Mist The FEMA Kitty Update

She's up to 5 lb. 7 oz.  Up from the emaciated 1 lb. 6 oz. when we took her in and expected her to up and die on us.

Going to be getting spayed in a couple weeks.

 

This Is Awesome

 Best April 1st video ever.

Refreshingly Honest

Spoke to the person at the local VSO that the American Legion hooked me up with.

For the first time, ever, the person who is supposed to help me wasn't even implying that I would be getting a substantial increase in my compensation.

There was a bit of a hang up trying to explain that I'm wanting an increase because the underlying problem got worse since I got out, not that I want something from before I left the service added on.

We're going to reconvene after my neuropathy assessment.

Appreciation

 My blade of Slavic might has gone up in value a bit since 2017.

$39 then, $100 now.  Even the ones with mismatched serials are $80.

Instantly out of stock, as is typical of emailings from Atlantic.

I Like Him As An Actor

Val Kilmer has succumbed.

Wikipedia says pneumonia.

I watch one of his earliest movies, "Real Genius" fairly regularly.

Quote Of The Day

"Uh oh!"

-G. A. Custer

Crowned

Got my tooth, temporarily, fixed.

I needed a new crown on the bottom, aft-most molar on the starboard side.

This tooth has been a bane for years.

It was the first tooth I'd ever needed a filling in.

The first tooth I'd lost a filling from.

The only tooth that needed a second filling.

Now.

The only tooth in my skull that's needed a crown.

The temp crown is mounted while the permanent version is being fabricated.

Should be installed in two weeks.

Despite the panic attacks, the dentist and his assistant were awesome!

He warned that, sometimes, once they started they'd find a root-canal would be needed.

We didn't end up there, but I told him that if we needed a root-canal on that tooth we'd revert to the Spanish and say, "extraction!"

He started to object and I said, this damned tooth has caused enough BS and this is its last chance!

Asking The Important Questions

Should Northrop-Grumman win the F/A-XX bid...

What cat name should be applied? 

I like Bobcat because the stealthy thing will almost certainly be tailless.

Speaking Of Itty Bitty Ribbons

The Clint Eastwood film "Heartbreak Ridge" has an interesting scene.

When he first arrives at his new duty station Gunny Highway bumps into his future LT.

LT Ring looks at his ribbons and gives a little exclamation.

It's subtle.

It's the sort of thing I've seen in person.

My 1SG was a medal of honor recipient and it was always fun seeing the reaction from people who'd forgotten where they'd put him.

My most amusing day was when top was all pissed off at something with me in tow and he blasted past CG 1st Infantry without saluting.

CG bellowed out, "First sergeant!  Wasn't there supposed to be a salute there?"

Top looked at him and replied, "It's OK, Sir, I don't really mind."

While CG was turning purple, his Aide-de-Campe reminded him of whom he was speaking...

That three star snapped to attention and gave the sharpest salute I think I've ever seen.

Top just returned the salute and said, "Carry on, Sir."

Yeah

Watching the last season of Cobra Kai and they discover a chest in Mr Miyagi's old house where they find he had a dark past.

Um...

I could have told them that from the first movie.

Staff Sargent Miyagi is a Medal of Honor recipient from the 442nd.

There's no happy, bright, shiny path to that itty bitty ribbon.

For Fuck's Sake

The company we're insured through did not change.

The member ID number did not change.

The group ID number did not change.

The persons covered by the policy did not change.

So why did my dentist think the policy was inactive?

Because the date start date changed from 01Jan24 to 01Jan25.

It's really odd that this tripped them up because they managed to automatically update this every year for the past five.

But not this year.

Not when I have a cracked tooth to look at.

No Dentist For You!

I am sure glad my cracked tooth doesn't hurt because I cannot see my dentist.

They can get me in today, but the fucking insurance that The Lovely Harvey pays for every paycheck apparently doesn't show as active in the system.

She called HR two hours ago and they have not replied yet, so I had to cancel my appointment.

This isn't something that should be difficult, but her HR department routinely fails to get it taken care of.  We went through the same shit with her health insurance over her knee and a recent eye appointment.

Crunch

That crunching was not a bit of eggshell missed in the making of hard boiled eggs in the chicken salad.

It was a point off the back of a molar.

Happily, no pain!

Sadly, the dentist doesn't open until 0800.

The same bottom rear molar that I had filled in a few years ago.

Fair Winds Anjin-san

Richard Chamberlain has shuffled off the mortal coil at 90.

I enjoyed his work in more than one instance.

Most especially in the Shogun miniseries.

Contractual Obligation

There is, often, a deliberate disconnect between what marketing says and what the contract stipulates.

If you signed the contract based on the marketing and didn't read the contract, that's on you.

If you trusted someone with marketing and contracts that don't match, it's completely on you.

When the other party adheres to the contract rather than the marketing hype; you were not betrayed.  You were duped.

You are among the many born every minute.

But since the contract was available for you to read, submit to your lawyers, develop counter proposals, do your own marketing...  Fuck you.

Wuhan Flu Redo

Back when COVID first started going around, me and The Boy (and Marv) all clearly had it.

I never got vaccinated, I figure that catching and surviving a disease being the surest form of immunization I'd be fine.

I have been.

I know several people who took the jab and are on their fourth or fifth round of being sick with Wu Ping Cough.

It's like the jab not only doesn't prevent you from catching it, it also keeps you from building an immunity from surviving it.

That's not how vaccines are supposed to work!

I Like Big GURPS And I Cannot Lie

I keep sticking my nose into RPG debates abotu which rule set is best.

Being a passionate advocate for GURPS, it's the rule set that I think is best.

I'm the first to admit that I haven't played a different system since...  1995?

And that was AD&D 2e.  I didn't have much fun because I was forced into the Cleric job.  I'd never made a cleric before.  Then I wasn't familiar with Forgotten Realms.  I wasn't familiar with the campaign.  AND I was only there to demonstrate to another player that they could be replaced.

Not a recipe for fun.

But picking a system and sticking to it doesn't mean that I didn't learn and play others.

I played every edition of D&D from the OG boxed set to AD&D 2e.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1e.

Chaosium's Basic Role-Playing in at least three settings.  Stormbringer being the one we used these rules for the most.

What became the Megaversal system with Palladium fantasy and Robotech.

Top Secret in two editions.

Champions in more than one edition.

Boot Hill.

Gamma World.

Star Frontiers.

Traveller LBB.

Twilight: 2000 1e.

Ghostbusters.

Teenagers from Outerspace (TFOS).

Toon.

FASA's Star Trek RPG.

2300 AD.

Mega Traveller.

You know what I found?

You can play, with one exception, any of those settings with GURPS.  The only sets of those rules that were better than GURPS was Champions and TFOS.  At least with GURP 3e.  4e is at least as good as Champions now.  Only Toon completely failed with GURPS.

The great thing about it was that once we learned the rules we didn't need to learn new rules for a new setting.

The bad thing was keeping the players out of the parts we weren't going to use.  That's a headache.

But nothing about my passion should make you feel bad about using a different system and having fun.

I've had fun with almost every one of the above listed systems.  The GM makes or breaks the game.  Your fellow players make or break the game.

But I am sick of people shitting on GURPS because they had a bad experience.  *A* bad experience doesn't mean the system sucks.

My bad experience with AD&D 2e had nothing to with the rules.  My conversion of my Wemic cleric from those rules to GURPS came with reading the 2e rules and Forgotten Realms setting.  I think it was a very streamlined experience from OG AD&D.  I think I would use those rules to play D&D if I were to use a D&D ruleset.

I've no experience with later editions, though I've heard positive reports.

It is clear, though, that later editions are emphatically, not the D&D I played once upon a time.

New races.  New classes.

A Warning

While everyone focuses on the weaponry; the truly impressive and frightening thing about the US military is this:

We can put a fully stocked, fully staffed, ready to begin sales, Burger King anywhere on the planet in 48 hours.

Think hard about the implications.

From A Treatise

I was reading about dueling and found a translation from the Italian:

"He runs his mouth as if he could hold a sword."

That, is a burn.

Now With Better Cameras

If you remember this post from a couple years ago...

A different channel has revisited it.

It goes without saying, do not stand in front of 75mm cannon unless you're Superman.

Update:  The PAK 40 firing an APCBC PzGr39 round does 6dx10(2) pi++ with follow-up of 3d cr ex.  APCR PzGr 40 should do 6dx12(2) pi++.  They don't mention what they're firing...

But 6dx12 pi++ from a mild steel solid will, on average, do 252 points of damage which will be doubled in a torso hit for 504.  60 gets you to auto death and 110 gets you to unresurrectable.  This GURPS!

The headshot is 6dx18 pi++.  378 on average. -2 for skull DR.  x4 for brain.  1,504 delivered.  Dead right there, not coming back.  This GURPS!

It Wasn't Like AAA Came And Got 'Em

 

FTL Speeds

In case I never calculated it before:

Jump 1 is 170.1c

Jump 2 is 340.1c

Jump 3 is 510.2c

Jump 4 is 680.3c

Jump 5 is 860.3c

Jump 6 is 1,020.4c

By way of comparison...

Larry Niven's Known Space quantum I hyperdrives are 121.75c.  Quantum II are 420,768c!

Star Trek speeds for the OG TV series were supposedly the cube of the warp factor times the speed of light or:

Warp 1 = 1c

Warp 2 = 8c

Warp 3 = 27c

Warp 4 = 64c

Warp 5 = 125c

Warp 6 = 216c

Warp 7 = 343c

Warp 8 = 512c

Warp 9 = 729c

Warp 10 = 1,000c

This is not consistent and several point in the various shows contradict it.

Ooops!

This is just down the road from me!

Plane flips after emergency landing. 

No injuries, they say.

When I first saw the pics I thought it looked like a very survivable crash.

I Have Fond Memories Of MAD Magazine

 

FB

I'm reading about how Boeing got the contract for the Air Force's F-47A.

Most of the press is saying that it's Boeing's first "clean sheet" fighter design.

That's not true.

The FB was not developed from another design.  Nor was the F2B.  Nor was the P-26A.

The first clean sheet design since the merger with McDonnell-Douglas?  Yes.

The first clean sheet design ever?  No.

I read the story and went looking for the P-26A as the first clean sheet design and was surprised that they'd made two fighters for the Navy before they made the Peashooter for the Army.

Not Suppressing Your 1st Amendment Right

I am not saying you cannot say that.

I am not trying to forbid you from saying that.

I am making fun of you for saying that.

Things You Can't Do Anymore

In 1984 or 1985 the motorcycle gang club my dad was a member of decided to do a winter road trip to Mexico.

We started in Minneapolis.

In WINTER.

If you rode the whole way, you got a special patch!

Since I already had all the winter gear from riding three-wheelers in the snow, I opted to ride the whole way.

I, foolishly, left my patch jacket with my dad when I moved back to Iowa. 

However, this story is not about that!

This is 500 bikers descending on Mexico in January for three weeks.

Actually, it's not a story.

It's mentioning that I climbed the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan.

That is no longer allowed.

I can understand why.

Still, it's neat to be able to say I did something like that.

It also occurs to me that seeing both the Teotihuacan site and several Egyptian pyramids (though from a distance) makes me a bit unusual.

The trip to Egypt was taxpayer funded and the whole battalion got to go play in the desert with our tanks.  The exercise was cancelled because of a terrorist threat, so it was really camping in the desert with tanks rather than a real joint exercise.

The ride on the ship across the Med was fun.

Grecian Formula

This is an M1951 web gear compatible Greek M1 Garand ammo pouch.

It is 2 lb. 11.5 oz. with four 8-round en bloc clips and 8.4 oz. empty.

There are M1951 style grenade loop and retainers (as shown with my fetching dummy grenades).

The clips need to be inserted as shown!  If they are both nose down or nose up, it's very difficult to get them out with the pouch loose in your hand, and would be impossible with it attached to your web gear.

 

If you have the outside clip nose up, the back of the inside clip snags on the hem of the mouth.

A decent means of carrying 32 rounds for your Garand and, I assume two pouches were given each soldier for a total of 72 shots.  Less than the 104 carried in the WW2 pouches, but all of them are more readily accessible in the Greek method.  Three pouches and a canteen would balance OK to tie the capacity of the old 1923 belt.

By way of comparison the M1956 Universal Small Arms Ammunition Pouch is 12.5 oz. empty and 2 lb. 15.7 oz. loaded with two 20-round FAL magazines.  With a basic load of two pouches and one mag in the gun we have 100 rounds on tap for just a 1/4 lb. more on your belt and a pound more in your arms. 

Loading a field dressing and four 20-round M16 magazines loaded with 28 rounds each is 3 lb. 6.6 oz.  Two pouches and 18 more in the M16A1 gives 162 rounds.  For about 3 lb. more on your belt and almost the same less in your hands.

A Soviet pigskin ammo pouch for a Mosin Nagant carries 30 rounds on 5-round clips for 2 lb. 4.4 oz. (6.6 oz. empty) and you get a much lower rate of fire for not a lot of weight savings.

Daytona Spring Fling 2025

The Beast and the car formerly known as Biscayne SS.

My buddy JT rode with me and we met with Adam.  Adam is whom I sold the Biscayne SS to and from whom I bought The Beast.

Attendance was, I am told, down from last year.  They suspect that was because of the admission going from $40 to $60 per show car.

There were still some interesting cars:

'62 Biscayne with a 409 and three on the floor!

I took this shot because I loved the color.  It did not photograph well.

'70 Mercury Cyclone.  A friend of mine had three of them and all met bad ends.

Dodge Custom with lots of subtle changes.  Including a 6.2 Hemi™.

Just room for your ass and a can of gas!

Motivated seller.

This car, also, didn't photograph well.  It looks black until the sun hits at the right angle then it's a dark bronze.  Epic Mercury Moterrey!

Mandatory General Lee.  Required by law at any car show with more than 20 cars south ot the Mason-Dixon line.

 

Update:  

There were many fake Camaros at the event.

 Just as all Chevelles are SS's, all real Camaros are SS/RS/Z28 Yenko Pacecar Convertibles.

Don't be fooled by kit cars.

I Don't Remember It Being This Complicated

My dad and I dropped a 250 into a '47 pick-up and it didn't seem as complicated as this to get the electrical system updated to 12v in 1984.

 We replaced the entire starter and alternator without rebuilding anything.

Are parts to do the conversion in one step no longer common?

How Did I Miss This!

Feeling It

Both knees and my left hip don't appreciate the activity of messing with the wheels and cleaning the car.

Luckily, there's self-medication!

Beer!

Doesn't dent the neuropathy in my shins, but it does help with arthritis. 

It's as close to exercise as I can manage and a lot of it is completely off my legs anyways.

I have a little roller stool instead of "rice paddy prone" for lifting the wheels back on and the behind-the-bumper work was sitting on the cold, hard concrete floor of the garage.

Cleaning the car needed more standing up, but I could brace off the walls and such.

Ready To Roll

The Beast is not getting smaller as she ages.  I started washing at about 4:30 pm and am just getting done waxing at 8:00pm.  The pic is from before I started waxing.

I took a few breaks, had dinner and helped the neighbors hang a blind in there too.

I don't wax her every wash.  McGuire's TechWax2 is pretty resilient stuff, I get 6 months easy before it stops beading.

Adam's Wheel and Polish's Wheel and Tire Cleaner is the shit!  Spray it on the rims and brake caliper, let it sit for a minute and hit it with some high pressure water and VIOLA! them rims and calipers be CLEAN!  Best wheel cleaner I've ever used.  Thanks to Marv for finding and trying it out.

Now I am ready to leave in the wee hours for the Daytona Totally-Not-Spring-Fling-Because-That's-Trademarked-By-Somebody-Else Turkey Rod Run Spring Car Show!

We still call it the Spring Fling and have to remember Turkey Rod Run to find the show information...

I have not gone to this show in 10 years.  Last time I took The Precious.  The Biscayne SS went several times too.

 

A Duel!

I hearby challenge President Donald J Trump to a duel!

Between whatever 150/40/5 point GURPS 4e character he dares bring to the table and a character of my own creation of the same points!

Winner gets to brag about it.  If I win I'm framing his character sheet and hanging it on my wall!

I will supply dice, snacks and beer.

Our seconds can decide the TL and weapons allowed to the characters.  They will also decide if dropping all 150 points into a single skill is allowed.

I'd argue against it, a well rounded and complete character will make for a more interesting game.

I'd say it was a duel to the death, but I doubt there's any physical risk past a paper cut and an imaginary character really isn't alive so it can't die.  Also, The US Secret Service gets REALLY touchy about even joking about killing the president.

I'm not even threatening him.

Though it might be hilarious to see what the Secret Service does about having the president visit the home of a gun owner to play a couple hours of GURPS.  Prolly insist we meet someplace a bit easier to secure.

Detailed Documentary About How USAID Works

 

Rare Pic

 Check out that grenade launcher on the left port side!

That's a Mk 20 Mod 0 40mm automatic grenade launcher.  It fires normal 40x46mm grenades. 

It's not often pictured, they didn't make very many.

It's hard to tell, but that's actually a color picture.

L->R Mk20 Mod0, 2x M16A1, M79, 4x S&W Model 15-2, 3x M16A1, M60C and the muzzle of an M60 blurry in the foreground.

Non Video Version

To ghost load your Remington 870:

Load the magazine with as many rounds as you want with the action open.

Drop a round in the chamber.

Place a round on the elevator.

Push down on the round as you partially close the action to get it started.

Pust the elevator back up as you close the action the rest of the way so the nose of the round partially enters the magazine.

Viola!

I don't know if this works with other pump shotguns.

In Phase

Prior to taking the front wheels off to gain access to the fog light housings, it was smooth sailing up to about 60, then the steering wheel would shake until about 70 when it would clear up again.

One, or both of those tires are slightly out of round.

A trip to meet a friend for dinner had a more pronounced vibration at 55 that kept getting worse past that point. 

Rotating the front-right wheel two lugs forward seems to have corrected the issue and I'm back to smooth up to 60.

Even better is the wheel shake is less at 60 and hardly apparent at 65+.

Victory!

The ultimate solution will be to get new tires that haven't been screwed up by worn suspension components.  But we're not to affording that yet.

Torque

I previously lost confidence in my torque wrench because the rear axles came loose on The Precious.

I have been suspect of its replacement because of a recurring vibration at about 60 that can get worse if the wheels are out of phase.

Tonight I took out the old one, dialed it to 140 and checked it against the lugs which had been torqued with the newer wrench.  It clicked without moving them.

Then I moved one wheel two lugs over and torqued it down with the old wrench.

Then I checked the torque with the new wrench.

They agree!

The problem with the axle nuts on the C6 wasn't torque, but it's really not a good design.  I ended up using a jam nut arrangement to keep them secure.

The vibration is from damaged tires from the ruined front suspension and taking way too long diagnosing it.  Holden really did a number with the geometry and it defies my double-A-arm education.

Tentative

If we can believe the statements of the Secretary of Education, the dismantling of her department is not supposed to get in the way of student loans.

That's a sigh of relief for small colleges all across the nation.

A big fear of these places is that the only source of higher education would be the state run land-grant universities and the states choosing a path that eliminated competition.

Eyes crossed most selfishly because Harvey works at such a small college.

The Hook

Remember back when they declared Biden not competent enough to stand trial over those documents?

Think they will use that to show he wasn't competent enough to sign pardons?

Interesting times.

What About Higher Ed?

All the news talk about shutting down the Department of Education is talking about concerns K-12.

Nary a peep about what higher ed programs are affected or what's to become of them and how this will affect colleges, big and small.

Our secretary of education keeps repeating that she wants services to continue to the people who need them, but the details are scanty.

Installed a better quality fog-light housing into The Beast!

TYC vs West Taiwanese No-Name:

Pic of the new housing installed without the bezel in the way so people can visualize how to do it:  Bog standard M6-12 flange-bolt and flanged nut.  GM uses a $9 plastic nut that clicks into the hole and you screw the bolt in from the front.  Since you have to access the tabs for the bezel from the back anyways...

 

The TYC has a better pattern than the West Taiwanese version (though they're prolly both made there) and they're aimed better because both bulbs are seated correctly.

Ghost Loading

I never take a shotgun when making a character, but this is a neat trick that you'd have to show the GM the video for them to let it happen.

 

Update:  Hope everyone saw that, YouTube has decided that loading an extra round in your shotgun is violation of their terms.

Mom's Favorite

I found this great spot on a grassy knoll and I'm standing there, braced and aiming when his fucking head explodes!  Then the bimbo is on the trunk lid picking up parts and they speed off.

I didn't even have to shoot!

That fucker you picked to take the blame actually did it!

Yes, I still want paid, you cheap bastard.

Not Cool

One nice thing about having never been cool is that I'm never going to try to get it back.

I feel left out of the cool kids things from time to time, but it's better to have never been cool than it is to have once been.

Bonus, there's no urge to change to remain cool or cutting edge.

I don't have to jump to the next big thing just to stay where I am.

I'm looking at a couple of bloggers who're clearly broken by Trump 47 in a way they never were by any previous president.  They say they aren't, but didn't feel the need to justify their actions when they were doing then what they are doing now...  Even though now is much more pointed, harsh and frequent than then.

I will even cop to agreeing with several of their points!

I can't put my finger on, exactly, what reads different now, but it is different.

It might just be that it's no longer cool do be doing their schtick with the current Ocupante de la Casa Blanca.

The Science Is Settled

Neil DeGrass-Tyson says there's only eight planets.

OK Boomer. I have a different scientist of equal credibility!

Interplanet Janet says nine.

 If you've ever answered a test question by singing a School House Rock song to yourself, you might be Gen-X.

Positive Note

Got a couple pieces of good news from my doc at the VA.

First, for the first time ever, I lost some weight!  Just five pounds from last year, but it's not a ten pound increase like it's been for the past five.  At this rate I will get to my target weight just in time to die of old age.

Second, he's referring me to the neuro people to confirm the neuropathy diagnosis I'd gotten after my bone scan five years ago.  If they confirm it, then it will go a long ways towards increasing my disability percentage.

My cholesterol is par for the course for my family.  Higher than they like, but without any of the things that it's normally a precursor to.  McThags don't have heart problems as long as we avoid diabetes (and my A1C is perfect!).  We have cancer, liver and dementia killing us.

I Learned It From YOU OK?

What makes a battle rifle?

What distinguishes it from an assault rifle?

Easy, right?

Turns out, it's nothing official.

The M16 isn't called an assault rifle.  It's just a rifle.  "Rifle, 5.56mm, M16" in fact.

Change that to M16A1, M16A2, M16A3 or M16A4 as needed.

Surely the M14 is a battle rifle then?

Nope, "Rifle, 7.62mm, M14."

Yet.

We know what we mean when we say "assault rifle" and "battle rifle" don't we?

They're informal designations.

Looked at one way, "assault rifle" can mean any rifle used in an assault.  A battle rifle can be any rifle used in battle.

But we typically mean that an assault rifle is select fire, detachable magazine fed and firing an intermediate power round.

A battle rifle is the same, but firing full power rounds.  Right?

But isn't a Garand a battle rifle?  K.98k?

Not so clear cut is it?

Especially since battle rifle is used informally for any military issue rifle, regardless of if it's full power or intermediate.

I know where I first saw the distinction.  Twilight: 2000.  The FAL and G3 were battle rifles.  The M16A2, AKM and AK-74 were assault rifles.  I am sure they didn't invent the terms.

And Everyone Knew It At The Time

The agreement to defend Ukraine's borders if they gave up their nukes was meaningless when they wrote it up.

The president of Ukraine was Moscow's buddy and they were really looking for assurances that NATO wasn't going to invade them and if they did, Russia would help stop the slavering western hordes.

NATO knew they weren't going to invade because NATO doesn't do that.

Russia knew they weren't going to invade because they had an agreeable government in place in Kiev.

That Ukraine would become pro-West and anti-Russia was never contemplated.

Russia invading wasn't on anyone's bingo card in 1994.

It was a big, meaningless media event calculated to make Bill Clinton and the UK leadership look good in the press at the time.  "Look!  We're bringing peace forever by reducing the number of nukes out there."

Actually it was good, those nukes were aimed at the West at the time too.

The Budapst Memorandum is doubly meaningless because the actions required of the signatories are minimal.

All it really says is Ukraine's borders will be treated in accordance with the Helsinki accords.

You know the non-binding Helsinki Accords?

So if you're on your high horse saying we betrayed Ukraine, remember that doing nothing is allowed under the Helsinki Accords.

But I was around and blogging in 2014 when Russia invaded Ukraine the first time.  Ukraine didn't give Crimea to Russia.  Russia took it by force of arms.

Where were you Uke boys then?  I heard nothing for 8 years.  Obama certainly didn't send troops or arms.

Well, if you read the Budapest Memorandum and Helsinki Accords, we're supposed to head to the UN and hammer it out there.

1. Respect the signatory's independence and sovereignty in the existing borders (in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act).
2. Refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of the signatories to the memorandum, and undertake that none of their weapons will ever be used against these countries, except in cases of self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.
3. Refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine, the Republic of Belarus, and Kazakhstan of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.
4. Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".
5. Not to use nuclear weapons against any non–nuclear-weapon state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, except in the case of an attack on themselves, their territories or dependent territories, their armed forces, or their allies, by such a state in association or alliance with a nuclear weapon state.
6. Consult with one another if questions arise regarding those commitments.

We sure made some sternly phrased resolutions.  That we did!  Just like the non-binding-never-ratified memorandum says we should.

Read that part again.

NEVER RATIFIED! 

Without ratification we're not obligated to do fuck all.

For 20 years everyone acted like we'd ratified it, but we hadn't.

It's like going to court for a crime that congress passed but the president didn't sign.  It's not a law, so your behavior wasn't illegal.

So, for the "nobody is ever going to trust us again" crowd; you've been complaining for three years about something that wasn't ratified for 30.  Where were you then?

I know where I was.  I was thinking it was pretty slick of Willy to have gotten those nukes away from a pro-Russian state without giving them anything in return.  And I hate that fucker.  THAT was our national interest and national interest goal achieved without any losses.

I think a lot of people need to learn how things really work out there before they go a ranting about betrayal.

Second Attempt

There's rumors flying that Neill Blomkamp is going to make a new Starship Troopers movie.

Further, the rumors state that he's going to stick to the book.

That's better than the previous attempt by Paul Verhoeven, if true.

Not sure how well the book can be translated to film, but I've seen a Japanese anime that did a better job than Paul "Everything Military Is Nazis" Verhoeven.

I've ranted continuously that if you're going to license a property, then DO that property.

We've got a few great examples that show that it's a good plan.

The Hunt for Miss Red October.  <- This one stands out because other adaptations of the Clancyverse failed to adhere to the books and didn't do near so well at the box office.

The Lord of the Rings.

Harry Potter.

300.

Dune.

Stick to the source material and the fans who've been keeping the books in the best seller rack since... a long fucking time ago will plant their asses in the seats with popcorn.

Notice that the fans will forgive some departure from the text because they understand the differences between the mediums.  But you have to hew close to the source!

Rubbing My Meat

I tend to be someone who yanks it out of the package and slaps it on the grill.

Tomorrow, though, is the inlaws anniversary and we wanted to make it special.

When they lived in Iowa, they'd hit Texas Roadhouse for dinner and split a ribeye.

They've complained about other steak places around here for not tasting right and I figured it had to be because of a rub.

Well, I found three sites with recipes that agree about what Texas Roadhouse is using for a rub and The Lovely Harvey said, "we have all that!"

So she mixed up the spices and I applied it to the steak for them tomorrow.

Plus a different rub that I had erroneously been led to believe was a clone of the one we found later.

I've never done a rub before.

We're going to cook them up and see if it triggers happy feelings.

They like medium well.  Ugh!

I prefer medium minus.  Maybe I can slip it past them cooked properly! 

Harvey also says I should salt the others before cooking because it helps make a crust and retains moisture in the meat.

Going to be fun no matter what.

We're thawing some hamburger in case of a disaster.

Even if all goes wrong with the steaks, there will be baked potatoes.  I know how to do those!

We Have Been Ordered By The Court To Say

I noticed at the local tobaccanist there's a sign that says that "RJR Tobacco has been ordered to display this sign stating that smoking is harmful to your health by court order wherever our products are sold."

The phrasing of that really makes me think.

They're not saying their products cause harm.  They're saying they've been ordered to say it.

It's like when your parents told you say thank you for the slipper socks from your aunt.

It's like then the coach tells you to say you're sorry and shake hands.

You don't mean it, but you have to say it.

Now, I am not saying that smoking is good for you.

I will go out on a limb and point out that neither side is being completely honest and that every single study on tobacco use was paid for by one side or the other and the results are suspect because of the "he who pays the piper calls the tune" bias.

Round-Up herbicide is the same sort of thing.  Convincing a jury to pay out is not the same thing as the plaintiff's claims being actually true.  There's a part of me that still believes that if it were truly harmful that after losing that case, the regulatory agency in charge of it would be forcing them to pull it off the market.

Just Empty Every Pocket

Helped a buddy replace the evaporator and heater core on his '99 TJ Wrangler.

That's a remove entire dash deal.

Just like The Beast will be.

Unlike my car, someone has been in there doing wiring.

Someone who wasn't very good at it.  Worse than me!

It seemed to go pretty smooth until it came time to recharge the AC.

First we found that Marv's new AC gauges and lines leak like sieves.

His old set with the battered gauges work great and he ran home to get them.

That let us get the system evacuated and confirm that it'd hold a vacuum.

Then we couldn't get the compressor going.

Jumpering the pressure switches didn't engage the clutch, confirming that they were seeing pressure.

Jumpering the AC relay, however, did engage it.  That let us finish charging it up.

We did a whole lot of tracing wires until I found that the damned fuse for the AC relay was missing.  My buddy thinks that a fuse-tap got taken out of that slot and put back in another empty position in the fuse box.  Putting a 10a fuse in the AC relay spot made the AC work correctly!  HUZZAH! 

Then there was no heat.

The heater hoses were getting plenty warm, so it wasn't a blockage.

I speculated it was the blend door being hung up and the blend door motor was visible with the dash back together.  It was moving, maybe 10° when it needed to move 90°!

I pulled the motor and found that the blend door wouldn't move at all by hand.

We think that we got it jammed when we put the heater box back together.  It's a fiddly part of the reassembly.  To fix it would mean pulling the heater box back out and that means taking the whole damn dash apart again.

Summer is coming and winter is a long ways off.  He's leaving it until then.

Can't says I blames him.

PEBKAC

Note to self.

Function F1 toggles the touchpad.

Control F1 does not.

That's important.

Clean Enough

It's a long standing axiom in engineering that the last 10% of improvement costs the same as the first 90%.

It can be rephrased as, "perfect is the mortal enemy of good enough."

I was a kid in the 70's.

I remember all the pollution my, not liberal at all, parents talked about.

I got to experience the change in air quality as it was happening in the suburbs of Chicago.

The pollution was real.  The improvement was real.

I've worked in water and wastewater treatment.  One of our bread and butter items was selling treatment plants to places that had run out of grandfathering.  The pollution was real.  The improvement was real.  Seeing how little a 1960's plant did to make the water better compared to a late '90's plant was sobering.

One of the things you get to see is the little chart of what's allowable.  Get a substance below x parts per million and you're legal and it's good.

What if x is arsenic?  Arsenic is poisonous!  That's bad!  Get rid of all of it!

Reducing it below the threshold where your body can deal with it is fairly simple and very cheap.  Getting rid of all of it is not.

And that's where we are with the environmentalists.

We've gotten rid of most of the air and water pollution.  Gotten it down below the harmful thresholds and life should be good.

But perfect is lurking, waiting, to kill off good enough to make life impossible.

That the environmentalists don't really seem to care about pollution but forcing a non-industrial lifestyle on everyone is evident in their making up new pollutants.

I am also old enough to remember when the goal was to get combustion from cars down to carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and water vapor.  The GOAL!

As soon as the automakers had pretty much done that and horsepower was returning to cars...  Nope!  Carbon emissions need to be zero!

Plus, food crops cannot be counted for carbon absorption.  Can't have man benefit from carbon in the air.

Blood Moon

 Got it right at peak!

Canon EOS M50; EF-S 55-250 IS II; f/5.6; 1/15"; 250mm; ISO 12,800

I'd have made a cropped version, but it's pretty fuzzy from the -3 exposure stops and the relatively high ISO.

Hand held, auto-focus, stabilization on...

That's A Relief

Ain't heard from Willard in about a month.

So...

Why react when you can overreact?

So I searched for his full name and tagged it with "obituary."

No hits on obituary, but his full name got to his voter registration.

"Republican."

Excellent.  That means he's still alive and kicking because if he wasn't, he'd be registered and voting Democrat.

Five Million

Five million visitors and bots have hit this blog since I moved over from LiveJournal.

Huzzah!

Odd Feeling

Neither of the buildings I attended school in Ames still exist.

Welch Jr High is gone.

Ames High School is still on the same site, but they tore down the building I went to school in.

The school I attended in Nevada, Iowa for 5th and 6th grade, Milford, is still there, but it's a house now. 

Oddly the school in Bolingbrook, Illinois I attended from K to 4th grade is still there.  I was there on day one when Wood View Elementary opened.

The schools I went to in Blaine, Minnesota for 9th and 10th grade are both still there.

The university that I graduated from is both out of business and the building is gone.

I'm not old enough for the world to have changed this much!

Cheaper Better K

Just three years ago I bought two 8gb SODIMMs for Crispy IV.

They were $55 from Amazon, Timetec brand.  1,333 MHz, DDR3, PC3 10600, 204 pin SO-DIMM.  They are $19 today.

2 8gb sticks for DerpyPuter were $35.  Crucial brand.  1,600 MHz, DDR3, PC3 12800 204 pin SO-DIMM.

I like how things keep getting better and cheaper with most electronics.

It keeps my antique laptops running!

All I Wanted Was A Little More K

DerpyPuter has gone from a $1 laptop to a $93.05 laptop with the replacement of the keyboard, battery and upgrading the RAM from 8gb to 16gb.

Pretty good price, overall, I think.  Thanks FuzzyGeff!

Huge processor upgrade from Crispy.

I'm pretty happy with it so far.

Next is to replace the hard drives so I can bring some movies along.

That's another $130 which will have to wait a bit, but it's a want rather than a need.

Breathless

I remember the press reporting the plummeting DOW and NASDAQ numbers as we prepared for the inauguration of  president Obama as no big deal.

It contrasts with the reporting of the DOW and NASDAQ being in flux from the changes wrought by the tariffs being imposed on all sides.

Except the 2008 numbers WERE a big deal.  Watch the movie The Big Short for a complete idiot's guide to that debacle.  It's even an entertaining movie. 

I think the current numbers aren't a big deal.  Changes to taxes always stir up the market and it settles down once the effect of the tax changes are evident and accommodation for them is made.

I could be wrong, of course, but I think I've got the fundamentals right this time.

Is It Just Me?

Is it just me or do many of the "anti-fascist" and "anti-nazi" attacks on Tesla dealerships and chargers look a lot like pictures post Kristallnacht?

Why is it the people who claim to oppose fascism keep doing exactly what fascists did?

Corollary

The corollary of "the police aren't coming" is "the police aren't coming."

Criminals haven't thought this all the way through.

Citizens in Italy, apparently, are ahead of the curve and vigilantism is getting a resurgence.

Fun fact!  Did you know the organizations we know as the mafia originate from vigilance societies?

So far the Italian police have been as ineffective in stopping vigilantes as they've been at stopping crime.

Vigilante is what you get when the government abdicates it's side of the criminal justice agreement.

There's solid reasons to have a neutral, not directly involved in the crime, party do the arresting and trials.

Not least of which vigilantes mete out "justice" when their blood is up and they have a tendency to snag the wrong person for lynching.

But it's not as big a percentage of those punished as you'd think.

Lucifer's Hammer

A plot point from the book Lucifer's Hammer is the constant reassurances that the comet is going to miss... right up until it hits.

Every time I read the reduced chance of 2024 YR4 hitting I think of Niven and Pournelle's book.

Yay?

 

And They Lost

SIG has issued a statement about the P320 and rather belligerently stating there's no problem with their guns.

Summary can be found here.

I'd like to inform SIG that Remington did a better job communicating to the public that the triggers in the Model 700 weren't dangerous and the perceived problem wasn't as widespread as some would have it.

And Remington lost in court.

Evolution Of F-4 Phantom In Combat Flight Simulators (1989 - 2025)

I've played a few of these games and they never seemed as bad as they clearly are now.

Willing suspension of disbelief is real!  I was more willing then than now.

I Think It's A Hollow Threat

OK, we got our minerals deal from Ukraine.

We're suing for peace from Putin.

What's his incentive to stop the "special military operation?"

I'm pretty sure we're not going to war to make sure we can access those minerals.

I doubt we're going to put miners in the way of Russian ordnance to extract them.

What's Russia get?

Land already in their possession?

Considering how much of Ukraine's mineral wealth is under the ground they've taken, not a bad deal.

Bad precedent.  It will encourage future wars.

I can't help but compare Russia invading Ukraine to Iraq invading Kuwait.

We went all in to expel Iraq.

I'm too lazy to really do a comparison. 

Update:  Counterpoint

 

No Scroll Lock

The scroll lock key doesn't light up the scroll lock light on DerpyPuter.

It would appear that Ubuntu doesn't support scroll lock by default.

There's a terminal command to turn on the key for the current session, but it resets when you end that session.

I did not know that and I was worried because I'd recently put a new keyboard in her.

Knowing how to toggle scroll lock is important on Windows especially when you're dealing with a spreadsheet.

Hoof Bump

Happy birthday to the gunblogosphere's bratty little sister Erin Palette!

Being Creative

We once played in a world where only silver weapons could affect were-creatures.

Non-silver weapons would pass harmlessly through them as if they were insubstantial.

The problem was that silver weapons sucked for all other purposes, so we tended to not have them when we needed them.

FuzzyGeff came up with the solution.

A very thin silver wire, under tension, and completely supported by another weapon surrounding it.

His example was a club.

Against normal opponents, it was still a club.

Against werewolves, it was a cutting instrument. FuzzyGeff came up with a lot of evil things like that.

I Still Wish Both Sides Could Lose

No, nothing Ukraine did was casus belli.

Russia is definitely the belligerent here.

Russia did not take their preferred leadership being deposed well.

They didn't care that the Ukrainian leadership was corrupt as long as it stayed in their pro-Russia lane. 

The US stopped caring about that same corruption as soon as the new leadership was corrupt FOR a certain family from Delaware.

But still corrupt.

When Russia took the Crimea, it should have been job one of the Ukrainian government to make sure it couldn't happen again.  I admit they adopted a more Western doctrine, but didn't spend near the money on defense as they should once they had a neighbor that had proven a willingness to take parts of their country by force.

The time to get ready for a war is before the war starts.  Some Chinese bloke said that, that or the cook on Alice.

Russian separatists and Neo-Nazis don't make the situation any easier or better.  Another sub-conflict there where I wish both sides could lose.

But there's some reality to accept on the part of the pro-Ukrainian side.

Without substantial outside help Ukraine cannot hope to keep Russia at the present front lines.  Even with substantial outside help, they will not be able to reclaim any territory lost to Russia.

To get back what they lost requires a cooperative Russia or a bigger war from bigger nations.  The bigger nation most capable of doing that isn't likely to do so because we don't want to get into a nuclear war.

In short, they be fucked.

The best they can expect is to get the war to stop at the present lines.  Worst is losing the entire place.

Russia isn't looking too great here either.  They've spent a lot more than they planned.  Even complete victory will be Pyrrhic.  Even with Europe continuing to buy their petroleum, it's going to be a long time before their economy recovers and most of the sanctions will likely remain in place as long as they squat on the eastern section of Ukraine.

Which brings us to why the fuck was the US involved in the first place?

Well, we don't like it when a bully kicks a little guy, so we were sympathetic to Ukraine and felt a little guilty about letting them get run over in 2014.

Plus the family from Delaware had a vested interest in Ukraine.

Selling them guns is a good choice.

Giving them weapons when they're never going to be able to pay us back because they're never going to win...  Bad choice.  Best to stay out of that.

But we did give them weapons and did so at a time when the coffers were pretty dry.  We've our own financial house to get in order and spending money on a lost cause isn't good business.

How much more do we need to spend until Russia decides that it's not getting any more of the place and decides to quit in place?  How long before Ukraine pays that back?

I'd love for them to be able to win, but what do we get from it?  What's our interest in making and keeping Russia an enemy?

I'm not saying we should be friends, but why are we making them a foe?

For what?

To keep Europe from being invaded?

That, still, sounds a lot more like a Europe problem than a USA problem and they fucking hate us anyway so fuck them!  I know, not all of them, but enough.

Besides, I'm sick of their lopsided tariffs and trade practices.  I'm especially sick of their protectionist hypocrisy and trade practices. 

You will note that I am not allowing comments on this rant.

Well That Was Fast

Canada decides to back off their tariffs when they see we're serious about ours.

I guess a two front trade war against both the US and China was a bit too much for them to contemplate.

Lumanumb

According to Pyramid Magazine 3/85 the DR of an inch of "high strength" aluminum is 35.

This is different from what I'd found earlier.

It makes more sense too, I think.  Otherwise we'd have gone to aluminum armor for MBT's before we realized how it liked to burn.  We made a LOT of Bradleys before we admitted that.

Centurion vs Patton

I was reading about the match up that Pakistan and India had between the M48 and Centurion.

It was noted that the 20-pounder could, in fact, penetrate the armor of an M48.

The Shot Mk.1 APCBC round does 6dx16(2) pi++ and that will penetrate DR 672.

The glacis of an M48 is DR 606.  The front of the turret at the thickest place is DR 716.

So a 20-pounder will punch the glacis on average, but not the turret from the front.

Side protection of the turret is just DR 314, so...

This GURPS!

Of course, it's no coincidence since I used real world numbers to get both the penetration of the round and the armor values.

Fucking LBJ

Lydon Baines Johnson.

That fucker is the author of so many things that fuck with my life and I just read that he's the cocksucker that signed off on daylight savings time.

FUCK!

We just need a bill that erases everything he did and I think we're going to be better off.

Possibly related:  Have you noticed that we haven't won a war since we passed the uniform time act?

Also, we keep expanding the "savings" which doesn't really save a fucking thing.  Most of the so-called benefit comes from the days getting longer because of the axial tilt of the planet and not because we fucked with the clocks.

If we'd left it alone we'd still be on Standard Time until April 27th.

Also also: We tried doing Daylight Saving Time year round for a year and four months from Jan 74 to April 75.  It was a disaster.  It even got some kids killed going to school in the dark.  Dark?  How could that be?  Because the nights get longer even if the clocks are shifted because of the axial tilt of the planet.

If You Just Repeat What They Say Why Do I Need To Listen To YOU

I have three YouTube channels that I am subscribed to that are sponsored by Ground News.

They're basically paraphrasing what Ground News says about whatever world event they're talking about.

So I am sitting here wondering why I would need them to read me the news from Ground News when I can just read it there.

I think I can unsubscribe now.

3/08

 

Because there's no 62nd of July.

How Many Legs Is A Spider Supposed To Have

Because GURPS: Technomancer limits the spider Chimera to a total of 8 limbs.

Two arms on the human torso, two that are shitty arms and can be used as legs and 4 that are only legs.

This is the only image of a spider person in either of the two sourcebooks.

 

But that doesn't match my mental image.

This does (in an anime sort of way).

https://safebooru.org/index.php?page=post&s=view&id=1890273

This gives this for stats: (if the cute little human looking legs are actually crappy short arms)

Chimera, Spider (Homo Sapiens Arachnae) (Pyramid 3/115 p.30 aesthetically modified)

40 Points

Attribute Modifiers:

Secondary Characteristic Modifiers: SM 0.

Advantages: Binding (Webbing) 15 (Accessibility, Target must be grappled, -20%; Engulfing +60%; Melee Attack, reach C, -30%; Sticky, +20%, Takes Recharge, 15 seconds, -20%) [7]*; Binding (Webbing) 10 (Rapid Fire 7, +70%; Retractable, +100%; Reduced Range, 1/10, -30%; Sticky, +20%; Takes Recharge, 15 seconds, -20%) [48]; Claws (Sharp Claws) [5]; Clinging [20]; Extra Arms 2 (Short -50%, Ham Fisted, -5%) [9]; Extra Legs (Eight Legs) [15]; Lifting ST 6 (Accessibility, only applies to lower “spider” body, -20%) [15]; Night Vision 6 [6]; Speak With Animals (Specialized, Spiders, -60%) [10]; Teeth (Fangs) [2]; Toxic Attack 1d (Poison, Cyclic, 1 hour interval, 5 cycles, +40%; Follow-Up, Bite, +0%; Resistible, HT-4, -10%) [6].

Perks: Climbing Line [1]†

Disadvantages: Appearance (Ugly to humans and other non-spider chimera) [-8]; Dependency (Mana, Constantly) [-25]; Lunacy [-10]; Social Stigma (Minority Group) [-10]; Vulnerability (Depleted Necronium or silver x3) [-30]; Weakness (Depleted Necronium or silver, 1d/minute) [-20].

Quirks: Bulky Frame [-1]‡

Features:

* Alternative Ability (x1/5 cost) to other binding advantage.

† As long as you have “shots” of the Binding advantage available, you can create a climbing line, allowing you to use the “rope up” or “rope down” options for climbing (p. B349)

‡ While spider people are technically SM 0, their large lower spider half means they find narrow spaces intended for upright humans awkward, imposing -1 to all tasks that involve fitting or squeezing into something.

 

I think this fits what my mind's eye says a spider chimera should look like better than the official rules.

$90 Rental

If you feel that you MUST have the latest ruleset to keep playing your fantasy RPG, Wizards of the Coast has bundled all three core books of D&D 2024 edition for $89.97.

They are not actually selling you these books.  They are granting you access to them through their D&D Beyond service.

A service which could be eliminated at any time if WotC decides it's not making enough money.  Or if your browser doesn't meet some arbitrary standard.  Or if your OS isn't on the list they support.

So you pay a one time rental fee for the rules.

I've already rejected this model.  I didn't know, at the time, I was participating.  But I have an old WinXP install that cannot play the legit copy of IL-2 I paid for because the server that authenticates the install is no longer there.  Or XP can't talk to it.  But since the game won't play on a newer version of Windows, it hardly matters which.

So I started paying attention if the game I wanted needed online authentication.

This is more of the same with a prettier web page.

Maybe it's the Gen-Xr in me, but I can recall dragging my books, dice, paper and pencils out to the woods and playing around a campfire.

You cannot do that with the digital version of the new rules.

The good news is WotC still sells physical books!  $149.97 for the three core books ($179.97 for both physical and digital).  $50 for each hardcover book is what books like this sell for.  I like paper copies of the rules.

Paper is handy when you need to flip back and forth between two paged and are WAY easier to bookmark frequently used pages.

I also like pdf versions.  They're easier to search and can be used offline.  Though they are less useful camping because of battery life.  pdf also lets me have a copy of rules that I don't really play, but want to reference.  Drive-Thru RPG is great for accumulating nostalgia rulesets!

So far, only WotC has gone subscription service access to the books you've paid for.  We should discourage others from following their example.

The Day The Unbearable Lightness Went Out

 

13 years since Lex went into the beyond.  I still miss him.

Just going for courage this year.

Mules

Spider-people in Technomancer have extra lifting ST with their lower bodies.  ST 16 for carrying stuff with the spider part instead of the normal 10.

That's gonna change some SLA Marshal equations and some unit equipment distributions.

A spider-person can lug a few recoilless rifle rounds round without undue effort where a normal human would struggle.

I might just rearrange my grenadier...

Two Hours

DerpyPuter did a bit more than two hours of normal surfing with YouTube running.  It was showing 48% at the two hour mark then 18% 17 minutes later.

The charge remaining is not being very linear, but this is just the second time I've run it down since I installed the new battery.

ALICE For Garand

Greece hung onto the Garand long enough to issue M1951 style pouches.

Each one will hold two en-bloc clips per pocket, for 32 rounds per pouch.

I'd never seen these before.

Kinda neat! 

You can get them from Apex Gun Parts (where I stole the pictures)

Still More Shots

When I was issued an M1911A1 they gave us two spare magazines.

That'd be 21 rounds if war were declared.

When I was issued an M9, they only gave us one spare magazine.

That's 30 rounds.

But two spares was cemented in my mind.

I took two spare magazines to the Czech-German border for my Glock 17 and harangued them to issue me 51 rounds.

We were, emphatically, forbidden from carrying one in the chamber.

Over The Edge

A buddy of mine, Bill Gerber, once tried to entice me into playing the RPG "Over The Edge."

I was mainly interested because everyone else was already making a character when I got to The Union.

Despite being told I could make any character I wanted, I gave up after five of my ideas were rejected.

I simply couldn't figure out what Gerb wanted me to make for a character that I wanted to play and the fastest way for me to give up on a collaboration is for the other party to have a veto when not actively helping.

He wouldn't even give any details about the setting to help me figure out a hook to make a character around.

That he was championing a "libertarian" setting with strict gun control at the same time I was particularly raw over the recent passage of the Clinton AWB did not help.  "I don't think that someone understands what 'libertarian' means," is what I said at the time.

Every once and a while I remember the setting exists and I re-read the wikipedia article on it.

This little nostalgia trip always reminds me of another esoteric setting he tried to get us interested in, The Empire of the Petal Throne, aka Tékumel.  The less said about that and MAR Barker the better, I think.  A Muslim who's anti-Semitic?  REALLY?  That's never happened before, or since...

The Sherman Was A Fine Tank

In point of fact, the Sherman was in the inventory of all the winning Armies in WW2.

People keep talking as if we won the war in spite of the thing.

They concede that it was OK if you consider the Firefly (which is a horrid adaptation).

The fact is that most Shermans had the "ineffective" 75mm M3 gun.

What one has to do when determining if the M4 was a good tank or not is to remove German propaganda from the research.

No, the M3 gun isn't as good at punching armor as the 76mm M1A1, but it was good enough against the Panzer IV right up to the end of the war.

It was definitely used incorrectly often, but that's not the fault of the design.

It's armor wasn't as thick as some other tanks, but it was enough to win most engagements.

No, it didn't catch fire more often than other tanks once it took a penetration.

Even if it did, you were more likely to escape from it than most other tanks.

No, it was not designed as an infantry support tank, even if infantry support was one of the main tasks tanks were expected to perform.

Grok

This past week I finally understand why so many bloggers just stopped without saying goodbye.

I grok it in its fullness now.

I Just Realized

John Moses Browning designed the cartridge that killed Hitler.

His hand touched everything that won the war!

Kit Bash Goal

What if you put the turret from a Bradley and a 120mm main gun from an Abrams on an M3 Lee hull?

 I wanna build this!

Non-Events

I have had racism, sexism and religious bigotry in my game worlds.

I use historical settings a lot.

I've had many LGBTQ players.  I've had many minority players.  I've had a few female players.

It's just never been a problem.

Old West campaign where the prevailing opinion is the Indians are prairie n-words and a player wants to treat them like people?  Totally OK.  It happened in history too.

Trans player wants to play trans?  Gets told that they cannot in the setting because medical technology and social norms have gotten to the point that a trans person just has the operation and is all better.  With both remaining birth sex and changing to identity sex as options.  Therapies for both are developed.

Same same for settings with supernatural and powerful deities.  The Gods don't make things that aren't what they are not.  "OK!" was the response.

A black player playing a black character wasn't a problem.  I came up with an explanation for them to be where they were and they put up with their skin color being a novelty.  "He's not a Drow, he's BROWN, not black!"

The black players playing black characters did come up playing Twilight: 2000 in the New America arc.  New America is racist, so they were racist towards the player's characters.

It made for a strong, motivational, adventure hook.

I've never had a disabled player insist on playing a disabled character.

I came closest by playing a character without legs once.  But he was a super hero who could fly...

The Bat never made a character who was blind.

FuzzyGeff, never took asthma.

We were perfectly free to make characters that "looked like us" and we often didn't.

The entire point was to make a character who wasn't us.

I am not a wizard.

I am not a knight.

I am not a dwarf.

I am not an elf.

I am not a pseudo dragon!

I am not a super hero.

I am not a space pirate.

I did not survive the nuclear holocaust.

I am not a prohibition era gangster mage.

Repetitive

In GURPS terms some tanks are exactly the same when they differ noticeably in the real world.

The British Centurion is such a case.  The gun changes twice and the armor changes once.

Other details change, but the stats are about the same.

Thank goodness for copy-paste.

 

I'll Bet Someone Wishes They'd Worn A Suit Now

Aid to Ukraine has been paused according to several news outlets.

The Americanization Of Emily

The Americanization of Emily is an enjoyable movie.

Julie Andrews in a non-singing role and James Garner in high form.

With James Coburn too!

I rented it from Amazon after seeing a break-down by The Feral Historian.

If you have the time, give it a watch.

PS: Warner Brothers: I spent the money to rent it because of The Feral Historian's evaluation and you copyright struck his video off YouTube.  Without his review, I would never have heard of the film nor spent any money to see it.

Flea Feasts

Something that happens EVERY time we answer the call of the cat distribution network is we get fleas.

It's part of the deal of bringing a kitten in from the cold, cruel world.

The sucky part is waiting for the new kitten to finally get big enough to hit with the good stuff.

While the package says 1.9 lb., we've had to make too many trips to the vet with a sick kitten from the flea stuff.  Waiting until 5 lb. seems to work best.

Mist made 5 lb.!

So they got dosed today.

Shadow sits at my elbow on the desk most of the time and they are making a ring around her as they jump off and die.  It's nice to see such positive feedback to the treatment!

Check Your Citations

I got into a little tiff on Facebook about the value of metal detectors in several places in Orlando.

They took the position that such things were a small thing to deal with when it's keeping mass shootings from happening.

I countered that most, if not all, mass shootings in Florida have occurred in such gun free zones.

They then posted a list of mass shootings in gun free zones.

I said, "Thank you for supporting my position."

They didn't understand and a third person had to explain it to them paraphrasing what I was saying.

I hope it was a revelation for them and they change.

Last Ukraine Post For The Day

It's nice to find that one is in agreement with VDH.

Victor Davis Hanson is also Cassandra.

Also

The Budapest Memorandum is a prime example of something I despise about Democrat foreign policy.

They meddle where they don't really belong and set up a place for failure with an agreement that doesn't obligate us to help prop up what we just broke with our meddling.

Get rid of your nukes and we'll support your cause at the UN was unnecessary.  But everyone was singing kum-by-yah at the time...

Ukraine, at the time, had a leadership that was friendly with Russia so the idea that Russia would ever invade seemed remote.

What great philosopher once said, "Never underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up?"

It seems pretty clear that the Delaware Crime Family did some toppling of leaders in Kiev and that put some people who were  pretty hostile to Russia in power there.

And they got a war out of the deal.

The people responsible aren't punished.  Hell, they got pardons! 

Here's the important part, at least as far as the US is concerned:

The United States has no national interest in whom runs Ukraine.

Mr Biden had a personal interest in keeping the place aligned against Russia while he was president, but the United States didn't have one.

That's why we sent aid.

It's really cool that we got real world testing of some of our weapons, but that not enough of a return to keep doing it now that our president has no personal stake in the outcome.  It wasn't all smooth sailing with them either.

The current president, our ambassador, state department, etc., working with their counterparts in Ukraine, had hammered out an agreement to both create a national interest for us AND establish a trade balance that would allow the US to recoup the money spent.

All their president had to do was put on a fucking suit, smile for the cameras, enjoy lunch and sign the documents.

He chose, on camera, to be a petulant, entitled, demanding little prick just like he was two years ago when he was making demands of someone who wanted to help for personal financial reasons.

The American response to this kind of gratitude has always been, "have fun, fuck off."

Zelensky is the big problem for getting aid to Ukraine, he's been getting it despite himself because up until now the people he was dealing with had reasons to ignore the ingratitude.  

Those reasons are now gone.

PS: Lots of people said that giving up their nukes was stupid at the time, but everyone was riding the "end of history" wave and forgetting their Kipling.

Wait I Know This One

There's a LOT of misunderstanding about the Budapest Memorandum.

Despite what President Clinton said, and was reported by the press, and repeated recently: It is not and never was an agreement to defend Ukraine.

The defend Ukraine part is an agreement to have discussions, bring it to the UN and issue sternly worded resolutions in the event that Ukraine is invaded.

All of that happened in 2014 when Russia didn't get their way over a leasing agreement of their navy base in Sevastopol and they invaded and took the Crimean peninsula.

"Treaty" obligations fulfilled!  Done.

Anyone who expected more was an idiot.

Yet more was provided.

The Bidens, I think, are the true architects of the Crimean annexation.  I've no proof, but the kids were thick over there and billions of dollars was sticking to their hands.  Allegedly...

The aid that was being provided, also allegedly, was getting kicked back to "The Big Guy" so the Bidens were getting paid to protect their investment.

But there's almost no US interest in being involved in this.  Except as the Bidens have interfered with shit, allegedly.

Traditionally and historically this sort of thing has been handled with either a "sorry about that" and hanging the nation that was meddled with out to dry OR with a costly war that has the same effect of leaving that nation out to dry.

Almost every argument for continuing to supply Ukraine with the arms it desperately needs by the US boils down to the sunk cost fallacy. 

It's in the US national interest to stop supplying those weapons unless we start getting paid for them.  Well, we all know how that went.

Maybe the UN will help.