Incorrectly?

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.

More Guac Please Perhaps On Toast

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!

Another Damn Lies With Statistics

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?

I Remember When

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.

Won't Someone Think About The Strippers?

The "No Tax On Tips" bill excludes independent contractors.

Most strippers are independent contractors.

This is fundamentally unfair!

Moar Schoolhouse Rock

The differentiation between noun and pronoun is baked into the language.

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.

Shit I Didn't Notice Before

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. 

Shocked Shocked I Say

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.

 

I AM An Expert You Know

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.

Mil Spec vs Commercial

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. 

Thanks Cellular Provider

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. 

Coming Up Short

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

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.

First Come First Serve

CMP has opened up 1911 sales!

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.

I Need To Hydrate

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! 

The Metallicas

 

h/t FuzzyGeff.

It's Just Me Isn't It

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? 

Reluctance

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. 

Resale Value

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.

End Of An Era

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.

Classic

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.

Can You Show Me A Timestamp?

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. 

Drunken Kitten

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! 

Jaws

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.

VDH Analysis

Linky linky

I Wonder

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.

No More Forever Wars

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.

It Was Fine In 2011

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. 

Damn Lies

A local weatherman posted a bar graph showing how much hotter the Gulf of Mexico America was than the average.

The graph covers from 1878 to present and compares the measured temperatures to an average from 1961-2010.

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. 

We Were The Only Ones Who Could

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. 

Two Weeks

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.

Maybe It's Just Me

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... 

Who You Gonna Believe

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? 

Feels Like Today Is Going To Be A Long Day

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. 

Smells

Every once and a while a scent will trigger a memory.

Ammonia will trigger memories of tank gunnery. 

About Them Ducts

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. 

If You'd Explained It I Would Understand

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! 

What A Day

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! 

 

Biggest

 The biggest land dinosaur compared with the largest land mammal.

 With a paleontologist for scale in the bottom left.

I Think I Know What They Were Trying To Say

But this is what they did say:

Without inflation an 84% 184% increase in population with no other changes should net us $182,160,000,000 in revenue.

With inflation, though, $99 billion becomes $1,020,618,556,701.03 today, according to this site.  $182.16 billion becomes $1,877,938,144,329.90.

The $1.88 trillion accounts for both inflation and population growth.

But the meme says revenue was $4.05 trillion!  That just more than twice the revenue we'd expect to collect if nothing but population and inflation had changed since 1962.

This is REVENUE, not spending.  Revenue is taxes collected and has nothing to do with the size of the government.

Revenue, is only increasing at 215.7% faster than the population, by the way.

The 1031% inflation since 1962 is more concerning, but that's not what they were trying to say.

Learn some business math, kids.

That way you can check their numbers and see if they're trying to trick you. 

 PS: A population increase from 180 million to 330 million is an 83.33% increase, not 184%. (Fixed!  Thanks FuzzyGeff!)  They even rounded wrong.

Language Laws

 The French labeling laws are bullshit.

One of the shop owners is absolutely correct about the manufacturers not making a French version of the box just for them when a much larger market segment in Brazil is being dumped over the costs of making Portuguese language versions of the games.

And Brazil is a proven market of people who actually buy the items in question, not a nebulous "they might buy it if it were only labeled in French."

For paints it makes even less sense.  You're either buying the color because you want the color you see in the jar or you're following the directions which has the English name for that color...

I've seen this personally.  I bought "panzer gelb" not tank yellow. 

 

 

Short

The US Senate appears to have put the Short Act verbiage back into the Big Beautiful Bill®.

If this makes it, intact, to the president's desk that means that I wasted $800 in tax stamps.

Darn.

No more NFA for suppressors, short barrel rifles and short barrel shotguns.

I've always wanted a DOE 9mm AR, but the pistol brace looked off.

H&R would be able sell it to me as a rifle, with the correct stock.

H&R would also be adding a lot of XM177 content to their catalog. 

Damn That's Cynical

"Neither side eats bacon.  Not our fight."

Someone on a forum thread discussing the Israel - Iran war. 

I'm So Old

I'm so old I can remember when us straight folks were included in the rainbow flag.

It was supposed to represent the entire spectrum, not just a narrow slice of it. 

Thirteen

The Beast turned 13 yesterday and I forgot to post about it!

Happy birthday!

Does He Know?

I see Mark Ruffalo, a known dancing monkey, wearing an "immigrant" hat at a "No Kings" rally.

Mark's from Wisconsin.

Judging from how stupid he's been on other issues, I think it's possible that he doesn't know that Wisconsin is part of the US and he really did immigrate to the USA.

Or is he taking the position that California is part of Mexico and he emigrated from the USA?

Either way, he's a dumbass.

Kinda Want

That's very creative!

Steak And Eggs

Something I've noticed:

You cannot get a good steak with eggs at most (any?) restaurants.

Steak places don't have eggs.

Breakfast places don't have a good steak; if they have steak at all.

It's a conundrum.

A conundrum that has nothing to do, I promise, with being hungry and realizing I've skipped breakfast. 

The Opposite I Think

From Sultan Knish:

The only question was whether America and Israel would take the regime’s threats seriously.

That question was answered when Israel, after two decades of trying to get the mostly fictitious “international community” to do something about Iran’s nuclear program, finally took action.

I don't think they were really waiting for the international community to do something, but rather waiting for the moment when they knew the international community would do nothing. 

It's been the world's reaction to their defending themselves that have been, almost, as big a problem to Israel as the threats issued by Iran and others.

Getting the word that they could blow up all they wanted and the US wouldn't cut support had to be liberating. 

 

Glitching (fixed)

If you have the same glitch I have with Blogger, you will only see one (maybe two) post on the main page.

I have not deleted my blog's content, it's just decided that the most recent post will be the only post shown on the main page.

It's done this before and as I make new posts, they go above the one with the glitch. 

Update: It was something associated with copy-pasting the image I screenshot to the previous post.  All better now and this post will be confusing if you didn't see the glitch. 

Don't Include Me With Them

As an old, white, person; I would like to say, "I'm not with them."

I kinda wanted to see the parade.

My Sympathy Is Used Up

Mark Barden, the father of a victim of the Sandy Hook massacre, keeps trying to convince me that my guns had something to do with the murder of his child.

But I didn't.

I was nowhere near the shooting.

You can probably tell because I think I would have been moved to assault the school and shoot the rat fuck who was murdering children.

UNLIKE THE WORTHLESS POLICE.

But, Mark, let's go through this again.

With the lack of police response, you need to change to a Civil War muzzle loader before you can't maintain the rate of fire to account for all the shots fired. 

The cops gave him 20 minutes to do his deed, but it's ME, 1,300 miles away, who's responsible because I own a gun (or two) that look like the gun the murderer used.

No, Mark.

No.

The more you interrupt what I'm trying to watch on YouTube the less I care about your loss.

I'm to the point of saying, "GOOD!" when I stab the "skip" button when it appears right as you say, "My son Daniel was murdered..."

You're not going to irritate me into supporting your position.

This is almost getting to be an annual post.

Grumble Grumble

People are going to watch YouTube videos about tanks and think they learned something.

They will be wrong.

While the M60 machine gun was offered as a solenoid fired variant in the M60E2, none were adopted.

Listening to the same dude from Australia repeat that the M60 was used in the... uh... M60 drives me nuts.

Battlefield Vegas doesn't have a coaxial gun and their M60A1 RISE clearly has the cradle for an M240.

Ask.  Me.  How.  I.  Know.

By the way, it's not the M240C.  The M240C feeds from the right side of the gun.  You find those in Bradleys.  The tank version of the gun is M240.  Feeds from the left.

Ask.  Me.  How.  I.  Know.

Prior to the M240 there was the M219 aka M73A1.  Prior to that there was the M73.

Thus ends the list of coaxial machine guns used in US M60 tanks.

Just to head off the, "maybe he got it confused with the M48," crowd.

The M48 starts with the .30-06 M37 machine gun and when it's finally upgraded to the M48A5 standard, it's gets saddled with the M219.

Even worse is his "history" and mention of the cupola.

The M60 has a .50 in that cupola, the M85.

He goes on to show lots of the mods made to M48A3's in Vietnam, including one where they removed the gun from the cupola and mounted it to a pintle on top of the cupola.

Did you know the MG in the cupola was an M2HB?

He doesn't.

It ticks me off because even War Thunder gets this stuff right and it only takes a couple of minutes to find it out.

Two Fiddy Part Two

250 years ago, today, what becomes the United States Army is founded.

MONTHS before the Navy gets rolling and the misguided children had to wait for the Navy to weigh anchor.

GM Wouldn't Warranty It Either

August 30, 2003.

Why do I mention that day?

That's the last day I saw the wiring in question.  That was when I fixed the connection from the fuel pump to the fuel sender.

From that day, to the day I sold the car, it drove 88,836 miles in the intervening 16 years.

I will not entertain the idea that the current set of problems with the car are MY fault in any way.

The car is 35 years old and the age of the wiring probably has a lot more to do with what's currently wrong than the quality of my engine swap.

But if we're looking to assign blame.

You had your mechanic relocate the PCM from where I had it under the dash to the 94-96 OEM GM location under the hood.  Are you certain they didn't damage any wiring doing that?  Because every wire we're talking about is in the harness they relocated with the PCM.

You had your mechanic replace the drum brake rear axle with a disc brake unit.  Are you certain they didn't damage any wiring doing that?  The ABS wiring runs into the same harness that runs the fuel pump.

You had the car painted.  That means taking off the tail lights and removing the rear bumper.   Are you certain they didn't damage any wiring doing that?  Because the fuel pump harness exits the trunk and heads towards the fuel pump very near the place that you bolt the rear bumper to the car.

But all of this comes down to one thing.

I sold you my car with no warranty, expressed or implied.

I gave you a thick binder full of documentation of the things I'd done.

I will no longer entertain being blamed for this! 

Oh, You Think?

Iran has called the airstrikes by Israel a declaration of war.

Thank you Ayatollah Obvious.

You guys have been saying you're going to attack Israel and the US for decades, and Israel took you seriously.

Congratulations for getting what you've been begging for.

I've long hoped that our two nations could go back to being friends, but I think everyone knows what's in the way.

Cue the "What About Islam?" dancers. 

Calculated Tyranny

Look at how fast the 9th Circuit moves when the matter at hand is something the liberals are screaming about.

See how slow they are about getting a gun case through the system?

One would almost say it's on purpose because justice delayed is justice denied, and the 9th is consistently against justice. 

Good To Know

"If you’re driving on one of those streets and a mob comes and surrounds your vehicle and threatens you, you have a right to flee for your safety, and so if you drive off and you hit one of these people, that’s their fault for impinging on you.  You don’t have to sit there and just be a sitting duck and let the mob grab you out of your car and drag you through the streets.  You have a right to defend yourself in Florida."

R. DeSantis 

Close To Home

Scammers Using AI Bots to Steal Financial Aid

The Lovely Harvey is on the front lines stopping this!

Her little college is getting very good at spotting them before they get any money and they've been approached by the Dept. of Ed. about their processes.

Got a promotion for it, actually. 

I Wonder

I noticed that Vortex is discontinuing the Strike Eagle in the 1-6x power.

It's been replaced in the lineup with a 1-8 power.

In GURPS you get a +1 for each doubling of the power from 2x.

So you get the same +2 for 6x as you do for 4x.

But 8x is a +3...

Think one of their designers is a GURPS player and wants the extra +1 on their character sheet of themselves? 

Buh Bye

"Well, bye," C. Bill Brocious.

Puerto Rico would like to stop being a US territory and return to being a Spanish territory.

I am fine with this, with one proviso:

Every Puerto Rican on the mainland is deported.

They've long irritated me with their blatant nationalism and refusal to even visit there; having been born here and somehow not learning to be an American or speak English.

The worst neighbor we've ever had was some kind of Puerto Rican nationalist and they were loud, obnoxious and the yard was covered in trash.  The empty lot is a far better neighbor.  New Jersey plates on all the cars too, so that might have been the real problem.

But aren't ALL the Puerto Ricans on the mainland from New Jersey if you check their license plates? 

They're the pricks whose kids took a bb gun to our windows one evening.

It still amuses me that the deputy who responded to our call couldn't do anything because Mom denied the kids were outside at the time and there were no bb guns in her house.

Bitter amusement.

But, with us glaring from the front porch, said, loud enough for us to hear, "You're in Florida now, not New Jersey.  Shooting a gun at dwelling is a forcible felony, and the homeowner can shoot back.  Any kind of gun.  BB gun, paint gun, squirt gun, staple gun, are you following me here, Mom?"

They moved very shortly afterwards because they'd seen us with rifle cases coming and going from the range. 

1975

50 years ago was 1975.

Firearms made before then are C&R eligible, if you can convince the seller to ship it to you.

There's an astonishing amount of quite modern firearms that are Crufflerized now. 

Bulging

 

All five of my cheap, aftermarket, batteries for my camera are swollen.

Three of them are too bulged to go into the battery compartment.  Two will go in and don't really want to slide back out.

The OE battery that came with the camera is still running strong.

I guess I know where my money goes when I buy genuine Canon now. 

What Do These Places Have In Common For $1,000

There are now more U.S. troops deployed to Los Angeles than in Iraq and Syria.

There are 4,800 activated Guard and Marine personnel in LA, compared to the 2,500 troops in Iraq and 1,500 in Syria.

--ABC News 

Ever notice that the US military really only deploys to places where it's both a shithole and local government has utterly failed or collapsed?

I read this as California being collapsed worse than two notoriously failed states.

I just hope we don't try to nation-build there.  That always seems to make it worse. 

Three Inch Scale

I've been playing Car Wars for a while.  A long while.

It didn't take us very long at all to notice that our Matchbox/Hot Wheels cars would be perfect game pieces.

That led all of us to repaint our battered cars!

One of my favorite cars was the Hairy Hustler.

I'd had that car since I was three or four.  It was not in as good of shape as this image I stole from ebay.

I don't know what nostalgia bug bit me to try and recreate my old car from my middle school days, but...

OMG, that looks like shit.  That might even be a 100% accurate recreation of what it looked like for reals, but my mind's eye says it looked better.

So I gently pried it apart and stripped the brushed on enamel paint off with acetone.

Where it sat for more than a month waiting for a rattle can of the color I wanted to arrive!

It came out a lot better with a spray can than brushing!

 

I intentionally left the paint chips from the old paint intact because I had them on the original car.  The color looks far better in person than my camera is capturing.

Reassembly went smoothly.

 There's still some painting left.  I had some small numbers on my AutoDuel car and I painted in the tail-lights.

How it compares to the original car:

 The OG example is in far better condition than the one I repainted.

Just In Case Nobody Notices

In the little tiff between Governor Newsome and President Trump about calling up the National Guard...

Not one mention of the National Guard being the militia.

Just like the pro-gun people have long maintained:  The National Guard is just another grouping of the standing, Federal, Army with a special clause to allow the Governor to call them up for in-state use.

Also of note is the part of USC Trump cited in calling up the guard.

10 UCS § 12406.

Whenever—

(1)

the United States, or any of the Commonwealths or possessions, is invaded or is in danger of invasion by a foreign nation;

(2)

there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States; or

(3)

the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States;

the President may call into Federal service members and units of the National Guard of any State in such numbers as he considers necessary to repel the invasion, suppress the rebellion, or execute those laws. Orders for these purposes shall be issued through the governors of the States or, in the case of the District of Columbia, through the commanding general of the National Guard of the District of Columbia.

Our protestors should seriously consider finding some uniforms of the nation they are protesting for; because they're skating dangerously close to the definition of partisans and or espionage agents of a foreign power.

Thank The Gods They're Communists

We know, from The Bell Curve, that, on the whole, Asians are more intelligent than white people.

We know, from history, that communism is one of the worst forms of government.

We are fortunate that so much of Asia has, stupidly, chosen this form of government to waste their superior intellect on.

Matchbox Commodore

Matchbox released a model of the Holden VF Commodore SSV in 2022.

As a South Australia Highway Patrol car.

In 2023 they rereleased it in metallic orange.

This year in metallic black.

The Commodore is a close relative of the Caprice.

The VE Commodore, lengthened, is a WM Caprice; like The Beast.

A VF Commodore, lengthened, is a WN Caprice.

Most of the differences are under the skin and in Matchbox scale, you can't even, really, tell a Commodore is too short to stand in for a Caprice.

The only VE Holdens Matchbox made were of the Ute.  It's like an El Camino. 

 

Unconventional Dice

Harvey got me a neat dice set!

 The carrier is at least as nifty as the dice.  It's in the form of a swing-out revolver cylinder.

The dice are little bullets!

The "cases" are flat and you read the number at the top when it comes to a rest.

 It also came with a wrist strap in that looks like a cartridge belt.

Very neat!

You Know What Song It's Playing

Pictured, with scale, the world's smallest violin!

Our tardigrade is getting it tuned for when the LA rioters (2025 edition) start getting arrested and charged.

That's just the warm up.

The people funding these riots and providing material support for a foreign insurrection will get the full performance. 

h/t FuzzyGeff for the image. 

It's In The Archives

My thoughts about the riots in LA have already been published.

More than 19 years ago!

Nothing changes for the better in California.

For some reason it became policy to allow colonies in California and they're paying the piper.

This is not a case of overzealous law enforcement enforcing a controversial and blatantly unconstitutional law.

This is the long delayed enforcement of a law that's passed constitutional muster more than once.

They're rioting over that enforcement.

That there are enough people to get a riot going over this says there's far too many people who are affected by the deferred enforcement of this law.

It underscores the need to do more enforcing, not less.

To stand up to these non-citizens rather than giving in.

To de-naturalize the few protestors who are citizens of foreign birth.  They took an oath to not do this kind of thing when they were sworn in as naturalized citizens.  They were made aware of the penalties in the process of doing so.

So let it be written... 

Scotland!

Scotland!

It's a lot like England, except the weather isn't as nice and the food isn't as good. 

The Other 'S' Word D&D Doesn't Really Talk About

The first 'S' word is Sex.  As we know from Phil and Dixie, they avoided talking about it while trying to get to talk about it.

Slavery is the other word.

Slavery was common in the way back.

For some categories of slave, it wasn't even a bad deal.  A Greek tutor was a good deal for a slave in Rome.

But medieval slaves are laborers, not skilled experts.

Despite the medieval trappings, most D&D campaigns don't have slaves.

I think it's from the generally egalitarian nature of the players.

Most of the fantasy games I've played didn't have slaves and didn't discriminate against women.

The one campaign were slaves were prominent had my character leading a revolution to end slavery.  That's the only time it stood out.

OG AD&D has a couple mentions of slavery in the Dungeon Master's Guide.  Admitting it exists is a pretty big deal.

The World of Greyhawk has slaves.  It also has some powerful abolitionists. 

AD&D 2e has an admission that slavery could exist, but only in the context of humans being weak and other races being strong.

The evil nations of Forgotten Realms have slaves and a slave trade. 

AD&D 4e mentions there's enslavement and suggests a campaign where the players free slaves and end tyranny and mentions being an escaped slave as a character background.

AD&D 5e mentions slavery as a tool used by the villain in a villain's methods random table.

GURPS: Banestorm, being a world setting rather than a game, has a chapter on slavery as does the 3e book of the same setting GURPS: Fantasy.  (4e's Fantasy is for making your own Fantasy world and it explains all the tropes and let's you DIY a world from them).

With all the mention of slavery in the rules, why didn't more of us have slaves in our games?

Again, I think it's just our American egalitarianism being applied to a social order that was decidedly NON-egalitarian in nature.  Feudalism isn't, generally, compatible with how Americans see themselves.

All that romantic liberty, freedom and equality (distinct from the French "Liberté, 'egalité, fraternité) seeps into most everyone's game and makes an almost unconscious decision to not go historical feudalism with it's attendant tyrannies and rigid social order.

The players don't like it when you put such things into the game.  They never take any social status that makes them noble and when the restrictions of being a commoner hit them, they get peeved.

Enforcing the sumptuary laws on them was good for a laugh.  But they really get umpty when they get told they can't buy a common everyday weapon, like a sword.

That first came up when I played a Togugawa Japan campaign in GURPS.  A commoner might own a wakazashi with a permit; but only Samurai could own and carry a katana.  The VERY rigid social structures confused the players and they didn't work to understand them.  Not that I understood them well, but I was working at it.

Japan is interesting here because, while the structure was rigid, it was possible to break through it and move up.  Not common, but possible.  Toyotomi Hideyoshi being an excellent example.

In Europe it was much harder to break out of your lane.  At least until the plagues... 

A Sure Sign

If you have a strong opinion over Comic Sans and Papyrus fonts very existence, you are a hipster.

It's one of the surest symptoms of the disease. 

I Finally Placed It

Something about listening to Thomas Sowell always messed with me.

For a long time I thought it was just the accent.

Then it hit me last night what was wrong.

He has the same accent as Rocky Balboa, but he says smart things.

Some part of my hindbrain was rejecting it because of the similarity in their voices. 

Opening AND Closing

My garage door opener decided to quit in January.

It's been a minor irritation opening and closing it manually.

But I recently discovered it would OPEN the door, but wouldn't close it because I unthinkingly hit the button when I got in the car.

That made it slightly less irritating to use the garage door.  Our security for The Boy's elopements is the main reason it's irritating.

The other day, not thinking like before, it closed.

I had noticed how smoothly it'd been moving up of late, so I got to thinking...

That got me to look up the instructions.

The instructions that I swear we followed.

We had not.

We'd reused the bracket that some previous owner had put on the door and it was mid-span of the top panel instead of in line with the top rollers.

The bar that connected the shuttle to the bracket was upside down.

Because of these two geometric mistakes, the connector bar was too long and at too shallow of an angle to the door while closed.

All of that all adds up to binding and that overtorqued the motor.

So I got on the ladder, moved the bracket, shortened the connector bar, hung it correctly and moved the closed stop switch.

It's worked three times in a row, and as we all know that means it's reliable for all time.

I don't entirely trust it, but it puts off replacing it a few more months and even if it fails again we're no worse than we were. 

Open And Closed

I think I mentioned being "in the club" before.

Willard puts in distinct levels, but it boils down to "are you a veteran or not?" and "have you been shot at or not?"

There's things you can talk about with other people in "the club" that you can't or won't with people who aren't.

This post reminded me of a time.

A car guy friend's dad was a Korean War vet.

We started comparing notes about how different our respective Army was and then we started comparing notes to decide which club membership level we were at.

Once that was established, we got to talking about shared experiences and such.

His wife, overhearing the topic of conversation wandered in to listen better to this part of her husband that was closed to her for the past...  many years.

As soon as he spotted her, he changed topic to cars and didn't return to military stuff.

That ticked her off.

The son asked me about it and I told him it was a frame of reference thing.

You can't explain some of it unless you were there, and if you were, you don't need it explained.

So there's things you can't talk to most people about because they're going to need an explanation that cannot be supplied politely.

He and his step-mom didn't like that explanation, but they accepted it. 

Because I Done It

The new owner of the car formerly known as The Biscayne SS was down.

He's turning it into a phantom of a 1991 Olds Delta 88.

A worthy project.

But she's fighting.

I never did get the AC completely sorted out when I owned it.  It works intermittently for him.  Sounds like an electrical problem to me.

It will run great then die with no fuel pressure.

The connector in the trunk was showing signs of overheating and fuel could be restored by wiggling it.

Adam bought some Deutsch connectors and Marv and I replaced the trunk connector.

Fired right up once we jumped it, because the battery was dead from having the domelights on from removing the interior to dye them the Olds color (the reason that Adam came down).

So...

We're trying to troubleshoot things and there's stuff abandoned in place that creates a wild goose chase.

Adam tries to complain that it was my engine swap, so I must know all the ins and outs.

But nothing is where I left it.  Everything is rewired from where I had it, and messy.

I gave him a thick folder with all the documentation of what I'd done.  That's disappeared and Adam doesn't remember me even giving it to him. 

He uses the interior like a storage shed, so the junk rolling around could easily have pulled a wire and intermittently break connection.

Then he gets mad at us for being frustrated because he's got Huntington's Disease and his emotions don't process like normal.  He's in something of a hurry to get the car done before the disease progresses past the stage where he can no longer work on or enjoy the car.

But it was running when he left.

He made it ten miles before the fuel pump crapped out again.

I am taking the position, now, that it's not my project any more.  It can't be.  I have my own project that keeps getting put off for everyone else's stuff. 

I wanna help, but there's too many people working the problem and the mechanic he normally uses does sloppy work.  I know because I've cleaned up after him on The Beast. 

I Know This One

Rioters are burning shit in LA because the immigration laws are being enforced?

I know the solution.

Belt fed.

The second you get organized and openly violent you stop being an illegal immigrant and become an invading combatant of a foreign nation.  Combatants in an invasion means you can use the Army without worrying about posse comitatus.

Forget your the uniform of the home nation you clearly love more than the USA, judging by that huge flag you're waving, you're a partisan saboteur.

Partisans can be summarily shot.

So, gunner, coax, mob.

Especially since it wasn't the side of law and order that decided to be violent first.

I'm fed up with this shit. 

D+ 29,585

86 81 years ago was D-Day.

  

If it hasn't slipped beyond living memory, that day is getting close.

It's up to us to remember now. 

Based On

This is a car from Autoduel Champions and it's so very familiar looking.

 

I wanna say "Lincoln" but it might actually be a MOPAR.

Looks a lot like a Chrysler Imperial.

But not quite...

I know I've seen the car they based it on, but can't remember where.

Tam would know, but she's too good to bother with my little blog any more.