13 December 2019

It Will Imported

I've seen in a couple of comment threads discussing the likelihood of the law actually being enforced in Virginia where the local law enforcement and National Guard members are the exact same people the law will have to be enforced against.

They're not going to trust this "important" work to the locals.

Lemme back up.

The first hurdle is actually these local boys actually refusing the order to begin the confiscations and arrest people.

Historically the cops and military simply follow their orders to violate the rights of the citizens they swore to protect.

If they seem recalcitrant, there will be a meeting that assures them that they're safe from the enforcement of these laws if they just enforce them on everyone else.  This, by the way, is why gun-control is normally backed by police unions and professional organizations: a carve out for the thin-blue-only-ones is always made.

Once it is made clear that they are unaffected by the new tyranny, they tend to be more eager to impose it on others.

Happily, that doesn't seem to be happening this time.

Which brings us to the, "Governor, they're not enforcing the law, just like they said they would," moment.

The cops refuse to arrest each other.  The Guard units reported to their armories and are sitting on their hands.

Now what?

History has this moment recorded too.

Police and military from someplace else will be brought in.

The California Highway Patrol was instrumental in seizing weapons from survivors of Katrina in New Orleans.  Seizures which included arrests and shooting resisting citizens who only wanted to defend their own homes.

It was bad enough that Florida even passed laws making it perfectly legal to remain armed on your own property after such a storm, and even during an evacuation order.

The imported law enforcement will not be friends and neighbors with the people they are sent to arrest.

The question becomes, "What happens next?"

New Orleans did have a few holdouts that refused to comply and got killed for their insistence on their rights.  But the holdouts were sparse and separated from each other without any communication infrastructure to share their concerns.

Virginians, the time to move will be when out of state law enforcement is called, not when they arrive.

12 December 2019

United States Cavalry's Birthday!

Today, in 1776, the first unit of US Cavalry was formed!

Of course, it was a regiment of dragoons rather than true cavalry; thus setting a trend that lasted until the horses got replaced by tracks.

Is Virginia About To Get Sporty?

The Law is the Law.

On the first idea about prosecuting elected officials for creating these 2nd Amendment sanctuaries on behalf of their constituents...  Who arrests the chief law enforcement officer when he and his entire department are doing what their community demands?

On the second idea of calling out the national guard?  I guess we're going to see if us pessimists have been right about our troops and their officers obeying unlawful orders in violation of their service oaths.

(Hint: historically they obey the orders virtually every time).

11 December 2019

.44 Henry Vs Bison

Watching "Dances With Wolves" and the scene where Lt Dunbar offs a bison with his trust 1860 Henry...

An American Bison has 24 hit points and a HT of 15.  The skull has DR 4 and the hide is DR 2.

They're tough hombres.

The Henry does 2d+1 pi+ damage.

Even with max damage, this is not a one-shot-stop with a body hit.

13 rolled would become 11 penetrating which becomes 16 delivered.  A major wound, but hardly fatal.

Aiming carefully for the vitals, though, could get it done.

13 rolled becomes 11 penetrating for 33 delivered.  One, count 'em, one death roll made at 15 or less.  Plus a consciousness roll at the same chance.

The pesky ungulate is going to make those rolls 95.4% of the time.

Thumping it in the brain might work better, but getting through the skull with a max damage roll only yields 36 delivered.

Going for the much more difficult eye shot to get the DR 0 would up it to 52.  Two death rolls!

In short, Lt Dunbar rolls really well on the vitals hit, and the bison crit-fails its HT roll to avoid being killed.

Dear Hollywood...

The NASA T-38A is coming in for a landing...

They show the instrument panel as the astronaut candidate flips the gear lever.

She's coming in for a landing...

Altimeter reads 74,600 ft at 29.92 in-Hg.

Climb is pegged.

Airspeed is 225 KIAS.

Both engines are showing temperatures pegged to the bottom.

The one RPM gauge I can see shows zero.

Slow clap, Hollywood.

Connect The Red Wire To The Red Plug

Getting ready to get The Boy off to school this morning and I noticed that the display for the thermostat was blank.

Replacing the batteries did not restore function.

CRUD!

I don't want a super fancy smancy thermostat.  I don't need to run my house AC with my phone, or want someone else to be able to.

I did want something fancier than a simple slider switch.  I like to be able to read the temperature of the hallway.

To Lowe's!

My system is an easy 4-wire set-up and easy as pie to connect.

The panic comes from the display blinking "Cold On" and the AC compressor remaining silent.

"What did I do wrong?" I cry!

Turns out, nothing.

There's a built in five minute "compressor protection" mode.

This is not mentioned until the very last line of the instructions.

To me, this is something that should be mentioned with the "reconnect power and set thermostat" instruction.

10 December 2019

It's A Trap!

When you have a friend who's moving, you have to help.

Even if you're a broke-dick-mother-fucker.

I hate being broke-dick, I can't help as much as I think the friendship deserves, but I will definitely give it a game try!

On the plus side, they indicated they didn't want the neighbors to see the CENSORED number of gun cases...

That's only like 5% of the known guns...

I guess they're just throwing those away, so I can take them!

Downside: Fucking Brooksville?  REALLY?

Going to lose a lot of time every day making the trip from Tarpon Springs to the southernmost reach of Yankee.

For Dismantling?

I was looking at the rafters (on TV) of The Ice Palace Amalie Arena during the VERY disappointing hockey last night.

I noticed that many of the i-beams are bolted together.

It occurred to me to wonder, "Is this so they can take the building apart?"

This seems doubtful.

Deer Season Opener

You'd think that if guns were truly the problem, then every deer season would be a massacre of epic proportions.

Penacola Shooter Was An Unmanly Pussy

Trusting Google Translate to express it in terms that his fellow savages can understand:

كانت العضوة المهزلة التي قتلت ثلاثة أبطال في بينساكولا ، رغم خبأتها الإباحية ، كل امرأة.

It would have been far better for her family to have raised a man instead of sending their daughter to train in America for a job beneath her.

I think it should be up to The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to prove they've got both balls and honor before anything lacking US markings flies there again.

Your pilot murdered three of ours?  Durandal all the runways.

09 December 2019

Economic Outlook

Florida made the top ten. (pdf warning)

Liberal shitholes and Vermont make up the bottom.

I Am Surprised That I Am Actually Shocked

Television advertising in the 1970's lied to me.

An actor presented himself as Clarence Birdseye in ads touting the virtues of Birdseye brand frozen veggies.

Clarence had been dead for 20 years when those ads aired and my sister and I totally bought that it was Clarence was appearing in them.

It's A Flaw

The biggest problem about our two party situation is any political position will be claimed by one party and opposed by the other.

It's how we get a situation where an LGBT person cannot profess to owning a gun because gun rights and LGBT rights are on different sides of the aisle from each other.

Being Godless Atheist myself, I've occasionally been confronted for my conservatism because that's somehow a Right-Wing-Christian exclusive thing.

Atheists are supposed to be liberals, I guess.

Being a conservative and pro-gun also means I'm not supposed to support LGBT rights.

Who decided this?

It's especially galling that admitting you're a Republican in this day and age somehow makes you racist.

Perhaps to the history deprived this could be true.

They don't seem to know who the first Republican president was.

The Civil Rights Act is often touted as a Democrat victory, but it barely got 60% of Democrats in Congress to vote for it while 80% of Republicans did.

Even so, it would have failed without the martyrdom of Kennedy that was exploited by LBJ.  The jury remains out if the act actually helped minorities or if it's been the tool used to reduce them to a marginalized status, only useful for their en-bloc voting habits.

But Wait

Going over my notes I realized that I contradicted myself a bit.

In dealing with The Blight and the undead, I explicitly stated that Christian burial rites were sufficient to keep a corpse lying in peace.

That means that Christian rituals have magical power or, at least, power over magic.

In GURPS, the religious equivalent to mana level is the sanctity level.

I can imagine that there wouldn't be a lot of sanctity for any religion outside it's consecrated ground.

That coincides with what I've stated about a Christian burial being sufficient to prevent the dead from its grave.  Graveyards are consecrated.

It's a delicate thing to do and I don't wish to show any disrespect while creating this world.

Tying My Harebrained Ideas Together

One reason I am a GM and not a novelist is I am presented my worlds in snippets rather than as whole.

But every once and a while things click together.

A recurring theme is mixing history with magic.

Old West has failed at least three times for various reasons.

It's the never played fragments that are trying to merge in my mind.

Magic "wakes up" in a burst during The Great War.  The trench lines become a necromatic wasteland now known as "The Blight".  WW1 ended differently because the warring powers needed to deal with The Blight.  It was rapidly obvious that it was a problem that couldn't be ignored in the hopes that it would take out the other side first.

The awakening was a bad day for many as they found they suddenly knew complete grimoires entire.

Many were driven insane.

Those that weren't were now powerful mages.  They formed the Mage's Guild.

The guild and its attendant athame, used with permission from Lawrence Watt-Evans, I've made details for a prohibition era setting that never was played.

There's people who can do magic without casting spells.  They are outside The Guild and are known as Warlocks.  GURPS has a vast advantage set for this.

Then there's religious magic.  All the "old ways" also returned with magic awake again.  All of the old pagan rituals (and even some mysticism from the monotheisms) work again, and don't operate under the same principles as The Guild's magic.

Russia is White.

The nobility of Europe is mostly intact, as are the pre-war nations.

The Roaring 20's still happen because magic is an endless bounty with no down sides.

The Great Depression still happens because of the world's economy adjusting to magic.

WW2 happens, but without a holocaust.

And this is where it stops merging, but I have a decent idea of where the world IS in 1959 and what I want it to be.  I'm just having trouble bridging the twenty year gap from 1939.

I want it to be very similar to real history and I think I can get there despite the changes I've made.

Just need a good Cold War substitute.

There's some sticky wickets with religion and magic.  How greatly does one offend if one declares that the reason The Holocaust doesn't happen is because the Rabbis can summon real aid with their prayers in the Holiest of Holies?

Would I end up on a neck-cutting list if, after letting Jewish prayers work, I say that Christians have no equivalent and Islamic mysticism is merely magic?

Playing around with the real world can be icky and dangerous in ones fantasy world.

An undercurrent could be played that religious magic is not divine power at all, simply religious rituals tapping into a different form of magic than mana.

Theology and Thaumatology are real sciences here.

08 December 2019

Technology

When you have players, when you're a 16 year old GM, who are masters and doctorate candidates in science and engineering...

You learn how things are done.

Two things that keeps coming up over and over when watching Hollywood and swords...

First:  Swords made from steel are NOT cast.  While crucible steel is molten, it's never seen as a liquid by the smith.

Second:  The sparks are from hammering out impurities.  Good steel is done with that by the time you're forming the blade.

There's numerous recreations of the historical processes out there for Hollywood to look at.

I really wish they would!

07 December 2019

Bought On Veteran's Day

Tampa Bay Brewing Company makes 200 cans of this every year.


It seems appropriate to uncork it on Pearl Harbor Day.

Especially as that day is quickly leaving living memory.

The Goal


When you start blaming the victim of a crime for the criminal act, you become blinded to the idea of punishing the criminal.



You focus on ways to make your property less enticing to the criminal.

You inconvenience yourself to make the crime more difficult to carry out, but you do it oh so righteously because you will blame yourself for the crime if you're preyed upon and wearing the hair-shirt atones for your sin of owning something worth stealing.

In short, you ignore the criminal and their agency in the crime.

Without the actions of the criminal it does not matter how valuable the item is, or how well it was secured.

But I don't see much condemnation of the actions of the criminal, it's as if it's been decided that criminals are like the weather; something we have no control over and if you didn't want your seats wet, you should have rolled up your windows.

But we do have control over criminals, control we've given up.

We don't punish them if they're caught.

We don't even look very hard for them.

We have far more laws binding the hands of citizens to prevent burglary and theft than we do to stop the theft in the first place.

The thieves are aware that they're very unlikely to be apprehended and even less likely to have to endure serious punishment even if convicted.

The goal should not be to figure out ways to keep the thieves away, the goal should be to eliminate the thieves.

No more than an hour in a sewage grinder seems appropriate.

We've decided that some crimes don't rate capitol punishment because the amounts stolen are small; but that just encourages the criminals.

Just look at the new shoplifting laws in some places.  As long as what was taken is below a certain dollar threshold, no police investigation.

Anarchy without retribution or vendetta.

Soon enough, without enforcement of the small laws, retribution and vendetta return on their own.

To really grasp why this is bad crack open a history book on the mafia and see where they started.

It's eye opening.

Saw It Coming But Still Sad

Digital media is supplanting and killing print.

19 car magazines which will no longer be printed next year.

I remember buying, subscribing and reading many of those titles.

I also remember when the builds stopped being informative "how-to" articles and started becoming lists of parts they bought advertisers gave them.

I remember when the "budget" build could be done by someone who didn't have a six figure salary and I was subscribing when the budget build passed the crate motor from Summit in price.

Inevitable, I suppose, that these mags should die.

When the supply of cars you can build up gets so expensive that only an investment banker can afford a rusted hulk and the price of the engine approaches the price of a new car... Who are you writing these articles for?

06 December 2019

Ozymandius

I've listened to this song since it came out and never once paid attention to the lyrics.



Sure sounds like a retelling of Ozymandius, don't it?

An Oddly Cheering Thought

Today I broke my personal record for consecutive number of days existing.

I plan on breaking it again tomorrow!

As long as I can keep this up, I'm not doing too bad at all.

I find that amazingly uplifting.

Proof Of Moral Decay

More electric cars are sold in the USA than cars with manual transmissions.

Again With The Navy Gun Free Zoning

This time in Pensacola.

I've been to Pensacola to get to the museum, they don't exactly frisk you at the gate looking for guns, but it is officially a gun free post.

I also wonder when reading the stories about Pearl Harbor and Pensacola:  What became of the Navy's cops?

Both bases had a heavy response of local, civilian, law enforcement.

Even though Fort Knox was an open post when I was doing OSUT, the Military Police was the only police force on post.

05 December 2019

Turn Your Traction Control Back On

The Lovely Harvey witnessed a Jaguar F-Type do the fishtail dance into a spin that culminated in it backing into the center dividing wall.

She says that right before they lost traction they were goosing it to pass.

I've lost count of the number of times I've seen an accident stemming from shutting off the electronic stability.

Repeat after me:  Unless you are an actual professional race-car driver you're not skilled enough to handle the stupid power so many of these cars make.

Especially when you leave the summer-only tires on that don't have any traction below 50˚F.

Dank Kush

If I can smell you smoking pot from half a block away, that means a deputy driving past can too.

Just sayin'...

It's also cute that my father-in-law didn't admit to knowing what the smell was after raising The Lovely Harvey...

It's not even a secret, she's proud of being a recovering addict these past 30 some odd years.

SMS Scharnhorst Located

Wreck claimed by Spain.

Light and fluffy article without much detail.

04 December 2019

Unpossible!

In a state with some of the most restrictive gun control, Hawaii, in a gun-free zone; someone still managed to murder two people and injure another before proceeding to off themselves.

I'm starting to think that gun control doesn't save lives at all.

Traditional New England Christmas Beverage

This is Erin's fault, blame Erin!

When He Won't Answer His Phone

Willard gets messages via the blog!

Century's Vz-58 clone is back in stock at Atlantic, and apparently with the open sight protectors he's been questing for.

Sancho! Another Lance!

I have to admire his optimism, given the current party mix in The House.

HR 5289.

It would remove SBR's from the NFA.

In light of how many "pistols" are out there using braces as stocks, it's kind of already happened to them, they just need to make it all legal.

Otherwise we could see a bumpstock situation where the ATF issues a "we changed our mind!" letter and makes instant criminals of lots of people.

A Small Omission

Reading this article linked by The Smallest Minority.

The FBI fails to complete about 200,000 background checks each year out of millions.

While they mention that about 1.4% of the checks that take longer than 3-days to complete result in a denial; they don't mention how many of the nine-million or so background checks that are completed result in a denial.

I'm guessing that there aren't many at all, or they'd be talking about how dire the straits are with all these criminals trying to buy guns.

Considering how the rate of gun related violence has been dropping while the supply of guns has been climbing.

Graphic from: https://graphicalrepresentation.wordpress.com/
I'm going to speculate that anyone who's background is sufficiently muddy that the FBI cannot find a reason to deny them in 88 days either has nothing disqualifying in it, they're damn good at hiding it or the people responsible for keeping these records straight at grossly incompetent.

Considering the number of cases involving people who should have been denied shooting others, I think the last explanation survives Occam's Razor.

What's Behind Us Is Not Important

The intertubes have been a quiver with the news that the time for The Cannonball Run has been bested again.

It should probably be a clue to someone how this flagrant violation of traffic laws and regulations is being celebrated.

You cannot long suppress a people who do things like this.

Missed It By "THAT" Much


Making more permanent ramps for the Mother In Law.

This is thirteen 60-lb. bags of Sackrete.

I bought ten more this morning.

Sow Division

When you sow division, you reap oppression.

Everyone who's freaking out about Virginia's "new" "ban" on gun training should be thrilled.

The real new thing is the ban on being armed while protesting.

3. Assembles with one or more persons with the intent of intimidating any person or group of persons by drilling, parading, or marching with any firearm, any explosive or incendiary device, or any components or combination thereof.

Y'all are the folks who so despise open carry, congratulations!

This is what you were demanding when you started insulting the people who wanted rights past what your Stockholm's Syndrome could handle.

Our enemies don't need to divide and conquer, they just have to wait for your prefragmentations to take effect.

Slow clap.

PS: which open carry event caused this?  Because that's the root of all gun control according to y'all.

What?  Nothing?  Nobody?

Almost as if they hate us completely no matter what we do and YOU played into their hands by sowing division rather than unity.

It's astonishing you have the temerity to call others idiots.

02 December 2019

Called It!

Narwhal tusk surrender bins installed around London.

Sure, it's Babylon Bee, but Snopes hasn't refuted it yet so it must be true.

The Review

Without any way to test terminal performance, we decided to see if the Federal Syntech Defence 138gr SJHP, that Widener's sent me, would fire and function in a variety of pistols.

All shooting was at 7 yards with Marv, Willard and I trading off the shooting duties.

First off, can you really claim it's in 9mm Luger if a Luger won't shoot it?



I loaded seven round and got two stoppages.  The second of which jammed the nose of the round hard against the back of the barrel.

Many pics below the cut:

Context Matters

I got pictures of a bear and two cougars means completely different things depending on if you're talking about the bar district or a trail cam.

01 December 2019

Perishible Skill

My groups have opened up to an embarrassing degree because I have not been shooting regularly of late.

I really hate my new glasses, which do not help my shooting a bit.

Long post on the Federal Syntech Defence 138gr review is coming!

Lemme Make A Prediction

The response in London will not be to make it easier for their citizens subjects to defend themselves.

Wanna bet the response will be to ban narwhal tusks and fire extinguishers?

I would also not be surprised to find they charge the person who wrestled the knife away from the perpetrator with possession of a knife and the people who intervened with assault.

Warren Again

Warren was cursed.

We, as GMs, didn't even pick on him.

He created his own luck.

Like when his character in Twilight: 2000 tried to drive a Humvee on a ruined road and fire through the windshield.  There just isn't room to get an M16A2 into position to do what he was trying to do and he was unable to comprehend my explanation of how there wasn't enough space.

When the chips were down, you could count on Warren to roll the exact worst result the dice could give him.

Those of us who know the HMMWV well know how hard it is to roll one.  That's how bad the dice treated Warren.

Sometimes it wasn't his fault at all.

In Traveller he once got flushed out of a cargo bay and into hyperspace.

He'd gotten wounded pretty good reducing the number of hijackers down significantly and FuzzyGeff's Hiver did the appropriate first aid, bundling him into a medical sleeping bag.

The action shifted to other players and parts of the ship for a while.  They successfully managed to eliminate all of the hijackers but the ones in the cargo hold, where Warren and FuzzyGeff were hiding.

FuzzyGeff gets the bright idea to open the hatch on the hold because Hiver aren't susceptible to going insane from looking at it.  He figured if the hard vacuum didn't get them, the sight of hyperspace would.  Warren would be safe because he was in the med-bag and unconscious.

It worked too!  The hijackers were sucked into space by the explosive decompression.

So was Warren.

FuzzyGeff had forgotten to tape him to the deck.