put on our infantry rifles.
Then go on to not bother teaching the troops how they work.
The people who wanted and needed the vernier caliper quality in the rear sights are people compete on known distance ranges.
As WW2 progressed, we asked the troops if they were using the adjustments in their sights. We interviewed captured troops. We exchanged information with our allies.
It was a rare soldier who bothered to adjust the range setting. It was nearly unheard of to change the windage setting.
So the Army responded by keeping the sights from the Garand and put them on the M14. Then they added adjustable sights to the M1 Carbine.
Bahwah?
I would love to have God's video tape to see if all those "the carbine couldn't penetrate a Chinese winter coat" were actually misses caused by the rear sight being easily adjustable now and knocked completely off zero by the soldiers absent minded fiddling around with it.
I think things are different now, but I do note that the back-up iron sights we issue all have a range setting and can be adjusted for windage without tools.
A long, LONG, time ago...
Willard asked me about installing a bayonet lug on an M1 carbine.
When we found out that the front sight needed pressed off we kind of forgot about it.
I stumbled across a pic of an early configuration M1 carbine with a 30-round magazine in it and it reminded me.
So I went out to see what it WOULD take to updated it to the late configuration that's mostly associated with Korea.
Front-barrel band and bayonet lug is $29.
Rear sight is $35.
The tools to remove and install the sights are $100.
Plus taxes and shipping.
Then there's the, mandatory, M4 bayonet: $150 to $900 depending on vintage and maker.
What amuses me about the project is how many people were converting their carbines from the later configuration to match the WW2 one.
Wading into the CMP 1911 pond again...
The lifetime limit has been increased from one to four.
While I defend the idea of buying one for the provenance, I just can't justify four to myself.
This is where I start agreeing with some of the objections and evoke "mixmaster."
It's not a case where you can get one of each maker because the parts were scrambled several times since 1945.
I'm not in the two is one and one is none frame of mind with pistols I obtain for the having, not the using.
But every one of the three I have left in my limit is one more available to someone who wants that single example.
If I were to get another .45 Gov't Model, I'd get a blue one.
I still need me a 10mm example.
PS: Someone checked the market and $1,700 is about where the $1,200 condition guns are trading.
GOA emailed me bragging about what we got from the Big Beautiful Bill® the other day, how it was their goal from the start and how happy we should be about it.
Today they share a video from VSO Gun Channel that's complaining about being stabbed in the back by the Republican Party.
For fuck's sake, pick a fucking lane!
It's OK to say, "This is what we hoped to get, we didn't get it, but we got something and what we got, while not perfect, is at least a step in the right direction."
GOA has never understood how the sausage is made.
No compromise strikes again?
I'll take the incremental win.
A $0 tax plus registration lays the groundwork to have it declared unconstitutional because its entire legality hinges on it being a tax. $0 is not a tax. Sucks that it's going to take FOREVER to get it through the courts, but...
GURPS was initially released this day in 1986.
FuzzyGeff and I bought our copies a bit later.
We didn't play it long because the 2nd edition was released less than a year later on June 2, 1987.
I played 2e a bit longer than many because 3e didn't make it to the AAFES bookstores while I was stationed in Germany.
But 2e lasted just longer than a year before 3e was released on August 18, 1988.
3e lasted 16 years and one day if you don't consider 3eR being released on July 7, 1994.
A pro gun ruling came out of the 5th circuit, again.
I don't live in the 5th circuit, so telling me what a great deal it was doesn't really matter.
I live in the 11th.
While you're celebrating, could you, maybe, explain why this is good for the rest of us outside the 5th?
Because, as I read it, this is a circuit split on 18-20 year olds owning guns and we have the 5th saying 18+ can own and the 4th and 11th saying, "gotta be 21."
Are you alluding to this circuit split means its more likely that SCOTUS will take up the case?
Stop alluding and say it then?
I'm happy for the residents of the 5th circuit, but you have GOT to stop acting like victories that don't affect a rather large population matter to us.
Not a lot is being done for Florida by the pro-gun forces and it's getting stale reading about how great it is elsewhere.
Dear GOA:
Getting the tax on, some, NFA items knocked down to $0 while keeping the registration and enhanced background checks is a, mostly, good thing...
It is not a major victory for our rights.
It is NOT what you set out to accomplish.
You bragged about how you got the language for full removal of short barrel rifles & shotguns and suppressors into the Senate version of the bill before the parlimentarian squished that plan.
Now that we have crumbs rather than cake you're bragging like this was what you planned all along?
Gods it ticks me off the way you guys try to communicate.
Having a bit of a tiff with someone on Arfcom over basic dimensions.
A basic dimension is one without a tolerance. No plus, no minus, it is what it says to infinite decimal places.
Most of the time that dimension exists as a datum for other dimensions. Those dimensions have tolerances so the thing you're making can actually be made.
This person mentions this, but goes off on how you can never hold the basic dimension without some kind of tolerance on it.
To that I say bullshit.
I've worked places that held them on mass produced items.
I will say that you shouldn't use them unless that dimension is critically important. It's expensive to set up to hold such a dim and uses more resources from quality control to assure it's being held.
But I did like him explaining to me my job for over 16 years.
Andy Richter predicts that people will use MAGA in 20 years like we use Nazi today.
Do you mean to label anyone you don't like who opposes the Democrat party line?
President Republican is LITERALLY MAGA? Like that?
Because you dancing monkeys have so overused Nazi that I'm not even sure that Hitler was literally Hitler any more.
I do remember how you slandered the Tea Party people as racists, so I don't think I'm going to listen to you.
That's still not listening to you, Andy. Your opinion never mattered.
The greenies have decided that avocados are now haram, I need to include them more often in my diet.
Which is great because they're good for me and I like them!
Remember that graph that showed how hot The Gulf was that compared a really recent average to a range starting in 1878?
There's also some swelteringly hot years before that cut off as well.
I can't imagine a meteorologist not knowing that.
If you're going to figure a mean you need to use the entire range!
Wanna bet if we use the records going all the way back to the 1600's that the Spanish were keeping that we're going to find that it's not really that much hotter today than it's been historically?
Remember when we didn't need to read the 2,400 page Obamacare bill and would have to wait for it to pass to see what's in it?
Now a 940 page reconciliation bill needs to be read in whole so...
They're emphasizing how big this bill is and forgetting the multi-thousand page monstrosities they shoved through in the past.
R and D operate to different standards.
The "No Tax On Tips" bill excludes independent contractors.
Most strippers are independent contractors.
This is fundamentally unfair!
Whether you like it or not.
The Schoolhouse Rock vid in the post below explains why they exist.
The usual suspects, in their shrill attempts to blur gender pronouns created a position where they wish to use no pronouns.
And I used two pronouns in that sentence to talk about them... Did it again!
Pronouns are inescapable if you're still speaking English.
I find it very odd that someone whose job is writing doesn't understand English this hard.
But it's possible that as a game designer, they (<--pronoun!) think that all the rules are mutable because they certainly are when you're designing a game.
Tonight I made Harvey stop talking for a second so I could parse the tempo of the bangs to decide if it's gunfire or fireworks.
I realized I've been doing it for years, but this is the first time I was consciously aware I was doing it.
Steve Jackson Games hires the lead designer from Possum Creek Games, Jay Dragon.
Possum Creek Games becomes an imprint of SJ Games.
All of the new game announcements are for old Possum Creek IP.
Who could have predicted this?
PS: Jay Dragon doesn't use pronouns. So if you have to talk about Jay Dragon, I guess you have to use the full noun.
PPS: Here's a simple lesson in WHY we fucking use pronouns, Jay Dragon.
D-P-355a refers to a set of drawings.
Rock Island Arsenal last updated them in 1960.
This is some OLD SCHOOL drafting! They don't make drawings like this any more. They didn't make drawings like this when I was still drafting.
Of note is the use of geometric tolerancing. That was state of the art in 1960.
I'd suspect (guess) that Rock Island was told to take the 1928 prints that all M1911A1's were made to and get them up to current engineering standards in case war were declared.
Now, this print tells you WHAT to make, not how to make it. The processes of how to make this part to this print is called a "technical data package".
Colt, historically, has been VERY reluctant to part with that documentation. In WW2 they basically had to be forced to give it up. Even so, Remington Rand lost almost a year's production of parts that were nominally to the print, but wouldn't interchange with other makers guns.
I remember talking with New Jovian Thunderbolt when he took a 1911 armorer's class and his talking about fitting parts to a gun.
I was reminded of:
D-P-355a 3.3.2 states, "Interchangeability. Unless otherwise specified on the drawings, all parts shall be interchangeable. Pistols and repair parts shall be capable of meeting the interchangeability tests specified in 4.3.3.4 and 4.4.4 (In normal assembly operations there shall be no objections interposed to preferential assembly of parts provided that all parts are dimensionally acceptable.)"
One thing, in particular stuck out and that was the ejector. It's retained by a notch in the ejector by a pin in the frame.
He described all the careful measuring to properly locate and align that notch in a virgin ejector.
In the Army TM the procedure was to secure the frame in a drill press, install the ejector and drill it in place; effectively using the existing hole in the frame as a fixture.
I am often curious about parts interchange among all the 1911 clones out there.
I know I've watched a lot of vids about how to fit a safety because I'm considering changing the style on my .38 Super. The safety is one of the drop-in parts on a mil-spec M1911A1.
Software Janitor has spoken of fitting a barrel to a slide once or twice.
We don't have an unlimited plan for our cell phones.
When three out of the four phones on the plan go out of state, we use up our data.
We know how much the overages cost and we brace for it.
But the phone company keeps telling me I'm over and it's $20 a gig and I should change to an unlimited plan...
Which would be a whopping $20 a month more for all four lines.
The thing is, we only go over like once every five years.
So $160 or so every five years or $240 a year for the same five years? (That's $1,200 for you liberal arts majors).
Thanks, but we got this.
The Senate parlimentarian squished our hopes at sneaking the removal of suppressors and short guns from the NFA.
I am not shocked at all.
Every single time I've mentioned the CMP is selling M1911s, someone just has to mention you can buy a new one for what the CMP wants.
It's an odd psychological compulsion.
I should have finished my degree and gotten a job in academia to get a grant to study it.
It happens with cars quite often as well.
Lifetime limit is increased to two.
Prices are in the link, repeated below:
Service Grade $1300. Pistol may exhibit minor pitting and wear on exterior surfaces and friction surfaces. Grips are complete with no cracks. Pistol is in issuable condition. Pistols may contain commercial parts.
Field Grade $1200. Pistol may exhibit minor rust, pitting, and wear on exterior surfaces and friction surfaces. Grips are complete with no cracks. Pistol is in issuable condition. Pistols may contain commercial parts.
Rack Grade $1100. Pistol will exhibit rust, pitting, and wear on exterior surfaces and friction surfaces. Grips may be incomplete and exhibit cracks. Pistol requires minor work to return to issuable condition but is functional. Pistols may contain commercial parts.
SOLD OUT – Range Grade – $1150. These are 1911 pistols for those that want a part of history and a shooter, not a collectable. These are 1911s that have been modified in some way, and may have some commercial parts. No two (2) pistols are alike, the modifications / parts could be any of the following: Night Sights, extended Beaver Tail, Rubber Grips, Barrels, Oversized Slide Release, Target Triggers, Adjustable Rear Sights, Tactical Match Hammer, Competition Grip Safety, Sight Rib, Slides, Checkered Front Strap, Ambidextrous Safety, Different Finishes. Some of the manufactures of these parts are: Bar-Sto, Wilson, Ed Brown, Pachmayer, Hogue, Caspian and Bomar.
Auction Grade (Sales will to be determined by auctioning the pistol). The condition of the auction pistol will be described when posted for auction. Click here to view our CMP Auction page.
All pistols are inspected and test fired by the CMP. The shipping cost is included in the price.
Prices are a bit higher than when I ordered.
If I am going to piss on all these graves of gun control pricks who've I've outlasted, I need to hydrate better.
Carolyn McCarthy has entered Hell.
Good!
Do you lock up your guns so that your choice is limited to the gun you assigned home defense duty?
So that if you do need to defend your house you're not dithering about which gun to use?
Just me?
Again?
I am making no progress on some gaming fronts and it hit me why.
I'm not going to get to use what I've figured out.
The incentive to finish it is gone knowing that there's no players.
Not even players I've never met running a game with a GM that isn't me.
Doing it in GURPS means that 99.9% of TTRPG people reject it immediately.
The group I played with before I moved to Florida abandoned GURPS pretty much as soon as my taillights were hidden by terrain.
My hand has hovered over the "delete" button on my gaming folder on the hard drive more than once.
I like playing around with it, but it's become random here and there.
FuzzyGeff doesn't even seem interested in talking about it anymore.
He's moved on to Pathfinder.
C'est La Vie.
Maybe I'm too much of a car guy, but depreciation and resale value has not once entered into my decision process for buying a car.
I either think it's cool and want it for that or I need a box to take me where I need to go.
My cars aren't investments.
I care more about them lasting than retaining value.
Moxie is Iowa rusty, but she runs. That's enough reason to keep her.
There are no longer any 24-hour Krispy Kreme Donut locations in Florida.
Dunkin Donuts 24-hour locations rarely make the donuts at that location and are frequently out. Never mind that if you do find one open, it's drive-thru only and 95% of the experience of getting donuts is looking at what they have on the rack.
I want my America back.
Snag yourself a way to watch The Park Is Mine with Tommy Lee Jones.
It was originally a made-for-HBO film, but don't let that dissuade you.
Student loan forgiveness is back on Facebook!
"Not paying back a loan made with someone else's money isn't forgiveness, it's THEFT!"
The implication that the person who's in default is the thief.
However, that's not true.
Making a loan with someone else's money is theft.
The borrower didn't steal from you, the loaner did!
So, what I want to see, since this matters so much to you: Where are your objections to federally guaranteed student loans. Make sure it has a date stamp that precedes the "student loan crisis."
Because if you were fine with them as long as they were being paid back, you're fine with the stealing of your money.
If you were fine with the loans and them being paid back, then you also have to get OK with the idea that there will be defaults. There will be circumstances where there will be massive defaults (happens with housing too). There will be defaults massive enough that the best financial decision for the lender is to erase the loan balances.
"Wait! No! That's different!"
No. It really isn't. What's different is a degree isn't repossessed or foreclosed.
You've been led astray and you're blaming the wrong people for the problem.
It's the universities still stuck in the paradigm where having a four year degree, ANY four year degree, led to a decent, white-collar, job.
If the content of your education didn't matter then students were free to pursue anything that interested them and universities were incentivized to provide degrees in those subjects.
I remember when a degree in black lesbian studies led to employment in an office.
A job, by the way, that used to require a high school education.
But that's a topic for a different post.
Shadow, it would seem, likes scotch.
I'd finished my drink and she dipped her paw into my glass and licked her paw clean.
Then she returned for three more dips.
The Balvenie Caribbean Cask is very tasty, so I cannot fault her.
I'm just surprised that she likes it!
When I was we wee lad, I got interested in dinosaurs, sharks and mosquitos.
In 1975 there were exactly zero movies about dinosaurs and mosquitos.
But there sure was a movie about sharks!
I did not practically beg my dad to take me to see it. I LITERALLY begged.
So we went on opening day.
It was not what my 6.5 year old ass was prepared for at all.
It scared me a lot and I think I watched more of my seat back hiding my eyes than I did the movie.
But I had an AWESOME time!
It's fun being scared by a movie.
It also shines as a positive memory about my father.
I remember, vividly, September 12, 2001.
People were PISSED.
W was able to talk America down and get us aimed at Iraq and Afghanistan.
I am not so sure America will do that, this time, if Iran starts blowing shit up with sleeper cells.
America scared is terrifying.
We're a, "kill them all, let God sort it out," people.
Yes, we will feel bad about the injustices committed and innocents killed along the way; but we won't do anything about it really.
Get America good and pissed and unrestrained...
I'm scared of that. Glad I'm not down range.
That's a great tag line, isn't it?
No more forever wars.
What's your basis for a war ending?
Not having to do it again in about a generation? The Great War World War One fails that.
Bringing the troops home? World War Two fails that. The Cold War fails that. Korea fails that.
Vietnam, widely regarded as a loss succeeds at both of those metrics. The troops are home and we haven't felt the need to go back...
The enemy doesn't want to go again is prolly the best indicator of winning.
Despite the agitation of groups like the American Indian Movement, The Indian Wars are won.
WW2 is really a win, despite the troops still being there because we started The Cold War almost the same day that Doenitz signed the surrender instrument.
I still feel like we won The Cold War too. Sun Tzu would applaud how the win was obtained too!
To play World Police, we need forward bases and we already had them in place in Europe and Asia.
But the war on Terra Tara Terror... We're not attacking the root causes, just responding to their attacks. In essence, a purely defensive war. Ask the Confederacy how a defensive war works out. Or France.
Curtis LeMay understood.
Sometimes you have to fight and if you're going to fight, fight to fucking win!
That will mean killing people.
That will mean destroying things.
But you need to take the war to the bad guys and defeat them on their home turf. You have to eliminate that home turf, even if it's in a "neutral" nation. Pakistan should have been a lot more afraid of Bin Laden getting caught is all I'm going to say about safe haven nations like that. Heck, I still think we owe them for that.
While blowing up Iran's labs is great, it's not going to end the conflict.
We're going to be blowing up their labs again unless they do a change in leadership.
Changing that leadership is not something the US has EVER been good at. Just look at our attempts in banana republics. South America has every right to resent our attempts!
I endorse an approach that leads to Iran being our friend. It's been clear since 1979 what is in the way.
By the way, speaking of 1979 and nations providing safe haven for the problem makers. France was instrumental in allowing Khomeini to take power in Iran.
Where were the calls from the Democrats to impeach Barak Obama in 2011 when he ordered air strikes on Libya?
I'm looking at you Bernie.
A local weatherman posted a bar graph showing how much hotter the Gulf of Mexico America was than the average.
Average? Do the mean the mean? Mode? Median? They don't say.
But I happen to know something about math and a bit about statistics.
This is cherry picking.
The average they used is arbitrary and suspect that it's not near so bad if you calculated the mean temp from 1878 to present.
But why stop at 1878?
I happen to know a bit about The Old West too. We had some record cold going on in the 19th century. Like the year without a summer, 1816? Four of the worst seven years for cold are in the 1800's and another is 1978 which is used in their determination for their mean.
You don't think they would have picked an average that's cooler than normal and then picked a start point that's also colder than average to make the current temperatures seem abnormally high, would they?
I got accused of having Dunning Krueger.
But Thag know this math.
The GBU-57A/B is the only weapon capable of getting at facilities like Fordow.
The MOP can only be carried by a B-2A.
The B-2A is only used by the USAF.
I figured we'd send a couple over sooner or later just to make sure the place got taken out.
I've long thought that our response to our embassy being attacked should have been a lot more dynamic than President Carter's actions.
I guess he was busy with fucking Rhodesia and couldn't spare the time?
I was always surprised that Operation Preying Mantis didn't go further than it did or that we didn't find some excuse to hit them during the reflagged tanker period.
Iran has repeatedly acted like there was a state of war between them and the US.
I always think it's strange they're surprised whenever the US response has been, "OK! War it is!"
And they keep being surprised that all of our weapons do what we claim they do. You'd think people would learn that we can't keep a secret from 60 Minutes so we don't really bother hiding the capabilities all that much.
Does the media really not know this joke?
It was endemic with every engineering place I ever worked.
"How long until project X is done?"
"Two weeks!"
And it was always two weeks even if we were making prints to send to the shop. Even if we'd just started a multi-year job.
Two weeks!
But since there's a number in it, that makes it math and something not covered in journalism school.
More than once with food processing and construction I've read about when ICE shows up and arrests the workforce, there's a line of Americans around the block applying for the jobs that Americans won't do...
That sure seems to me that the employers froze Americans out of their workplace and that makes them complicit in hiring illegal labor.
I'm sure they have their weasel words ready and proof they're not technically liable, but...
I have to admit, I am bit torn.
I definitely don't want a nation that has "Death to America" rallies to have a nuclear device.
But, for as long as they've been at it, you'd think that Iran would have come up with something by now. Something includes a power plant, by the way.
It took less than three years from theory to Trinity. With 1940's tech.
On the other hand, it does feel like if they weren't up to something, we wouldn't keep finding out about secret nuclear research labs.
Which brings us to the recent statement by the IAEA chief that Iran isn't intending to build a bomb. Considering how often a new, secret, facility that the IAEA had no knowledge of is found... Forgive me for being skeptical of their analysis.
Looking at things, I've been hearing about how close Iran is to making a nuke for close to 30 years and there's, proven, timelines to get there that are far shorter.
Which does make me wonder just how bad the post-Shah brain drain was.
Was everyone smart enough to make a nuke also smart enough to escape?
Happy Summer Solstice!
Not for about 12ish hours, really. The actual moment of the solstice is at 10:42 pm EDT.
I get 13 hours 56 minutes of daylight today!
If we were still on standard time we'd only get 12 hours 116 minutes of daylight.
Every once and a while a scent will trigger a memory.
Ammonia will trigger memories of tank gunnery.
We were not unhappy with the rotten, old duct work.
Yes, they leaked cold air into the attic.
Yes, they weren't insulated against the hot attic.
But they worked just fine.
Set the thermostat for whatever and you got that.
The new ducts...
One room is hot.
One bathroom can be used to hang meat.
This is not what I asked for, this is not what I wanted.
But I got told, repeatedly, how much better it was going to be.
When I complained that I didn't get what I wanted, to be told that I could spend more money to get it...
Let's just say the fucker is lucky that Harvey wasn't home.
The next problem of the day was finally getting the AC company out to hear the complaint I had on the very first day of our new ducts.
There is insufficient flow into the main bedroom.
It needs more flow than the rest of the house because it takes a direct hit from the sun from an hour past local noon to sunset. The Eastern faces have trees so that side of the house doesn't need near so much flow.
They're taking the position that they explained to me things that they never mentioned.
Harvey was there too, and she corroborates my recollection.
On the plus side, they did give me a tip that we had the vents set all wrong.
I admit that it's better with the vents angled correctly.
The big problem, at least as far as the kittens are concerned, is the bedroom door MUST remain open during the day.
That means that Shadow and Beeper must finally settle their differences.
The door has been open since before noon and Beeper hasn't even stirred from under the bed and Shadow has wandered in a couple of times without a fight starting.
Fingers crossed!
The Boy clogged the toilet.
He did a good job cleaning up, and the toilet appeared to flush, so I wasn't too worried.
But then I saw water all over the garage.
When we washed the towels used in the clean-up, when the washer drained it hit the blockage and overflowed from the shower drain in the garage bathroom.
I plunged at a few points, got things so they didn't back up instantly and put some Drayno™ down.
Ran some hot water for a while.
Second load of laundry didn't back up, so tentative success!
