The Day The Unbearable Lightness Went Out

 

13 years since Lex went into the beyond.  I still miss him.

Just going for courage this year.

Mules

Spider-people in Technomancer have extra lifting ST with their lower bodies.  ST 16 for carrying stuff with the spider part instead of the normal 10.

That's gonna change some SLA Marshal equations and some unit equipment distributions.

A spider-person can lug a few recoilless rifle rounds round without undue effort where a normal human would struggle.

I might just rearrange my grenadier...

Two Hours

DerpyPuter did a bit more than two hours of normal surfing with YouTube running.  It was showing 48% at the two hour mark then 18% 17 minutes later.

The charge remaining is not being very linear, but this is just the second time I've run it down since I installed the new battery.

ALICE For Garand

Greece hung onto the Garand long enough to issue M1951 style pouches.

Each one will hold two en-bloc clips per pocket, for 32 rounds per pouch.

I'd never seen these before.

Kinda neat! 

You can get them from Apex Gun Parts (where I stole the pictures)

Still More Shots

When I was issued an M1911A1 they gave us two spare magazines.

That'd be 21 rounds if war were declared.

When I was issued an M9, they only gave us one spare magazine.

That's 30 rounds.

But two spares was cemented in my mind.

I took two spare magazines to the Czech-German border for my Glock 17 and harangued them to issue me 51 rounds.

We were, emphatically, forbidden from carrying one in the chamber.

Over The Edge

A buddy of mine, Bill Gerber, once tried to entice me into playing the RPG "Over The Edge."

I was mainly interested because everyone else was already making a character when I got to The Union.

Despite being told I could make any character I wanted, I gave up after five of my ideas were rejected.

I simply couldn't figure out what Gerb wanted me to make for a character that I wanted to play and the fastest way for me to give up on a collaboration is for the other party to have a veto when not actively helping.

He wouldn't even give any details about the setting to help me figure out a hook to make a character around.

That he was championing a "libertarian" setting with strict gun control at the same time I was particularly raw over the recent passage of the Clinton AWB did not help.  "I don't think that someone understands what 'libertarian' means," is what I said at the time.

Every once and a while I remember the setting exists and I re-read the wikipedia article on it.

This little nostalgia trip always reminds me of another esoteric setting he tried to get us interested in, The Empire of the Petal Throne, aka Tékumel.  The less said about that and MAR Barker the better, I think.  A Muslim who's anti-Semitic?  REALLY?  That's never happened before, or since...

The Sherman Was A Fine Tank

In point of fact, the Sherman was in the inventory of all the winning Armies in WW2.

People keep talking as if we won the war in spite of the thing.

They concede that it was OK if you consider the Firefly (which is a horrid adaptation).

The fact is that most Shermans had the "ineffective" 75mm M3 gun.

What one has to do when determining if the M4 was a good tank or not is to remove German propaganda from the research.

No, the M3 gun isn't as good at punching armor as the 76mm M1A1, but it was good enough against the Panzer IV right up to the end of the war.

It was definitely used incorrectly often, but that's not the fault of the design.

It's armor wasn't as thick as some other tanks, but it was enough to win most engagements.

No, it didn't catch fire more often than other tanks once it took a penetration.

Even if it did, you were more likely to escape from it than most other tanks.

No, it was not designed as an infantry support tank, even if infantry support was one of the main tasks tanks were expected to perform.

Grok

This past week I finally understand why so many bloggers just stopped without saying goodbye.

I grok it in its fullness now.

I Just Realized

John Moses Browning designed the cartridge that killed Hitler.

His hand touched everything that won the war!

Kit Bash Goal

What if you put the turret from a Bradley and a 120mm main gun from an Abrams on an M3 Lee hull?

 I wanna build this!

Non-Events

I have had racism, sexism and religious bigotry in my game worlds.

I use historical settings a lot.

I've had many LGBTQ players.  I've had many minority players.  I've had a few female players.

It's just never been a problem.

Old West campaign where the prevailing opinion is the Indians are prairie n-words and a player wants to treat them like people?  Totally OK.  It happened in history too.

Trans player wants to play trans?  Gets told that they cannot in the setting because medical technology and social norms have gotten to the point that a trans person just has the operation and is all better.  With both remaining birth sex and changing to identity sex as options.  Therapies for both are developed.

Same same for settings with supernatural and powerful deities.  The Gods don't make things that aren't what they are not.  "OK!" was the response.

A black player playing a black character wasn't a problem.  I came up with an explanation for them to be where they were and they put up with their skin color being a novelty.  "He's not a Drow, he's BROWN, not black!"

The black players playing black characters did come up playing Twilight: 2000 in the New America arc.  New America is racist, so they were racist towards the player's characters.

It made for a strong, motivational, adventure hook.

I've never had a disabled player insist on playing a disabled character.

I came closest by playing a character without legs once.  But he was a super hero who could fly...

The Bat never made a character who was blind.

FuzzyGeff, never took asthma.

We were perfectly free to make characters that "looked like us" and we often didn't.

The entire point was to make a character who wasn't us.

I am not a wizard.

I am not a knight.

I am not a dwarf.

I am not an elf.

I am not a pseudo dragon!

I am not a super hero.

I am not a space pirate.

I did not survive the nuclear holocaust.

I am not a prohibition era gangster mage.

Repetitive

In GURPS terms some tanks are exactly the same when they differ noticeably in the real world.

The British Centurion is such a case.  The gun changes twice and the armor changes once.

Other details change, but the stats are about the same.

Thank goodness for copy-paste.

 

I'll Bet Someone Wishes They'd Worn A Suit Now

Aid to Ukraine has been paused according to several news outlets.

The Americanization Of Emily

The Americanization of Emily is an enjoyable movie.

Julie Andrews in a non-singing role and James Garner in high form.

With James Coburn too!

I rented it from Amazon after seeing a break-down by The Feral Historian.

If you have the time, give it a watch.

PS: Warner Brothers: I spent the money to rent it because of The Feral Historian's evaluation and you copyright struck his video off YouTube.  Without his review, I would never have heard of the film nor spent any money to see it.

Flea Feasts

Something that happens EVERY time we answer the call of the cat distribution network is we get fleas.

It's part of the deal of bringing a kitten in from the cold, cruel world.

The sucky part is waiting for the new kitten to finally get big enough to hit with the good stuff.

While the package says 1.9 lb., we've had to make too many trips to the vet with a sick kitten from the flea stuff.  Waiting until 5 lb. seems to work best.

Mist made 5 lb.!

So they got dosed today.

Shadow sits at my elbow on the desk most of the time and they are making a ring around her as they jump off and die.  It's nice to see such positive feedback to the treatment!

Check Your Citations

I got into a little tiff on Facebook about the value of metal detectors in several places in Orlando.

They took the position that such things were a small thing to deal with when it's keeping mass shootings from happening.

I countered that most, if not all, mass shootings in Florida have occurred in such gun free zones.

They then posted a list of mass shootings in gun free zones.

I said, "Thank you for supporting my position."

They didn't understand and a third person had to explain it to them paraphrasing what I was saying.

I hope it was a revelation for them and they change.

Last Ukraine Post For The Day

It's nice to find that one is in agreement with VDH.

Victor Davis Hanson is also Cassandra.

Also

The Budapest Memorandum is a prime example of something I despise about Democrat foreign policy.

They meddle where they don't really belong and set up a place for failure with an agreement that doesn't obligate us to help prop up what we just broke with our meddling.

Get rid of your nukes and we'll support your cause at the UN was unnecessary.  But everyone was singing kum-by-yah at the time...

Ukraine, at the time, had a leadership that was friendly with Russia so the idea that Russia would ever invade seemed remote.

What great philosopher once said, "Never underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up?"

It seems pretty clear that the Delaware Crime Family did some toppling of leaders in Kiev and that put some people who were  pretty hostile to Russia in power there.

And they got a war out of the deal.

The people responsible aren't punished.  Hell, they got pardons! 

Here's the important part, at least as far as the US is concerned:

The United States has no national interest in whom runs Ukraine.

Mr Biden had a personal interest in keeping the place aligned against Russia while he was president, but the United States didn't have one.

That's why we sent aid.

It's really cool that we got real world testing of some of our weapons, but that not enough of a return to keep doing it now that our president has no personal stake in the outcome.  It wasn't all smooth sailing with them either.

The current president, our ambassador, state department, etc., working with their counterparts in Ukraine, had hammered out an agreement to both create a national interest for us AND establish a trade balance that would allow the US to recoup the money spent.

All their president had to do was put on a fucking suit, smile for the cameras, enjoy lunch and sign the documents.

He chose, on camera, to be a petulant, entitled, demanding little prick just like he was two years ago when he was making demands of someone who wanted to help for personal financial reasons.

The American response to this kind of gratitude has always been, "have fun, fuck off."

Zelensky is the big problem for getting aid to Ukraine, he's been getting it despite himself because up until now the people he was dealing with had reasons to ignore the ingratitude.  

Those reasons are now gone.

PS: Lots of people said that giving up their nukes was stupid at the time, but everyone was riding the "end of history" wave and forgetting their Kipling.

Wait I Know This One

There's a LOT of misunderstanding about the Budapest Memorandum.

Despite what President Clinton said, and was reported by the press, and repeated recently: It is not and never was an agreement to defend Ukraine.

The defend Ukraine part is an agreement to have discussions, bring it to the UN and issue sternly worded resolutions in the event that Ukraine is invaded.

All of that happened in 2014 when Russia didn't get their way over a leasing agreement of their navy base in Sevastopol and they invaded and took the Crimean peninsula.

"Treaty" obligations fulfilled!  Done.

Anyone who expected more was an idiot.

Yet more was provided.

The Bidens, I think, are the true architects of the Crimean annexation.  I've no proof, but the kids were thick over there and billions of dollars was sticking to their hands.  Allegedly...

The aid that was being provided, also allegedly, was getting kicked back to "The Big Guy" so the Bidens were getting paid to protect their investment.

But there's almost no US interest in being involved in this.  Except as the Bidens have interfered with shit, allegedly.

Traditionally and historically this sort of thing has been handled with either a "sorry about that" and hanging the nation that was meddled with out to dry OR with a costly war that has the same effect of leaving that nation out to dry.

Almost every argument for continuing to supply Ukraine with the arms it desperately needs by the US boils down to the sunk cost fallacy. 

It's in the US national interest to stop supplying those weapons unless we start getting paid for them.  Well, we all know how that went.

Maybe the UN will help.

Cassandra

I knew I'd posted about Zelensky's attitude problem before.  Two years ago almost to the day.

This is not a new behavior for him at all.

It's really lending credence to the idea that the meeting going the way it did was sorta planned.

DEI Boycott Day

I bought two tanks of gas for The Beast and a tank each for the Equinoxes.

Harvey bought groceries from both Wal Mart and Publix.

Today is also a Fuck Earth Day™ day.

I drove an hour just to have lunch with a buddy.

Before You Notice

In the comments I mention the '73 Charger my dad and friends turned into a race car.

It had a Hemi in it.

A REAL Hemi.  Kieth Black Hemi.  Not a Hemi™.

How does this happen?  The '73 didn't come with a Hemi.

You are correct, Troubleshooter!

But the K-Member out of a '71 fit.  I won't say bolted right in because I wasn't there and didn't help put it in.  But I remember Dad explaining it to someone else.

Why was I driving?

Because my dad and his three buddies forgot they were fat old men when they had the roll cage built and my skinny teenage ass could actually get into the seat wearing the safety gear.

I Wonder If He's Surprised

"Hey, I need a favor, and FUCK YOU!" is an interesting bargaining position.

Wow.

I Feel A Bit Better

I'm watching Dave Freiburger's channel and his working on a '72 Roadrunner.

He's had the car almost two years and he's mentioned the punctuated equilibrium of working on it.

Do something.

Sit for months.

Do next thing.

Sit for a year.

Later.  Rinse.  Repeat.

My project is flying along like it's blasting across the alkali flats in a jet-powered, monkey-navigated...

You get the point.

Not Necessarily True Anymore

In the way back...

Engines were severely choked by the intake and exhausts the OEM's put on them.

A different air cleaner and headers could free up some noticeable horsepower.

That's not as true as it used to be.

Getting more efficient means the intakes and exhaust flow very well now.

They will handle anything the stock motor can put out and putting on better stuff doesn't actually free anything up.

If you're adding a lot of power, of course, you will need more flow capacity, but you're just not going to see the boost that doing it used to do.

Headers perked up the 305 in my '79 Camaro noticeably.  A whole second in the 1/4 mile.  A 4-barrel woke up it even further.  But it was just a 305...

A bigger motor with 45 more cubes did MUCH more.

But I've watched people with much newer cars put serious money into exhausts and intakes and seen the before and after dyno runs.  10 horsepower, tops.  The good news is they have the flow capacity to double the output, but rarely do they even put a new cam in...

The only reason I'm looking at exhaust for The Beast is acoustically cosmetic.  I don't want the Cadillac quiet exhaust on my hot-rod.  The police might need silence to creep up on a suspect.  I don't.

Definitely MUCH Better

Marv bought a K&N air filter for his PPV, almost nearly the same day he ordered an over-the-radiator-cold-air-intake.

Since the OTR intake doesn't use the stock filter, he passed it onto me.

You can really feel the difference in power.

If you wish hard enough.

Breathing better is never a bad thing, but the performance gains are overblown by the companies selling them.

K&N has been good kit for me before.

I am certain I am getting the full "up to 20hp" gain.

Parts

Someone on the Facebook group for my car found a '12 Caprice in one of the local salvage yards.

Marv and I descended like locusts on it.

I got the steering wheel clock spring, all four door latches and both passenger side door seals.

Marv got a steering wheel, dash trim and a rear molding.

Just For The Record

There is only one Highlander movie.  No sequels, prequels or television series.

There are only two Alien movies.

There are only two Terminator movies.

For some stupid reason, Star Trek movies only have even numbers.  Nobody knows why.

Let Us Thank Goldie Hawn

It would appear that Kurt Russel was originally cast as Connor MacLeod.

Goldie talked him out of it to "star" in "Big Trouble In Little China."

I cannot imagine BTILC without Mr Russel.

There Can Be Only One

They appear to be poised to remake Highlander.

Henry Cavill is a decent choice for Connor MacLeod.

There's two big problems.

Freddy Mercury be dead.

Who the fuck can top Clancy Brown for the Kurgan?