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In March I said that I'd broken five million visitors.
It too me three years to go from three to five million and less than a year to add another three.
Thank you, dear readers, for stopping by and reading my humble ramblings.
May 2026 treat you better than 2025!
Fine.
If politicizing it means that it will end and the perpetrators are punished then let's be political about it!
Clearly it was already politicized because the list of states where there are large Somali colonies are not Republican controlled.
I want the fraud to end.
I want the fraudsters punished.
I want the colonists removed.
I am fine with force being used to accomplish all three things, so merely making it political doesn't bug me in the least.
It's New Year's Eve and it's time to do a cleansing sage.
That means fire.
There will be some fireworks and board games with drinking too!
After learning compression, tension, torsion and shear; it drives me nuts to hear someone calling a compression spring as being under tension.
In my experience... (second only to "no shit, there we were...")
I've found that Colt has a better trigger out of the box, but that the revolver will go out of time faster than a Smith & Wesson.
S&W's triggers "wear in" to being very good after a few hundred rounds, but can be irritating right out of the box. S&W tends to be more durable than Colt once you have years and years of shooting it.
This position is, apparently, controversial.
It is also based on a very small sample size, I haven't bought many new revolvers.
"Zero maintenance," is vendor code for when it breaks you have to replace the whole thing.
h/t Freefall
On the down side, I might be getting to the age that I need little blue pills.
On the up side, I might need little blue pills at my age!
I've made a table of all the military ranks to be encountered in my T2K setting.
It was not that hard, but a pain in the butt to transcribe from wikipedia to odt file.
Not every nation uses all the same ranks as the others. Some skip ranks.
The US has four ranks (PV1, PV2, PFC, SPC) for the single rank of "private" for example.
Also fun is the Bundeswehr Heer and Nationale Volksarmee use the same ranks, but at slightly different levels in some places.
Marv and FuzzyGeff are making GURPS 4e characters from my Twilight: 2000 conversion.
"Why is there this (repeated error) here?"
What error?
"This one. Oh and another here too."
FUUUUUUUCK!
I've sent the pdf out to about a hundred people and not once did I get feedback on the character template section.
I remember the patron error. At one time every military template had it. Then I removed it; or so I thought. About half the support templates still had it.
Forgetting that 4e changed shooting a select fire rifle from two skills (light-auto and rifle) to just one (rifle) also happened. Since light-auto also encompassed light machine guns I changed Guns TL/8 (Light-Auto) to Guns TL/8 (LMG).
From the text as written in Funny New Guys and comparing it to the real world...
You cannot get there from here.
The base is now 18.79 miles to Plei Hodrong Thoung; 18.09 miles to Plei Me's Special Forces camp; and 28.32 miles to the Pleiku air base.
Firebase 23 on Hill 562 "near" the villages of Plei Hodrong Thoung and Plei Ya Bo; 23 miles Southwest of Pleiku air field, 10 miles north of the SF Camp at Plei Me.
You might be able to embiggen...
Plei Me is the southern point of the triangle. Plei Ya Bo is the western point, Plei Hodrong Thoung is the eastern. Pleiku is off the map to the northeast.
Firebase 23 is at the little kink of the east-west leg of the triangle. There is no 562m elevation there.
This is the only likely hill between the "nearby" villages and fitting the distances from the other two landmarks.
Assuming the QL19 highway is the same as Route 6C this is a good spot. It's within the 7 mile, 105mm howitzer range of the road (about 5 miles), but too far from Plei Me (13.6 miles) to support it.
I think, now, that the "nearby" villages mark points on route 6C which is a smuggling path from over the Cambodian border rather than an actual road. In that case, the path goes right past the firebase.
That's also why the commies want it destroyed, bringing us to the beginning of the campaign!
Funny New Guys is set in 1967.
"Boris the Spider," by The Who came out in 1966.
Will spider-chimera get the, affectionate, nickname of "Boris?"
Or does Boris become the n-word for them?
Or both... depending on how mixed the company.
Can't stop Sharia because religious freedom.
Can't deport anyone because birthright citizenship.
Can't stop illegal aliens from... anything because they have the same rights as those here legally.
And I wonder.
Was the Constitution and Bill of Rights always a suicide pact?
Did the founders and their extensive notes and correspondence about freedom and liberty intend for it to become the chains of anarcho-tyranny?
Whenever anyone questions why you've bought any particular gun just reply, "because it delights me you joyless scold!"
I've had this conversation about my .45 Colt Anaconda a couple of time and I am fully aware that they made and make them in .44 Magnum.
Don't care.
That giant gun in the, by modern standards, under-powered round gives me the giggles and I really can't see anything changing that.
Strangely, I never see them complain about a S&W 25-5 when the Model 29 is the same gun except in .44 Magnum...
I get the same delight from my useless .25 ACP guns.
I went out of my way to find a .38 Super Gov't Model in as plain-Jane trim as I could get and then "ruined" it by putting a short trigger and arched mainspring housing on it. It delights me to do so.
Having a clone of an M16, M16A1, M16A2 and M16A4 delights me.
The XM177E2 clone delights me even though I had to make a short barrel rifle of it and am only a fraction of an inch shorter than a 16" barrel with the moderator screwed onto the end of the 11.5" barrel.
The purple AR delights me.
The people who are grimly utilitarian about gun ownership should really start relaxing.
Once your needs are met, Maslow, you can move up the pyramid.
In the dark times, before there were Rail Adapter Systems, you clamped a bracket to your barrel:
SIMPLE!
The advent of RAS makes it a lot simpler:
I've done a few attempts at doing Cyberpunk.
They run into problems.
The biggest one is something that happens to a lot of campaigns. People stop showing up on the regular so you can't plan on their role in the party.
The setting itself is a bit of a problem since most of the books are (were?) single protagonist and most games are multi-player.
But the biggest problem is the net-runner part.
First, too many friends knew that computers did not work that way, and would be stupid to make them work that way.
Even accepting that computers work that way, the guy with the deck gets their own mini-adventure while the rest of the party twiddles their thumbs.
The two most successful versions of it I ran didn't have the net-runner deal.
One was like combining Navy SEALS and Sneakers. It was fun, but the party got butchered by a competing team.
The other was having the party be cops in 2037 Des Moines. That worked shockingly well.
Doing a Shadowrunesque version with GURPS worked pretty well, and the reason computers worked like the fiction was magic computers are inherently so much faster and near unlimited storage as compared to silicon that the security shit you have to put up with is worth it.
That's the only time I've ever seen anyone try to explain why computers don't work like the real world.
A DIY sequential fuel injection conversion for a 1978 280Z!
Spoiler... At the end he gets it back to stock power and mileage.
I'm guessing that it will be a lot more driveable.
Why didn't it make more power than the stock rating? Those things are determined by the mechanical parts he didn't touch.
He got power back because he fixed the parts that had become too worn to work and were too complex to properly troubleshoot. Even Sarah-N-Tuned just replaced everything with new-old-stock.
While double checking a couple items for T2K, like the AN/PEQ-2, I noticed that they all pre-date rail systems that are common today.
"That's impressive, where on the rifle does it go?"
Proprietary mountings were the norm before the widespread adoption of Picatinny rails.
Tomorrow I have to get two of my players to make a couple of characters in advance of FuzzyGeff's imminent (not eminent you stupid autocorrupt) arrival.
JT needs a Funny New Guys AND a Twilight: 2000 character.
Marv just needs a T2K.
I have suggested that Marv make a 27 year younger version of himself and create a former Pershing II missile technician. Making yourself as a character has a long history for helping figure out the rules in a skill based game. Marv was once an electronics technician for the MGM-29 Sergeant.
Marv's character's commanding officer, "Well, we've fired all the rounds we had and there will be no more made... Here's a rifle, welcome to the infantry!"
Marv's character, "FUCK!"
T2K has the Pershing II making it to 1997 because the INF treaty wasn't on anyone's radar in 1985 when T2K was first published. I think one of the modules even mentions a ruined city having been hit by one.
Governor DeSantis is term limited from running again.
That means every "Republican" in the world is putting their foot in the ring.
So far I have gotten Fecesbook recommended posts from two that are all about divesting from Israel.
Oh and some family first stuff too, but divest from Israel!
SIGH. I thought BDS was done.
Just as a lot of Jews were considering jumping ship from voting Democrat to voting Republican too.
I recommend they register Republican so they can help pick a gubernatorial candidate who's not aligned with the National Socialist American Worker's Party.
Some of the verbiage of that "family first" stuff sure rings familiar.
History doesn't repeat, it rhymes.
The good news, however, is these people don't seem to capturing much in the way of voter recognition.
Harvey got me this absolutely deadly projectile weapon!
The "primers" are the triggers and the spring that lobs the plastic projectile is contained inside the case. The problem is when you load a round and close the action, the "primer" hits the breech face and goes off.
3D printing makes for a lot of fun!
A sword shaped dice box was not something I'd even thought of, and here it is.
Willard gave the best gift, though!
He says that it's been whining about being at his house among the Smith and Wessons.
If it looks familiar, it's the same gun I sold him to pay for my air conditioning a few years ago.
FuzzyGeff did some weird for T2K by making a sniper that thought his M21 rifle was enchanted. The stock was carved with runes and he spoke words over it at night to maintain the magic. This character and his rifle made two incredible rolls in a row that affirmed his belief AND convinced a couple of the other characters that it was magic in action.
This is being weird correctly.
Then there was Doug. We shall call him Doug because that is his name.
Doug wholeheartedly embraced the idea that you could make ANYTHING with GURPS.
And he did.
The problem was he didn't do so within the confines of being a member of the party or adherence to the concepts of the world.
Doug was a disruptive agent.
He routinely did not take hints and resented when more blatant methods were used.
Nothing we tried would get him to get along with the party, so I eventually had to ban him from my table.
The AR-15 has become the new Mauser.
Just about everyone is converting to some variation of the AR now. Some closer to the original than others...
The Sportsmaster only gets a decent cleaning once a decade.
It doesn't NEED cleaned like an arms room was taking it back.
I always do the bore after I get home, but most of the time let the mechanism get dirty.
And .22 rimfire always leaves a lot of gunk behind.
The 5.9 lb. AN/PVS-2 gives Night Vision 4.
Compare that to the natural vision of Chimera in Funny New Guys.
Coyote and Foxes have better night vision than the mechanical device and they don't need batteries.
They also don't suffer from color blindness, no depth perception and no peripheral vision while using their night vision.
"Shockingly" the fuel gauge in The Beast is inaccurate.
This is typical of GM.
The "Driver's Information Center" display will show me how many miles I have remaining in the tank in 5-mile increments down to 35 miles then change to "LOW".
At this point, the "Low Fuel" alarm will go off.
The distance is based on the current average miles per gallon the system calculates and the fuel remaining in the tank...
How many gallons are in the tank with fewer than 35 miles remaining displayed and 16.4 mpg average?
My math says less than two gallons in the tank.
The tank is 19 gallon capacity.
The low fuel light comes on with 4 gallons remaining. I know this because when I refuel with the low fuel alarm on, it accepts 15 gallons of fuel not 17.
I've seen the press complain that several suggested (and implemented) means of deporting illegal aliens makes them "second class citizens."
For fuck's sake, for a profession that's supposed to be highly educated in the use of words and language you sure don't seem to know what words mean.
They can't be second class citizens because they're not even citizens!
A black person in Jim Crow Mississippi is a second class citizen. That person has every right to be there and every expectation to the same rights and privileges as every other citizen. That they weren't getting all the same rights and privileges is WHY they were second class citizens.
An illegal alien isn't a citizen, is present in the country in violation of the law and should have no expectation of the rights and privileges of a citizen.
Acting otherwise is causing a mind boggling amount of problems.
I've seen several pro-gun lawyers saying that illegal aliens have gun rights because, of course, they have all the other rights like free speech and protections from illegal search and seizure.
But I think that's wrong.
I think that they don't have all those other rights because of the illegal nature of their presence.
They get the illusion of those rights because the process must not violate the rights of people whom are here legally.
The police must operate on the off chance that the person they are arresting is actually a citizen and behave accordingly; this gives the appearance that the illegals have rights.
PS: If a prison in El Salvador is unacceptable, we COULD release them in Atlantis. What? You never heard from them again? Atlantis is very nice...
The Remington 341A Sportsmaster that Harvey was shooting was bought new by my mom's dad in 1938.
It's not the only gun he left me. I got his pipe too!
Missing from the guns he left me is a .25 ACP pocket pistol. We think that went to my uncle's family.
I wanted that gun, but I don't begrudge them it.
Christmas Eve is Chinese food.
Mom started that tradition with her friends by going to a restaurant in Ames called The Mandarin. There's an empty lot there now.
I carried the tradition to Florida with me.
Christmas dinner is lasagna. Rather, it's lasagne. Grampa always spelled it with an 'e', so it's a tradition!
I think I started this one because my mom wasn't a big turkey eater and once a year at Thanksgiving sated her for a year.
She didn't like shopping for, or cooking, a ham when there were so few mouths for dinner and leftovers.
So I suggested we just make a lasagne on year and it stuck.
My friends came out of the wood-work for that where they kinda avoided turkey or ham...
So I keep up the tradition because Harvey is not a big turkey eater and we JUST had ham for Thanksgiving...
Things to bear in mind...
Lasagna does not have egg in it. I blame the Irish of New York for this abomination. I don't care if they're actually guilty. (wink)
We use cottage cheese instead of manicotti ricotta (don't do a lot of "holiday cheer" before posting kids). Great grandma was never satisfied with the manicotti ricotta she could get in Iowa and was happy with cottage cheese. So we just kept using it in our own recipes.
I don't make my own noodles, great grandma did. I don't make my own sausage, great grandma did. I don't make my own sauce, great grandma did...
Mom and grandma taught me to make all of those and showed me that store-bought was the same if you picked the right brands. Barilla, Winn-Dixie house brand hot, Hunt's garlic and herb.
The way I've remembered making it comes out VERY wet if you eat it right out of the oven.
The next day in the microwave it's awesome.
Last year I discovered that if I cooked it on Christmas Eve, put it in the fridge and then cooked it again on Christmas Day... PERFECT! 350° until the cheese is all melty on day one. 375° until the cheese is browned on day two. Everything else is already cooked before assembly so it really only needs to get melted and hot.
After many years of strengthening and therapy, and no small amount of anxiety, Harvey has fired a long gun from the robo-shoulder!
My grampa's old rat-slayer still works great!
We ran it at 7 yards because she was familiar with that distance.
The book Les Liaisons Dangereuses is set in the same year it was published, 1782.
Since it's main characters are all French nobility, they only have seven to ten years or so before the revolution overtakes them.
Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil will not have to suffer her humiliation long...
From the NAGR Facebook feed.
How are you supposed to tell a threat from someone going about their life?
Gonna answer your question with a question.
Are they being threatening or going about their life?
If they are going about their life, then you're fine. This will be 99.99999999999999999999999% of the gun owners you see open carrying.
Even if they are carrying at you. Which isn't actually being threatening with a gun, it's just being really blatant and obvious that they ARE carrying a gun. Technically they aren't going about their lives, they're carrying a gun openly as the only thing they are doing. Ignore them. They're attention seeking and don't feed the trolls.
A threat will be pointing the gun at people. Probably followed by shooting the gun at people.
A decent rule of thumb for the people who are scared of open carry is, "if you wouldn't freak if a cop was carrying like that, then you shouldn't freak if a citizen is carrying like that."
Today is the day that slavery was legally abolished in the USA.
Right after a war that decided that it would be THE USA.
Since the oldest person ever verified was "just" 116 years old and the oldest person claimed was 122...
I think we're on pretty firm footing that any former slave in the United States is no longer with us.
Probably even outside their grandchildren's lives.
I'm not saying that racism and bigotry did not happen after the 13th Amendment was ratified.
I am saying to stop citing slavery when speaking of the injustices you wish to address.
Also, limit yourself to injustice that happened to YOU. Not your brother's nephew's cousin's roommate.
I am slowly weening myself off Youtube.
I finally figured out how I spot robo-voice. There's no variation in the pronunciations. I'd been sitting here wondering why a given narration was so grating and finally figured it out.
The "documentary" videos are getting irritating.
The straw is a video on USS Wasp. Nominally, it's about the flaws in her design that led to her sinking. But they can't just talk about that. They have to waste my time talking about her entire history up to the sinking WITHOUT saying a word about the design except the obligatory aside about the Washington Naval Treaty.
Something else that I've noticed is the plodding, slow, deliberate pace of the robo-voices.
They sound almost normal at 1.25 speed. That tells me it's a deliberate choice to make the video length fit some Al Gore Rhythm Section.
Then there's the videos that are clearly geared at people with severe ADHD and constantly explaining in great detail things that are self-evident and backtracking to explain them in a way that interrupts the narrative.
And I am over it.
I am getting sick of all the people on our side of the gun debate constantly coming up with new ideas to use in court against us.
Thankfully, it seems that what they've come up with is almost entirely theoretical still.
But the current round of speculation is about what training you've had and if your lawyer is being paid by some form of CCW insurance.
Because those things indicate "planning" to create a "self-defense" situation where you get to shoot someone.
Oh, and not getting training indicates gross irresponsibility and negligence.
There's no way out of the process as punishment.
Especially since it appears that the ccw insurers are essentially scams because of all the exit clauses built into the contract that lets them not pay for what you think you hired them to pay.
Apparently every single member of the US Armed Forces is getting a $1,776 check.
Pretty decent year end bonus!
Now taking bets on exactly how many hours it takes the E-4 and below community to spend it and have nothing to show for it.
I expect a banner weekend at strip clubs near base.
The Bondi Beach and Brown University shootings have something in common.
Both took place where the victims were banned from having a firearm.
Both sets of, alleged, shooters were Moslem. This turned out to be a rumor.
Neither nation is predominantly Islamic.
One was definitely, "let's murder the Jews!" The Brown shooting might have been trying to shoot a specific Jew.
The Bondi Beach shooting was slowed down by the intervention of a Moslem!
This will be touted as justification for not stemming the flow of immigration.
The thing is, you cannot tell whom in the crowd of immigrants are waiting for their moment to enact the intifada and who wants to live a quiet live in a mostly secular manner.
If you cannot tell, then you kind of need to accept zero immigrants from places that have any people who're waiting for their moment to murder our citizens.
If the people you do accept refuse to assimilate, they should be deported. They clearly wish to remain citizens of their homeland, so they should live there.
If the children of the people we accept turn out to have a trend of being criminals and non-productive citizens, we should definitely stop accepting immigrants from those nations too.
The poem in the Statue of Liberty has no legal power. The New Colossus was written by Emma Lazarus and she was of a political bent that eventually coalesces into Socialism.
Don't be fooled by her pretty words!
I find, as a student of history, that I have to keep pointing out that the prior mass-immigrations to the US are an anomaly. The Swedish, German, Italian and Irish waves came from a people very much like the Americans they joined and they assimilated readily... Though it took years of prejudice and change for the mistrust of Catholicism in the Irish and Italians to fade.
Yet, despite language and religious differences, these peoples became Americans.
I repeat myself again...
I want every single immigrant to this nation to either already be an American with the misfortune of being born a foreigner; or to become an American as quickly as they can.
That means abandoning their, former, national identity.
It means learning to speak English.
It means respecting our laws, and forsaking the laws of their homeland.
It means abiding by our culture and ways of doing things. This includes dropping things from their culture or religion in conflict with our culture and laws.
If they cannot, then they don't get to stay here!
Americans strive to be the good guys. We want to help people in need. We want to save people.
But there are times when you have to realize that you cannot save everyone and you most especially cannot save anyone if you won't save yourself. Saving yourself sometimes means letting others die.
We still have time to avoid our generosity from becoming a suicide pact.
Harvey reports that the local McDonalds has put up no gun signage.
Concealed means concealed if you still wanna go there, and the worst they can do is ask you to leave and have you trespassed if you refuse AND wait around for the cops to give you your trespass citation.
I think I am inclined to shop elsewhere for my heart attack inducers.
I like Culver's and Wendy's better anyways.
My copy of Shooting Times tells me that this is my last issue.
Bummer.
I am allowed to change over to American Rifleman or American Hunter.
I chose American Rifleman in print and online editions.
Actually used a P-38 to open a can, instead of posing one next to a pull-tab can...
It is not difficult. It's a bit more tedious because I really couldn't set up a rhythm the way it cuts.
It's set, cut, set, cut. You don't get the cut-slide motion like with the Swiss Army knife.
The edges are far rougher too. I can now see what they were modeling from cartoons showing open tin cans!
If you have a P-38 to open cans you will not starve. Open a few and you will seek an easier method.
I think I'm going to try the P-51 tomorrow.
Update: I was going the wrong direction! If you go counterclockwise around the can, it's set-cut. Going clockwise lets you set up a rhythm! I experimented with the already opened can's bottom side. The bigger paddle and blade on the P-51 is MUCH nicer.
I remember when you could get a quick, concise answer to any question just by typing it into a search engine.
Like, "Was Rob Reiner anti-gun?"
That just gets you hits from news sites about his death and nary a word about his stance on gun control.
I didn't ask if he was dead.
I didn't ask if he was murdered.
I asked if he supported gun control and the search engines don't answer that.
It pisses me off.
PS: He was an advocate of gun control, I wanted to make sure I'd remembered correctly because I can't think of anything more embarrassing than being murdered from a lack of shootin' back.
Rob Reiner has died.
Considering how often he lectured me about my politics, I will not miss him much.
He made a lot of stuff I enjoyed watching, and if he'd limited himself to letting his art speak for him, I'd prolly be more upset.
Update: It's being investigated as a homicide.
I'm familiar with most of this kit from photos and books, but never seen most of them in action.
Pretty neat!
Once again:
The possession, use, or storage of Weapons or Firearms is strictly prohibited on all [Brown] University Property and at [Brown] University-sponsored events, except as authorized under this policy.
There cannot have been a mass shooting at Brown University because firearm possession, use and storage has been prohibited.
Do not repeat the lies of the mass media.
Or, maybe, just MAYBE, gun free victim zones are the problem and not the guns.
I don't recall any mass shootings since Texas legalized campus carry.
There's a faction of people who are wanting others to stop discriminating against them for their "immutable characteristics," but are more than happy to condemn "cisgender white men."
You know, discriminating against straight white guy's for their immutable characteristics.
I guess the best thing about being a liberal is getting twice as many standards as everyone else.
I dunno why people say opening a can with a P-38 is difficult. It only took me a moment.
I don't know what everyone complains about.
It appears that Dan Crenshaw is suing Shawn Ryan for asking how he got so wealthy on his congressional salary.
I find that I want to hear the answer to this question because I know several people who've been working for longer at a congressional pay scale and aren't millionaires.
Almost as if there's something congress creatures get to do that normal people don't.
I am not sure if it's Blogger or Flickr that's the problem with putting pictures on the blog.
The "by URL" inserter from the WYSIWYG interface barfs on anything bigger than x1024.
It will happily display a linked photo that's much larger if you write your own HTML string.
I am not sure if this is Flickr refusing to parse for the inserter, or the inserter being unable to process larger files before it times out.
Harvey decided she needed some time to herself so I decided to go for a drive.
Five hours later, I am home.
The Beast is just a nice cruiser.
Took some new roads and did some small exploring.
Florida between Crystal River and Chiefland is about as nothing to see as you can get.
Lots and lots of deer. Paid close attention to that with a foot hovering over the brake.
There's a truism about WW2; "The war was won with British intelligence, American steel and Russian blood." It's attributed to Stalin himself.
I became aware of this truism from some British subject explaining how us Americans didn't really do much and we shouldn't be saying we won the war.
They refer to WW1 in this light too.
Well, WW1 would probably have ended differently after the collapse of Russia and without the injection of American troops to the Western Front. Even if the Germans eventually lost, the surrender terms would likely have been a lot less provocative. Might even have prevented WW2 from happening at all.
But the "American steel" part misses something very important.
American FOOD.
If we'd sat it out completely, England would have starved. Literally.
I don't believe that the US won the war in Europe single-handedly. But I do think that the US was instrumental in achieving that victory.
On the topic of war I'm different from a lot of the people I'm reading.
I don't think one should wait until it's too late to start one, but I also don't think it should be the first step of "diplomacy."
I think that if we're going to have a war, we should to it right, follow the rules and have Congress pass a declaration of war.
I also think that the president should have the flexibility to reply to casus belli without waiting for Congress to convene and vote.
But I'm conflicted on the president being able to initiate hostilities.
"But, McThag," I hear some say, "what if a quick, surprise, attack is what's needed?"
I dunno. That's why I am conflicted.
Considering how often the people who are on the receiving end of those quick, surprise, attacks are not national actors, then I think the old hostis humani generis rules apply.
Wanna drop a JDAM on pirates, slavers or terrorists? That's executive power and doesn't need Congress to further authorize the force because it's long accepted that such are enemies of humanity.
I'm getting to the point of thinking that non-assimilating, illegal aliens should be added to the list.
It'd be a Hell of an incentive for them to get to be becoming 'Merican.
But if you want to make war on a nation-state, you have to get Congress involved before you start shooting if they aren't actually shooting at you first.
I get conflicted because I can easily see lots of practical problems with following the rules.
However, if war is declared, then WARRE it is!
You get us to the point where we feel the need to get that declaration, your nation becomes an entry in the history books. Your language, culture and history will be, effectively, erased and you will be replaced by US. Your nation becomes a territory. Your people become territorial residents who will now have to assimilate to being Americans; like it or not. Your grandchildren will not know how to speak your foreign tongue and will not be able conceive of a time where their home state was ever a nation-state.
I'd rather we were a lot friendlier and happier nation than that though. I prefer mutually beneficial treaties, trade and cultural exchange.
Wiping you off the face of the Earth is the last thing I want us to do... but it IS on the list.
Just sayin'.
Twilight:2000 happens as some long held paradigms in infantry weapons changed.
The Austrians and British had changed over to bullpup rifles which used magnified optics instead of iron sights. The Germans were working on a caseless bullpup rifle that used a scope instead of irons.
The US and Canada were slicing the carry handles off their M16 derivatives and replacing them with a rail which wasn't specific to a particular optic. The US with the, now, ubiquitous Picatinny rail, Canada going with a modification of the ancient Weaver system. Picatinny is also a modification of the Weaver system, but different from the Canadian version.
It's the slots. Weaver and Canada use narrower slots (0.180" vs 0.206"). Weaver doesn't specify spacing of the slots, Canada and Picatinny do.
Canada and Picatinny use different spacing (0.394" center to center for Picatinny) with the Canadian system getting 14 slots in the same space as Picatinny getting 13.
This creates some incompatibilities. Don't get too down on Canada here, they simply licensed an existing Weaver modification from A.R.M.S. mere months before the Picatinny rail was developed and NATO adopted it.
Anything designed for a Weaver base will fit both.
Anything designed for a Canadian rail will fit a Picatinny rail.
Some things designed for a Picatinny rail will fit on a Weaver or Canadian rail. Trial and error here.
And then there's the Soviets and Warsaw Pact...
Nominally there are two standard side-rails for their weapons. The AK pattern and the SVD pattern.
The same scope can be found with either mounting style. Except for the mounting, they are identical.
Later scopes, outside the scope (pun) of T2K have a mounting system that can used with both style of rails.
Dear YouTubers, especially GunTubers...
Tell me what you're going to say.
Say it.
Tell me what you just said.
Don't ramble on for 1/3 of the video with the justification for what you're about say.
Justfication comes after your statement, to support it, not before.
Take a couple classes on public speaking at the local community college!
Ilhan Omar thinks we should have Federal gun registration.
Yeah, right. Let's ignore that the number of firearms is increasing steadily and the rate of crime done with them is falling.
As Fuddbusters points out, let's say the, ever efficient, Feral Gubmint can register a gun a minute.
There's 637 to 985 million firearms out there to register!
At one a minute... 1,215.28 to 1,897.2 years.
This assumes 100% compliance, and even traditionally polite and law-abiding Canada can't get that!
We're also seeing the effects of giving up personal arms in places like Great Britain.
Compliance is gonna be low.
Even saying, "we're gonna register all the new guns and not worry about the almost a billion already out there!" adds 47.7 years of registration at one gun a minute every year for the 25 million guns added to the supply.
I think they can record and register the new guns a lot faster than one a minute.
It's possible to register all the new guns.
It's not possible to account for all the existing guns.
When a gun is damaged beyond repair, there's no requirement to tell anyone about it. Some simple precautions and it's in the scrap bin.
Ten years later, what gun?
The non-compliant will simply say they had the proverbial boating accident and without a search of their residence you don't know if they're lying. You can't know!
This also assumes they hid it IN their residence to be found during a search too.
I think your average clumsy boater is smart enough to cache their accidentally lost guns off site.
Home Depot sells everything you need to hide a gun for decades.
I have long held to the belief that if you intend to live someplace you should join the citizenry.
I did not move to Florida and subject them to my Iowa ways. I attempted to act like them not force them to act like me.
I remember why I left Iowa. Why would I want to bring that with me?
Admittedly, it's a smaller move to change from one region of the US to another, but it was a change.
Floridians chafe at New Yorker's constant bitching about how things are better in New Fucking York.
Explain, again, why the fuck you're here, again?
I mean if Florida sucks and you're unhappy here, why don't you just return to the land of good bagels and pizza?
They've forgotten why they left.
Yet, they're still Americans. Fellow citizens.
The problem is that people who aren't Americans are living here without a plan to become Americans.
This was not true of the other mass immigrations to the US.
The Swedes, Germans, Irish and Italians who came here and manifest destinied the shit out of The West were already most of the way to being Americans because there was, like, an 80% overlap between American and anyone from Western Civilization. Much of the gap was eliminated through learning English.
There were large enclaves of these immigrants where, if they didn't assimilate, they did not leave without harassment. Literal ghettos used to force assimilation.
My great grandfather and grandfather on Mom's side both experienced what would be called racism if we accepted Italian as being racist. My mother and I experienced no such prejudice. My grampa assimilated.
The present problem is Mexicans and South Americans are present in large enough numbers that their enclaves don't resemble ghettos but colonies. Somalians are definitely running a colonial model.
We're paying them to do it.
At least Latinos are from Western Civ, but their flavor has less overlap with American thanks to growing up under less than Western Civ governments. It wouldn't really take a strong effort to get them to assimilate.
Somalis aren't from Western Civ and would take a lot more effort to get them assimilate.
I'm not opposed to the effort, but any refusal to assimilation should be accompanied with a deportation.
Islam may, ultimately, be incompatible with Western Civ and being American.
American includes religious freedom that's anathema to Sharia.
Sharia and the Bill of Rights have a lot of conflict too.
Conflict that, if it proves irreconcilable, means they will not be assimilated and if they cannot or will not, need to find someplace else to live.
I am not the only person who marvels that not a single Moslem refugee population has taken refuge in an Islamic country.
I am increasingly convinced it is not emigration or refuge they seek, but conquest. Colonization.
They mean to subjugate The West.
I hope to fight it, being of The West, I have much to lose.
When women have 100% the choice about whether they get or stay pregnant, they don't get to claim any right to the father's money.
Their body, their choice.
They choose poorly, to Hell with them!
Enshrined in law is:
Both parents don't want a kid, kid can be aborted or given up for adoption.
Both parents want a kid, no problem, they get down to the job of being parents.
Mom doesn't want a kid, Dad does. Mom can get an abortion or give the kid up for adoption without any recourse for Dad.
Dad doesn't want a kid, Mom does. Mom carries to term and gets The State to take money away from him. Again, Dad has little to no recourse if his genes match the kid's.
Since Mom gets to make the decision about having a kid, I don't see how any father is responsible unless he volunteers for the job.
No rights = No responsibilities.
Worse, Mom can completely eliminate Dad from the raising of the children while simultaneously demanding child support. He gets no visitation, no say in how they are raised or educated. He's just financially responsible.
So, girls, if you want men to assume duties, you have to give them rights.
It should be our bodies, our choices.
And, although it's a staid position, maybe consider aspirin held between the knees for birth control until you're in a loving, lasting relationship where the kids will have two parents who agree on it.
PS: Before you comment, this is not the place to have a debate about the morality of abortion. If you try, your comment gets deleted and I will call you a mouthbreathing Walz.
Dun dun dun!
Legally, that's a machine gun and if you didn't spend $200 and get one made, and registered, before May 19, 1986; you're breaking the law.
So...
DO NOT DO THIS AT HOME IN THE REAL WORLD!
But we're talking about GURPS and Twilight: 2000 where the government has, largely, collapsed and even where it hasn't little to no effort is given to gun control.
To make one you need Armoury/TL7 (Small Arms). A successful roll gets you one that converts most semi-auto AR-15's to full-auto only. Change Rof from 3 to 13!. Also change malf to 16.
A critical success means you don't have to change the malf.
You can also eliminate the malf penalty by fitting the link to the gun, Armoury/TL7 (Small Arms) -5, or by spending the extra time during manufacture to create a fine (reliable) version.
$50, neg. for Malf 16 version.
$100, neg. for Malf 17 version.
$250, neg. no Malf version.
DO NOT DO THIS AT HOME!
"If you look at my characters, you will find me. No matter what kind of character you create or assume, a little of yourself must remain there."
-Jack Kirby
I've only made characters for role playing games and some amateur science fiction, but it's true. You put yourself in your creations and there's always a little reflection that someone might spot.
I watched a few of the training films that are out there on YouTube for WW2 aircraft showing how to start the engine.
I don't know why I'm surprised that everything I did to start my car in winter in Iowa before computers ran everything is stuff you do when cold starting a P-47.
The big difference is there's no spring returning the throttle to idle and the throttle is hand controlled not foot. Oh, and an airplane has manual mixture control.
Otherwise, just your standard 4-stroke gas engine.
But it is kinda funny watching the instructor wiggling the throttle lever to "feather it" like I would tickle the pedal to get it to catch when it hasn't quite started.
It still kind of surprises me how fast and easy the knife's opener is.
While thinking about Twilight: 2000, I came up with a really good campaign idea for once things return stateside.
Now I cannot recall what I'd come up with.
I don't even have the excuse of not having a place to have recorded it because I was typing out shit for the equipment list.
Most times, these ideas come back.
Top row, L to R: Pyrite, Amethyst, Flourite.
Bottom row, L to R: Watermelon Tourmaline, Rhodochrosite, Tangerine Quartz
Remarkably complex and difficult builds.
Modular weapons are a pain to express clearly in GURPS.
A flat top AR has no rear sight.
What's the Acc of a rifle without a rear sight?
I have decided that it's 0.
A rear sight also adds weight to the rifle, so I've shown it without the weight of a rear sight and a note on the weapons table, "Acc 0 without rear sight or optic. No iron sights while an optic is mounted."
Then I listed the detachable carry handle on the table, and a common, issue, optic.
Clear and succinct.
It's important, I've found to be so because you need to waterboard most players before they read the descriptions.
I would have mentioned the anniversary end of Prohibition 92 years ago on Friday, but I was busy drinking.
Today is Pearl Harbor Day.
84 years since The Empire of Japan opened hostilities against the US and touched the boats.
NEVER.
TOUCH.
THE.
BOATS!
Cue the Beatles... Abbey Road, side 2, song 1.
In one of my nexus worlds I had a barbeque place called The Tall Hog.
It was popular with the Orc and Goblinoid crowd.
Because of this, it was also a "rough" place.
I don't recall any player character trying it out.
The Tall Hog specialized in serving people meat, it's a play on long pig.
Because the nexus was pure Barter Town, there were very few rules, but you could be assured that the "livestock" was not murdered in the nexus itself. I didn't go into how they sourced their meat.
I had not actually decided!
But I found a note today that suggested that they were serving pork and it was all false advertising!
But I still regret never being able to do the scene where the players have figured out that Soylent Green IS People and the "Try The GIANT Burger" sign doesn't mean a bigger burger.
This is the same nexus where I had a seafood place where the owner/proprietor/entire staff was a group mind of, what looked to be, Christmas Island red crabs.
It had a diving board above the cook-pot and an individual crab would make a great show of diving in to be cooked and served.
108 years ago Finland decided to stop being part of Russia and declined it's first invitation to be part of the Soviet Union.
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa has passed to the actors home in the sky.
His career had some surprising turns for me.
The G41 was a program that West Germany launched when the G11 program was showing all the signs of being an epic failure.
It's basically an HK33 that uses a normal STANAG magazine.
In the real world the end of the cold war killed the G11 project and German reunification delayed adoption of a 5.56 rifle for a few years; culminating in the G36.
In T2K, the G11's problems were solved, but it was still expensive, so the G41 was adopted as a secondary standard.
I'm having trouble finding the introduction dates for the folding backup iron sights the military issues.
I am thinking I will have to revise my T2K list, again, and make the detachable carry handle the default BUIS.
This is not to say that such sights weren't available, they just weren't issued.
I think that ARMS #40 was around in time for Twilight, but I am not certain.
Who offers the M16EZ to local governments?
I think the original game got it upside down.
But it depends on who controls the depots and the surplus.
If MilGov is offering worn parts as a kit to help local governments obtain fighting arms, that implies that CivGov controls the warehouses and depots where, literal, mountains of surplus small arms are stored.
I am thinking, in the T2K universe, that because The Cold War kept going, politics in the USA didn't go the same as our timeline. That means no Kap'n Krunch destroying mountains of M16A1's which makes them available to hand out as government aid.
That makes me wonder if the M16EZ or LMR projects are needed unless MilGov doesn't have access to the depots where the M16A1's are stored.
The LMR is a fun gun for a player to end up with.
The big question is if the LMR barrels for T2K are 1:12 or 1:7?
Something I just noticed from Forgotten Weapons posting of the LMR's manual is that it takes the M14 rifle's M6 bayonet not the M16's M7 (or M9 or OKW 3S)!
You find yourself in Poland, near Kalisz, in the year 2000 and your commander has just said, "Good luck, you're on your own," just before a big explosion takes out the TOC...
After a few days of dodging Soviets and marauders you decide you're fed up with the 3-round burst mode of your M4.
You remember your dad talking about how they got authorization, during the Gulf War to "bend" something in the fire control parts that disabled the burst and allowing full-auto fire.
What are you going to bend?
Well, dad doesn't know the whole story.
The fast way to remove the burst mode is to remove the burst interrupter, but that will let the normal interrupter to slide too far left to right in the trough in the trigger, giving a Malf of 16 in full auto fire.
Inserting a spacer the same thickness as the burst interrupter solves this issue.
If you're never going to put the 3-round back in, you can use the burst interrupter as the spacer by simply filing off both hooks.
Knowing this and doing this is Armoury/TL8 (Small Arms). If you don't have this skill, the default is Engineering/TL8 (Small Arms) -5 or Guns/TL8 (Rifle) -5.
But there's another way!
If there's an M16, M16A1, M4A1, C7, C8, C8A1, or L119A1 laying around that's deadlined for some reason besides the fire control group; you swap all the trigger and hammer parts between them and et voila!
This will give a +3 to your Armoury/TL8 (Small Arms) roll because it's so much simpler.
Please note that none of this will change a semi-automatic civilian version of an AR to a select fire weapon.
For that you need to do some drilling (and machining with some lower receivers). That's an Armoury/TL8 (Small Arms) roll at -2 because of the precision required in modifying the lower receiver. Then you toss the semi-auto hammer-trigger-sear parts and plop in the full-auto or burst parts.
Even if you make a drop-in auto-sear with an Armoury/TL8 (Small Arms) you're still going to need the full-auto or burst parts.
Changing semi-auto parts into full auto parts requires adding material to the parts and some finesse. Armoury/TL8 (Small Arms) -5 and appropriate tools are required.
Neutering full auto parts to delete select fire is Armoury/TL8 (Small Arms) +5.
Doing all of this legally... If you already own a legally registered machine gun, you can swap parts to your heart's content.
If you don't have a legally owned machinegun, the police will want to have a chat and you will be booking a room in one of the worst hotels on the planet for an extended stay.
In the world of Twilight: 2000, all bets are off! There's a slim chance of coming back under control of the chain of command who will object to modifications you've made to your issued weapon.
Canada, when they changed to 5.56 NATO from 7.62 NATO in 1984 followed the US' lead and went with an M16 variant.
The C7 is very much like the M16A2 except they kept the rear sight and full-auto from the M16A1.
Also, like the United States, in 1994 they adopted a carbine version of their rifle.
The fixed rear sight C8 and the flat-top C8A1. The C8A1 got issued with an Elcan C79 3.4x optic.
Interestingly, the flat-top C7A1 rifle wasn't issued until 2005! Too late for T2K.
I've made amendments... again.
While the M4 carbine is the official service rifle for the US Army in Twilight: 2000 as well as the real world...
The M4 RAS doesn't happen in time and the SOCOM barrel is not standard.
Stats for this are easy because High Tech lists it in this original configuration.
The GURPS stats include the detachable carry handle... 7.3 lb. as listed. But the Army went with the Matech rear sight, which is lighter. 7 lb. with oval handguards, BUIS and no optics.
The listed weight for the M16A4 is all wrong though.
Without the M5 RAS handguards and with A2 handguards and a detachable carry handle it should come to 8.8 lb. With the Matech sight, 8.5 lb., with the KAC 600m sight, 8.4 lb.
While not period correct for Twilight: 2000, an M16A4 with the M5 RAS, detachable handle, some grip panels and vertical grip, 9.6 lb. With Matech rear sight, 9.3 lb. With KAC 600m rear sight 9.2 lb.
They even get the M16A2 weights wrong with the oft-quoted 8.9 lb. I get 8.4 lb.
All fixed now!
All weights include a bog standard, green follower, gray aluminum body USGI 30-round magazine, because Magpul isn't around for T2K.
I went to vote for the Gundie Awards and encountered a problem:
Fuck that.
I already delete about 200 emails from places I've done business with already and I don't want more.
Never mind the idea that there's terms and conditions to an internet popularity contest that's binding on the voters. Even more "fun" is the terms and conditions has links to the subsections with their own terms and conditions. You have to click to three levels on one to get the whole thing you're agreeing to.
Since I've made him a character in my scribbles, I've been reading about George Crook.
In particular the battle of the Rosebud.
This is where General Crook learned that the northern plains Indians fought a little differently from the Apache and Northwest Indians he'd been accustomed to.
But part of that difference was from a change in how the Sioux and Cheyenne were dealing with Whites.
They'd gotten new leaders who were aggressive, take-the-fight-to-the-enemy types.
And they took the fight to Crook at Rosebud creek.
I've read several accounts of that fight and the worst I can call it for Crook is a draw.
The outcome of the battle was not decisive for either side, but it did fix Crook in one spot for
Both sides apparently fought until ammunition levels were getting critical and the Sioux withdrew. Crook then sent riders to his supply dump and withdrew to a better position until fresh supplies arrived.
Those supplies did not arrive until after Col. Custer had met his fate.
Something I've not seen mentioned is I think the Indians had something of an after action review of the Rosebud battle and did a "this worked, this didn't" kind of analysis and applied it to the Battle of the Greasy Grass.
I think some historians forget that Indians are people too and capable of learning and changing their approaches to problems.
I also think a lot of historians keep missing that Rosebud and Little Big Horn are separated by about a week and how long it takes to move a supplies when it's carried by wagon or mule (or how far a wagon or mule can go in a day).
Someone mentioned that the pros study logistics, some obscure general I think.
I have also noticed that George Crook was an unpopular officer with his contemporaries who really only kept his job by being relentlessly successful... Until Rosebud.
There's a lot to unpack about the man, but history is written from what people wrote about someone and those someones hate you...
Since I have T2K on the brain, I was wondering if it was better to take an M4 or and M16A4.
Both guns are different from the present day's versions.
No RAS on either.
Both accept the same optics.
The M4 will have the earlier lighter barrel.
The M4 loses a bit of damage vs the A4. 4d+2 pi vs 5d pi. That's 4-26 avg 16 against 5-30 avg 17.5.
The M4 loses some reach. 750/2,900 vs 800/3,500.
The M4 is lighter. 7.3 lb. vs 8.9 lb.
The M4 has less Bulk. 4 vs 5.
The M4 costs more. $950 vs $850.
So the M4 does 91% the average damage per shot at 94%/83% the range for 82% the mass for 80% the bulk for 112% the money.
Looks like the M4 wins the min/max fight with the M16A4.
The M16A4 normally has a vertical grip.
I don't care for it, but...
It's not clone correct, but I'm OK with a representative example of the breed.
It's interesting to me that three companies still make the M5 RAS and none of them sell them to the unwashed public.
How can you tell someone is a bigot about straight white shit?
The word "cisnormative" comes up a lot. Said with all the tone and bile of a Klansman saying CENSORED.
The assumption that biological sex and gender being aligned is the default state.
That belies any statement of understanding.
Cisnormative white men deserve the bad things that happen to them because of their moral corruption.
Cisnormative white men are The Other.
The Other are not people, so they get to treat them as less than people.
Don't like me pointing out your bigotry?
Tough shit.
A real tell is the screaming that someone who's cisnormative can't speak about any situation where LGBT folks are involved, but they sure as fuck can speak about any situation where cisnormal white men are.
Even if speaking in favor of the LGBT folks!
How can you tell someone is a bigot about LGBT shit?
The word "degenerate" comes up a lot.
Morally corrupt and given to vice.
That belies any statement of mental illness and compassion for the sufferer.
Degenerates deserve the bad things that happen to them because of their moral corruption.
Degenerates are The Other.
The Other are not people, so they get to treat them as less than people.
It's their invisible friend in the driver's seat and in a nation with religious freedom, PEOPLE are free to ignore the diktats and dictates of other people's invisible friends.
Don't like me pointing out your bigotry?
Tough shit.
By the way, I've read the book attributed to your invisible friend and you idiots are completely misreading the section on pederasty and applying to homosexuality. The gay sex part is pretty mild.
But even accepting your invisible friend says no butt stuff, there's not a word about being generally weird.
And the constant mention of LARP and Furry says, to me, that the real issue isn't the buttsects but the being strange or different.
