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Whomever thought that, "As long as the grass grows and the water flows," meant forever was a fool.
Because in the land in question, the grass stops growing and the water stops flowing every winter.
Sometimes you can tell which side had legal representation by the contract's terms.
It has been 180 years since the USA last declared war on Mexico.
Not the last time we've fought, but it was the last time war were declared.
Something I accidentally hit while looking for other stuff about The Sioux.
American Indians volunteer for the military in fairly high numbers compared to their population.
They've done so since the beginning of the nation, as a matter of fact.
Strange they're fine with joining forces with the people who genocided them into non-existence... Except for that whole thing that there are actually more Indians now than when Columbus landed.
The thing I keep hitting, over and over, is most Native Americans are of the philosophy of, "we fought, we lost, we got over it and moved on," and it's a small minority who keep stirring shit back up.
Turns out race baiting isn't just for African American grifters!
Grifting comes in all colors!
Plus you never hear about the people who just shrugged and joined American society and live productive, happy, lives. Happy productive people don't make the news or garner any graft. You need angry, unhappy, people for that.
Every race can produce some of those.
Turns out that most American Indians aren't sitting around feeling either offended or sorry for themselves.
While they might be as proud of being Cheyenne as I am of being Scots-Italian, it's not their primary allegiance.
PS: My Blackfoot wife is not pinin' for The Rez; she's an example of a happy, productive, citizen.
Using this inflation calculator to check the picture found here.
$39,300 house should become $239,144.57.
$14,100 income should become $82,212.17.
$0.59 gas should become $3.44.
$1,500 college tuition should become $9,057.31
$3,800 new car should become $22,156.47
$150 rent should become $874.60.
$2.10 minimum wage should become $12.24
$0.28 loaf of bread should become $1.63
$1.55 movie ticket should become $9.04
Gee, you'd think the calculator might not be calibrated correctly. At least for those specific things.
A 23" Zenith TV was $420 in 1975. It should cost $2,599.78 today. They actually cost $99.
A Colt Gov't model was $175.50. It should cost $1,086.34 today, but actually comes in at $970.99.
Inflation is not even across all things, but calculators try to make it so.
The invisible hand does not care if something is relatively more or less valuable compared to 50 years ago.
I remember $70 Mosin-Nagant 91/30's around 2004. Inflation says that should only be $123.41, they're selling in the mid $400's now.
My mom loved cardinals more than any other bird.
She set out feeders to attract them so she could watch them more often.
My area has a resident cardinal who has a sixth sense about cameras.
I am determined to get a good photo, but he's very camera shy.
 |
| My best pic so far. |
Little did we know we'd set out a squirrel feeder.
My grampa, famously, hated tree-rats, and some of that has rubbed off on me in how I talk about them, but I don't really mind squirrels that mind their own business.
It was also kinda fun watching them do their gymnastics to get at the feeder.
But it wasn't for them, and they're keeping the birds away, so we moved it to a spot that forces them to break cover longer than they're comfortable doing.
Now we see them returning to the place where the feeder used to be and looking confused. We're almost feeling sorry enough to get then their own feeder.
I have severely edited my post berating Mikey for being illiterate.
It was childish and not up to my internal standards.
The replacement language says the exact same thing in a more adult tone.
I will try to explain the comment policy again...
You get to comment at my sufferance.
If I will not suffer you to comment, you don't get to comment.
Ending your commenting privilege doesn't mean I am afraid of your argument, it's means I'm sick of hearing from you.
Nothing about me allowing comments give you a right to express yourself here.
For the most part, if you remember to sign your comment, it's getting posted.
It actually takes some work to get me to give up and start moderating someone.
Filtering out the sealions makes my life easier and happier.
Oh, and once I've decided to ban you, you're done. No matter how reasonable and polite you are when you've forgotten about what you did to get banned.
True cowards shit on other people's blog without having their own to be shit upon.
You got banned for not being able to follow the posting rules, Mikey.
I'm not afraid of you, I'm sick of you.
And I know you can't read.
If you'd been able to read, you could still comment.
You'd have known I'd be mocking you for being unable to read.
Tschüß!
PS: Because I control if you get to reply, I get the last word.
It just hit me that Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is set in the same time frame as the English Civil War.
How about that?
Kinda cements the idea that adding some blackpowder guns doesn't wreck the fantasy world feel too much.
It also underscores how little you really need to do to make WFRP work under GURPS, if you're motivated and not easily distracted.
Which, I'm sorry to say, I am unmotivated and easily distracted.
In a nutshell, 95% is already done.
If you wanna preserve the distinction between mage and cleric, you need a couple of GURPS: Dungeon Fantasy supplements.
All that's left is a couple of the world specific races and I've been plugging away at them.
It's slow work because WFRP is not well grounded in reality and that means converting stats is an irritating slog.
I was reading about how Senator Kelly spewed the contents of a classified briefing in public (are charges coming?) about how shallow our stockpile of precision munitions is getting.
Need I remind everyone that the dumb munitions still work fine if you're willing to have a larger circle of destruction surrounding the target?
One of the main drivers of precision munitions is to get stand off distance to keep our own people safe from the enemy's defenses.
If the enemy has no defenses to speak of a WW2 bomber could do the mission.
Nothing in current events, mind, but I just watched the old classic Richard Harris movie, "Cromwell."
I am thinking that I like the look of the period for a Fantasy campaign.
Solid early TL4 so all the "shouldn't exist at TL3" armor and weapons problems won't exist.
I like it.
The 17th century is, potentially, more fun than the 10th or 11th where most people envision Fantasy taking place.
Got the agitator dogs replaced in the Kenmore today.
What a difference!
The Boy's bed linens actually smell clean now.
I rewashed a load of my own clothes and the water was very gray during agitation.
I think it's safe to say that the washer ain't been washin' very well for a while. I have no idea how long the dogs were not ratcheting.
Also the new clutch lets the drum really spin, so the clothes are coming out drier before they go into the dryer.
There's a list of words that you cannot say on YouTube if you want to keep your channel monetized.
There's also a list of words that let you wink wink, nudge nudge, understand what word they'd meant to use.
Like unalived instead of kill.
Yahtzee for Nazi.
Etc.
By going along with the ban, you are going along with whatever messaging the people in charge of the purse strings wish you to portray.
I don't know a way around it except to be funded outside of YouTube and using their platform despite it.
But that leads to your channel being buried and not seen by new eyes...
The washing machine was making a screeching noise in spin cycle.
No es bueno.
We hired the local appliance place to come diagnose and repair it.
It was very close to the same price as getting a different washer, but we LIKE our old Kenmore direct drive.
They're serviceable.
Repairable.
Nigh immortal.
The part that needed replaced was the clutch for the drum.
The repair guy mentioned our agitator dogs were out too, cheap fix and simple to perform. He even said, "I can see your tool box, you can do this!"
That made me feel good.
He might even have seen me changing the hatch struts on Alice too.
I remember when the CMP announced the prices for the M1911's all the sturm und drang over the sales.
I was among the early doubters, in fact.
Since then there have been at least four lotteries for whom got a pistol and that's moved on to direct sales of what's left.
And the furor is gone.
Not even sour grapes griping about missing out.
While the lotteries were running, I only recall a couple of people who didn't like what they'd gotten.
I've seen pics of some very nice guns on various forums.
IN spooked them. They thought they had Trump and MAGA contained. They thought they could ignore Trump. They thought that MAGA was weakened, split, and easily put back in the corner. They believed the fake polls. They figured their podcast bros caused more than enough…
— unseen1 (@unseen1_unseen) May 7, 2026
I keep telling the few liberal friends I still have the Trump, and MAGA, is a symptom not the cause of what's going on.
It doesn't end when he leaves office.
It started back when the TEA in Tea Party meant "taxed enough already" and before the media convinced everyone TEA meant KKK.
The media that did that no longer has that kind of power. Especially with the SLPC involved in wire fraud charges.
Buckle up, Buttercup!
Too many MAGA people moan about what they are not seeing done while ignoring the incredible wealth of good news in their midst.
— Cynical Publius (@CynicalPublius) May 6, 2026
I’ll give you just one example.
Did you know that the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has created a “Second Amendment Section,” designed to protect the…
Yes, it's good news that the DOJ is suing over an AWB.
But we can also see that Duncan v Bonta is not moving and it's been sitting there for...
Nine years since the initial, favorable, ruling.
Three years since the 9th Circus Circuit issued the
unfavorable ruling saying the law could proceed and be enforced.
Waiting on the Supreme Court.
Again.
Still.
It took our side two years to file for certiorari, FFS!
So, good on the DOJ for suing Denver. Should have the injustice removed in about ten years... Assuming that the succeeding administrations and their DOJ keep the case going.
That's why we're pessimists! They can't do a decade's worth of litigation in the two years remaining.
What we've done by buying and using the 75% IDPA targets at seven yards is to simulate shooting at ten yards.
7 yards is -3 to hit. 10 yards is -4, so we've been giving ourselves a -1 penalty at the range vs "real life".
In the above photo, going for the Mozambique Drill, it's -3 for the vitals and -7 for the skull. How to GURPS it is on page 15-16 of Tactical Shooting.
In total:
Vitals: -4 for range, -3 for location,+1 for all-out-attack (determined), +1 for no risk to self, +1 for no risk to others, +3 for well lit range, +3 for known distance. +2 to hit vitals.
Skull: -4 for range, -7 for location,+1 for all-out-attack (determined), +1 for no risk to self, +1 for no risk to others, +3 for well lit range, +3 for known distance. -2 to hit vitals.
If you're patting yourself on the back for how well you do on the range, notice the +8 for being at the nice, safe, comfortable firing range.
I've calculated my Guns/TL8 (Pistol) at 15 before, so I'd need a 17 or less to hit with one round at the vitals, 15 or less to hit with both in round 1. Then I'd need a 15 or less to hit the skull in round 2.
I am definitely not running at the pace that requires using the Rapid Strike version of the drill!
In the real world, I'd need a 9 to land one shot and a 7 to land both in the vitals. Rolling a 10 or 8 means hitting the torso instead. To hit the skull in the next round I'd need to roll a 5 or less. I don't feel super confident of that head shot. Rolling a 6 means hitting the torso instead.
In the real world I'd prolly not be ready to shoot until the person attacking me was a lot closer than 10 yards, more like three... So -1 for range instead of -4 and then 12 for the vitals, 10 for both rounds (13 and 11 get the torso) then 8 or less for the skull shot.
Probably more doable.
If you're blaming me for someone else being a racist because I look like that racist...
You're a racist too.
Wasn't me, didn't do it.
Blaming the group for individual crimes is the core of bigotry.
It's a seductive trap and easy to fall into.
Interestingly, noticing that groups of people have something in common is not racist or sexist if the observation happens to be true.
You wouldn't be able to recognize them as a group otherwise.
And sometimes the differences between groups are insurmountable and they should live with some space between them. But not as often as many bigots would have you believe.
Because today is May the Fourth Be With You and tomorrow is Cinco De Mayo...
I give you Obi Juan Kenobi!
I object to the Universal Metric Cartridge Naming System because there are too many duplicates, not because it uses metric.
Using inches would have the same problems.
8x50mmR would still need to have "Lebel" or "Siamese" after 0.321x1.98"-R.
For the record, we went to the moon using the metric system. Look it up.
Gauges and instruments were labeled in Imperial because of familiarity to the operators, but the math was done in metric.
Actually, hitting the paper.
Harvey has hit the proverbial wall in becoming a better pistol shot.
She is also frustrated by me being so much better than her in a casually effortless way.
I don't even think I'm that good, I'm OK.
And it took many long years to get to it.
She was very depressed and down on herself so I said, "let's sit here on the stools behind the range on the other side of the glass."
We sat for a while watching the other people shoot and I say, "you're already better than half the people here."
And she is.
She's getting all her shots on paper. Nearly all of them in the -1 ring of a 75% sized IDPA target at 7 yards.
With an epic flinch while she jerks the trigger no less!
She tends to string vertically with a low bias.
We're working on it. But it doesn't help that she cannot feel her pinkie on her right hand and often cannot feel her ring finger thanks to something pinching in her right elbow.
Her eyes/glasses combination isn't helping. Our last trip to the eye doctor did NOT get us glasses we're happy with at all.
Posting pics has, once again, become unreliable at Blogger.
If they'd just stop breaking the "Insert Image by URL" feature, I'd be fine.
Copy-pasting the image to the page as a work around started working erratically, and was making hot-links to the URL I wanted to insert anyway rather than actually dropping the image. Those links die for some reason.
Uploading the image to Blogger has never failed, but there's reasons to not use that; not least of which is the limited space provided.
I pay flickr for unlimited space, I'm not going to pay someone else too.
There's a video making the rounds of a Muslim woman complaining about the lack of Halal choices in Japan.
She, apparently, spent a month there and ended up eating...
Well the pics she posted looked yummy to me.
But Japan loves pork.
One would think you'd check that out before committing to a month there.
But I have seen this meme before there was a word, "meme."
The Ugly American.
You know the person, they go to a foreign and exotic land and demand that everything be made just like home for them. It's an American stereotype.
So she went to Japan and is demanding they have Halal food at every eatery because SHE is there.
Yeah.
Well, I gotta love one response I found from someone in Japan, "So I can buta no shogayaki at every restaurant in Riyadh?"
I mean every place MUST conform to the ideals of their visitors, right?
I'm actually surprised there's been push back against her little rant.
The first example of how Universal Metric fails against simply naming the rounds is the number of 8x50mmR rounds where you end up naming them anyways. Austrian, Lebel, Siamese...
But where it really rankles me is .22 Long and .22 Long Rifle.
UM is based on caliber x case length.
.22 Long and .22 Long Rifle are identical if you use UM. 5.6x16mmR. This is because they use the exact same case. .22LR uses a longer, heavier, bullet and more powder. They're not the same.
While I was restricting myself to things that were plausible for Twilight, I'd missed that the hoary old M577 stopped being M577.
Neatly sidestepping becoming the Mobile Command Post of Theseus the M577A2 was extensively upgraded and modernized to become the M1068.
A similar upgrade makes the M577A3 into the M1068A3.
Still looks the same on the outside and you'd be forgiven if you mistook one for another.
The M1068 is due to be replaced by the Bradley based M1286.
I once had a player group in one of my first conversions of T2K to GURPS select the M577A1 CP because it had air conditioning.
Twilight: 2000 had a few variations of the M2 Bradley which were projected to enter service, but never did.
It was a logical progression that the Brad would be modified as the M113 had and would have as many specialized variants.
Well... No. Especially with the Berlin Wall falling and ruining the chances we'd have full on nuclear combat, toe to toe with the Ruskies. It also makes T2K an alt-history instead of a speculative future.
Darn.
It does turn out that the M113 is obsolete and not viable for frontline operations any more and that we needed something to replace all of its numerous variations.
Which we started to do in 2018 with the Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle program.
T2K's M18 mortar carrier is the real world's M1287.
The world only took 32 years to catch up to a game...
There seems to be some confusion out there.
Here's a handy way of looking at things that will help.
If you do something because of race, it is racism.
If you increase the voting power of Black people because they are Black, you are doing a racist thing.
If you increase the voting power of White people because they are White, you are doing a racist thing.
If you increase the voting power of Asian people because they are Asian, you are doing a racist thing.
If you increase the voting power of Hispanic people because they are Hispanic, you are doing a racist thing.
Update:* Swapping the races doesn't make it not racist. If it's racist for White people to do it, it's racist for Black people to do it: Regardless of how often or how long White people did it! Two wrongs don't make a right.
See how that works?
If the voting power of a given people is decreased because it increases the power of one political party over another it is not necessarily racist.
If the voting power of one political party is always increased when the voting power of a given race is increased it is racist.
If the voting power of a given race is disproportionate to their population, it is racist.
The majority will always have more voting power than the minority. That there are more White people than Black people is incidental to argument.
I hope this clear things up. But it doesn't.
Which brings us to Florida and how the new district map increases the power of Whitey™.
Florida was 51.5% White as of the 2020 census. It was 14.5% Black and 26.5% Hispanic.
The distribution of race is not even in Florida. There are no real concentrations of Black people where they're the majority unless you get really creative with drawing the lines and the map suddenly looks a lot like Illinois. Essentially you'd have to pinpoint every Black person you can find, connect the dots and that's your district with a majority Black population.
This district will utterly disenfranchise anyone who is not Black and, historically, it was drawn across places that were, historically, majority Hispanic. Oddly, never up along the Alabama border were it made more sense...
Yet, somehow, this increases White Power®? Never mind there's a distinct population of "Black" people who'd say, "¡Soy cubano!" Does moving the lines increase or decrease their voting power?
The final thought I leave you with: There is no way to draw the lines that is completely fair. It is impossible. The best you can do is to maximize fairness, but someone will always be left out.
*Thanks SiGraybeard!
If you call the cops for the same thing too many times, you will be fined for it.
The most common version of this tale is a false alarm of your security system.
The cops come out when your alarm goes off, find nothing, and after a certain number of calls order you to fix your alarm or be fined.
So you call the alarm company and discover that there's nothing wrong with your system.
But the alarm keeps being triggered.
So the cops fine you.
This does not sit well with the average business owner at all.
What's happening?
The burglars know the police response time and how they operate. They trigger the alarm and disappear. They know that the most common end response of the business owner is to shut the alarm off rather than face the fine.
Then they can burgle at their own pace.
The crowning moment is when the place gets cleaned out and the owner calls the cops in the morning they say, "you should have had an alarm." They will then proceed to do a cursory investigation and the crime will never be solved no matter how obvious it is to everyone in the neighborhood whom the criminals are.
Oh, and don't you dare figure out what the thieves are up to and sit inside your business waiting for them to break in. There's no defending mere property allowed.
And THAT is how you end up with a law making it legal to shoot burglars.
And by the bye, if you don't make it legal to shoot burglars, you eventually get cops getting shot by citizens because the cops are only getting in the way of justice and things have progressed to the point where the only path to justice is unlawful.
Remember: The deal is we give up the right to vendetta and The State catches and punishes criminals. If The State reneges on this deal, we get our vendetta back.
We don't want our vendetta back. It really is better if the professionals catch and punish criminals, it's one of the things that allows for a high-trust society.
The center group is the M&P 2.0 9 Compact. The other two groups are the Shield Plus.
I then decided to so some Mozambique drills with the Compact.
While I keep hearing about how great the Gen 6 Glocks are, they'd have to really be great to replace my Smith.
Poproszę o przedmioty z byłego państwa komunistycznego – takie, których nie można było posiadać, gdy było ono jeszcze państwem komunistycznym – za 1000 dolarów.
Today is international fuck communism day.
The official food of today is "no food."
Half price helicopter rides if you show your Communist Party ID when checking in at the gate.
