Would anyone be interested in a "will it GURPS" description of the Tienanmen Square Massacre?
Because I hear that people in China really love to read about it.
So much so that the traffic to your site from China drops to zero almost instantly from what can only be their servers locking up from all the traffic trying to reach the site.
Nothing censorious there at all.
My blog is, apparently, actually popular in Singapore.
That shocks me beyond belief.
The hits go up when I post GURPS content and down when I talk about cars.
This isn't like the Russian and West Tiawanese bot traffic that was steady until Google finally got sick of them.
OLD GURPS posts are getting traffic from Singapore too.
I'd read that GURPS was popular there relative to other games before, but this is interesting.
Welcome to my larger audience!
The plywood I use as a workbench and a photo back-drop on the back patio has succumbed to the ravages of Florida weather.
Let us welcome a newer piece of plywood!
It'll develop some character as time passes.
As I get balder, I notice that I am growing thick luxurious hair out of my ears.
It's really irritating.
There's pronunciation of a couple words that drive me nuts.
But two rise to the top frequently.
Cache is pronounced the same as cash. It is not said the same way as cachet.
Cyclic is pronounced sigh-click. It is not pronounced sick-lick.
The mispronunciation comes from bicycle and the occasional motorcycle being bye-sickle and motor-sickle.
In the case of bikes, that's slang.
Even worse, the origin of saying cyclic wrong comes from a movie.
The Jackal with Bruce Willis.
Richard Gere's horrible fake Irish accent and improvising saying some words differently to underscore his Irishness is how we got here.
Do you want to emulate a dancing monkey?
Civil War was not as bad as I'd seen it reported. It's not great, but it's got its moments.
FuzzyGeff and I have oft discussed how religion would be different in a fantasy setting as opposed to the real world.
When you can ask the Gods a question and they not only answer, but do so where others can hear it as well...
You don't need faith for that.
So we figured that since the Gods were undeniable, they wouldn't be denied.
I just realized something.
Denial is so totally human.
From flat-earther to "the Holocaust never happened"...
The cleric's spells won't work on them, but they will fervently believe that's because the Gods don't exist, not because the Gods are simply denying them for their lack of belief.
Cue the leaders of Hy-Brasil...
I've managed to make a workable set of stat conversions from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay to GURPS.
It utterly falls apart when going past the humanoid character level, but by that point I have other benchmarks to compare with.
It took too long.
The average Warhammer human fails stat checks at a different rate than the average GURPS human.
Once I scaled around that...
CLICK!
The work progresses.
I will at least get the humanoids converted. Most of them, like elves, dwarves, and the lot, just get the default racial stats GURPS already provided.
Reading about how Star Wars: Andor has an attempted rape in one of the episodes and watching lots of places trying to make it an allegory for... something.
Maybe they're just showing that the Empire is evil and employs evil people and there's no hidden meaning or equivalence to Donald Trump and illegal immigrants into the US.
Try to remember that this universe dates from when Jimmy Carter was president and if we're trying to make an allegory that the Empire is the USA then it's got to viewed from a 1977 lens as well.
Watching a video of two guys talking about the changes made in the new edition of D&D.
Right at the beginning they mention that if you don't actually read the new book, you're not going to see those changes.
Dur! I says, then... Oh wait.
It's something I'm guilty of.
I have no idea if some of the characters I made for Champions were actually compliant between the boxed set (2nd edition) and the spiffy hard cover (4th edition); but they worked.
LBB Traveller and The Traveller Book are not, entirely, the same thing either. Not sure if we even noticed at the time.
I've dealt with big changes in GURPS and trying to get the players to update their characters. At least one player would use older characters as a template for newer ones and that included stuff that was different in the new edition.
I've also been the player trying to get my head around the new rule set when I joined an AD&D 2e game and just did not understand the explanation for THACO. It's actually quite simple, but the GM did a bad job explaining and I was used to looking up that information on a table in the Dungeon Master's Guide.
At the time I didn't have the books, so I couldn't figure it out on my own.
I think the YouTube algorithm is offering it's opinion about the difficulty level of my HVAC job by suggesting this one:
Actually it was Marv that sent it to me.
The algorithm would send the Panama Canal if my theory was valid.
Turn off the sound. Trust me.
Part 1:
To match his speed I'm going to need lots and lots of meth.
This is completely within my skill set, I just need patience.
Yeah yeah, patience, how long does that take?
"There is no Cloud. There is only someone else's computer."
The tariff thing is really revealing some things about some paradigms many businesses were working under.
They didn't actually make what they were selling.
They designed it, then farmed out the manufacturing to someone else because they have no in-house manufacturing at all.
The put all of their manufacturing in West Taiwan and are now freaking out because it sure looks like they cannot economically make their product elsewhere.
Even worse, they don't sell anything that people MUST have to live.
Entertainment products are high elasticity demand.
But something these game companies lost when the prices on custom dice and miniatures dropped through the floor from West Taiwanese manufacturing is we used to play these games without any 3D elements at all.
Little square counters punched out of cardboard were universal. Those can still be printed in the good old USA economically.
They could go back to that.
We didn't use figures to play any of the roleplaying games I played for a really long time. The only figures I had of characters were because it was fun to make and paint them, not to bring to the game and put on the map.
Even now, my figures are Lego Minifigs.
But it's rare that I unroll the hex-map and have people get out their little dudes.
I think that gaming companies could recapture a lot of market by just going back to imagination.
I say this and realize that I know several GM's who never did make a world of their own, they just ran the pre-made modules.
Maybe there's less imagination out there than I think...
But, maybe, that's why I was always welcome as the GM. They couldn't buy the adventure I was about to put them through and get some pre-knowledge. I noticed that my players were doing that with T2K. So I increasingly used those modules as world building rather than running the adventure.
Completely changing Operation Reset is a pretty decent example. I should write that up sometime.
Watching one of the podcasts I run on YouTube in the background and they talked about how SCCY owes Volusia County, FL about $250k and there's tax seizure notices on all the entrances to the building.
Now that I know to look, there's been a lot of forum traffic from people complaining they're not getting any response about getting their lifetime warranties honored.
The misidentification of the M203 from Pew Pew Tactical, for some reason, has reminded me of something.
Somethings...
We had two experimental weapons changes to our M1A1(HA).
The first was a single tank in the company that General Dynamics Land Div. had changed the coaxial MG from an M240 to an M134 mini-gun.
We took turns with it at gunnery, giggled like little kids, got debriefed by the GDLD reps and they took it away and nothing appears to have come of it.
The second was to replace the Ma Deuce on the wing tanks with a Mk.19 automatic GL.
Again, we took them to Graf and did a couple of full CALFEX with them. Finding room for the more bulky ammo was an issue and we weren't really certain when to use them.
The .50's were back on the tanks when I left the unit.
Funny story about our first range trip with them:
The guy training us didn't effectively communicate to us that the flight time of a 40mm grenade is a LOT longer than any other weapon we used.
It didn't really show up until we tried to fire at the hulk of an old APC at a decently long range though.
What happened was we lined up the sights, fired a round and, in our minds, nothing happened down range. Figuring we missed, we carefully aligned the sight again and fired another round. Nothing. In frustration, we let loose with 10 rounds.
All of the above did not take very long at all, but it seemed like a long time subjectively.
About the same time as the last of the 10 rounds had left the barrel, the first round hit the M114 we were using as a target.
"COOOOOOOOOOL!" we says!
While we were admiring the explosion, the 10-round string started to arrive and range control starts screaming for us to stop shooting.
"We haven't been shooting for a while!" we protest.
As an almost psychology graduate, some aspects of research make me wonder if I could have gotten the grant and done the study.
I was reading this article when I wondered: In the absence of racial differences, will groups create their own divisions to mistreat in the same manner as racism.
What made me think of it was my experience in high school in Iowa.
Iowa, at the time, lacked minorities.
But we had many "out" groups in the school.
It'd be an interesting field of study.
My first AR was made from a kit I bought from Del-Ton.
Their web page now says:
Thank You For Your Support - Del-Ton is Closing.
As Del-Ton prepares to close its doors, we want to take a moment to express our deepest gratitude to the incredible people who have been part of our journey.
To our loyal customers: Your trust in our products and support of our mission has been the cornerstone of our success. Every purchase, every kind word, and every moment spent using our products has meant the world to us.
To our vendors and partners: Your collaboration, innovation, and shared commitment have been invaluable in helping us deliver quality and reliability to our customers.
To our dedicated employees: You are the heart and soul of Del-Ton. Your hard work, passion, and unwavering commitment have shaped our legacy and built a company we can all be proud of.
Together, we’ve achieved so much, and though this chapter is ending, the memories, partnerships, and friendships will remain. Thank you for being part of the Del-Ton story.
With heartfelt appreciation,
The Del-Ton Team .
I had not done business with them since, maybe, 2009.
They decided they were a rifle company and that meant they stopped selling parts and kits during all of the AR panic buys.
So I found other sellers for the parts I wanted.
Sad to see them go, though.
The parts to do the evaporator core arrived today from Rock Auto.
I need to read up on how much oil I need to put into this thing and I might end up doing what it says and removing the compressor and seeing how much oil is in it.
Yaaaaay! More work!
When verifying that Bushmaster is who coined the term "dissipator" for a 16" barrel with a rifle length sight and handguard, I encountered this article from Pew Pew Tactical.
In this article is a photo:
|
| Colt 605 with suppressor, Vietnam 1968 |
They identify that rifle as an R605.
It is not.
That's an M16A1 or an R603.
The HEL E4 suppressor overlaps the barrel, it doesn't attach right at the front sight base.
Then there's this photo:
|
| “New York” with Colt 605a and suppressor and “Jackie” with M-16/M79 grenade launcher |
Again, not an R605. That's an M16A1 with a HEL E4 again. Notice the forward assist? But the caption contains another glaring error, that I replicated above. Did you spot it?
I think we can skip citing Pew Pew Tactical as an authoritative source...
Every once and a while I do a "what's still out there" for the alternate calibers.
Widener's has posted about 6.8x43mm!
It's a good summary of what's still being made and some honest consideration of the pros and cons of the round at this, rather late, point in the game.
I'm giddy that they have someone who appears to actually read the blog!
In turn, I'll give them a link.
They've given me a couple of free boxes of ammo here and there to review and Harvey has bought ammo from them.
It's a pity that I cannot crank the AC and Heat at the same time with my entirely too modern house thermostat.
But what I can do is leave Moxie idling all day while I drive around in my six-liter V-8 hot-rod!
The AC doesn't even work in it, but I can run the fans at full tilt just to waste some extra energy doing nothing.
All the lights will be on all day.
FTW!
Often times among my friends I am just the MOST socialized.
That doesn't mean I'm well socialized.
I routinely get the signals wrong.
With depressing regularity, I will end up depressed about how someone said something and take days or weeks to come to grips that it was just an offhanded remark.
You'd think I would be better at this by now.
The U.S.S. Robert A. Heinlein Campaign!
We want the new Secretary of the Navy – John Phelan — to name a future DDG-51 Flight III
destroyer for Robert A. Heinlein.************************
It is the prerogative of the Secretary of the Navy to name Navy vessels. Navy policy is to name destroyers for deceased members of the Navy.We want the new Secretary of the Navy – John Phelan — to name a future DDG-51 Flight III destroyer for Robert A. Heinlein.
This would happen if lots of people write asking him to name a future Arleigh
Burke-class destroyer for Heinlein.Phelan’s address is:
The Honorable John Phelan
Secretary of the Navy
Room 4E686
Defense Pentagon
Washington, D.C. 20301More information may be found at the Campaign website.
I'm a pretty firm supporter of adult LGBT stuff.
I've been confronted about it here too.
But something else from that Lazerpig diatribe stood out.
I will try to be gentle, but there's no real way to candy-coat it.
Trans folks, if you're looking in the mirror and the face you see doesn't match your self image you've got a wiring problem.
Where I differ from a lot of the conservative folks is what to do about it. I prefer compassion, they prefer trauma.
But it's a mental illness. A mental sickness. A mental condition.
Those all mean the same thing.
Saying, "it's not a sickness, it's a condition!" as he does, is a non-sequitur.
You didn't redefine it. You rephrased it.
"She's not pretty as Hell, she's hot as fuck!" is the same sort of thing.
"I'm not stupid, I'm dumb," is as well.
Stating that there have been transgender people leading secret lives for centuries doesn't really bolster your argument. Yes, and?
Weaseling around it doesn't do your side any good.
Especially since, most of the time, it makes no never mind.
But I can see the corrosive effect that the Lazerpigs are having on my position. The loudest advocates are tending to be the craziest. I want to be against the craziest and be supportive of the people trying to be normal as they can be.
It's getting more and more difficult and I don't like it.
I never posted a pic of Olive as a 6.8?
She's only been this way for a year and a half...
It's a very comfortable configuration.
The dissipator upper came with an 'F' marked front sight base. Those are slightly taller than the normal front sight base and are tailored for flat-top uppers and the rear sights that clamp to them.
I deliberately didn't use an F-marked sight on Linda because I was using the A1 upper. She zeroed no problem.
Most of the time a normal front sight base zeroes no problem on a flat-top. Occasionally, you run out of elevation adjustment before you're on target.
Likewise, you can run out of adjustment in the other direction using an F front sight and a carry handle.
Because the non-F and a carry handle worked fine with Linda, putting her back that way meant returning to a known good condition.
Dottie will have a flat-top and the appropriate F-marked front sight base, which should work fine.
When I, finally, get a bolt carrier group I will zero Dottie and we'll find out.
That Lazerpig diatribe forgot something very important when he went down the list of bad things that President Trump was doing with regards to our military posture.
US interests.
Our withdrawal from several places which have European and United Kingdom interests and no US interest are mentioned at length.
Perhaps Europe and the UK should have done a better job of convincing us that we needed to remain?
Ukraine, it seems to me, is a prime example of a place that we don't really have an interest in whether it's run by a corrupt Ukrainian government or a corrupt Russian government or some hybrid of both.
Poland? We have an interest there. But notice the difference in spelling?
Not the same places.
Syria?
I think we've done all we could have been expected to do there.
Israel, with our support, seems more than able of handling that.
Europe is going to have to come to grips that Russia is THEIR problem and we're far more concerned with the Pacific region because it affects us directly instead of through third or fourth parties.
Pacific region, ie China.
I know he doesn't want us to look after ourselves at the expense of HIS interest, but here we are.
If you have two and a half hours to waste, you can watch his vid too! If you find something besides TDS by the time you're done, let me know.
PS: He's totally engaged in the methods he's accusing neo-nazis and the KKK of using. see if you can spot it.
Than foreigners explaining to me how I made my decision to vote.
Probably should have had the courtesy to ask me first.
Buh, bye Lazerpig.
That's two hours of my life I'm not getting back and I gutted it out to the end to see if you'd admit that the left does the exact same thing you accused the right of doing.
Nope.
Trump! Ukraine! Russian collusion!
PS: It's been us conservative gun owners blowing the whistle about anti-semitism here in the states, not the left.
I commented on a Facebook thread where someone was criticizing someone for using a universal style upper radiator hose and wondering what other shortcuts they'd taken.
I mentioned that the fitted hose is like no longer made for that odd year/engine combination.
They replied that I should look harder.
Well, I found the hose in question. It's 20 years old.
I don't think I'd trust that on my car.
New Old Stock is a Godsend sometimes.
But other times the part is deteriorating while you watch. Rubber parts are in this category.
Dottie has seen almost as many changes as Kaylee.
4-20 is a traditional day to get stoned.
It's also Hitler's birthday.
It's also kills 79 and 80 (his last) for Hauptman Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen.
It's also when the second to the last manned mission to the moon (so far) landed.
It's the anniversary of Columbine.
It's a busy day.
I remember it being earth day, but that will wait until Monday.
I don't favor collapsible stocks any more.
The parts bin gun and the SBRs are it. And the SBR's are clones of historical guns.
Every other AR is a fixed stock.
I noticed the preference when we were making the KP-15 guns.
Even if it denies us a fully non-compliant AWB for Chuck and Babs.
Battle of Lexington and Concord.
Branch Davidian... um... conflagration? Massacre? End of the Waco siege at any rate.
Oklahoma City bombing. A direct result of the above.
Lots of stuff.
I have, like, three role playing games that I want to read and understand.
Ironically, one of them is one that I played extensively.
Thirty-seven and some odd years ago...
Another is one I played a bit.
Forty-three odd years ago...
It'll be fun!
But I need to sit down and actually read and Grok the rules.
I remember them standing alone and being fun.
I stopped playing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay because I had more players for GURPS T2K when I was in the Army.
I stopped playing The Fantasy Trip because it was just me and two other people playing. And we mostly were trying to play AD&D modules... It made more sense to just play AD&D.
I welcome our alien overlords and this opportunity to have some "fun" for a change.
With all this barrel swapping, I found something interesting.
Linda's barrel nut is really banged up.
That comes from being the parts bin gun.
The (literal) High Speed Low Drag tool does not fit Linda's barrel nut.
The DPMS one still does.
No Easter dinner here tomorrow.
It's not something we did with any regularity and the in-laws appear to have forgotten it so we get to skate on making a big production about it.
That is not to say that we didn't make The Boy an Easter Basket... He enjoys that.
We're not Christians here, so we also get to skip church.
I recall my far more religious friends complaining about how Easter brought out people who never attended otherwise.
Idle hands and all.
Looking at the pics I decided I liked the original configuration better so I put the A1 upper back on Linda.
It was the triangle handguard photo that did it.
I'd have spent more money on a set of triangle handguards if I'd left it alone.
Then I'd have been upset about the A2 flash-hider.
Then I'd have obsessed over the forward assist and needed to find an R605 upper.
Then I'd have noticed the trap-door stock.
It would never have ended.
But the original configuration looks cool and I can call it done today without changing anything!
Florida was among the first states to go full on with the Real ID requirements.
I've had mine for a bit more than 14 years now.
So far it's been no different than the Fake ID it replaced.
Despite not making a declaration for more than a year, today, 250 years ago is when we actually started the long road to secede from the British Empire.
Lexington and Concord are the shot heard 'round the world.
Fireworks are legal in Florida.
That means that it sounds like Beruit at New Years and Independence Day.
It also means we get the occasional BOOM here and there.
Screaming at your neighbor for launching a boomer and threatening to call the cops before the noise ordinance kicks in will accomplish little.
We get lots of new people from up North who don't realize that it's not New York / New Jersey / Pennsylvania 'round here.
People from Michigan, however, seem to be accustomed to loud explosions and they don't bat an eye.
This is as close as I am taking Dottie to being an R605 clone.
I borrowed the handguards from Bubba's AR and did some judicious relieving to get clearance around the allen head.
I gotta admit, it looks right.
Not going to leave it this way though.
This is the normal mode:
In Twilight: 2000 the RDF Sourcebook setting proved very popular and ripe for roleplaying.
Somewhere, off post, was a tavern that was noteworthy in that it had good live music and booze.
All the other places nearby held to the Islamic prohibitions on booze, even to the point of not selling to infidels.
That especially extended to selling to the American's den of inequity.
A tavern must have food, so what did they have?
HOT BREADED RAT ON A STICK! (with cheese).
ASK FOR IT BY NAME!!!!
Cheese?
"Do you see any cows around here, detective?" L. Huxley
As it turns out, you CAN make cheese from rat milk. People who say otherwise are impatient.
The players never asked where the cheese came from, so I never had to tell them.
But the line above in red was great fun.
Them, "What are we going to have for dinner?"
Me, "Hot breaded rat on a stick?"
Them, "Again?"
Me, enticingly, "With cheeeeeeeeese?"
Them, "ASK FOR IT BY NAME!"
When I look in the cabinet... In the rack...
To my surprise my favorite barrel length is 20" and the rifle gas system that comes with it.
Next is a 16" barrel with a mid-length gas system.
Finally are the SBR's and their 14.5" and 11.5" barrels respectively and they're rocking carbine gas.
The Jones Act dates to 1920.
Between 1940 and 1945 the US was making cargo ships faster than Germany and Japan, combined, could make torpedoes.
Almost all of the ship building capacity is now gone, but if the Jones act was solely responsible, it would have been missing in 1940 when we started cranking out ships to supply England.
It wasn't just cargo ships. We made a fuck ton of other ships as well, in particular destroyers.
Eliminating the Jones act isn't going to address some fundamental aspects of making things in the US and one must look squarely into the face of environmental regulation and labor unions.
Because killing the Jones act will create a situation like making cars. Japan and Korea do a great job of keeping market share here, don't they?
Dissy Dottie is not an accurate clone of an R605.
Barrel is too long, handguards are wrong, A2 instead of 3-prong flash-hider, forward assist is intact.
Still pretty fetching.
Putting the A1 upper on her, I think, solidifies the idea that we're going for a longer sight radius by sticking to irons alone.
Lavender Linda got the "discarded" flat-top.
Ironically, she's rocking irons too because the red-dot I do have isn't tall enough to see past the front sight. Fixing this is a low priority item.
I noticed something taking this pic. If you have a windowed, or translucent, magazine, you need to have it loaded to show the bullets.
Another thing, they're sharing a bolt carrier group and charging handle. While PSA had a scorching sale on the dissy upper that I couldn't pass by with the risk them discontinuing it, they didn't have such a deal on a BCG.
It's not like I desperately need to have them both up and running for a lack of AR's around here.
Got the tacos tonight that I wanted to get a couple of weeks ago when my tooth broke.
The permanent crown is acting just like a normal tooth!
I was entirely too worried about that because the temp crown never did stop being tender.
I had a different scare right before I left to get Taco Bell.
One of the upper molars had that rough edge like the broken tooth had.
I grabbed my little mirror and shined some light on it and...
A tiny piece of a Frito was caught in there.
Makes sense, I'd just had Fritos with my lunch.
A couple seconds with a toothpick and all was, once again, well.
Scary though.
Crowns aren't cheap, even with insurance.
Swapped the A1 upper from Lavender Linda to Dissipator Dottie and vice versa.
Pics tomorrow afternoon when the light is right.
The entire point of a dissipator is to get the long sight radius of a rifle length front sight base. It seems wrong to put a flat-top on such a gun.
Linda is kind of the parts bin gun. She gets the hand-me-down stuff, and that includes the spare red-dot. I just need to find the spacer to put it back at co-witness height.
PSA on LEFT, Brownell's on RIGHT. <-- Lysdexics of the world UNTIE!
From the front:
Outsides:
I don't think there's anything wrong with either set now that I've trimmed some sprue tabs off the PSA version.
Took the PSA supplied handguards out of the storage bin I tossed them in when I grumbled at the quality.
I just can't give up on some things.
The reason they didn't fit well is because whomever was supposed to clean them up coming out of the mold did a bad job at the breech end.
A couple minutes with a knife and the plastic parts fit together like they're supposed.
This is something I've been doing with plastic models forever, so it was a no brainer to check. Odd that I didn't until now...
So the USGI A2 handguards are back in the bin and the slightly oval ones are back on the Dissy. I kinda like the slightly chonkier look of them.
I've read that the more oval pattern of "A2" grips comes from Canada's later versions of the C7 rifle. They did theirs in green.
The alleged FSU shooter is 20.
I was told in the wake of the Parkland shooting that the law banning people younger than 21 from buying guns would keep this from happening.
Shall we run down the list of laws broken before the first shot was fired?
Shall we do it again?
Do we need to?
Especially since it appears that he stole the gun from his mother, a Leon county deputy.
She's gotta be in a great place mentally right now.
Stolen gun.
Under 21 carrying.
On campus carrying.
Shooting people.
Murdering people.
Yeah, I think we need to make it more illegal. That always helps.
Or maybe, just maybe, the idiot politicians actually listen to us for a change and make things safer by acceding to what we've been saying for decades.
Gun free zones kill people.
Pulse Nightclub, Ft Lauderdale Airport, Parkland... And those are just the disarmed by law places. Several happened where it was legal to carry, but the policy of the owner/tenant of the place barred guns, like the GMAC shooting.
That's up in Tallahassee, so not local to me at all.
But just to get my version of blood dancing out there...
Guns are banned from any and every Florida school from kindergarten all the way to college and university campuses.
Gun free victim zone strikes again. Update: Literally again! This is the third or fourth active shooter at FSU since we started lobbying for campus carry!
For decades we've been demanding campus carry only to have the Florida Sheriff's Association order the Florida senate leadership to do nothing. Stab the "marion" tag to see other times it's been killed.
But this time we have a study that found that us common citizens are far better than the cops at stopping this kind of shit...
And no common citizen is armed. Because common citizens obey the law and don't carry into gun free victim zones.
So, I says the blood is on the Florida Sheriff's Association and the Florida Republican party's position that the Florida Senate consider no bills allowing citizens to be armed on campus.
Ten years ago, Willard made himself a Dissipator too!
His upper came from Spike's Tactical. My lower did!
I noticed they do things a little different from Palmetto State Armory.
 |
PSA uses an allen head screw.
What that means is USGI triangle handguards won't quite fit in the handguard cap. A little bit of carving should allow them to work, though.
The quality of the handguards that come from PSA is disappointing.
Happily, I had a set that came with the upper I used making my M16A4 clone. Much better fit. Bonus! They're 2.2 oz. lighter as well!
Something I've noticed about dissies in general and mid-length dissipators in particular is that they come and go as a stocking item.
There's long gaps where nobody makes one then someone will get brave and put a run up for sale and it takes forever to sell them.
Willard, as I recall, got his on sale from AIM Surplus. Mine was deeply discounted in the Easter sale. They're out of stock now.
Palmetto put their middy dissapator uppers on an extreme mark-down.
I am not made of steel and I had a left-over lower already assembled.
Colt originally did something like this back when Vietnam was still going on. Their barrel was a bit shorter (15") with the flash-hider right up against the front sight base.
Bushmaster liked the idea and increased the barrel length to 16" for legal reasons. But they kept the rifle length gas system too, and had pretty much the same reliability issues. They're the ones who coined the term "dissipator."
After a while someone realized that you could put a low-profile gas-port at the mid-length location and get the proper dwell time with the dissapator's rifle sight radius.
I am strongly considering doing some parts swapping and making Dottie an A1 carry handle gun.
I am ashamed that this is not a fully accredited "assault weapon" because it lacks a collapsible stock. The bayonet lug, though, is just there to get AWB points!
8.6 lb. loaded and it points extremely well.
I really like the Chessex Vortex series of dice!
Got an estimate from the local AC shop: The local shop with a good reputation and is known for being reasonable on pricing.
Labor
R/R evap - $1,667.50
R/R expansion valve - $58
R/R heater core - $43.50
Evac and charge AC - $213.15
Parts
Evap Core - $244.88
Heater Core - $237.58
Expansion Valve - $51.45
Refrigerent (17oz) - $63.75
$597.66 for parts
Total, including tax:
$2,760.40
Rock Auto parts
Evap Core - $59.79
Heater Core - $58.79
Expansion Valve - $11.44
Refrigerent (17oz) - $13.46
Misc Seals and Dessicant - $17.30
Shipping - $10.99
Tax - $11.08
$182.85 for parts
I can do the job, and the nearly $2,300 in labor is inspiring.
Passenger is a form of cargo that complains, but it's cargo.
The Blue Origin flights send up passengers, not crew.
The vehicle is a robot.
The people on board don't have a means to affect anything.
They're cargo.
Don't get me wrong, if I had the means to buy a ticket I'd be in line waiting for my turn to be on the manifest.
But having the means and taking the flight grants me nothing.
It also does fuck-all to contribute to anything.
Which isn't bad.
Bezos gets to make some money. Maybe...
But it's a sight seeing trip. Like helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon.
It's not a vital contribution to Mankind. It does not advance women's rights. It does not suppress minority rights.
It simply is what it does.
China just cancelled delivery for about 200 Boeing jets, blaming the tariff war.
Boeing will shortly be letting about 200 other customers in their over six thousand plane back-order their delivery date got moved up.
When I took the plant tour in Seattle the guide explained how customers paid.
1/3 on order. 1/3 on first flight. 1/3 on delivery.
And pretty much unrefundable.
So Chairman Pooh just paid 2/3 the price of a plane that Boeing will repaint and deliver to someone else.
Boeing will almost definitely be pocketing the money and charging full price to the new owner.
This marks the... lost count... number of times I have ordered a part for The Beast that has been cancelled because the part was discontinued and not really in stock.
How hard is it to make and maintain an inventory system that doesn't lie to you and your customers?
Some places seem to do this effortlessly.
Others... like GM, not so much.
Looks like we're going to have to do this the old fashioned way.
Rock Auto's inventory system has never lied to me.
Marv came over and, graciously, put R134a into The Beast again Sunday night.
The AC ran great all the way to the dentist and back yesterday.
It was inop this morning.
I couldn't find any evidence of leaks at the lines, so I jacked her up and looked for the drain port that lets condensation escape the HVAC box.
I didn't need to find the port because the black light showed a streak of dye down the transmission tunnel aft of it.
My worst fears are realized.
It's the evaporator.
That requires the complete disassembly of the dash to access it.
On the plus side of the ledger, the evaporator is less than $100.
But...
If you're in there, might as well do the heater core too because sure as shit, that thing will start leaking the moment you button it back up.
Another $100.
But! GM parts dealers still have a complete HVAC box with blower assembly for about $500. One of the local places even lets me skip the $250 to $300 shipping!
$300 more, but it's got all new stuff. Many of them are already discontinued, like the actuators for the flapper doors.
Since the entire assembly has to come out any way, getting a complete assembly actually saves some labor.
And it leaves me with a complete unit to rebuild. So when the next time this happens, I can swap assemblies.
Victory?
Moxie, being a 2010 Chevrolet Equinox with AWD has a known flaw.
The all wheel drive system.
It's typical afterthought engineering that lets you simply and easily have front wheel drive only and all wheel drives share nearly all the same parts.
The rear differential is powered by a driveshaft that comes from a power-take-off on the front transaxle.
But this doesn't always drive the rear wheels.
For that, there's an electronically controlled set of clutches back there.
There's also, apparently, some sort of electronic limited slip in there too.
The problem is the electronic controller loses its mind as the clutches get worn and the rear end starts trying to do an imitation of a Detroit-Locker.
There's two, time honored, solutions to this.
One: New differential. A truly new one is REALLY expensive. $1,400 before shipping, plus $2,500 for the electronic clutch module. Used ones abound for around $300 shipped.
Two: Remove fuse #46 from the underhood electrical center.
Solution two makes your car front wheel drive only and tells you to service the AWD module.
After the tooth and AC shit on The Beast I have selected solution two.
All I need is a functional vehicle and she's functional (and perkier) with the complicated electronic diff disabled.
Data culled from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) show far more deaths associated with the vaccine than with measles infection.
If a vaccine is successful at immunizing people from a disease, then you should expect that more people will die from an adverse reaction to the vaccine than from the disease.
This is like noting that since transatlantic travel transitioned from ships to planes that there are far more deaths from plane crashes than shipwrecks now.
When a friend calls and says, "I almost died!"
Don't say, "Don't do that!"
You don't want them to succeed at dying!
"I almost died!"
"You fucking quitter! You can't do anything right! Why can't you be more like your... Uh... Get well soon?"
Someday I will master not putting my foot in my mouth.
Something that's missing from Technomancer and Funny New Guys is what a racist calls a chimera.
It's mentioned that chimera are part of the civil rights movement along with blacks.
What's the equivalent to the N-word for a chimera?
Even if we have to use code like "N-word" to say it, there should be something.
In world, there definitely will be such a term.
Watching "Becoming Led Zeppelin" and they flash some concert tickets on the screen.
In 1969 it cost $5 to a mainline band like Led Zeppelin.
That's $43.57 in today's money.
What's Ticketmaster want for Metallica tickets?
Surprisingly, $55 for the upper tiers. $250 for the next level down.
That $5 ticket is a $250 ticket today. The venue is still there!
I have a permanent crown now!
I was totally fine and relaxed until the dentist asked, "you want to be numb?"
Lizard Brain says, "I'm in charge now! PANIC!"
Monkey Brain tries to explain it to the dentist.
I did make a game attempt to skip the novocaine. He got the tools on to remove the temp crown and before I could say, "let's go with numb," he had the needles out. I guess it was obvious it was painful.
The fitting went well, the measurements taken two weeks ago were accurate.
The only discomfort after getting numb were a brief flash when the temp crown was broken free and when they hit the raw tooth with air to dry it off to apply the new crown.
I never wanna do this again!
Good news, I prolly won't have to if I just keep brushing.
Brushing is something I neglected severely for years and years. I'm born again about it now.
Even my gums have recovered to the point that he said I could change back to normal toothpaste from the special "detoxifier" stuff.
Pic stolen from Irish.
Here are some more examples of things my players would scream bloody murder about if they got caught up in them.
The Traps/TL skill does give a roll to spot these dirty tricks, but a bad roll means kaboom.
Players hated realistic stuff like this. Impersonal and deadly.
I learned most of these tricks from a buddy who was a combat engineer and most of them are incredible simple. Many are reasonably easy to spot and disarm, but you have to take the time to look and the time to carefully expose them.
Which is the point.
To tie the enemy down removing your mines and stopping or severely slowing their advance if they have the temerity to go through the minefield instead into the channel you've made with your obstacles.
You might even get time to reposition and attack them trying to clear mines while they're stationary.
GURPS, technically, has a default campaign setting.
It's a multiverse time-travel cops sort of deal.
I only glanced at it and I can't be arsed to even look up the name.
OK, I lied, I couldn't not look it up.
Infinite Worlds.
Brainstorming with FuzzyGeff I hatched a campaign idea for this setting that would have taken considerable time and lots of work on my part.
The players would have to make, at least, two parties.
Then they would set about playing against each other.
This is a red herring for when they figure out they're playing against themselves.
It's not Team A vs Team B. It's Team A vs Team A and Team B vs Team B.
But the situations are similar enough to make them think its A vs B. Plus everything has a lot of overlap on the Venn diagram.
A does something. B is called in to fix. A is called in to fix what B fixed which leads, eventually to A being sent to fix what A did.
It'd be even more interesting to have a different set of players and GM with a Team C and D too and overlap everything.
But I can't even get ONE group together for more than two sessions a year and this is a campaign idea that needs to be run weekly for a couple years to pay off.
Bearing Arms author Tom Knighton feels that shooting that autistic kid was self defense on the part of the cops.
I have a huge problem with that.
All they needed to do was to step back four feet from the fence and the kid could have waved that knife menacingly all day. They were not in imminent danger.
Tom, stop licking the jackboots.
It's not self defense unless and until you're in imminent danger.
Next, I think it's high time we get night sticks back on the belts of law enforcement.
This could have ended with the kid having a broken wrist instead of being ventilated by four cops and lots of rounds.
Back in a better time shooting the suspect was not the first choice. It was well down the list.
I know that we're jumpy about night sticks since Rodney King, but it's the original less lethal weapon for cops to carry. Hell, in many places that truncheon was a constable's only weapon for a long time.
I've watched the video, and saw that the police didn't do fuck all to de-escalate the situation. They rolled up, gave orders and when they weren't instantly obeyed, they opened fire.
Fuck you Pigs!
A free citizen doesn't owe you instant obedience.
Fuck you and your officer safety trigger happy bullshit too.
We give far too much deference to them while we forget that they're on the vanguard of fucking us out of our liberties and rights.
It's almost enough to say, "defund the police."
The temporary crown is ill fitting.
The material it is made from is a way better temperature conductor than natural tooth.
If I forget and get something hot or cold on the temporary crown it sets off my whole jaw.
That brief event will lead to hours of my jaw aching.
Happily, over the counter pain meds take care of it, but I tend to gut out pain rather than take an ibuprofen. My legs don't hurt less when I take OTC meds, why should other pain be different?
But this new source of pain has reminded me that being in pain is fatiguing.
It all added up today and after nine hours of sleep, I woke up, ate lunch and got another five hours.
I feel a lot better! I even chewed some with the temp crown to prove I could do it!
Oh, chewing with just one side of your mouth is also tiring and will make the hinge on the side of your jaw you're not using to ache too.
If your car has electric power steering: The reservoir is the battery and the pump is the alternator.
Hope this helps.
Every single thread on SKS's mentions the $50 Chinese guns from the late 80's.
Dear Boomer: That was 40 years ago, at least.
Even accepting the government's numbers, that SKS should be $150 today.
But it isn't.
China can't export them to the US any more. Thanks Slick Willy!
That means the supply is fixed.
Demand is not declining, so the price must go up.
That price is $500-$800 now. Depends on completeness, condition and provenance.
You're not impressing anyone with your, "back in my day!" objections.
A movie ticket isn't 5¢ anymore either.
Denying that prices have climbed over the years means you're not getting an SKS unless you find a chump.
I'm a little raw about this because I've been dealing with it with car people for decades.
Yes, that Chevelle is worth $50,000. No, they're not letting it go for $2,500. It doesn't matter if you sold one just like it for $2,000 thirty years ago.
A Swiss pharmaceutical company is either building a new plant or expanding an existing one here in the US.
This is in response to the Chinese tariffs and not on the Swiss ones.
Interesting.
Even better, getting the production out of China should assist with quality control.
I'd heard rumblings back when my mom worked for Roche that they lost as much to riding their Chinese workers to keep quality up as they saved in cheaper labor.
And that was nearly 30 years ago.
I'm thinking that some companies were itching to make the change and now have the political cover from the US to do so now.
Did you know that every year the earth actually rotates 366.24 times?
"But there are only 365 days in a year!" I hear you object.
Both are true.
We lose a "day" each year to our rotation around the sun.
Neat, huh?
These four officers are fucking heroes. No doubt about it.
Unloading on an autistic kid with a knife while on the other side of a barrier.
I, for one, am ecstatic that they all got to go home safe.
Because that's what's important.
That cops are safe.
That's all that matters.
The above is sarcasm, just in case you can't parse it.
I'm utterly fed up with cops being held to a lower standard than the general populace.
There was very little that autistic person could have done with that knife from the other side of the fence. That means there was no imminent danger to the four officers.
The autistic person was also, apparently, contained in their own yard, so no imminent threat to the public.
What, most likely, happened here was Karen got mad at the kid, dialed 911 and started filming.
Except for The Boy having a knife or getting shot, we've been here and done that a lot.
The main difference is our sheriff isn't in the habit of hiring and covering for cowards.
The Boy, in fact, was a driving force in the local department changing training and guidelines for dealing with the mentally challenged! Some of my legal drama contributed, in fact.
The entire point of having an NAS is to be able to access and edit my files from any machine on the network.
That point is defeated if the files become read only.
I am not sure how it got set, but something created a hidden file that told LibreOffice that the file I wanted was locked.
I didn't do it, but there was a ~lock<filename> in the folder.
The cat's proclivity to walk on keyboards and activate unknown keyboard shortcuts is suspected.
I think I messed up the affliction for the skunk.
Bad Smell is, I believe, the primary effect of being sprayed by a skunk with blindness and coughing only happening as follow-on secondary effects.
Going to make it cost more, of course.
Being a skunk is expensive!
Update: Turns out I already had official stats for the skunk's spray in Dungeon Fantasy 5: Allies. They are cheaper than what I had.
Affliction 1 (DX; Based on DX, Both rolls, +40%; Disadvantage, Bad Smell, +10%; Extended Duration, x300, +100%; Malediction 1, +100%; Nauseated, +30%) [38]
That gives us:
Exalted Skunk
-67 Points
Attribute Modifiers: ST -4 (No Fine Manipulators, -40%) [-24]; DX +2 (No Fine Manipulators, -40%) [24].
Secondary Characteristic Modifiers: SM -3.
Advantages: Acute Hearing +5 [10]; Affliction 1 (DX; Based on DX, Both rolls, +40%; Disadvantage, Bad Smell, +10%; Extended Duration, x300, +100%; Malediction 1, +100%; Nauseated, +30%) [38]; Blunt Claws [3]; Discriminatory Smell [15]; Fur [1]; Night Vision 5 [5]; Sharp Teeth [1].
Disadvantages: Bad Sight (Nearsighted) [-25]; Cannot Speak [-15]; Quadruped [-35]; Social Stigma (Wild Animal) [-10]; Restricted Vision (Tunnel Vision) [-30]; Wealth (Dead Broke) [-25].
Features: Tail.
A side effect of living in the same town as Iowa State University is rubbing shoulders with both agronomy students and farmers.
You pick up bits and pieces of practical genetic manipulation here and there.
Nothing you can use for anything, but enough to not be lost in the conversation.
Reading about these dire wolves is sounding awfully similar to listening to two friends discussing soy beans.
That makes me say that they have not made dire wolves at all.
It's not a gray wolf or dire wolf. It's something new.
There was a quote with several articles that I can't find now but the gist was they wanted to restore the dire wolf to its proper place in the ecology.
So you're going to kill those three pups you spent so much time and money making?
Because that's a dire wolf's proper place in the ecology. Dead.
They went extinct when gray wolves kept going.
I'm not a scientist, but part of me thinks the damn things might have been dumb as posts and that's why La Brea is full of dire wolf skulls and not gray wolf skulls...
I ordered a spare keyboard for DerpyPuter on ebay.
It was in China.
Tracking says, "returned to shipper."
I'm thinking the tariffs have something to do with that.
But if that helps to get Chairman Pooh disposed, then I am proud to be doing my part!
The two storms that went over my house last year have had their names retired.
That's a first for me.
Helene and Milton will not be used again.
I said with The Biscayne that I was never doing unreliable AC again.
The Beast has unreliable AC.
I'm out.
I don't have the resources to keep fixing things and never getting to the modding part of hot rodding.
Update:
It might have been a simple fix.
I went out to the car to move it more out of the way, since I was planning on letting it sit for a while.
On a lark I popped the hood and pushed down the plunger on the HP port. Hardly a pssssh.
I had a can of R134a laying around so I put it in.
Compressor fired right up and the air was blowing cold!
That's a positive sign. I had been imagining that the sealant we tried had clogged something.
So I shut it off and disconnected my fill line and I heard hissing from the LP port!
So I asked Marv if he could come over with his gauges and a couple cans of R134a, then removed the schrader valve from the LP port; losing that can I'd just put in... C'est la vie.
New schrader installed, two 12oz cans installed. Pressures reading correctly and air blowing 43° at the center vent (just like the tables in the service manual says for 93% humidity at 73°F.)
Cautious optimism installed!
If we're really lucky, this was where the leak has been all along. Eyes crossed.
The corvith just gets me going on all other kinds of hybrid animals that could be created if a wizard is responsible for things like the owl-bear.
Same sort of thing, except turkey and racoon. Turkoon!
A sort of gryphon made with a pigeon and a rat. Update: I asked FuzzyGeff what one would call this and he said, "I think the traditional answer is 'pigeon'."
The possibilities are endless!
I looked up familiars in the D&D books I have.
AD&D and AD&D 2e's find familiar spell summons a real creature and grants powers to both the wizard and familiar.
OG's list of familiars is a lot more fun than 2e's. 2e is just some normal small critters, OG summons stuff like quasits and pseudo-dragons.
4e and 5e you're not summoning a real creature. You're summoning an entity that takes the form of a creature.
The 4e list has lots of fun options.
5e is mundane critters like 2e... LAME!
But now I have what I want to create an analog for GURPS if I ever get my extended module run going.
Harvey made meatball subs and, without thinking about it, used the right side of my mouth to chew.
That's where the temp-crown is and I had no problems beyond noting that I'm a little more temperature sensitive than before.
That tooth has always been sensitive, it's just worse with the temp.
I am significantly less sore than last monday.
Statting out the corvith reminded me to read up on how to get a familiar in the 4e rules.
It was not near so complicated as I'd feared it would be.
It's under the Ally advantage and there's notes specific to making a familiar.
It's straight forward. First you stat out your familiar like a character to determine how much they're going to cost as an ally. Then you purchase any special abilities they grant you with a -40% limitation "provided by familiar".
Done.
That was way simpler than I expected.
I remember the 3e version being nearly impossible to parse. Update: The rules were in Compendium I and they are not as bad as I recalled. They are VERY expensive, so I can see why our mages didn't have familiars when we played a fantasy setting.
I'm leaving figuring out were-creatures to FuzzyGeff. With the exception of Mikhail, he's the only other player I remember who played a were-thing.
It was the morality skunk.
My only sort of were-creature was a Oriental Adventures Cat-Hengeyokai played in one of Standing Bear's worlds.
Corvith
ST 4; DX 14; IQ 4; HT 10
Will 10; Per 12; Speed 7; Dodge 10;
Move 7 (Ground)
SM -3; 8 lb.
Traits: Acute Vision 3, Extra Arms (Beak); Domestic Animal; Flight (Winged -25%; Air Move 14); Fur; Horizontal; Sharp Beak; Catfall; Combat Reflexes; Night Vision 5; Sharp Claws; Temperature Tolerance 1.
Skills: Brawling-14; Jumping-15; Stealth-14
Exalted Corvith
52 Points
Attribute Modifiers: ST -6 [-60]; DX +4 [80].
Secondary Characteristic Modifiers: Basic Move +1 [5]; SM -3; 8 lb.
Advantages: Acute Vision +3 [6]; Extra Arm (Beak, Short -50%, Temp Disad - Cannot Speak -15%) [4]; Flight (Winged -25%; Air Move 14) [19]; Fur [1]; Sharp Beak [1]; Catfall [10]; Combat Reflexes [15]; Night Vision 5 [5]; Sharp Claws [5]; Temperature Tolerance 1 [1].
Disadvantages: Horizontal [-10]; Social Stigma (Domestic Animal) [-10]; Wealth (Dead Broke) [-25].
Features: Feathers, Fur, Tail.
Racial Skills: Brawling (E) DX [1]-14; Jumping (E) DX+1 [2]-15; Stealth (A) DX [2]-14.
Exalted Skunk
-40 Points
Attribute Modifiers: ST -4 (No Fine Manipulators, -40%) [-24]; DX +2 (No Fine Manipulators, -40%) [24].
Secondary Characteristic Modifiers: SM -3.
Advantages: Acute Hearing +5 [10]; Affliction 5 (Blindness +50%, Contact Agent -30%, Jet +0%, Limited Use, 5-uses -10%, Reduced Range /2 -10%, Rear Only -5%; Secondary - Irritant, Coughing +2%; Secondary - Bad Smell +2%, Extended Duration, Permanent (2-weeks or special cleaner to remove) +30%) [65]; Blunt Claws [3]; Discriminatory Smell [15]; Fur [1]; Night Vision 5 [5]; Sharp Teeth [1].
Disadvantages: Bad Sight (Nearsighted) [-25]; Cannot Speak [-15]; Quadruped [-35]; Social Stigma (Wild Animal) [-10]; Restricted Vision (Tunnel Vision) [-30]; Wealth (Dead Broke) [-25].
Features: Tail.
So, I went looking for what historians believe caused recessions and depression in American history.
Even the downturns that coincide with tariff increases are generally attributed to speculation and collapse of a foreign bank or market.
There's no causal relationship between the tariff increases and the downturns.
The 1828 recession that many people are blaming on the US increasing tariffs was happening because the United Kingdom had banned trade with the US. The tariffs were a, "yeah, fuck you too!" measure that didn't really affect the loss of trade. The increases were also set to match the tariffs that England had placed on the trade it had just banned. Oh, and it lasted about a year. Hardly the existential crisis that some people are making out to have been.
The 1820s saw a lot of recessions, actually.
Hmmmmm... The '20's seem to be bad times no matter what two numbers are in front of them.
History might not repeat, but it rhymes.
Also, the Great Depression was shorter and less severe than many in the late 1800's and early 1900's! It lasted 3 years 7 months and the economic downturn was around 25%.
The Panic of 1873 aka The Long Depression lasted 5 years 5 months and the downturn was about 34%. Some historians say it really lasted until 1896. It was caused by (surprise) economic problems in Europe and a domestic bank that was invested in those European problems failing.
Look it up!
I'll bet you'd never even heard of The Long Depression!
That there are many, compelling, arguments to the cause of the Great Depression that contradict each other, you cannot say, with certainty, that any one thing caused it. Written by very highly educated and competent economists.
As with everything affected by the invisible hand, it's the combined circumstances that do it.
It's speculation AND tariffs AND changing the monetary policy AND deflation AND... AND AND AND.
$1,300 for the, nicest, M1911A1 from CMP seems steep when compared to Tisas or Rock Island Armory.
It even makes a brand new Colt seem quite affordable.
But what so many people are missing:
You're not buying the gun, you're buying the history.
An extreme example is a beat up old Remington revolver with provenance that it was actually owned someone famous.
Are you buying a beat up old revolver or are you paying for that provenance?
If the provenance means nothing to you, it's just a beat up old gun.
But you gain no moral superiority over the person who wants that provenance and is willing to pay for it.
Though, I suspect that much of the heat from people declaring that they'd never get one is sour grapes.
The circumstances behind the Smoot-Hawley act and the reciprocal retributive tariffs are not even similar.
Yes, they are both tariffs, but that's about where the similarity ends.
Nothing in SH reduced the tariff if the foreign nation reduced theirs.
The reason it was an economic problem was other nations retaliated against our tariffs.
If you're going to cite SH, then you need to get the roles straight.
We are retaliating against the rest of the world's version of SH, NOT passing one of our own.
Did you see the chart that Trump had up with the various tariffs? Where we're going to put about half what they put on us?
Have you seen a refutation of that chart? One that says, "China isn't really charging a 67% tariff on US goods, it's really x%." That 67% is the Chinese Smoot-Hawley act.
Most of the nations on that chart are in serious discussions about getting off that chart.
That, you economic and historically illiterate morons is the fucking goal.
Opening up THEIR markets to OUR goods so WE can make some money for US for a change.
Or did you think the trade imbalances were entirely because our goods were no good?
The EU is getting off fucking light with just a 20% tariff, by the way. The maze of entry barriers to their market is dizzying and mercurial. The Ur-example is Boeing v Airbus. If the federal government subsidized Boeing the way Airbus is, Boeing would be barred from European skies. But when we threatened to bar Airbus planes because of their subsidization, again Boeing would be barred from EU skies. They've been having their cake and eating too while we stood watch against the Soviet Union and Russians for them.
But go ahead, tell me you don't know fuck all about this topic without saying you don't know fuck all about this topic.
I am sure he's a nice guy, but I'm fucking over him.
When he accused all us American veterans of being brainwashed all y'all said, "well, he's Russian..." as if that actually explained something.
Well, I've been reading his thoughts on Facebook about economics and I can definitively say that he's an excellent photographer.
But, hey! He's Russian! I guess it's fine they're not only economically illiterate, but repeating stuff that's just not true because it makes a good TDS soundbite.
PS: He's been here long enough that he'd better stop being Russian and start being American. Just sayin'.
PPS: If you say that he IS an American, then you cannot use the "but he's Russian" as a defense of his slandering anyone. A uneducated foreigner gets some slack, but he should know better by now. It's not that hard to say, "I'm sorry," but all y'all defended him so he didn't have to either apologize or learn.
Something I watched more than once in Germany was someone bringing their American car over and overheating it on the autobahn.
American cars aren't made to run at 100 mph for hours.
I also heard of tires coming apart at those sustained speeds because cheap tires aren't speed rated for that.
The reason this bubbled back up for me was Texas saying they were going to remove speed limits in some parts of the state.
I think a lot of people are going to learn the same lessons my fellow soldiers did in Germany in the 1980's.
If you're trying to get someone to play GURPS, get them to watch this. I think it will help.
The AC on The Beast decided to start fading on the way back from Ocala today.
Typical symptoms of low freon in a WM car is the AC runs colder at the vent than it should and the compressor shuts off momentarily, but with increasing frequency, until it stops working altogether.
Since I've been smelling the PAG, that means the leak is prolly at the evaporator.
If a $30 can of sealant will cure it for a year, I can face pulling the entire dash and replacing the evaporator!
It's not an expensive part, it's just hard to access thanks to making cars Union Assembly Easy.
The AC on Harvey's Equinox has been spotty for a while and it's been strange.
When it finally decides to work, it works great, but we can't count on it working.
Tonight I finally remembered to check the relay. If you jumper it, the compressor kicks on and works.
Tapping the relay a few times got it working again!
New relays are on order.
Got 15k views from Singapore the last couple days.
Somehow, I doubt it's actual viewers.
I'm still on Steve Jackson Games mailing list and I got this today:
An Important Message From Our CEO Meredith Placko
On April 5th, a 54% tariff goes into effect on a wide range of goods imported from China. For those of us who create boardgames, this is not just a policy change. It's a seismic shift.
At Steve Jackson Games, we are actively assessing what this means for our products, our pricing, and our future plans. We do know that we can't absorb this kind of cost increase without raising prices. We've done our best over the past few years to shield players and retailers from the full brunt of rising freight costs and other increases, but this new tax changes the equation entirely.
Here are the numbers: A product we might have manufactured in China for $3.00 last year could now cost $4.62 before we even ship it across the ocean. Add freight, warehousing, fulfillment, and distribution margins, and that once-$25 game quickly becomes a $40 product. That's not a luxury upcharge; it's survival math.
Some people ask, "Why not manufacture in the U.S.?" I wish we could. But the infrastructure to support full-scale boardgame production – specialty dice making, die-cutting, custom plastic and wood components – doesn't meaningfully exist here yet. I've gotten quotes. I've talked to factories. Even when the willingness is there, the equipment, labor, and timelines simply aren't.
We aren't the only company facing this challenge. The entire board game industry is having very difficult conversations right now. For some, this might mean simplifying products or delaying launches. For others, it might mean walking away from titles that are no longer economically viable. And, for what I fear will be too many, it means closing down entirely.
Tariffs, when part of a long-term strategy to bolster domestic manufacturing, can be an effective tool. But that only works when there's a plan to build up the industries needed to take over production. There is no national plan in place to support manufacturing for the types of products we make. This isn't about steel and semiconductors. This is about paper goods, chipboard, wood tokens, plastic trays, and color-matched ink. These new tariffs are imposing huge costs without providing alternatives, and it's going to cost American consumers more at every level of the supply chain.
We want to be transparent with our community. This is real: Prices are going up. We're still determining how much and where.
If you're frustrated, you're not alone. We are too. And if you want to help, write to your elected officials. You can find your representative and senators' contact information at house.gov and senate.gov. Ask them how these new policies help American creators and small businesses. Because right now, it feels like they don't.
We'll keep making games. But we'll be honest when the road gets harder, because we know you care about where your games come from – and about the people who make them.
I'm not finding a lot of sympathy in my heart for them.
I don't think they realize that what they are really saying is, "our business model of having someone else be the manufacturer of our products has just failed."
They are just a design studio because they have no production of their own.
I remember full page ads from the companies that did the printing and die cutting in America when everyone was, "it's so much cheaper in China!" Those ads were practically begging for business and support. But companies like SJG went to China instead of supporting the domestic company and the domestic companies went under.
But I have an observation: This looks like an opportunity! Buy a building. Buy some machines. Invest in those domestic companies who are willing but lack the ability to do the volume required.
Sell at a price point that is lower than the 54% tariff! Which, by the way is actually 34%, don't lie.
This, by the way, is the real intention of those tariffs. To get production back on shore.
Rather than complain that mean old orange man fucked me, be the savior of the industry and start being the domestic company that actually makes the games!
Or are you spending too much on DEI to afford it?
She's up to 5 lb. 7 oz. Up from the emaciated 1 lb. 6 oz. when we took her in and expected her to up and die on us.
Going to be getting spayed in a couple weeks.
