But Not YOU Peasant (Updated)

UPDATE: THIS WAS A SATIRE POST AND I FELL FOR IT HOOK, LINE AND SINKER. 

Found this on Facebook:

What is it they keep telling us?  If we have nothing to hide, we have nothing to worry about? 

ST. PETERSBURG — A leak involving the city's automated license plate reader network has allegedly exposed an extramarital affair between two high-ranking St. Pete officials after records documenting months of late-night travel were obtained by TMZ.

According to the leaked data, one official's vehicle made at least 17 late-night visits to the home of the other, frequently arriving after 11 p.m. and departing before sunrise.

Neither official has been publicly identified yet.

City officials responded to the apparent breach by ordering an emergency review of the Flock system and the privacy risks associated with storing vehicle-location data.

The review reportedly concluded that additional protections are needed for elected officials, senior administrators and other designated personnel. Under the proposed safeguards, registered vehicles belonging to qualifying officials would be automatically excluded from the system, with detections neither logged nor stored.

"No public servant should have to wonder whether their movements are being recorded, stored or potentially accessed by people they don't know," a city spokesperson said. "Elected leaders deserve a reasonable expectation of privacy as they go about their daily lives."

Officials stressed that the proposal would not affect the collection of data belonging to ordinary residents.

Local development advocate Graham Whitmore praised the distinction.

"There's an enormous difference between tracking ordinary citizens and tracking the people responsible for tracking ordinary citizens," Whitmore explained. "One is an important public-safety tool. The other is an alarming invasion of privacy."

Whitmore also rejected criticism that the policy would create a two-tiered privacy system, noting that officials are exploring a program that would allow residents to apply for similar protections starting at $420 per month, following a $69 application fee and background check.

"Nobody is being denied privacy," Whitmore said. "We're simply asking people who value it to help pay for it."

Officials declined to identify the individuals involved in the alleged affair, citing their ongoing commitment to personal privacy.

$420 a month to get the tier one privacy?

I have one.  Every single public official's address, all their phone numbers, all their email addresses and all their license plates published in a searchable database.

Why them?

Because they, literally, fight tooth and nail to get and keep the jobs they are elected for.

You wanna be in public and wield that kind of power?

Fuck your privacy.

Don't like being exposed like the unwashed?

I'm sure you have a degree to fall back on, or some work experience you can put on your resume, and get a job in the PRIVATE sector.

You suck on the Gubmint Tit, you let us know where you are at all times.

Fuck all y'all.

PS: Please enjoy the budget haircut coming with Amendment 3 you tax fattened hyenas! 

The Headline I'm Waiting For

"We easily gained access to the device because it lacked viable encryption.  We have corrected that oversight!"

I was reading about how someone stole a Flock camera and managed to download much of the data onboard.

They mentioned a lot of the data was still encrypted and they couldn't access it.

But what I wondered about is if someone could steal the camera and change things so it reported healthy and happy to the mothership, but was actually not doing a gorram thing.

Then I wondered if this same someone could encrypt what they'd done so fully so as to force Flock to buy new hardware to fix it. 

Same Logic

Public opinion is against Flock and other similar camera systems.

To the point that the local sheriff canceled their contract with both Flock and Axios.

Governor DeSantis banned them from FDOT right of ways.

But the press is publishing lots of articles like the picture above.

It seems very much akin to saying that since the Nazis MUST have killed a few people who deserved it, then The Holocaust is completely justified.

Some of the nearby county's sheriffs are not getting the message the public is sending and are saying that they will continue using Flock cameras that are placed on private property.  I think some of them have been running unopposed for so long they've forgotten they're elected officials and subject to the opinions of their constituents.
 

What?

From the Baltimore City Crime Gun Intelligence Facebook page:

On August 23, at approximately 3:40 p.m., NED DAT detectives were in the 5400 block of Sinclair Lane when they observed an individual exhibiting behavior consistent with being armed. During the investigation, detectives arrested the suspect and recovered (1) Polymer80 9mm handgun.

The gun in question:

 

What is "behavior consistent with being armed?" 

It Was Cars First

My road to being a gun owner ran through being a hot-rodder.

It also is the core of my hatred of greenies.

Do you know how much pollution I've saved by not getting a new car every 3-5 years like they do?  They never count the pollution of making their new car and disposing of the old one.

It's a lot more than the pollution of driving a "dirty" car for 15-20 years.

It's amazing how many gun control things rhyme with car stuff.

California has a handgun roster and it is poised to have a tire roster.

Because rolling resistance is all that matters in a tire's design.

They're using the thin veil of "that's what came on the car" as cover for the decision and how much it's going to save the consumers in fuel.  Never mind the OE tire is normally the most expensive one you can get for a given car and that costing the customer more in tires than they save in gas...

But why did the OE put that shitty tire on the car in the first place?  Corporate Average Fuel Economy.  The teeny increase in mileage from low rolling resistance can be enough to move the car's EPA efficiency to a different column and keep the OE from paying taxes, fees and fines to put it on the road.

They didn't do it because it's the best tire for the car and what the consumer wants to do with it; they did it to comply with a set of regulations that were never attached to reality and get further detached every legislative session.

By the way, this is the same government that decided we all need to have run-flat tires rather than insist we learn how to deal with a blow-out.

Just wait for when your rear view mirror gets replaced with a camera! 

This Is The Same Logic

One Florida sheriff is touting their relationship with Flock and how it helped them find a missing child.

The thing they are missing is they are, in essence, saying that it's OK to enter every house in their jurisdiction without a warrant to catch a child pornographer.

The huge question is, "Does the good outweigh the bad?"

Considering the contents of the Bill of Rights, no.

The founders were firmly of the idea that it's better to let a few criminals get away with it than to trod on the rights of the innocent to catch them.

Something we're going to have to address is the issue of private organizations collecting information and then selling it to the government(s).

I suspect that if we decide that if the government buys something they cannot, legally, collect on their own is forbidden; the collection of such data by private entities will stop. 

I Have A Potential Solution

Dear gun makers, want this shit to end?

Stop all government sales.

No sales to any government entity or employee.

State, clearly, "people no get, cop no get," and watch the police lobbying organizations suddenly become pro-gun.

Ammo makers, you too.

The only reason places like NY and Cali keep doing this disarmament shit by a thousand cuts is because they know they have the support of the cops who still get theirs even if no civilian can own a gun.

I would not be surprised to find SIG-Sauer at the heart of all this, because their business model is centered on agency, government and military sales.  Losing the civilian market suits them and they'd be pleased to have monopoly status.

They should ask H&K and Colt how that works out in the long run. 

I Know Why

250,000 girls raped by Muslim rape gangs. A quarter of a million of your young daughters. And then kept secret by those meant to protect them. Then arresting people for speaking out.

Why Brits aren’t violently overthrowing their government as we speak I’ll never know.

— The Dank Knight 🦇 (@capeandcowell) June 16, 2026

 

They are referring to this.

It's because the people of Great Britain have been disarmed.

This Is Very Familiar!

A modest proposal for the student loan crisis.  With a workable solution.

Of course that means we'll never try it. 

Again I Ask

Once again, casting my eye to California, I ask, "What, exactly, is wrong with letting people decide for themselves?"

Jalopnik has a story about how California is going to start forcing people to buy a particular kind of tire over all other kinds.

Specifically shallow-tread, low rolling resistance tires.  (In the article they use 8.5/32"...  I think someone failed fractions and that made them decide to go into journalism because math is too hard.  17/64" is what you were looking for, Mr Hughes.)

Those tires last 27k miles instead of 40-50k.

On the plus side, that could save the average driver a whole $176 over four years!

At California prices, that's just under 40 gallons of gas.

Considering that the average driver puts 10k miles a year on their car, you need tires every 2.7 years instead of every 4-5.  Tires are, at least, an $800 cost and they want you to do it, about, twice as often.   Gee, thanks Mr Mx Government Man Person!

Improved gas mileage is only one consideration for what you want a tire to do, as they mention in the article.

The problem, in their minds, is people come to the wrong conclusion about what suits their needs; so they must be forced to make the CORRECT decision.  They're doing it for our own good!  Even worse, they're once again using Europe's already favoring such shitty tires as a justification for doing it.

If I wanted to live in a place like Europe, there's a place called "Europe" that I could move my happy ass to and get all the Europing my heart desires without sullying myself with provincial 'Mericanism. 

The thing is, the invisible hand is better at making this decision.  Always has been, always will be.

It's What Happens

Most rational people aren't racist.

They really believe that you shouldn't punish groups for the crimes of individuals.

But when the police refuse to punish an individual because they are a member of a group, rational people start to become mistrustful of that group.

This is not because the group, as a whole, is bad; it's because they know that a small number of the members of that group will realize they can commit, virtually, any crime with impunity.

So they become rationally racist.  The rational part is what distinguishes them from bigots.  Bigotry is irrational racism.  It's both simple and difficult to tell the two apart.

A corollary to the cops not enforcing the law, when the members of a protected group commit the crimes, is the rise of vigilantism.

Measures to put distance on the protected group become notable. 

The law needs to be colorblind, and what matters is the crime not the demographics of the perpetrator.

Otherwise the people will reclaim the power they delegated to the police and decline to recognize the legislation promulgated in their name by politicians they'd previously delegated to represent them. 

Then it won't be a republic any more. 

Control The Words Control The Dialog

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... 

More Anarchotyranny

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. 

Mayday Mayday Mayday

 

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. 

Is It Doing Anything Good?

I keep wondering if there's anything positive to the citizenry from any kind of registry of firearms, legal or not.

We keep getting told that it helps solve crimes.

If that were true, I'd think there'd be ample bragging about it.

It doesn't even get stolen guns recovered from thieves back to their rightful owners because many jurisdictions simply destroy any firearms they find at crime scenes.

If this story is correct, an illegal, and useless for anything good, registry will soon be a thing of the past.

Not that we can trust them to have actually destroyed ALL copies of it... 

Mixed Feelings

First off, she's lying, they are not banning classic cars with this bill.  Bad way to start.

What they are changing is the issuance and usage of cars with the special classic car license plate.

Near as I can tell, if you register your hot-rod normal like, you are not constrained by the new rules.

At the moment you pay $13.50 for a rear plate or, optionally, $15.50 for front and rear plates; plus $150 for sales tax and $25 one-time registration.  It's always been the law that you can't use it for "general transportation purposes."  So $178.50 and your car is registered forever in Minnesota.

General transportation purposes is not actually defined.

The proposed bill really defines, and limits, what you can do with your special, lifetime, registered car.

I am not that shocked that they went very restricted.

But you takes the tax break, you takes what restrictions come with it.

This is not going to destroy the hobby and most people who actually qualify for the plate as it was originally intended have the money to register and insure their cars with normal plates and can drive as much as they like, anywhere they like.

Betcha that there's a lot of shitboxes that are 2006 and older that have a "Collector's Vehicle, collector plate" who are doing it to avoid the 10% of original MSRP plus 1.575% of current value.

For reference a '69 Chevelle's MSRP is in the $2,600 ballpark.  Current value is VERY subjective, so let's say $50k because that's what Autotempest says.  So $1,047.50 a year to register your '69 Chevelle in Minnesota.  That's steep.

A 2006 Toyota Corolla ran $14,725 sticker price and is worth $6,500 today.  $1,574.88 a year.

See the incentive to call your shitbox a collector car?

The Rat Rod people have also made it difficult to make a, "is this a collector car?" decision on condition.

Club memberships don't really help either, there's scads of Ricer clubs that will include that Corolla.

Considering that I paid $250 total for three cars in Florida, I can see that the real problem isn't the definition of "Hot Rod" but a rapacious and greedy Democrat controlled government.

Worth Your Time

 

Woz Is The Smart One

Steve Wozniak expounds on "you will own nothing and (dis)like it."

It's a growing problem and most people aren't any more aware of it than a fish is aware of water.

FuzzyGeff, first made me aware of the ancestor of this problem back when he asked me to look up Stalin in a paper dictionary.

"Does your dictionary say, "a Soviet politician," or, "a Soviet politician and dictator?"

Other things to check are the definitions of Nazi and Fascism.

I was shocked, all those years ago, that definitions had changed between editions.

Then I was angry, because words mean something.

For example:  Vaccine and inoculate were changed while I watched during COVID.

Amusingly, my Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary from 1959 contains some archaic stuff.

Vaccine: adj 1. Of, pertaining to, or derived from cows, or, especially in technical use, cows afflicted with vaccinia or inoculated with its virus; as, vaccine lymph.  2. Of, or pertaining to vaccinia or vaccination.  n 1. Matter or a preparation containing the virus of cowpox or vaccinia, in a form used for vaccination.  2. In general any substance for preventative inoculation, especially, a suspension of sensitized, attenuated, or killed, bacteria, called preferably bacterial vaccine, injected into the body to induce immunity to the same species of bacteria and their toxins.

Note that second noun definition and "induce immunity".

Here's the current definition from Merriam-Webster's website:

1: a preparation that is administered (as by injection) to stimulate the body's immune response against a specific infectious agent or disease: such as a: an antigenic preparation of a typically inactivated or attenuated (see attenuated sense 2) pathogenic agent (such as a bacterium or virus) or one of its components or products (such as a protein or toxin) b: a preparation of genetic material (such as a strand of synthesized messenger RNA) that is used by the cells of the body to produce an antigenic substance (such as a fragment of virus spike protein)

 

2: a preparation or immunotherapy that is used to stimulate the body's immune response against noninfectious substances, agents, or diseases.

1: a preparation that is administered (as by injection) to stimulate the body's immune response against a specific infectious agent or disease: such as a: an antigenic preparation of a typically inactivated or attenuated (see attenuated sense 2) pathogenic agent (such as a bacterium or virus) or one of its components or products (such as a protein or toxin)

a trivalent influenza vaccine

oral polio vaccine

Many vaccines are made from the virus itself, either weakened or killed, which will induce antibodies to bind and kill a live virus. Measles vaccines are just that, weakened (or attenuated) measles viruses.—Ann Finkbeiner et al.

… a tetanus toxoid-containing vaccine might be recommended for wound management in a pregnant woman if [greater than or equal to] 5 years have elapsed … .—Mark Sawyer et al.

In addition the subunit used in a vaccine must be carefully chosen, because not all components of a pathogen represent beneficial immunological targets.—Thomas J. Matthews and Dani P. Bolognesi

b: a preparation of genetic material (such as a strand of synthesized messenger RNA) that is used by the cells of the body to produce an antigenic substance (such as a fragment of virus spike protein) 

The Pfizer [COVID-19] vaccine—unlike the seasonal flu shot—does not contain the virus or viral material. Rather, it is an mRNA or messenger RNA vaccine, which creates a piece of genetic code that instructs the cells to create proteins which trigger an immune response.—Jerry Nowicki

Viral vector vaccines, another recent type of vaccine, are similar to DNA and RNA vaccines, but the virus's genetic information is housed in an attenuated virus (unrelated to the disease-causing virus) that helps to promote host cell fusion and entry.—Priya Kaur

Note: Vaccines may contain adjuvants (such as aluminum hydroxide) designed to enhance the strength and duration of the body's immune response.

2: a preparation or immunotherapy that is used to stimulate the body's immune response against noninfectious substances, agents, or diseases

The U.S. Army is also testing a ricin vaccine and has reported success in mice.—Sue Goetinck Ambrose

… many of the most promising new cancer vaccines use dendritic cells to train the immune system to recognize tumor cells.—Patrick Barry

Those are not the same.  Are they?

I also love how they include some extra stuff as examples that is really just justification for no longer using the word as it once was used.  Definitions aside, people use vaccinated to mean immunity because vaccines for hundreds of deadly diseases means you don't catch them.  It does not mean that you have an easier time dealing with your smallpox, it means that you don't break out in blisters at all!

How does this relate to Woz and not owning anything?

Because in 2018 the Merriam-Webster definition of vaccine was:

1: matter or a preparation containing the virus of cowpox used to vaccinate a person against smallpox

2: a preparation of killed microorganisms, living attenuated organisms, or living fully virulent organisms that is administered to produce or artificially increase immunity to a particular disease

chicken pox vaccine; also :a mixture of several such vaccines 

measles-mumps-rubella vaccine

My paper dictionary didn't change when the CDC and WHO redefined vaccine to explain why you weren't getting any immunity to COVID despite being vaccinated against it.

The online dictionary changed and if you didn't have a paper version, or think to check the Wayback Engine, you would never know they changed it.
 

Gone

I tried to share a picture with Marv with regards to the guts of his new Glock purchase.

This information is scoured from the internet.

Challenger

40 Years Ago some engineers put on their manager hats and seven Astronauts died.

I was in the lunch line at school buying my breakfast.

They announced it over the PA.

Not more than 10 seconds later someone made the "what's this button do?" joke.

Just after I'd finished eating I joked that the student liberation organization claimed credit for the bombing and no teacher would be safe until our demands were met.

Just after that I was waiting for my mom to come pick me up for my three day out of school suspension.

Apparently a teacher was right behind me when I made my joke.

Zero appreciation, or tolerance, for gallows humor at Ames High School.

I've long supported manned spaceflight.

I've long been critical of the shuttle program.

I've loved planes as long as I can remember and from reading about military programs I gleaned that the time to start the replacement is during the first flight.

If NASA had used that rule of thumb then Challenger wouldn't have been on the pad that morning 40 years ago.  She would have been in a museum.

But I remember what the original plan for the orbiters was and we never even once flew them that way.  Hauling modules for the ISS is as close as we got.

So a replacement never got made, we killed 14 astronauts with it, and the jobs program it had become finally died.

The replacement for the replacement would probably have been flying before Columbia's accident too...  But we were never serious about it.

We made a jobs program and science research toy out of a cargo truck and were surprised it was expensive.  So we cut funding for follow-on programs.