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In April, my "favorite" climate "scientist," Michael Mann, predicted 33.1 ± 5.8 named storms for the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season.
The total stands at 18.
We have just under six hours to get to the low end of 27.3 storms before hurricane season ends.
That's about a storm and a half per hour.
This prediction was roundly mocked by several of the local meteorologists too. They were saying 16-20.
Weathermen 1.
Climate scientists 0.
This is a, finely crafted, link that I guarangoddamtee to be good at the time of posting.
From the EPFUCKINGA.
Notice: "Starting as soon as January 1, 2025, restrictions will take effect on the use of higher-GWP HFCs in new 1) aerosols, 2) foams, and 3) refrigeration, air conditioning, and heat pump equipment."
The EPA is enforcing it as a hard deadline rather than a soft phase in.
On January 1st your air conditioner becomes obsolete.
Not by design.
Not because it doesn't work.
Not because a better system is supplanting it.
Because the government is mandating a change to a different refrigerant.
Again.
I am fascinated that with all the talk of democracy from some corners of politics they didn't even ask if I wanted the cost of a new system to triple.
They didn't even check to see if the average citizen could afford such a change.
I plan on writing my congress creatures about this passed-in-the-dead of night tree-hugger law.
Because we can still step back from the mandate, the companies are still allowed to make legacy components and refrigerants to get past existing warranties.
I don't think we will because the existing refrigerants are out of patent and the new stiff is still under one.
It's regulatory capture in the name of global warming.
Again.
Google is wonderfully inconsistent about how Blogger works.
BUT!
I remember us pledging to defend Ukraine back when we encouraged them to give up their nukes.
I also recall that everything was going OK when the corrupt leader of the Ukraine was a Russian mouthpiece.
It also seems to me that we got involved with Ukrainian politics and got that corrupt mouthpiece replaced with a different corrupt politician who was more beholden to the Delaware Crime Family.
That appears to have triggered Russia a great deal and has led them to test the waters by annexing Crimea, waiting to see if the world would do anything, then going for the rest of the place.
That they did it when the Delaware Crime Family was in office was shitty timing for Russia.
No corrupt leader beholden to them in office, no carefully laundered foreign aid gets filtered back to "The Big Guy."
I think that is the crux of the matter.
Nothing I've read makes me think I want either side to win; but rather that it'd be best if they both, as nations, lost.
It'd really be best if it'd never started and all the innocent people caught up in it were spared.
But the innocent never do seem to avoid it, do they?
When noticing that the average hit from a middling trained gunner only got 14 hits instead of the expected 28 when firing an M494 105mm APERS-T round at 50 yards with muzzle effect selected...
I have to also remember that the 3d cut per flechette will average 10 points raw damage each that becomes 15 once its through their uniform and that is 210 total points of damage.
The average 10 HP human is automatically dead after taking 60 total points of damage and cannot be resurrected past 110.
He's not less dead because he only took half the expected number of hits.
Prolly got a couple of his buddies too.
If you were to observe my sister and my father, you would get the impression that she's the only child of his second marriage.
I don't exist to them.
My aunt has made mention of it several times.
It upsets her a lot more than me.
Someone doctored this picture of Willard:
Into something from the SM Sterling Draka novels (Probably "Under the Yoke):
That's interesting!
The M494 is a fletchette round that bursts like a shrapnel round making a cone of death.
A person's silhouette is approximately a square yard.
At 50 yards, with it set for muzzle effect, the cone of fletchettes has expanded to a circle of about 176.7 square yards.
So one would expect that person to absorb 1/177th of the 5,000 little bees.
That's around 28 fletchettes.
Many fewer than I expected!
Skill 11, 3-seconds of aiming.
That's a -8 to hit for range.
+11 for number of projectiles, +5 for Acc, +1 for Braced, +3 for the targeting computer.
23 or less to hit.
Average roll of 10 means that 14 hit. Critical hit of 3 just gets 21.
About half of what you'd expect with the average roll. 75% with a critical hit.
GURPS doesn't simulate large numbers of projectiles well.
It's the gut buster holiday, though we eat more on Christmas here.
The last three years we've pawned the cooking off on Bob Evans, and saved a little money and a LOT of time.
I'm thankful for the little stuff because the big stuff is, presently, handled.
Sadly. There is no hockey.
Also: So far I have not checked the mail box. At some point I will forget, I am sure.
Flechette rounds keep coming up in science fiction stuff, but they're an ammunition technology that keeps failing to live up to the hype. At least in small arms.
Shortly after the introduction of the M79 grenade launcher, a round firing 45 of these teeny darts was fielded.
Notice the lack of even an XM number.
They didn't stabilize and would often hit sideways. Their light weight meant that they barely raised a welt, let alone hurt anyone.
If they did land point first, they rarely did any substantial damage.
GURPS gives them 1d-3 pi-. So whatever small amount penetrates gets halved!
The average hit will do a mere 0.25 points (min 1). So you're going to need lots of hits for it to matter.
45 projectiles means you get a +6 to hit.
Using the same Skill 11 grenadier from last time...
At 20 yards they have a 11 to hit so, average 2 fletchettes scoring. For 2 points of damage.
At 7 yards they tend to get 5 hits. 5 points of damage.
Not quite as good as a M576 buckshot round.
The history of beer!
I'll drink to that!
Beer is civilization and a polity that claims to be a civilization without beer is savages aping the forms of civilization.
In the discussion about tariffs and Mexico, I am only seeing remittances being talked about in the comments sections.
Taxing remittances at some insane amount, like 90%, removes a gigantic incentive for illegal aliens to be here in the first place.
It's also around $65 billion a year removed from the US economy and injected into Mexico's.
Mexico stands to lose far more than we will in a protracted trade war; especially if we figure out that despite the price of goods here going up from the tariffs, so do wages and wages earned here get spent here and that spreads out to other parts of the economy.
The current system of cartelization does get cheap goods, at the cost of domestic jobs and stagnant wages. Goods NEED to get cheaper in this paradigm because wages are, defacto, falling as inflation eats them before they're even earned.
If were to two-prong our attack on fixing the economy we'd talk about how the NLRB is unconstitutional too. Breaking the unions would go a long way towards making manufacturing affordable again.
Mr Musk might not be the paragon of liberty many people are making him out to be.
Being a car guy, I noticed another side of him with Tesla.
If you buy the top of the line super duper Tesla, get bored with it and sell it to someone else; Tesla will audit the sale and decide if the next owner paid enough for all the features and if they decide they didn't: They disable the features.
That's at least adjacent to "you will own nothing and like it" territory.
I have a hearty mistrust of places that rent you something under color of selling.
HA! Thag know some basic HTML and I can trick it into showing me the picture without using their interface!
Take that Google!
#4 Buck does 1d-1(0.5) pi- and gives 27 pellets in 12ga 2-3/4" 00 Buck does 1d pi and you get 9 pellets. For the record, a .22LR from a pistol does 1d+1 pi-
Coincidentally, the M576 multi-purpose round for the 40mm grenade
launcher also uses #4 buck, but just 20 pellets. 40x46mm is a much
larger round than 12ga 2-3/4"!
The #4 gets a +5 to hit from one shot and +6 for two; 00 gets +2 for one shot and +4 for two due to the number of pellets flying.
More hits could mean more damage despite the halving of the damage after penetration. For a single shot the same roll means 3 more pellets hit.
Range is kinda pathetic, so let's keep it to 20 yards, -6 to hit.
A skill 11 shooter will have a 7 chance to hit with a single round and 9 with the RoF of 2 of a pump shotgun shooting 00 buck. On average, they're gonna miss with both.
The same shooter will have a 10 with a single round and 11 with two. On average, they'll get one pellet to hit with one round and two with two.
Our grenadier gets a +4 to hit with his single M576 round and will likely be missing...
Hits do more damage than misses regardless. (1 point or 3 points is more than zero).
If we let the enemy get much closer, like say, 7 yards... it's only -3 to hit.
That means rolls to hit of 10 and 12 for the 00 and the average roll will now land 1 or 3 hits.
#4 needs 13 and 14 to hit and will land 4 and 5 hits respectively.
40mm needs 12 so the average roll lands 3 hits.
00 buck will do (on average) 3.5 hits per round; so 3 or 10.
#4 buck will do (on average) 1.5 hits per round; so 6 or 7.
40mm does the same average damage so 4 points of damage from its three hits.
At longer ranges #4 is going to work better because you're going to be hitting more.
For some reason I can insert this picture of The Beast with my laptop and Ubuntu, but not my desktop and Win7.
Odd.
Two weeks ago, the opposite was true.
Update: Now that I have inserted this pic with the laptop, it will recognize it and let me insert it again from the desktop. This appears to be true of any photo that has already been linked.
Nice VW Type 3 wagon cruised past while I had my camera out taking pics of The Beast.
Big brakes and multi-piston calipers often come with copious amounts of brake dust.
Big brakes also mean you can't really reach between the spokes to get the inside of the rim clean.
But boy howdy do they look AWESOME when you clean them up.
That means taking the wheel off.
I decided that was too simple and rotated the tires too.
I should have taken a picture. Maybe I will later and edit this post.
Figured out how to make the bar at the top of the blog to remember I was logged in.
Gotta make an exception for the enhanced tracking.
That's Mist and Shadow pausing just before play resumes.
I read this article and am immediately struck with a possible cause.
Almost all of the recalled foods are in sectors where the food is handled extensively by human hands and those hands are attached to "migrant" workers.
Also known as illegal aliens.
Hygiene is not the same with those south of the border as it is with us.
Can't even suggest that cleanliness standards aren't even being given lip service because the workers aren't from around here.
E-coli in lettuce? Can't be from the workers shitting in the fields!
E-coli in hamburger? Can't be from workers not washing their hands!
Can't suggest that the owners and operators of the places with the problem are complicit in the crime of illegally entering the country.
It makes one wonder why we have an FDA if they don't randomly and frequently inspect the places making our food.
Did they spend their entire budget on DEI and LGBT outreach?
Ever since I read "The Caine Mutiny" I've been off and on obsessed with the US 1,000 ton/4-piper/flush-deck destroyers.
Those are Caldwell, Clemson and Wickes classes.
I used to watch a lot of World of Warship videos and noticed that destroyers and torpedoes could be devastating.
In the game, the tubes reload and you can try over and over.
In the real world, even if you had spares in the hold, there's no means to reload them.
So a flush-deck gets 12 torpedo shots then it's a gunboat.
Then it needs to get to a dock or a destroyer tender to get reloaded.
This might not be true of every destroyer class, but it's common.
Honestly, it surprised me.
2024 sees the departure of the guys from Top Gear/Grand Tour and the demise of Roadkill.
It's a sad time to be a car guy.
I want my right to open carry back.
I am also unlikely to exercise that right.
There's lots of good reasons to keep it concealed and many reasons to not advertise that you're toting.
Those reasons are not the point.
I am being denied a right.
That alone would be enough, but the people who are politically powerful and denying my that right are dishonest about it.
The consistently fail to compellingly communicate why I shouldn't be able exercise my right.
They very rarely cite the reasons I alluded to above.
I reject, out of hand, "officer safety." That bat has been used to beat me too many times.
Very often the spokesweasels for the police and their professional organizations bring forth the hoary old, "It will make our jobs harder."
So?
I think it's within a citizens rights to demand that their civil servants life be made more difficult. Did you ever think of that, Sheriff? That we WANT you to work harder for the vast sums of money that your agency consumes?
But does it really make their jobs harder?
I guess it would. If open carry is legal, then they can't just arrest everyone without the Seal of the King* on their chest they see with a weapon.
Ever notice, while they are not citing the solid reasons to not open carry I allude to near the top of this rant, cops, deputies, chiefs, sheriffs, police unions and law enforcement organizations and lobbies never advocate for LEOs to stop open carrying?
Wearing of arms, historically, is a badge of rank. A divider between the nobility and the commoner.
Well, Sheriff, there ain't no nobility in a Republic; or rather we're ALL noble because we're all sovereign.**
This is all about political power and elitism. If I can openly carry, then they aren't special. They are not elevated above me.
The truth of the matter is they are beneath me. They're supposed to be working for us not telling us what we can and cannot do.
*Badge
**Not to be confused with the Sovereign Citizen Movement
I have two votes for making some progress with the Traveller Interstellar Wars campaign we started, harrumph years ago.
JT is in.
FuzzyGeff is in.
Gotta get Marv roped in. He's not a serious gamer, but he's been entertained so far with other adventures.
If I run out of material, I want them to make characters for Funny New Guys, which is set in Merlin/Technomancer's Vietnam war.
A military campaign with magic!
The time to overhead did matter once in a GURPS game.
I recreated the movie "Tears of the Sun" and set it in the more appropriate time, during the Nigerian Civil War when Biafra tried to secede. February 1968 to be precise so I could have USS Oriskany be the jumping off point.
The players would be a SEAL team catching a ride home on Oriskany. Why didn't they fly home? One of the team had angered an admiral so the ride on a carrier was punitive.
So we have our carrier and SEAL team in position to rescue the missionary, just like the movie and...
It went really well! I even wrote a properly formatted opord!
Better than the movie, in fact, because the captain of the carrier actually understood his orders to support the teams and the players remembered they had radios and called in air support at an appropriate time.
In my notes I have:
Expected air support is mostly withdrawn after VF-111 Crusaders engage and shoot down a Nigerian MiG-17. RA-3B provides intel that pursuing force did not stop for the night on day two.
Emergency CAS: F-8Es can be on station for CAS ten minutes after being called, they can only loiter for about five minutes. A-4Es can be on station in twenty minutes after being called and can loiter for half an hour. A-1Hs can be on station forty minutes after being called and can loiter for an hour and a half! Party leader will be made aware of this and must make the call. Political situation prevents attacking pursuit before 10km of Cameroon border OR 1km of party whichever comes first.
Party could force the situation by calling for CAS and laying an ambush. Waiting for the bad guys to break the 1km boundary makes the support legal...
So the party, seeing the bad guys were catching up, made the call when they were about 15 minutes from crossing the 10km line AND ambushed the pursuit just about the same time the Skyhawks were overhead. They told Dr Kendricks and Ibo refugees to keep going when they stopped to set up the ambush.
Better than the Hollywood version, I thought!
I watched this so you don't have to.
He shows you the "reverse Hi-Power" method of taking a 1911 apart, but never once explains why you should deviate from the Holy text of John Moses Browning (PBUH).
The proper, or GI, method of taking one apart relieves the recoil spring so you're not fighting it all the time.
The why, that he never mentions, is belled muzzles and extra tight barrel bushings. He thinks he explained it by showing how tight his was, but he didn't explain.
In my mind fighting the spring once is the way to go and moving the slide slightly to the rear to disengage the bushing and barrel from their fitted positions and then rotating the bushing is better.
Wait until you lock up the barrel link in the dust cover trying to put it back together his way and you'll see what I mean. Assuming you could get the gun back apart to try again.
When I was researching a couple of military campaigns for use in GURPS I was struck by how long it would take to get fire or air support.
Minutes.
In a game that is famous for resolving combat in seconds.
I think that says a lot that, in the real world, that real troops in contact were able to fight for five to twenty minutes waiting for support to arrive. Sometimes even more minutes while the aviators got themselves aligned with the situation.
I think I know how to make it work, but it will impact the player's expectations about modern combat.
I bumped into it before when trying to explain that the 3e rules let far too many hits happen unless you tossed in some of the, unpopular, optional rules.
They'd become accustomed to the world acting like a shooting range and the bad-guys being the paper targets.
Extending the ranges that contact begins at would go a long ways towards making the entire battle last longer in game time rather than table time.
I see running it in combat turns in small spurts to simulate the pulse of the battle.
I don't see a chance to test my idea any time soon, but...
My tank of deal with it energy is a bit low.
I have my choice of three events that friends have invited me to and it means choosing between friends and...
I'm feeling all or nothing about it.
First event will be, essentially, hanging out by myself because those friends are super social and will be flitting around like butterflies chatting with everyone else the whole time because this socialization shit is easy for them.
Second event is a bit of a haul and although I've been invited, I'm an outsider to this group now. I put myself there, and it's been difficult to summon the energy to get back inside.
Third is a celebration of a business friends put back together after a partnership exploded. It's got much the same trouble as the first event for me.
Normally things don't line up like this and two of the friend groups attend the same event and that means not either being alone or feeling like I'm intruding.
And I can never quite shake the feeling that I'm intruding and unwelcome.
That follows naturally from watching group after group continuing on as if I'd never existed when I depart.
You want to really feel like you don't matter? Check up on a social group you left behind and see if they were more than mildly affected.
Better not. You may discover that they were relieved and happy you finally stopped showing up.
At least I know I did one thing good for them.
The Florida Sheriff's Association owns the Florida Senate.
They don't like us unwashed citizens carrying guns, and therefore nothing ever comes to a vote.
The sheriff to the south says, "[I am a] staunch opponent of open carry. We don’t need open carry in Florida."
Yet he and his deputies open carry.
It's not open carry he opposes, it's US doing it.
Fuck you Bob.
Also, The Florida Sheriff's Association claims 73,566 members against 22,537,160 citizens.
0.327% of the population is dictating what the other 99.673% gets to do.
That smacks me wrong.
Our new senate president, Ben Albritton, says, "“Let me be clear about this: I’ve supported law enforcement my entire life. It’s the way I was raised. And I’ve been super consistent as a legislator to support law enforcement in Florida, and I encourage you to check that record. And I stand with them today in opposition. They oppose it. And I trust my law enforcement officials. And that’s where I stand.”
Fuck the voters as long as the Kings Men are happy.
I'm getting sick of this state of affairs.
I love how the internet keeps expanding our knowledge of obscure firearms.
Part One:
Part Two:
Because I actually hit the FCC "report this caller" web page, a while ago I got a letter and an email from a law firm suing a robocaller.
I gave my assent to join the class by checking the box and returning their self-addressed stamped envelope.
Then I promptly forgot about it after joking about where I'd spend the whole dollar I'd get from the, estimated, $100 per member.
Today I got a check for just over $50.
This breaks the record for class settlements for me. The previous record holder was Remington and the $20 I got because of something about 870 shotgun barrels. I got that check because excluding myself from the class was not an insignificant effort. I spent it on a hat from Remington that I have since lost.
The people I was exchanging emails with from Operation Blazing Sword have gone silent.
This has happened before.
I sometimes suspect that once they learn that I am not actually gay they decide they'd rather not learn about guns.
I've fired off a, "hey, you still interested?" message. If I don't get a reply...
Have you seen the new Jaguar ad?
Here it is:
Krusty says it best:
All I can think is, "Do you still sell cars?"
It just occurred to me that if SJGames isn't going to do more GURPS and Steve is someone I don't want to have any of my filthy, deplorable, garbage lucre:
My rules interpretations and house rules are now the official rules.
I'm the only person I am in contact with who games who even tries to do GURPS anymore.
Pathfinder is what the group who discovered they were happy to be rid of me is playing now.
So if they were to allow me to come back in some form, they'd be playing my interpretation of GURPS because I'd be the GM and my word would be law.
All things considered, I am not even certain that GURPS would be better than Pathfinder for traditional fantasy settings.
I trend to non-traditional stuff, so...
Hell, from what I've read of the newer versions of AD&D, I'd pick 2nd edition. It's stripped down AD&D and if I'm going simple, I'm gonna go all the way.
SJGames, in the process of abandoning GURPS resurrected The Fantasy Trip. If they wanted my filthy, deplorable, garbage lucre it's just $35 to get the rules in pdf form. I remember playing Melee back in the day. Pity.
I went looking for GURPS 5e rumors and encountered several links to this from just before election day.
Steve.
Remember when you got raided by the Secret Service? I recall you being displeased by that.
What you are advocating for is a more powerful Secret Service and a weaker court to extricate you from your alleged criminal activities.
Yes you are.
I'm posting his tirade below in case he decides to memory hole it:
I keep goofing around with GURPS shit and I never get to play.
If I am very lucky, I get one or two sessions when FuzzyGeff makes his annual pilgrimage to Florida to visit Marv and I.
I loved tabletop role playing games once.
It was my main social activity at one time.
Now?
I do some reality checks and make characters that will never be played.
I polish the cannonball of converting Twilight: 2000 to GURPS 4e.
And...?
It's a little depressing.
Especially when I learn how woke and TDS the people who make and sell the games I still love are.
