I'm Getting A Little Sick Of This

One of the things you get with being a 100% service connected veteran in Florida is a property tax bill of $0.

$1 property?  $0 property taxes.

$500 million property?  $0 property taxes. 

Apparently they will be most affected by the referendum on increasing the homestead exemption. 

How?

Increased ad valorem.

Increased ad valorem that everyone will have to pay if the local politicians don't get the message about reducing their bloated budgets.

It's a scare tactic to get us to vote against our own interests in favor of these "poor" veterans.

Oh, a married 100% vet gets $4,158.17 a month ($49,898.04 a year tax free) for their service too.  So Mr Young complaining about ad valorem going from $2,000 a year to $4,000 a year can cover it with a single month's check.  Or he can space it out and hold $333.33 a month until tax time.

If he's living on that disability check exclusively, he shouldn't be living in a city with $2k ad valorem.  I'm willing to bet that he and his wife have jobs and are making decent money and this is just a "I don't wanna spend an extra $167 a month to cover the services of the municipality I've chosen to live in."  For example, the total taxes on the inlaws house, where we get no tax breaks, is less than the ad valorem Mr Young claims he's paying.

The average home value in Loxahatchee, according to Zillow, is about $860k.  Mr Young is already skipping out on approximately $10k in property taxes every year, but having to pay an extra $2k is going to break him?

I am, myself, a disabled veteran, but I am growing ever sicker of listening to people who are less fucked up than me with a much higher rating complaining about the benefits they're getting.  They're the kind of people who say, "You're welcome for my service," unironically. 

In the process of trying to find out how much Mr Young is being assessed, I discovered that I should be taking an additional $5k off my home's assessed value because of my own disability rating. 

PS: There are approximately 60,000 100% veterans in Florida.  That's 0.2% of the population.  Yes, let's design our entire tax policy around this teeny constituency. 

Anomaly

I'm still wrestling with Gun Stats and round nose bullets.

.30 M1903 uses a 220gr, 1.308" long bullet fired at 2,300 fps.

.30 M1906 uses a 152gr, 1.123" long bullet fired at 2,700 fps.

1903's ranges are 1,240/5,200.

1906's ranges are 890/3,700.

Longer bullets do tend to hold velocity better and, thus, go farther.

The advantage of the lighter, faster, spitzer rounds was supposed to be the flatter trajectory not extended range.  This should show in the Accuracy column.

But it doesn't because of the length to diameter ratio of the longer bullet getting a +1 and the relative velocities being in the same bracket. 

.30-06 does have a lower ST and Recoil with 9 and 3 versus 10 and 4, making it easier to shoot.

I don't think, as a whole, this passes the reality test. 

Gotta Read The Whole Article

Road rage or self defense?

Iowa is a Constitutional Carry state, so what does, "one count of being a person ineligible to carry dangerous weapons," mean?

Is that how Iowa phrases, "felon in possession?"

But look how far down the article you have to get before you find out that the person with the gun is the victim of a rear-ending and the person who rear ended them has a history of driving without a license and insurance.

That mentioning the behavior of this person post-impact was, in fact, criminal is tossed in as an aside.

This case might end up, eventually, at the Supreme Court over whether felons have the right to own a gun to defend themselves.

And since the cops have, repeatedly, used "tried to run me over" as a positive defense for shooting someone trying to run them over, pulling a gun to get someone who's just rear ended you from continuing to move their car seems fairly justified. 

Start With Compassion

I have tried to say something of this sort before.

Every time I do, the list of banned commenters gets a little longer. 

The Spirit Of Aloha

Hawaiian cops have, so far, declined to call assault a hate crime despite use of racial slur.

Racism is racism and if we're going to have hate crime provisions, then they need to be applied to everyone equally. 

GURPS Alts

Gun Stats vehemently disagrees with some of the published ranges.

But here we go anyway!

5.56x45mm M193 from an M16A1: 5d pi, 430/3,000; ST 8, Rcl 2.

5.56x45mm M193 from an XM177E2: 4d+1 pi, 360/2,500; ST 8, Rcl 2.

5.56x45mm M855 from an M16A2: 5d+1 pi, 530/3,700; ST 8, Rcl 2.

5.56x45mm M855 from an M4: 5d-1 pi, 490/3,400; ST 8, Rcl 2.

The Soviet opposition:

7.62x39mm M-43 from an AKM: 5d+1 pi, 520/2,200; ST 9, Rcl 3.

5.45x39mm 7N6 from an AK-74: 4d+2 pi, 480/3,400; ST 9, Rcl 2.

The Loyal Opposition: 

6.5 Grendel 123gr @ 2,457 from a 16" AR: 6d-1 pi, 670/4,700; ST 9, Rcl 3.

6.5 SPC II 115gr @ 2,550 from a 16" AR: 6d-1 pi, 760/3,200; ST 8, Rcl 2.

.300 Blackout 123gr @ 2,215 from a 16" AR: 5d pi, 500/2,100; ST 9, Rcl 3.

.300 Blackout 220gr @ 1,010 from a 16" AR: 3d pi, 570/2,400; ST 9, Rcl 3.

22 ARC 75gr @ 2,953 from a 16" AR: 5d+1 pi, 680/4,800; ST 8 Rcl 2.

6mm ARC 108gr @ 2,626 from a 16" AR: 5d+2 pi, 810/5,700; ST 8 Rcl 2. 

.30 Remington AR has been discontinued, so we're not going to show that with 125gr @ 2,800 fps from a 22" barrel R-15 did 6d+2 pi, 640/2,700; ST 9, Rcl 3.

Piece Rate

One of the most corrosive effects of unions is the need of the business they've extorted to make a profit now that the wages are higher and the sale price of the good is inelastic.

That means you can't just raise prices for you SEIU members.

You can't lower wages, the union has seen to that.

But what if you can get the union worker to make more units in the same time frame?

So you engineer things to be easier to assemble and automate the assembly of as many parts as you can.

I got laughed at for pointing this out, but a bot can make a circuit board with embedded relays on it for lot less than paying a UAW worker to install relays in a fuse box.

Thus, we end up with a $500 part we need to replace because a relay failed rather than a $5 relay.

It's why we have to buy assemblies and cannot buy parts. 

It's Just That We Don't Trust You

Something I keep wondering about is if why do we even have things that can be abused by the government?

Gun registration lists cannot be used by the government to track gun owners if there is no list.

But they make a list and tell us they're not accessing it.  Because it's illegal.

I don't want it to be illegal to misuse a list, I want it to be impossible.

The only way for that to happen is for there to be no list at all and not collecting any information that could be used in a list.

Not even if a non-governmental entity holds the list, government will access it. 

Flock cameras are the same thing. 

Because it is possible for the government to use the information to violate my rights, they will do so.  "They have not done so yet!" is a very weak defense and Flock's own spokesman doesn't much reassure me that they won't enthusiastically assist government in fucking me over.

But if there are no Flock cameras... 

Penetration

Sometimes it seems like a given round is underperforming in GURPS.

But it's a game, not a simulation...

For example, the WW2 M82 APC (APEX in GURPS terms) does 6dx10(2) pi++ with a linked 6d+2[4d+2] cr ex.

That was calculated from a formula that gives all six dice their average value of 3.5 to, mostly, match the muzzle penetration value against rolled homogeneous armor.

Thus that round will penetrate DR 420 or rolling a 21 on six dice or ((6x3.5)x10)x2.  Dr 420 is 6" (152.4mm) of RHA.

But you could roll a 6 on six dice, do 60 damage and penetrate 120 DR or 1.7" or 43.5mm.

OR you could roll a 36 on six dice and do 360 damage and penetrate 720 DR or 10.3" or 261.3mm. 

Officially it penetrates 143mm or 5.6" or DR 393 or 6dx9(2) pi++.  At the muzzle.

Gun Stats gives it a little extra performance.

Realistically, that 393 points of damage should be at the muzzle and it should get smaller as the range increases.

But you can roll all ones for 6x10 at 1 yard and all sixes for 36x10 at 6,660 yards.

Again, game.

Balance between playable and accurate.

It's hard to strike sometimes.

The randomness of the dice and the chance at unrealistic results allows the game to account for anecdotal stories where people went, "Did you see that shit?"

A DR 4 M1 helmet will not stop even the minimum damage of a 7d pi K.98k, but there's examples where the round bounced off.  Result of a miss by two?  A miss by one is a torso hit (ever notice that all misses by 1 go low not high?)  The GM has to provide narration to what's going on to the players.

There's examples of "no way that will penetrate" going right on through.

Things tend to GURPS.  It's what I like about the game.

I don't wanna have to do the math that calculates the impact angle against the angle of the armor's slope and the velocity at that EXACT range.

Dice will suffice. 

For Comparison's Sake Gun Stats Update

Updated from this post. 

GURPS: World War II has stats for WW2 vehicles, surprisingly enough.

Since I've been mentioning the performance of Cold War stuff, and many people are more familiar with WW2 shit...

It's Front/Sides/Back/Top/Bottom (if needed)

Sherman M4A1 Hull: 300/150/150/75/50; Turret: 300/200/200/100

Gun Motor Carriage M10 Hull: 255/85/85/55/50; Turret: 275/100/100/0

Panzer IV Ausf H Hull: 315/120S/80/40/40; Turret: 200/120S/120S/40

Panther Ausf G Hull: 540/190S/160/60/120; Turret: 600/260/260/60

Tiger Ausf E Hull: 400/420/320/100/100; Turret: 425/310/310/100

Königstiger Ausf B Hull: 850/310/310/155/100; Turret: 700/310/310/170

T-34/76 1940 Hull: 350/250/175/75/75; Turret: 350/250/175/80

Guns!

M4A1 Sherman's M3 75mm firing the M61 APCBC or just AP does 6dx6(2) pi++.  That's good for a whopping 252 DR.

The "long 75mm" 76mm M7 cannon firing M62 APCBC delivers 6dx12(2) pi++ and a linked 6dx2[4d-1] cr ex.  This punches 504 DR.  M93 HVAP does 6dx12(2) pi++ without the linked explosion and punches the same 504 DR  This was considered HOT ammo!

The 7.5cm KwK40 L48 on the Pzkw IV-H firing a PzGr 40 APCR or APHC does 6dx12(2) pi++ that will penetrate DR 504 with most dice.

A KwK42 7.5cm on a Panther G lobbing a PzGr 40/42 does 6dx14(2) pi++.  That's good for punching holes in DR 588.

Tiger E's KwK36 8.8cm gun gets the most penetration with the PzGr 40 which is an APHC round doing 6dx13(2) pi++.  That'll punch 546 DR on average.

The heavier Tiger II's KwK43 8.8cm gun shooting a PzGr 40/43 round gets 6dx16(2) pi++ to routinely stab through 672 DR.

The pride of the Soviets 76mm L-11 gun firing BR-354P APHC does a mere 6dx9(2) pi++ for an average penetration of 378 DR.  And people were bagging on the M3 in the Sherman!

Update: The D-5T 85mm gun from the T-34/85 firing a BR-365 APHEX round will do 6dx13(2) pi++ with a linked 7d+1[4d+1] cr ex.  That will penetrate 546 DR on average.

As a reminder, the 90mm gunned M48A3 has Hull: 606/314/96/113/87; Turret 716/314/281/129; Cupola: 386/386/386/193.

The M41 gun firing M332A1HVAP APHC does 6dx12(2) pi++ for 504 DR penetration.  Not enough for a lot of the heavy Nazi armor.  Damn the Tiger II is tough!  The Patton is somewhat vulnerable to the King Tiger's gun, but it's even more mobile than the Sherman that maneuvered around it to get rear shots.  But HEAT is what we thought would be the real armor puncher.  The M348 HEAT round does 6dx4(10) cr ex with a linked 6dx 3 cr ex that will burn a hole in 840 DR.  The hull front of a Königstiger is still not penetrated!  But the more visible turret front is!

However its expected opponents the T-54/55 and T-62 aren't near so well protected, but they're a lot more mobile:

T-55: Hull 330/218/165/68/55; Turret 565/358/165/165

T-62: Hull 281/218/126/85/55; Turret 667/421/110/110

Good thing the Patton is mobile and reliable.

The 100mm D-10T firing a BR-421D APHEX round in 1953 does 6dx17(2) pi++with a linked 5d+1[5d] cr ex.  That will punch DR 714.

A 115mm U-5TS firing a 3BM4 APFSDS round in 1963 will do 6dx28(2) pi++.  That gets past 1,176 DR.  Yes, the Soviets were ahead of us on tank guns.

But what if we drag an M60 into the argument with its M68 cannon?

The 1959 issue M392 APDS does 6dx23(2) pi++ for 966 penetration.  The M456 HEAT will do 6dx5(10) cr ex with a linked 6dx3 cr ex and make a 1,050 DR deep hole.

 

Heroes

The California Highway Patrol is staffed by heroes.

 Ayup, that's one super deadly gun there.

Not one mention of returning it to its rightful owner, is there? 

Citing Your Religious Text Is Not Making An Intellectual Argument

It's OK to have faith, but you cannot cite your religion's text, traditions and dogma when trying to convince someone outside your faith to start or stop something your faith requires or forbids.

You have to use other means to convince them.

M14M

Get ready to tell the kids they're going to a community college because you're emptying their college fund!

The CMP is going to get some genuine M14 rifles to sell.

ATF has approved a method of modifying the receiver to get past the, "once an MG, always an MG," rule.  Contrary to popular belief, they've done it before with M2 Carbine receivers.

No word whatsoever about pricing and availability.

Clinton's Cap'n Crunch ate a lot of these guns, and their valuable parts, so it's anyone's guess how many there are to give to the CMP for sale.  An arfcom thread had an AI guesstimate of about 10% of the 1.38 million made are still in inventory or service.  That's close to the same numbers they had for the 1911 sales.

Their time as designated marksman rifles means a lot of what's left got rode hard and put away wet in the middle east.

I wonder what condition and configurations will be coming out of this.  Wood stocks?  SAGE stocks?  Fiberglass?  Scope mounts? 

Jeff, You Cleared Up Any Doubt For Me

FOP is constantly on the wrong side of freedom and liberty in Florida and this scare tactic is bullshit since funding for fire, law enforcement and schools is guaranteed.

In other words, Jeff is lying through his teeth and he knows it.

Again.

I remember FOP and their position on conceal carry, open carry, campus carry, 18-21 year olds carrying, waiting periods, bump stocks, and anything NFA.

So, pardon me, if I just vote for my self interests and tell the help they can suck it up or find productive employment. 

Much Newer Than I Expected

The term "sound suppressor" refers to a device that reduces the sound intensity of a firearm when it is discharged. The earliest use of the term "suppressor" in this context dates back to a US patent in 1985, while the term "silencer" was originally used by its inventor, Hiram Percy Maxim, in 1902.

It's a quote from Wikipedia generated by the Duck Duck Go AI, so apply the appropriate levels of salt.

If the term silencer is wrong, and was never used and it's always been sound suppressor, what were they called for 83 years?

I am thinking that the youngin's are at it again and forgetting a lot of us old grognards were there when the changes happened.

I watched this happen with "assault weapon".

Assault weapon and assault rifle were terms the gun community itself was using for military look-alike guns at least as early as 1986.

I remember when the gun control people starting using it against us.

I remember when we tried to say it was always referring to a select-fire, intermediate cartridge firing rifle or carbine.

I remember when we tried to say we'd never used it for describing a semi-auto clone.

And I remember when a group of very young internet gun bloggers tried to "take it back." 

Odyssey

I am starting to see a divide in the YouTube pundits over Christopher Nolan's Odyssey.

They either love it or hate it.

I think I spotted the why of it.

It's the same as when Paul Verhoeven did Starship Troopers.

Some people loved it.

Some people hated it.

There's no middle ground.

So I asked the people who loved it, "Why?"

They loved it because it's a funny, sci-fi action movie.

"What about all the changes from the book?"

"Book?  What book?"

And there's your divide.

The people who hated Starship Troopers wanted to see the book, not an unrelated property with character names from the book.

I'm willing to bet that the people who don't like Nolan's Odyssey are in the same camp.

They wanted Homer's epic, verbatim.

PS: John Leguizamo is an epic hypocrite!  John, if you're going to whine about Anglos in Hispanic roles, you shouldn't take on roles where you're not playing an Hispanic character.  Or roles where the character is significantly older than you, what about all the genuinely elderly actors who need the work, John? 

Hmmmmmmmmmm

 

MilSpec

"No civilian should have a military specification handgun!" paraphrased because I cannot be arsed to find the actual quote.

Found it! 

Well, ignorant gunbanner, this is a Revolver, .45 Caliber, M1873, "Altered."  Not quite state of the art in 1892 but still military issue and a genuine weapon of war.

I notice you never mention six-guns when you're frothing about "military" guns.

In point of fact, every single bolt-action hunting gun has a lineage that can be traced back through some military arm.  Some retain more of that lineage than others, but a staggered internal box mag on a bolt gun is a military innovation.

No You're Wrong

Dear everyone clucking like you know what the fuck you're talking about:

A thing you screw onto the end of your gun's barrel to make it quieter is a SILENCER.

How do I know that?

Because that's what it's called in the 1921 patent by Hiram Percy Maxim.

Got an earlier patent for one that's called a suppressor?

Because if you don't, saying "there's no such thing as a silencer, they're called suppressors," just makes you sound ignurnt.

The person who invents something gets to name it.

Maxim named it a silencer.

He could have called them mufflers, because that's the only earlier patent for something that makes the noise from a tube quieter. 

Speed Test

Now that Derpyputer has replaced The BeastMac on the desktop, I wondered if I'd see a speed difference if I plugged the CAT6 cable into it.

In a word, yes.

It also led to checking the speed with both logins on the router.

Insertrouternamehere got:

53.76 Mbps down and 40.01 Mbps up.

Insertrouternamehere-5G got:

300.27 Mbps down and 237.94 Mbps up.

The wired connection to Insertroutername got:

 503.36 Mbps down and 421.70 Mbps up.

I think I can live with that. 

Stupid Attitude

 

I would say that I don't care how much enjoyment the thief gets from my stolen property, but that's not true.

I do care.

I want them to be utterly miserable from their theft.

Far more unhappy than I am about the loss.

I want them to contract a slow moving, incurable, untreatable, painful disease that also, perversely, prolongs their life.

I want them to experience this in a poorly run prison, where their cellmate considers their affliction a kink.

For Fuck's Sake!

Where does the idea that someone who steals from you being happy about stealing being a good thing come from?

Perhaps the idiots who think this way should be treated more harshly than thieves.

The thief's depredations are far more limited in scope than the idiot depicted in the comic.  That idiot will go out to vote, get laws changed and make it impossible to punish thieves.

Shitheads like this think, "property can be replaced, so it's wrong to kill thieves," and, "your property isn't worth more than their life!"

I shouldn't be surprised to find that's a close quote to something Che Gueverra said, "The life of a single human being is worth millions of times more than all the property of the richest man on Earth."

That's wrong-think.

The proper attitude is, "nothing here is worth getting killed over."

It's not me deciding that my property is worth more than their life, it's them deciding that their life is worth less than my property.

It's illegal for me to act morally on this. 

Gaming The System

The feint rules in GURPS are pretty simple.

There's a quick contest of weapon/defense skill rolls and margin of success is the penalty to their defense next round.   See p.B365.

It doesn't get used much because, most of the time, the players are overpowering their opponents and they don't need the bonus to land hits.

But something I noticed a while back was when you announce that you're feinting, the opponent goes all-out-attack that same turn.

They KNOW they don't need to defend that round, because a feint isn't an actual attack, and they get a +4 to hit.  If they hit, the penalty from wounding the character doing the feint more that offsets the risk of a penalty to their defense next round.

That seems unclear to ME as I write it.

Turn 1:

NPC feints at Player.  Contest gets a -3 to the NPC's defense in turn 2.
Player all out attack (determined) the NPC scores 3 points of damage.

Turn 2:

NPC suffers effects of injuries, -3 to hit.  Misses.
Player has defenses again, at -3, but that doesn't matter because the NPC missed.

Thus nobody feints!

At least not when they have the initiative and move first.

If you go after the Player, then they have to decide to use all out attack BEFORE you announce your feint.

So to make this work, you have to take a wait maneuver to let them attack first.

If you've got good active defenses, like il Gatto, then this is a good plan. 

PS: Suddenly a lot of cinematic and SCA fights I've seen make more sense in gaming terms.  If there are numerous wait and feint maneuvers going on, that explains the circling each other slinging soliloquies! 

Conceited

Something I noticed that's made it hard for me to watch some CarTube channels is the obvious wealth of the presenter.

Their being richer isn't the problem.

It's the conceit that they're experiencing the same problems I would have in getting the money together for the project while they casually mention dropping thousands on it.

Additionally the "old friend" from the car rags days has returned.  Parts donated by a vendor and deals I won't get because a seller isn't trying to get ME to mention them on my channel.

So, no, will not be taking my $100k F350 and $20k enclosed car trailer to pick up a $3,500 car with a seized engine.

I will not be finding a 6.2l aluminum LS engine, that already has a Summit stage 4 cam, laying around for less than $5k.  I will not be handed a $5k exhaust system.  I will not be spending the day getting my car dyno-tuned, a $1,500 to $3,000 value.

But most of all, I will not be doing it in my forty-thousand square foot shop with 8 two-post lifts.

Because of all that, it rubs me wrong when they start complaining about how much a fucking water pump would cost.  I might, by necessity, need to skip the $200 water pump if I needed to get my car back on the road after an engine swap.

But I also don't brag about "being under ten grand" on a project that has, at least, another $10k in parts donated to it.

Your project is $25 grand to the rest of us and I can't pretend otherwise.

My suspension of disbelief is no longer willing. 

But Did It Happen

I am certain there are racists out there doing racist things.

Some of them try to comment on my blog, that helps with the certainty.

Despite this, I still get a record scratch moment when a black person mentions experiencing racism.

I think I might have figured out why.

I didn't do racism.

I lived someplace where nobody around me did racism.

So I never saw racism directly.

I did get to see and experience the hate that is reflected from the racists doing racist things.

It was quite an epiphany to realize that hate was racism too and that I was experiencing it as a victim.

So I spend my entire life after that crippled by the knowledge that someone out there hated me because I was white and dedicated all of my waking moments to forcing the government to punish them and enrich me!

Actually not.

I tried to understand why they hated me.  I have not, and likely never will, succeeded in understanding hate based on skin color.

Having internalized that whole individual responsibility thing, I can hate individuals for their crimes but can't really transfer that hate for superficial similarities between people.

There's a whole raft of dissonance and hypocrisy when I think about invasive cultures amidst my own culture.  I'm still working through it. 

The Very Butcher Of A Silk Button

Cirilo di Faenza has the highest skill I've ever given a character with a sword.

A skill of 17 with a rapier gives a 14 or less to hit the vitals.

He then delivers 1d+1 imp.  On average that's 4 points, and typically without DR so that becomes a 12 and his opponent is looking to make a consciousness roll to keep fighting.

It's -9 to hit the eye, but you get x4 damage to hit there.  That wouldn't change if they die in one shot or not, but 16 is closer to dead than 12.  Even if they live, they're down an eye.

All out attack (determined) would give a +4 to hit that eye so 12 or less net.

All out attack (strong) would give a +2 to damage.  That'd be 6 points on average to the vitals and 18 delivered.

All out attack robs you of your defense and he's not stupid enough to do that.

What is the best course, with his skill is the seldom used feint.

That might even get a good roll at that eye without needing to all out attack. 

 

I Need An Equalizer

Something I've noticed about Ubuntu and media is a lack of an equalizer to shift the preponderance of bass down a notch.

I know there's a nerd or two reading this.

What do I need to do? 

Hit The Ballpark

I decided that artillery rounds would get a base cost calculated from 1/1000 of the starting wealth for the TL times the weight in pounds.

Then you multiply that by the cost factors in Gun Stats.

The TL7 M107 round is $15 times 116.3 lb. (Shell, PD fuse and powder bags) to get a base of $1,744.50 and x2 for HE rounds...  $3,490.

An actual M107 runs $2,860.  I'm acceptably close.

Especially since my price is in $GURPS not USD. 

Generic

Rather than have five HE rounds for the 155mm and four APFSDSDU rounds for the 105mm...

I decided to go generic and just use the best APFSDSDU-T round for every tank gun.

I found out that the older rounds would go back to the factory and the uranium would be melted down and re-alloyed into more advanced rounds.  Even the Russkies!

For the 155mm because the M107 HE and M795 HE have such different performance, I called them TL7 HE and TL8 HE.  Some nations never updated to the later rounds like the US and UK, so lots would still be around...

One could make the argument that the newer stuff is the scarcest because it got fired first.

T2K is, in a lot of ways, a fantasy setting. 

PDMTSQEIEIO

Nearly every cannon round fuse is built in and goes off when it hits something hard.

Howitzers and mortars call this a PD fuse for Point Detonation.  It's an impact fuse.

This is the default fuse for GURPS: Gun Stats.

But there are others!

Most common is the Mechanical Timer Super Quick or MTSQ.  This is a fuse that has a clockwork timer in it the gunner can set to go of before impact, if they time it right, it creates an airburst over the target and more things get attacked by fragments.

Proximity fuses do the airburst thing too, but at a fixed altitude rather than selected time from firing.

MOFA are Multi-Option Fuse, Artillery.  This is everything all in one.  Impact, timer, and proximity.

Just to be confusing, there's also an anti-aircraft proximity fuse, but the sensors look sideways instead of forward.

All of the timed and proximity fuses I've found have an impact mode too.

Where this gets sticky for GURPS terms is your basic M107 HE round can take any type of fuse changing it from a PD to an MTSQ to a Proximity round with a spin.

The entry for all of the timed and proximity rounds is "Airburst".  +2 cost factor to any round.  Which makes it a little awkward because the various base rounds will have different prices.  One would think that the price increase would be the same for all rounds of the same chambering.

Worse, some rounds have to be timed fuses or they just don't work right.  DPICM, for example. 

If You Have Nothing To Hide You Have Nothing To Worry About

I do so love being able to toss this back in the faces of the Democrats.

They're busted and they know it and that's why they're scared of the SAVE America Act.

Their objections at state level attempts to clean up the voter rolls were not the reaction of a group that's innocent of the charge. 

NBC Notes Updated

Twilight: 2000 has five chemical round categories:  HC Smoke, Irritant Gas, Blood Agent, Blister Agent and Nerve Gas.

Irritant is easy, that's tear gas.

Nerve is also easy, that's nerve gas.

What differentiates blister and blood in their effects is whether you can get by with just a gas mask or if you need an NBC suit.

Blister agents include mustard gas and you need a suit.

Blood agents include chlorine gas and you don't.

What's interesting about researching chem rounds is how the blood agent rounds disappear after WW2.  Mustard and nerve keep going and the US added tear gas to the 4.2" mortars and 40mm grenade launchers. 

Update:

Poisons on p. B439 will give us our game effects:

HC Smoke will be treated as Smoke. 

Irritant Gas will be treated as Tear Gas.

Blood Agent will be treated as Chlorine Gas.

Blister Agent will be treated as Mustard Gas.

Nerve Gas will be treated as Nerve Gas.

NBC Purge

Something I've noticed about using the internet to look up artillery rounds for Twilight: 2000 is how few write-ups on many weapons still include the chemical rounds.

In 1995, in the Home timeline, the Chemical Weapons Convention was drafted and signed already and well on its way to being put into effect.

The US and Russia had been happily destroying their stockpiles, informally, since the end of the Cold War™®.

Many of the weapons in service now, were in service then, so they get listed without their, now-defunct, icky chemical weapons.

In the OG T2K timeline, however, the Cold War™® was still in full swing in 1995 when what would be known as the Twilight War began and chemical weapons were still a thing, if only to keep the other side from using them with impunity.

You kind of have to dig to get information on the rounds. 

It should be noted that the Soviets were firmly convinced that we'd use chemical weapons first and lavishly and they only held their stocks for retaliatory purposes.

NATO had the same conviction about the Soviets... 

I Will Say It Again

I don't mind immigrants.

An immigrant is someone who has decided to move to a different nation and become a citizen of that nation.

They adopt that nation's language and culture.

They change from a them to an us.

The thing I rail against is not immigration.

While it might not rise to the level of colonization, we do have enclaves of foreigners who have no intention of adopting our language or culture.

Most of these people have not entered the nation legally, and there's a significant number of people who entered legally but did not return home once their visa expired.

But adoption of culture and language is important.

Hell, I'm even willing to compromise on the language part if they're doing our culture well enough.

That I have to make this post is an indication that people who hate America have managed to shift the language so that immigrant doesn't mean what I've indicated, but anyone who's managed to cross the border.

The best you can call a small number of them is "expat."  But expats enter legally and keep a low profile. 

Never Done

The 4.2" mortar would still be in service in T2K.  I forgot it.

I am torn between adding the specific round designations for mortars like I did for other cannon; or going generic on the cannon.

On one hand it's simpler to just say APFSDSDU.

On the other, there are several APFSDSDU rounds with different performance and old-stock would be brought forward as the good stuff ran out or was late getting to the front because of production delays.

The OG game certainly didn't worry about it, but it was much coarser grained than GURPS.

It gives me something to tinker with. 

Illuminating

The deep dive into artillery for GURPS led me to discover something neat.

We have IR illumination rounds now.

That is really cool!  Hot?

Not sure if they would have had them for T2K or not, but it's still neat. 

Hold On I Got This

Apparently, illegal aliens being detained in Miami are being treated like animals...

I will bet that they will be treated like people in their home nation.

Since they find how they are treated in MY nation not to their liking, I invite them to head home.

90% of the reason they are being detained is a refusal to just be deported.

Fuck 'em.

However...

I wish someone would treat me like an animal based on how my friends and I treat our pets.

Yet another example of how the media and these illegals don't understand America. 

Done Again!

I have updated my Twilight: 2000 to GURPS 4e to account for the effect of Guns Stats.

Many of the older stats I'd pulled out of my ass.

If they're still wrong, they're all wrong the same way now! 

An example:

If the range stays the same, I didn't repeat it until it does.
 

Missed Opportunity

Babylon Bee is sleeping at the switch.

They should have had a headline, "Trump, taking inspiration from Mars Attacks 'addresses Congress'."

Area woman says, "he killed Congress!"

Film at 11. 

Tinker Tinker

I've tried all the rifle length handguards on Dissipator Dottie!

First is the round A2 style that came with the upper:

Then a set of USGI A2 handguards that look so similar to the ones that came with I can't tell the pictures apart!

I tried out an M5 RAS:

I was happy with reproduction triangle A1 style:

Now I'm trying out the Magpul:

I've long liked how the Magpul handguards have felt, I don't even mind how they look.  The rifle length is a bit too long for where I want my light, but it's workable on the other side.

ARs are, indeed, Lego for men.

Wait That's The Same

Something about explosives is the Relative Explosive Equivalency Factor.

GURPS calls this REF when you're figuring dice from boom.  It's also another example of GURPS using real world numbers for things.

An M107 155mm HE shell can be loaded with 15.1 lb. of either good old fashioned TNT or Composition B.

Comp B has an REF of 1.4, making it the equivalent of  21.14 lb. of TNT.

An M795 round is filled with 20.1 lb. of either TNT or IMX-101.

IMX-101 has an REF of 1.62 making it the equivalent of  35.6 lb.

The M107 is constantly criticized for not having enough boom, but the supposedly superior M795, when loaded with TNT, has less than the M107 when loaded with Comp-B.

I have no information about when or why or how many rounds get loaded with TNT as opposed to the better explosives. 

Blacked Out

Harvey and I were out back watching movies last night and we could clearly hear helicopters.

Definitely 4+ blades. 

Normally that means a Coastie Jayhawk, the sheriff's 406 or a Lifeflight EC145.

I always go out to look.  Just in case it's a Hind sneaking up on me.

No lights.

Sometimes the sheriff's helo will do that.

Look up the ADSB.

The only thing in the area was a Cessna 152 that I'd seen and they were in the opposite direction of the rotor sounds.

The closest helo on ADSB was the county to the south's sheriff helo and that was way too far away and the wrong direction.

I am wondering if we're hearing training from MacDill up and around here.

They've done it before. 

I'm Much Cheaper

It turns out I did more about 155mm shells than General Dynamics did last week, and I didn't spend $500 million to do it.

Ooops! 

Though it appears that GDOT did a, "we think this might work, but we won't know until we try to actually do it," deal by using older machinery to make newer rounds.

Well, we now know that the machines that made M107 rounds don't make M795 rounds.

Reading between the lines, to me, it seems that they're getting a handle on it, but the worst case scenario played out. 

A Long Long Time

The US has been using 155mm artillery since we bought guns from the French in WW1.

What surprised me is the rounds are nearly identical to what we're loading today into an M777.

We have developed a handier charge than the silk bags packaging, but the M107 HE round dates from WW2 and isn't very dissimilar to the HE Mk. 1

The HE Mk. 1 is the round that came with the guns in 1917.  It's developed into the M102 then M101 then M107.

They made the walls a little thicker to handle higher velocities in the newer guns.

They changed the threads to accept different fuses.

They changed the weight and kind of explosives.

But if you sat all of the HE rounds from WW1 to today next to each other, you almost need the markings to tell them apart.

There's just enough difference between them to see on the GURPS stats, but if you treated all 155mm howitzers the same and gave the same numbers to all the HE rounds, you wouldn't get too far off track. 

 

Net Positive?

While I will miss AutoCAD and Photoshop, I had not actually used them for much of anything in years.

What I have gained, is desk real-estate!

That tower and the two monitors took up a lot of space.

I should be able to run a second monitor from any of my Ubuntu laptops.

I'd long since stopped using the drives on the Mac for primary data storage.  Technically, the data is still on the hard drives.  I have several ways to read those if I need to. 

PS: I am much less upset about the machine's death than I expected to be.

Maybe because it'd become progressively less useful as time went on and neither OS was safe to have online anymore. 

Sad Day

My 2008 Mac Pro A1186 has died.

With it goes my copy of AutoCAD and Photoshop. 

Ah

I found the section in the Take Care of America's Veterans act that has all the big names in a tizzy against it.

It's deunionizing the staff at VA hospitals.

It was never complaining about future veteran's care, it was all about lining the union pockets.

AFL-CIO and SEIU are against this bill.

My kneejerk is to be for it now. 

Stronk

I have been operating on the idea that ST for mounted cannon didn't matter.

Otherwise the average character isn't going to be able to use them.

p. B270 backs this idea.

But I noticed that vehicles have a ST value.

Is your tank strong enough for the cannon?

There aren't rules as written for this, but I can see several ways of using it. 

Universal Metric Fails Again

It's not a huge failure, but I bumped into how naming a round is simpler and clearer than caliber x case length again.

You end up using the names.

20x110mmRB Oerlikon.
20x110mm Hispano
20x110mm USN

The US Navy used all three in the same time period.

There are guides on how to tell them apart.  USN and Hispano are very difficult to tell apart visually, the USN round for the Colt 20mm guns is derived from the OG Hispano gun and round.

Isn't history fun!

I've got Oerlikon and USN finished for GURPS.  Working on Hispano now, at least the US issue rounds.  Like the Oerlikon, everyone and their brother used the Hispano-Suiza HS.404 in some form or another. 

Clogged Again

My toilet has been perfect for three weeks!

Not any more.

Got the Green Goobler main line clearing goop soaking now.

They say minimum of 30 minutes, but recommend overnight.

Thankfully, the house bathroom uses a different route, so we still have a toilet. 

That means we can limp it along until we're not having to call the emergency guy and pay those rates. 

Update: 

We're flowing again!

Letting the Green Gobbler gobble for 8 hours did its trick.

It's grease buildup.  We have to do something to clear that narrowing of the line or it's just gonna keep happening. 

GURPS ALL THE GUNS!

 With nothing else to do...

I took Gun Stats at the guns in this video.

GURPS: SEALs in Vietnam had the 5"/38, Bofors and Oerlikon, but I ran down the stats anyways.

And found an error in SEALs.

They used the stats for 20x110mm USN for the 20x110mmRB Oerlikon.

Here's what you need to change to make your stats right! 

AP-T is 6dx2(2) pi++, Acc 5, Range 840/4,700, ST 29M, Rcl 3.

HE is 6dx2(0.5) pi++ linked 1d+1[1d+2] cr ex, Acc 5, Range 820/4,600, ST 29M, Rcl 3. 

Ding Dong

Now that I've amended my spreadsheet a bit...

These numbers are no longer valid. 

The 16" High Capacity Mk.13 does:

6dx73(0.5) pi++ linked 6dx24[6dx3] cr ex.

Range is 17,000/39,000 (9.7/22.2 miles) 

ST is 210M.

Rcl is 6.

The 16" Armor-Piercing Mk.8 does:

6dx57(2) pi++ follow-up 6dx12[6dx3] cr ex.

Range is 25,000/57,000 (14.2/32.4 miles).

ST is 218M

Rcl is 7. 

USS Alabama with her shorter L45 guns firing the same rounds "only" gets:

16" High Capacity Mk.13 does:

6dx71(0.5) pi++ linked 6dx24[6dx3] cr ex.

Range is 17,000/38,000 (9.7/21.6 miles) 

ST is 208M.

Rcl is 8.

16" Armor-Piercing Mk.8 does:

6dx52(2) pi++ follow-up 6dx12[6dx3] cr ex.

Range is 23,000/52,000 (13.1/29.5 miles).

ST is 214M

Rcl is 9.

USS Texas with her 14"/45 guns:

14" High Capacity Mk.19 does:

6dx72(0.5) pi++ linked 6dx20[6dx3] cr ex.

Range is 23,000/52,000 (13.1/21.6 miles) 

ST is 202M.

Rcl is 11.

16" Armor-Piercing Mk.20 does:

6dx44(2) pi++ follow-up 6dx11[6dx3] cr ex.

Range is 17,000/40,000 (9.7/22.7 miles).

ST is 192M

Rcl is 9.

Game Called On Account Of Books

There's scanty information about Soviet and Russian artillery rounds.

I need the weight of the projectiles, type of explosive and weight of the filler.

I have this in abundance for Western rounds.

So I have given up on the internet and bought a copy of Janes Armour and Artillery, 97-98.

Since my primary focus is on WW2 and T2K, it should suffice.

I hope.

It wasn't super expensive, so fingers crossed. 

Oh My God

Linky

During a routine inspection in 2026, museum staff uncovered a shocking secret hidden inside a WWII Panzer III tank that had gone unnoticed for more than 80 years. Beneath an internal floor panel was a 7.92×57mm Mauser round, the same ammunition used by the German MG 34 machine gun mounted on the legendary armored vehicle. The discovery stunned experts because the aging bullet was potentially dangerous and had to be carefully deactivated before being added to the collection. This rare Panzer III, one of only two surviving examples still running, carries a mysterious history dating back to the North African campaign and the Battle of Alam el Halfa in 1942.

So, a live round was rolling around under the floorboards for 84 years, and the lack of men in the UK caused a panic?

Potentially dangerous?

Maybe if you tried to swallow it.  It's not like it's an HE round where the explosive's stabilizers have been slowly breaking down leaving something behind that makes nitroglycerine seem easy to juggle.

I love the line about carefully deactivating it.

In America a quick poll would have been taken among the workers to see who had a 98k and they'd have shot that round to see how badly the powder had degraded. 

"Historian Ian Hudson said he could not definitely say the round was a wartime artefact but “it’s certainly very likely”." 

Are you fucking shitting me, Ian?

A fucking historian doesn't know to look at the headstamp?

I am ever more convinced that we should have helped the Germans in 1918. 

Flock

I did not save the link...

But it would appear that Flock's surveillance and its use by the cops was found to not be a violation of privacy because there weren't enough cameras in use to provide 100% coverage and thus the person surveilled could have routed around them.

There are Supreme Court cases holding that milder infractions are violations of our right to privacy.  The recent one about geo-fencing is one.

It would appear to me, reading the tea leaves, that even one use without a warrant is a violation and Flock is digging it's own grave by pointing out how many cameras they have operating.

Someone is eventually going to tie a penumbra to these cameras from the cyberstalking laws and the "we did it to everyone" defense is just going to increase the number of counts in the charges.

Because while government can use the "we did it to everyone equally" defense, they're not allowed to do it to anyone without a warrant.

"We did it to everyone," is not a defense a private party can use when invading someone's privacy. 

But I Remember

The Veterans of Foreign Wars is all in a tizzy about veterans benefits being cut.

They care about ALL of us now?

Because I remember, back in 1992, when what my paltry 10% service connected got me was dramatically reduced.

You now need to have a 30% serviced disconnected disability to get those benefits.

The VFW didn't give two shits about me back then.

The Cold War didn't count, see.

To see the power the VFW had, look at the difference in benefits Nam ERA vets get compared to anyone serving from the end of Vietnam to the beginning of the War on Terror.

I'm not opposed to them fighting this fight, but I remember when they didn't care about me.  They still won't support me directly because my DD214 doesn't reflect my entire service.

There still isn't a single veteran's organization that represents all of us.

The smaller VSO's are geared more to discourage us from making claims.  Ask me how I know.  I am discouraged, they are successful. 

If you're about to ETS, look at the dates CAREFULLY on the DD214 they ask you to review.  You have that moment and 90 days after that to fix any errors.  If you notice that someone typed 89 and not 90 as your separation date, and you notice in 01...  It's a nightmare to get fixed inside the VA's system and you will NEVER get a new DD214 showing the correct dates.

"I was popping percocet like M&Ms when I ETS'd," is not grounds for missing the clerical error! 

I'm Just Not Imaginative Enough

A company that just went bankrupt had a heck of a scam.

You send them money and they say you bought some gold or silver, which they hold for you.

As long as the music keeps playing, and there's chairs left, this works.

But one day the music stops when someone notices there was no actual gold or silver, just pieces of paper.

Whups!

I'd have never thought of this. 

I Have A Better Solution

How's about you keep your citizens in your country where ICE has never had to shoot them?

Mexico's president wants to sue ICE for her citizen getting shot.

I think I like the cut of her jib.  We should endorse punishing the nation that's enforcing its laws in accordance with their own legal system.

Time to sue Mexico back to the dark ages over arresting Americans who accidentally, but illegally, brought a firearm into Mexico.

Or, is that different? 

I've Talked About This Topic Before

A Gun for Dinosaur

L. Spraugue de Camp (1956)

.600 Nitro on T-Rex. 

Amended with Gun Stats...  .600 does 9d+2 pi++ now.

.375 H&H does 8d+1 pi.

Popping the Rex in the vitals with the average damage roll of  33.5 points gets 31.5 to penetrate for 94.5 damage.  A single consciousness roll from a HT 15 critter means you're going to have to keep shooting.

You need to do 106 to get a death roll out of one.

A second hit to the vitals gets you there.

The .375 rolls an average of 29 points, 27 penetrate for 81 points of damage.

Two, well placed, rounds of .375 H&H has enough medicine to take down the tyrant lizard.

SPOILER ALERT

I suspect the late Mr Holtzinger didn't hit the vitals even once.  A hit to the body would only do 27 points of damage and three such shots are the same as a single vitals hit.  A fourth would get to death rolls, but that HT 15 looms large if you're going for this big game at close range. 

Don Is Coming To His Senses

The Iranians never stopped firing so it wasn't really a ceasefire, ceasefire is no longer in effect. 

The Iranians were lying?  PERSIANS lying?

OMG!  Did the sun come up in the East?

Is water wet?

Does fire burn? 

Downgraded

Colorado State University has reduced their prediction from April.

They now say:

9 Named Storms

4 Hurricanes

1 Major Hurricanes (Cat 3+)

This is down from:

13 Named Storms

6 Hurricanes

2 Major Hurricanes (Cat 3+)

 

Amazing

Isn't it amazing that parts that are warrantied for 5 years and 100,000 miles when the car was new are only good for a year and 5,000 miles when added later? 

My God It's Full Of Math Errors

I have made a serious dent in the cannon list.

All the Kwk guns from 3.7cm to 8.8cm for Mr Mustache Man.

The 17 pdr, 20 pdr and L11 guns for the Brits. 

All of the US 75mm and 3" guns.

Just about all the T2K guns for the US and Soviets.

A couple of the WW2 USSR guns for good measure.

One sheet per gun.  29 guns.

And because I was looking at tables in the Gun Stats pdf and doing a lot of copy-pasting...

I introduced a lot of errors.

Errors which were corrected when I figured out the IFS function!

Now it accounts for the three variables from bore diameter, two from velocity, one from the TL and if it's a smoothbore or not.

Save early.  Safe often! 

Dear Anon Commenter

Your question was already answered in the linked article a few posts back.

Read the article hosted by the white supremacist and your questions will be answered!

Which is as nice as I can be about saying, "do your own homework."

Google AI For The Win

If you search for every individual round, by name and case dimensions, Google's little AI scourer will give you the weight of a complete cartridge for WW2 German tank rounds.

I am still shocked that someone didn't put this on wikipedia in a nice, easy to read, table like was done for just about every other round I've been trying to punch into GURPS: Gun Stats.

Next up, the L11 120mm cannon for the Chieftain and Challenger.

It's Baked Into The Language

The paper that was posted on the white supremacist site (much to the author's chagrin), and I can't find it posted on a non-racist site, focuses on how most African languages have no concepts we consider bedrock ideas in Western Civilization.

Without these concepts, you cannot be a true member of Western Civ.

The sooner you are exposed to these concepts, the easier it is to learn them.

And the question becomes the old nature vs nurture debate.

I believe that the average African-American can learn these concepts and be successful in American society.

I base my hypothesis on the fact that they used to be successful members of American society before the Democrat party actively hamstrung them.

In fact, it often seems as if every time racism is almost dead and black Americans are poised to become full members, some Democrat comes along and fucks it with a dick dipped in resin and rolled in ground glass.

I believe that race has nothing to do with their circumstances because the same failures are present in Appalachia.  Thomas Sowell has mentioned the similarity more than once.

That similarity has the "fucked by Democrats" in common. 

Wildly Wrong

I was hoping that GURPS: Vehicles 2nd edition for GURPS 3e would suffice for getting ammunition weights.

It will not.

Using its formulas will give 106.7 lb. for a 120mm APFSDSDU round.

The M829 round is 41.2 lb.  It's a 120mm APFSDSDU round.

Notice the problem?

Me too. 

Gonna Examine It

Science is.  Science is often not what you want it to be, because the facts don't care.

I strive, desperately, to not be a bigot in my behavior and thinking.

I tend to reject the bigot's answers for things because their answers are trite and made to fit preconceived notions.

But there's a kernel of doubt.

The OG racists in America were southern slave owners.

The people most familiar with American blacks, over and over, described "childlike" behavior and attitudes.

I always chalked that down to a culture imposed upon them because:  How much culture does a slave need to be a good slave?

They were not inculcated with Western Civ's values because those didn't help them be good property. 

Because I think in science, I read stuff that has conclusions I dislike.

Like this.  It's published by a thoroughly white supremacist group.  Take it with a carton of salt.  Remember what I said about trite answers fitting preconceived conclusions.

Just because I don't want the problems with American Blacks to be inborn and uncorrectable, doesn't mean I shouldn't consider it.

Science will not care if I don't want it any more than it doesn't care if a bigot does.

We're not going to do the research for real because it asks hard questions and the best solution could ultimately be extremely racist because, if that paper is correct, we'd have to, structurally, treat black people differently from white people.

That doesn't align well with "All men are created equal" in a document we just celebrated. 

Odd Problem To Have

I'm doing Russian tank rounds now.

American rounds it's easy to find the weight of the loaded round, but hard to find the length and weight of the projectile.

Russian rounds have been the opposite.

Extensive data on the projectile, not much for complete rounds.

Of course, it's better than Nazi German ordnance, you can often find precise data on penetration values and be left wanting for how much anything weighs.

I am dreading doing France and the Brits. 

FFS Ordnance Bureau!

When the Army realized that the M2 and M3 guns in the M3 and M4 tanks weren't going to cut it for most anti-tank purposes...

OK, they didn't.  The M2 and M3 guns do exactly what they were supposed to do, and the Gun Motor Carriages were supposed to handle the stuff that was too heavy for the tanks.

So they made what we call "tank destroyers," or gun motor carriages.

The TD counterpart to the Sherman is the Gun Motor Carriage M10.

It's got a long 3" gun that's tailored to kill tanks.  This is the M7 gun on an M5 mount.

Towards the end of WW2, they started to replace the M10 with the Gun Motor Carriage M18 "Hellcat".  It too has a long 3" gun that's tailored to kill tanks.  This is the M1 series of guns.

The tank destroyer concept started to wane after the war and we developed a light tank with a long, 3" gun that had a decent chance against a tank.  This is the M32.

They all use the same round, right?

No.

No, they do not.

Despite all sharing the same caliber, they don't share the same case.

Frustratingly, The M7 and M1 guns share projectiles.  The cartridges are named after the projectile so they share designations.  76mm HE M42 for the M7 is a different round from the 76mm HE M42 for the M1.

The M7 gun fires 76.2x585mmR.

The M1 series fires 76.2x539mmR.

The M32 fires 76,2x580mmR.

The manuals that ordnance issues doesn't really distinguish between the 76mm rounds and even forgets there's more than one cartridge length.

What caused me to notice was going through the rounds for the Lee/Grant and Sherman's 75mm M2 and M3 guns.  Those guns both fire 75x350mmR.

But Ordnance doesn't specify that the 75mm Pack-Howitzer rounds are not the same.

The round that started my noticing was the 75mm M66 HEAT-T round and seeing how low the muzzle velocity was compared to other rounds fired by the Sherman.  Even lower than the shorter barreled gun in the Lee/Grant.

This is because the pack-hog fires 75x272mmR!  It gets a couple of rounds that the Sherman never got because it stayed in service a lot longer. 

It's getting sorted.

I have also made my first set of stats for a NBC round.  The M64 Chem round.  Mustard gas!  Not to be confused with the M64 Smoke and M64 HC Smoke rounds.

That Name Sounds Familiar

Mother of five, an innocent bystander, dead after gunfire erupts at gas station in Ferguson, Missouri.

Ferguson, Missouri?

Isn't that one of those "fiery but peaceful" places? 

It doesn't seem a very nice place to live. 

 

 

The tragedy is it appeared she'd had a successful GoFundMe campaign to allow her to get a place outside Ferguson and was only at the BP station to get celebratory slushies for her kids. 

No Kings Rally At Casa McThag

 

For 2037 for when the REAL 250th birthday happens!

Why July?

Because it was balls hot and they figured it'd cause a minimum of debate if they were feeling heat-stroke coming on.

 "Sign it and we open the windows!" 

SNT NoGo Las Vegas

It would appear that SNT Motiv will be making a production facility in Louisiana and not just Americanizing guns that are mostly made in Good Korea.

Sadly, that means that new tooling needs to be bought and manned here in the states and that will make the K2S a lot more expensive.

Probably at least as expensive as a used DR200 is. 

Shooting Older Guns

Shooting the 915 today reminded me that there's nothing wrong with many older guns.

You can get 17 round mags for it.

It's only a little heavier than a Glock 17.

You're not giving up anything, really, by carrying one.

There's scads of guns that still work fine and have enough beans to be competitive.

They may be used by the time we get to them, but that just means the previous owners ate any depreciation there is.

I've seen so many used, but unfashionable, guns with almost no wear on them going for about half what a new one would go for.

Several are in the safe!

The downside is parts support.  The manufacturer might not support it any more.

But it's, mostly, not a problem. 

Getting Comfortable

The Lovely Harvey is getting more comfortable with her new Equalizer.

It also helps if I stop hovering.

After shooting we stopped at the Tarpon Springs Aquarium and Animal Sanctuary.  It's touristy fun!

Then we hit Britton Guns and managed to escape without buying anything.  Russ and Heidi both say "hi!" to Willard.

The Wehraboos Have Failed Me

There are no consistent sources for the weight of complete tank rounds for Nazi Germany.

Worthless AI guesses are the projectile weights. 

915 Test Fire

I test fired the S&W Model 915 with the curved grip and the two magazines for it that I'd replaced the springs.

I think it went well.

The curved backstrap is definitely superior to the straight one and recoil was very gentle.

I don't care for the sights on this second least expensive version of the S&W 3rd gen.  They are not conducive to fast shooting, but I made due dew do.

One round failed to fully chamber and the round below it had its nose up the feed ramp.  Not sure if that's a magazine problem or not.  It's disappointing because it has a new spring in it and it'd suck to have to decommission it.

Bet They Were Feeling A Little Inadequate

The 8.8cm KwK.43's Pz.Gr.40/43 will do 6dx16(2) pi++ out to 5,950/17,500.

That's got more reach than the same projectile from a Tiger E.

The 8.8cm KwK.36's Pz.Gr.40 will do 6dx13(2) pi++ out to 4,980/14.600.

Those punch 9.6" and 7.8" of RHAE respectively.

The 90mm gun on the T-26 firing a M82 APC-T round does 6dx10(2) pi++ follow-up 6d+2[4d-1] cr ex.

That punches 6" of RHAE.

That's our best armor piercing round.

On the plus side, the Tiger II only has 5.9" of armor on the front of the hull.  That should only be DR 400, but it's sloped for DR 850 and the M82 round will ping...  You need 6dx21(2) to get a Tiger from the front.  We didn't develop a round that could do that until we filed the serial numbers off the Brit L7A1 105mm gun and called it M68.

On the down side, the T-26 firing that 90mm round almost has 4" of armor...  It too is well sloped and gets DR 420.  6dx10(2) penetrates that.

On the gripping side, there were damned few cats of any flavor running about when the T-26 arrived to test out the idea of what would become an MBT.

Cautiously Optimistic!

ATF is adjusting their stance on NFA and fingerprints.

With special love for us with NFA Trusts.

Linkydinky. 

Wading Through It

Did the 76.2mm rounds today.

Did you know that East China had a long-rod APFSDS round for their modernized Walker Bulldogs?

I didn't.

I also discovered that tungsten is almost the same density as depleted uranium, a little heavier in fact.

I knocked out the 75mm German WW2 tank guns too.  They were very considerate using the same projectile in three different length cases.  Just had to change the velocity to get the stats.

The 75mm HEAT round they came up with in '38 is truly pathetic.  At least by modern standards.

The Hl.Gr.38B only does 6d+1(10) cr ex with a linked 6dx3 cr ex.

The improved Hl.Gr.38C does 9d(10) cr ex with a linked 6dx3 cr ex.

6d+1(10) penetrates a mere 220 DR, just a tad over 3" RHAE.

9d(10) will get past 315 DR, or 4.5" RHAE.

While that's adequate for early WW2, I'd gotten used to Twilight and the M456's 6dx5(10) cr ex linked 6dx3 cr ex.  That punches 1,050 DR or 15" of RHAE.

It's A Race

If I ran a campaign where this was available, the big question is will an NPC have one to confound the players, before a player adds it to their equipment list.

Moar dakka is always the goal of the player, but they often make quirky choices in arming themselves that interrupts achieving the goal. 

Gun/Launcher 152x195mmR

The cannon part:

The missile part:

There are variants of the HEAT round that are identical in GURPS terms.

Same same for the Canister round.

These stats are for the M162 gun in the M60A2, but the M81 gun in the M551 is identical in game terms.

They're mostly identical in real terms, but the differences in mounting added up quick.

PS: Did you notice that M162 is double M81?  The '60's did this a lot.

The M219 is simply M73 tripled.  "Third time's the charm!"  It wasn't.

Why It Wasn't A Problem

In 1868 granting birthright citizenship to anyone born on our side of the line wasn't an issue because all you got was citizenship.

If you didn't get to work, like everyone else, you'd starve.

If you worked it was, relatively, simple to become a productive member of society rather than a burden. 

It's an issue now because of the lavish, and unending, handouts and, as was pointed out in the comments, the penumbral right to bring everyone with even 1% consanguinity with you here to live.

The issue compounds.

Personally, I'm in favor of killing the handouts.  We really can't afford them.

Ideally we only let the citizen stay and send their parents packing.  I'm not sentimental about breaking up a family whose only goal is to punch out an anchor baby and start hanging from the welfare teat.

Especially now that we've seen how much fraud came with it. 

Done?

I have used Gun Stats to make stats for all of the US issued 90, 105, and 120mm tank gun rounds.

Yes, I remembered the M58 gun on the M103 heavy tank.

75 and 76mm beckon... 

Then it will be time to do the Soviet stuff. 

M494 Update

Back here I had the damage for the 105mm M494 APERS round at 3d cut.

Gun Stats changes that to 1d-2 cut.

The 14 hits at 50 yards only does 2 per hit now and that's 42 damage.

Not a red-mist, but very unhappy with life.

10 consciousness rolls and 3 death rolls tends to make people grumpy. 

Knock Knock

A 16"/50 Rifle Mk.7 firing a 16" HC Mk.13 round does:

6dx80(0.5) pi++ linked 6dx24[20d] cr ex out to 16,160/37,300

16" AP Mk.8 does:

6dx51(2) pi++ linked 6dx12[20d] cr ex.

Updated from here. 

It's hilarious calculating these things in grains!  133,300,000 grains for the exemplar Mk.13 round.

Explosive D has an REF of 0.95 not 1.13, so that changed things a mite. 

Angry Bees

The standard US flechette is 1" long and 0.05" in diameter and weighs 13gr.

The tungsten ball in an M1040 canister round is 0.31" in diameter and weighs 73gr.

For some reason this was harder to find than it was the first time I looked it up.

No It Doesn't Do That

The massive tax cut represented by increasing the homestead exemption will NOT make renting a house more expensive.

Cutting taxes on home owners doesn't increase the taxes on rental properties.  Those remain the same as before. 

In fact, there's language slowing down the rate they can increase the taxes on non-homestead properties from 10% to 5%.

That will help renters, not hurt them.

US Cartridge 105mm APFSDS-T M900

My old stats for the M900 were:

6dx34(2) pi++ inc; 6,000/18,000 - That's good for punching 518mm of RHA at 0°.

Gun Stats gives:

6dx33(2) pi+ inc; 8,140/26,700 for APFSDSDU.  503mm penetration.

6dx39(2) pi+ inc for long-rod APFSDSDU.  594mm penetration.  "Long-Rod" is defined as a penetrator being 15 times longer than its diameter.  The M900 penetrator is 25x603, 23 and change to 1.  It's a long-rod.

A bit short of both benchmarks I found back in Feb '25.  The round's performance is still classified (sorta) so there's not a lot of official information, but a great deal of "already leaked" information.  War Thunder thinks 522mm.

But 6dx39 is in the ballpark of what I think it should do. 

It's a game, so the important thing is the relative values come out about right even if the precise numbers don't quite.  Gun Stats even has a section about how to use stated penetration values to determine damage.

Take the RHA penetration in mm * 0.787 / armor divisor and that gives dice.  6dx34 in the case of 522mm!  But, like I said in Feb '25, I think it punches more, so I'm going with the long-rod numbers!

Don't Say Nothin About Mom And Dad

I've long been willing to concede that anyone born here is a citizen.

But if their parents aren't and are here illegally, there's nothing about that child's citizenship that allows those parents to stay.

The child is a citizen and therefor ours. 

Our fellow citizen gets to stay, and be raised by their fellow citizens, while Mom and Dad are swiftly and surely returned to whence they came.

Yes, I am saying we're going to be separating families.

For the good of the child and our nation.

Wanna bet this small change stops birth tourism in its tracks?

Restuarant Ideas

 "New Delhi Steakhouse"  India themed like Longhorn is western themed, all vegetarian.

 "REAL Vegan Diner"  Just a normal diner, but hire actors to profess to being vegan and extoll the virtues of various cuts of their own bodies in a manner similar to "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe."  Then they leave the table, you pay them, they never come back out front.  Serve pork and "steak" made from soy and lentils.

Right To Repair

It would appear that President Trump did us hot-rodders a solid!

 

🚨 JUST IN: President Trump signs an order to STOP people from being arrested or targeted for FIXING THEIR VEHICLE, giving the “right to fix”

Common sense!

This also breaks up a California-based monopoly on 3rd party car parts certification, per Lee Zeldin 👏🏻

TRUMP: “It came… pic.twitter.com/yOf3FiBzlu

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) June 29, 2026

 

I think I'm better than the dealer at fixing my car and have always felt that I should be able to access, modify or fix any system on it.

Processed Chemicals

Just as every bit of matter is a chemical...

If you're not eating it raw, it's been processed.

Cooking is a process.

Harvesting is a process.

Butchering is a process.

Motor oil is organic, by the way.  All hydrocarbons are organic molecules.

All domesticated food sources are genetically modified.  Some by injecting genes and splicing, some by the old fashioned method of selective breeding. 

This has been your linguistic science fact diatribe of the day! 

Local Debate

Salami on a Cuban is the beans in chili of Florida food.

XM274 Revisted And Edited

Gun Stats says it can do cannon.  In fact, they give us the detailed process of making the 120mm M256 firing the M829A3 APFSDSDU round.

So I decided to see if the numbers I pulled out of my ass for Twilight 2000 were even close.

The initial APFSDSDU round did 6dx19(2) pi++ inc out to 4,800/16,600.  This round didn't last long in testing and never got an XM designation.

XM885 (Delta 3) APFSDSDU round did 6dx25(2) pi++ inc out to 4,800/16,600.

XM885 (Delta 6) APFSDSDU round did 6dx28(2) pi++ inc out to 4,800/16,600.  Delta 6 might have become M885A1 if development had continued.

XM884 HE-AB did 6dx11(0.5) pi++, follow-up 6dx3 [4d-1] cr ex out to 2,400/8,300. 

The penetrator is 19mm in diameter and 380mm long, so it's definitely a long-rod with its 20:1 LDR. 

Gun Stats says a long rod penetrator APFSDSDU should do:

XM885 does 6dx25(2) pi+ inc out to 9,340/30,600.

XM884 does 6dx12(0.5) pi+, linked 6dx3 [4d-1] cr ex out to 4,670/15,300.

I get more range, regardless.  I'm giddy how close my original XM884 round was and I'm happy that the calculated damage matches the published penetration values for the Delta 3 round.  Not sure how to get it to spit out the published Delta 6 values, except for the section on page 23 saying to just calculate the damage off the actual values rather than the what the formula says.

The delta 6 is calculated as a "long rod" round, delta 3 was not, but there's some speculation that it was also heavier than the delta 3, which could up the damage.

If delta 3 was always a long rod and 6 is heavier...  But I don't think that 2.91kg is realistic.

Acc changed from 8 to 5+3.  ST changed from 70M to 62M.  Rcl changed from 10 to 4. 

I think I can live with these numbers. 

Dusting Time

Unlocked the M12 rack and dusted the AR's.

This, of course, meant pointing them at the mirror and aiming at my reflection.

Although Dissipator Dottie is about the most comfortable, holy crap is the XM177E2 clone LIGHT!

That applies to the M16 and M16A1 clones too.

They're just so damn pointable!

It also reinforces my feeling that a fixed stock is better than a collapsible one for comfort.

The M4 clone is comfortable enough, but... 

Who's Shocked?

Who else is shocked that Iran is still shooting at ships?

The problem is we have not defeated them.

Curtis LeMay had the right of it, but it's Nixon who has the correct method.

We stop bombing when you sign the agreement and not before.

We resume bombing the moment it even appears you lied about what you signed.

What you are signing is entirely written by us, you don't get a voice in the terms, you're surrendering.

Sooner or later we're going to hit something they care about enough to stop fighting.

I don't care what it is, but defeat needs to be what they feel. 

Moar Gun Stats Shenanigans

In the world according to High Tech, an M1 Carbine does 4d+1 pi damage.

An M4 Carbine does 4d+2 pi damage.

I don't think that .30 Carbine really does almost the same amount of damage as 5.56.

Gun Stats thinks it should be 4d pi-.

That better suits its reputation, I think; and it fixes a long running problem with where the line between high and low velocity is with small caliber rounds.

Gun Stats has a little table for the length/diameter ratio by caliber and if a .30 round is LDR of less than 3, then it's pi-.  The 110 grain bullet of M1 carbine is definitely under 3.  2.24, to be exact.

I've long suspected that an errata should have been made for it, but Hans-Christina Vorsitch long maintained that 4d+1 pi was correct. 

.30 Super Carry Gun Stats Version

Calculated .30 Super Carry!

S&W Shield Plus stats. 

Dmg: 2d+2 pi-; Acc: 1; Range: 140/1,500; Weight: 1.5/0.4; RoF: 3; Shots: 13+1(3); ST: 8; Bulk: -1; Rcl: 2; Cost: $550/$41; LC: 3.

Notes:  Improved visibility sights, hammerless, 16 shot magazines ($41, 0.5 lb.) available.

This compares to the 9mm Sheild Plus...

Dmg: 2d+1 pi; Acc: 1; Range: 140/1,600; Weight: 1.5/0.4; RoF: 3; Shots: 10+1(3); ST: 9; Bulk: -1; Rcl: 2; Cost: $550/$41; LC: 3.

Notes:  Improved visibility sights, hammerless, 13 shot ($41, 0.5 lb.) and 15 shot ($41, 0.6 lb.) magazines are available.

That pi- still kills it for me.  BUT...

If all 13 rounds hit, that's an average roll of 9 for 4 damage with ball and 8 damage with 2d+2(0.5) pi hollow points for 52 and 104 respectively.

9mm, if they all hit with an average roll of 8 for 8 damage with ball and 10.5 damage with 2d+1(0.5) pi+ hollow points for 80 and 105 respectively.

Closer than I expected. 

Speaking Of Shooting And Having Fun!

Harvey is digging the experience of her new Equalizer!  Absolutely thrilled to, finally, have a pistol where she can easily work the slide.

Next up, getting her glasses where she can see what she's doing better.

But she was happier leaving the range than I've seen in months.

We fed the Equalizer several brands of ammo, including Hornady 135gr Critical Defense and Federal 124gr HST.

Her old gun, an M&P 2.0 Compact, would not feed Hornady Critical anything.  It liked HST.

No problems of any kind turned up with the Equalizer!

It ate three brands of 115gr ball and both of the brands of carry ammo!

The counter person who sold us the hollow-points was a little surprised we were taking them straight to the ranged down the hall.  It seems that a lot of people don't ever shoot the ammo they're betting their life on.

I shot my M&P 2.0 Compact and continued to try and speed up my Mozambique drill.  I'm no Jerry Miculek.

 That grouping at this speed is much smaller than it used to be, so progress, but it's a lot bigger than if I slow down just a teeny bit.

Living?

MSN, you just keep being you...

20 Firearms that are living off their names. 

Basically, every gun fails to be the author's favorite example of whatever type of gun they're talking about.

They're impractical.

They're too expensive.

I think that Josh Clark subscribes to the "only brutal practicality" school of owning guns that misses 70% of the experience and all of the fun parts of shooting. 

Twenty Years

It has been twenty years since Rob of Acidman's Gut Rumbles shuffled off into the void.

It doesn't seem like it's been that long, but...  Damn. 

Best wishes to his daughter and son, and I hope they got to know him from what he left them on his blog. 

Fine By Me

Saw this on Facebook:

OK.

But I do have more books than guns.

I think I have more books about guns than I have guns.

All it really means is I have a metric shit-ton of books.

There's nothing about having more books than guns that predicates having few guns. 

 

All Of 'Em I Think

"How many Indians are in that village over there?" asked Col. Custer 150 years ago, today.

"Exceptin' me, Joe and that Pawnee feller; all of them." the scout replied.

"I like my odds!" exclaimed Custer and he rode off to battle!

Sitting Bull, on the other hand, had been talking about a vision of a great battle with the White Man, where if they ran and did not fight, everything would come out OK for the Sioux.  But if they fought, they would win the battle and all would be ruinous from then after.

He'd told of his vision often, and few believed him; many thinking he'd lost his power.

When Custer and Reno attacked, he realized that:  "This was it!"

His cries to stop the fight were unheeded as Crazy Horse took charge...

And the Indians won the battle.

And all was ruinous for them thereafter... 

Aloha Bitches

Hawaii's vampire rule has been struck on 2nd and 14th Amendment grounds.

For everyone scoring at home, this is another 14th Amendment incorporation moment.

It's also reminding Hawaii that they're a state and subservient to the US Constitution and there's no legal binding to the spirit of aloha. 

Make 'Em Lug A Garand For A While

I've been reading about Special Forces' new idea for a rifle.

HICAR.

The super special ammo is 5.56x45mm in all but one respect:  82kpsi chamber pressure.

Normal 5.56 is around 55kpsi and M855A1 runs about 62kpsi.

So, about a third higher than the current round that's causing issues with bore erosion.

Why do they need this higher chamber pressure?

To get the exact same velocity as a 20" barrel gets while using an 11 to 12 inch barrel.

And a suppressor...

Always lose the handling gains from the short barrel by bringing it right back to the previous length with a suppressor.

But there's good reasons to want one, and they have them.

But I am waiting for the day that some normal soldier loads a spiffy M855A1+ round into their M4 and...  Well, the proof round is about 77.9kpsi.

Ever wonder why .357 Magnum is 0.1" longer than .38 Special which is 0.12" longer than .38 Long Colt?

It's to keep this exact pressure mismatch from happening.

I can't help but think that an M16A4 is a lot handier, even with a suppressor, than a Garand, and an excellent training exercise would be to show them exactly HOW handy a 20" M16 can be.  That way they don't introduce a dangerously high pressure round into the supply system just to recreate the velocity that standard pressures make with a longer barrel.

While we're at it...  Make a flat-top pencil-barrel M16 available to them to remind everyone that the A2 and A4 are unnecessarily heavy.