Read It Learn It Live It

 Science is never, truly, settled.

Climate science very often reminds me of the "spherical cows in vacuum" statement.

Cows aren't spheres, so any experiment that hinges on them being so is invalid on its face.

Neither do cows live in vacuum...

If your experiment hinges on conditions which never exist in nature, then your experiment is invalid with regards to nature.

While isolating the variables is important, it's crucial to remember that variables interact in complex and messy ways.

Messes that don't support the narrative...

Talkin' 'Bout Night Vision Generation

That was easy!  I had examples once I looked for them.

Gen 0 is Night Vision 1-3 but requires active IR illumination.  Active IR boosts the bonus of any IR sight too.

Gen 1 is Night Vision 4.

Gen 2 is Night Vision 5-6.

Gen 3 is Night Vision 7-9.

Gen 4 is Night Vision 9.

Different Enough For GURPS

M60: thinner armor, M48ish turret, external M2HB.

M60A1: standard armor, new turret, cupola with M85.  Late versions have partial stabilization.

M60A1 RISE and RISE+: Many small improvements some even show in game terms.  I'm going to have to assign Night Vision levels to distinguish between 1st and 2nd generation passive IR system.  The RISE+ gets smoke grenade launchers.

M60A2: radically different version.

M60A3:  Two versions Passive and TTS.  Adds full stabilization, electronic fire control and a laser rangefinder.  The TTS gets a thermal imager that is arguably better than the later M1 gets!

I've already mentioned the speculative upgrades.

Curse You Element 13!

When the outside temperatures are similar to the desired temperature inside, our air conditioner goes schizo.

When I am sitting at my desk, this manifests in a cold current of air that hits my right elbow.

The rest of me is comfortable, and my elbow is stiff and cold.

So I bought a deflector for the register.

It uses magnets to attach itself to the register.

My aluminum register.

DAMN IT!

Double sticky tape to the rescue.

Sub Sub Sub Variations

If you start down the rabbit hole of tank variants, you're going to encounter dozens of variations which are indistinguishable from each other when distilled down to GURPS terms.

And GURPS sieves finer than Twilight: 2000 did.

T2K didn't really have a system for fire control computers and stabilization systems.  GURPS does.

I am also finding that I need to up my game (pun) with regards to the descriptions.  They get repetitive fast.

Connections

I made a connection today thanks to The Cat Rotator's Quarterly.

They're talking about the demise of pig latin and describe what pig latin is.

An argot or cant.

That got me to remember "thieves cant" from D&D.

That made the connection to Cockney rhyming slang because, "an argot, or cant, is an insiders dialect."

I think that's pretty neat.

Of Rabbits And Holes

I did the research to make GURPS stats for the M48A5 and M60A3 TTS.

I can't just stop there.

Now there's the M728A1, M60A2 and upgrades to the M60 that happen in T2K, but not in the real world.

Soon I will have the M60, M60A1 and two significant M60A1 upgrades.

Then I will wade into the M48's variants...

Then the Leopard 1.

Probably end up with ALL the T-54/55 and T-62s before long.

Never mind the T-72, 64, 80 and 90's.

Leopard 1 And Pattons

 Got the stats lines for the OG Leo and some Pattons.

It's interesting that the M60A3 doesn't get near the armor upgrades as the T-62 over the years, but I have still to get the likely for T2K variants nailed down.

Reminder of that those are:

Skirts and ERA added to an M60A1 RISE (USMC) or M60A3 (TTS) (Army) becomes an M60A1 RISE+ and M60A3 (TTS+).

Super M60 without the added armor is M60A4, but few are made because the engine and suspension upgrades are expensive compared to the GLDS M60-2000.

M60-2000 is the M60A4.  I might even go to the effort of figuring out the old M1 turret armor because the M1(IP) and early M1A1 have more protection (than an M60) and some of those old turrets would be available.

I think I will skip the Super M60 as being too complicated and lacking customers due to the expense.

Because The Difference Matters

Are you speaking of slavery in America or slavery in The Americas.

Because if you mean America as in "The United States of America," it runs from September 17, 1789 to January 31, 1865.  Even so, the issue was primarily thought of as a state issue until right before the war that settled the point.

76 years and change.

From April 19, 1775 to May 12, 1784 who's in charge is up in the air.

From May 12, 1784 to September 17, 1789 it's not the United States, it's that weird transitional confederation entity and it really can't be blamed for slavery in in the independent entities it composed of.  The 1789 date doesn't even extend to slave holding places that were French or Spanish then, but are US now.

So prior to the ratification of the US Constitution, slavery is an English, French, Dutch and Spanish problem.

And it ran for far longer than the short seventy some years of US slavery.

Blame them.

I'd love to see Spain blamed for slavery as a whole in the US and be forced to pay for reparations under the same, tortured, logic that they've been hoovering up gold from salvaged galleons.

And if you REALLY want to pick at it, the American Indian practiced slavery until the end of the Indian Wars.  Noble savages, indeed!

Today Is A Busy Day In History

Some things good, many things bad.

Lots happened today.

QC

Everything I said about Kontakt-1 and Kontakt-5 assumes that the plates are metal and not rubber sheets and that the explosives are actually something that will go kaboom.

Several examples from the recent unpleasantness in Ukraine shows that Soviet quality control and corruption still rules.

THAT is a complex issue for a GM to decide.

More Details

GURPS puts the penetration values in terms of armor division.

That makes the effects of 2nd Gen ERA odd in game terms.

But since we have fractional divisors, then we can be realistic about it.

According to this article Kontakt-5 should change the armor divisor of a long-rod penetrator from (2) to (1.25).

That really affects penetration.

Kontakt-5

Reading between the lines is necessary.  Then you fudge.

Kontakt-5 is an explosive reactive armor that actually works on KE rounds.

That's handy!

Kontakt-1 and Blazer sure don't.

The difference is that instead of a thin sheet-metal box with a thin plate at the bottom; Kontakt-5 uses a thick plate on the top.

When the nose of the KE round hits the explosive in the base of the box, it blows off the plate when the penetrator is about half way through it.

That does bad things to the penetrator.

Inferring the performance of this second generation of reactive armor comes from reading about the bragging about third generation reactive armor's performance.

From reading about 3rd gen stuff, it would nullify the armor divisor on AP rounds.  Changing the (2) to (1).  (1) is a normal bullet...

They phrase it as doubling the effective thickness of the armor.

3rd gen is supposedly twice as effective as 2nd gen...  Or that the armor is, effectively, 50% thicker against KE rounds with the 2nd gen.

So, Kontakt-5 nullifies the special effects of HEAT and HESH, changes the armor divisor of KE AP rounds from 2 to 1.5 and changes the armor divisor of the second charge of a tandem warhead from 10 to 5.

There!  Now I have a working rule.

I am happy!

In A World Where Pi Equals Three

The turret armor of a T-62M has DR 1,250!

That takes 6dx21(2) to punch.

The T-62MV is going to be harder because they stripped the BDD add-on armor for Kontakt-1 reactive blocks.

Twilight: 2000 gave an extra 400 points of armor against a HEAT round.  This is a game where the frontal armor of a T-72 is 300.  GURPS gives DR 1,130L for the hull and 1,695L for the turret of a T-72BV.

Reactive armor is meaningless to kinetic energy rounds with the ancient 3rd Edition's Vehicles.

Reactive armor is MENTIONED in the 4e High Tech, but not really detailed well enough to apply it to vehicles.  It basically nullifies the special effects of HEAT and HESH rounds making them behave as if they were simply HE.

Kontakt-1 appears to be the kind of ERA that the books are talking about.

GURPS: T2K vehicles stats, so far...

There's a LOT of fudge factor going on with the armor bringing down to just a single value per facing.

T-62MV

The Soviet Union was hip deep in upgrading their T-62's to the T-62MV standard when The Cold War ended abruptly.

I don't think I've seen many pics of tanks going to Ukraine that weren't up to that standard, so even in our timeline they appear to have succeeded.  Update: There's a few T-62M in those images...

T-62MV

T-62M

I think I am on firm footing making it the only variant I need stats for in Twilight: 2000.

The T-55 is a tougher nut.  The Soviets were done with them by 1997, but just like today and the T-62 there were lots of them in depot.

I need to check what the other Warsaw Pact nations had done with them by then too.  Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland tended to lag behind The Bear a bit in shedding old stuff.

T-55AM (It's even Polish!)

 

Update:

Poland didn't shed their last T-55 until 2002 in our timeline!  T-55AM was their standard.

Hungary was having problems buying T-72s all through the end of The Cold War and ended up keeping their T-55AM's 'til the end.

East Germany had a stable of T-55AM's too.

Czechs were running the production line on the T-55AM2 until 1999!

It looks like most of the Warsaw Pact transitioned from T-55 to T-72 and either skipped the T-62 or were never offered it.

Paging Technomad

Reading this story sure reminds me of stories Technomad told about his rental and the class of renters he had.

Landlords don't have property rights, they have property privileges.

The squatter thing is getting ready to come to a head and renter's rights will be dead for a very long time.

It's getting to the point of bulldozing a place is cheaper than renting it out and keeping a vacant place from sprouting squatters.

I also question the police position that this is purely a civil matter.

The fake lease is fraud.

They are literally stealing the house from its rightful owner.

Those seem like crimes to me.

This is just another example in a long list of where parasites are being protected from justice.

Discontinued

I have confirmed that my repair to the washer fluid line is the only way it could be repaired.

The factory part, 92203846, has been discontinued.  Interestingly, it's the ONLY part of the wiper-washer system that is.

GM is strange.

While sitting here thinking about it, I realized that knowing how to figure out the problem and then fix it is a skill.

I learned this somewhere along the way.

I know people who didn't.

They irritate me when they insist upon talking about cars.

Driving Home

The other day I was coming home from buying beer and was struck at the light from the twilight.

Some nostalgia synapse was firing and the color of the sky and the intensity of the sun setting just reminded me of so many times in childhood.

It was still light enough to stay out and play, but we were playing chicken with the streetlights coming on.

It was a good remembrance.

It's Math

Dear Bureau of Land Management Black Lives Matter.

The cops kill about 800 people a year, of all races.

About 60% of those deaths are white people.

So just 480 320 are minorities.

Just about 100 "unarmed" people are killed by the cops every year.  Again, mostly white people.  Like 90% this time.

So, 10 "unarmed" black people a year adds up to just about 100 in the past decade.

But 250 thousand black people were murdered in the last decade.

Since nearly all murders are same race, that also means that nearly all of those 250 thousand folks were the same color as their killer.

This is nearly all of the murders in the USA.  If black people stopped killing other black people the murder rate wouldn't be worth mentioning in the US.  But the honor-based sub-culture demands blood.

It seems to me that defunding the cops is the last thing you'd want.  Especially since the number of murders in places that did went up dramatically.  Places with large BLM protests, mostly.

So fewer cops means more murders and more dead black people than if the cops had not changed how they did things at all.

It seems counterintuitive if you can't do math.

Sadly, it appears that the same people doing all the murderin' and dyin' also shun the education needed to do this math.

Or be aware of the word "counterintuitive."

Fixing an enclave of a subculture is not pretty.  It's probably necessary.

Sadly, even if we start the process, we will only get tantalizingly close to ending the racism bullshit by the racists themselves.  They've got a grift they can't afford to lose.

An alternative is for the rest of the nation to revert to the overelaborate manners and politeness of a dueling society.  Since the subculture's rules for manners are different from the primary culture, they will be involved in more duels.  Demographics will matter here.

In the end the effect will be the same as the melting pot method.

Learn the rules of the wider society.

In the melting pot method, it's a lot more peaceful.

Ouchie

Being old and still not 100% from the accident means my chest hurts a lot after wallowing around under the dash.

I'm getting familiar with the soreness, it doesn't freak me out like it once did.

Hurray!  No panic attack this time!

VICTORY!

 

Completely installed and functioning!

Inching Across The Finish Line

Complete with Marv In Profile while he held the power leads to the battery while we finalized the camera mounting.

The punch list is getting short.

I have to wire the positive and negative leads to the car.

I have to route the RCA from the trunk to under the dash.

It is supposed to be cool enough tomorrow to do so!

Eyes crossed!

When I mounted the new camera, I changed where the plastic trim piece was situated to put the camera further aft to give it a better field of view.

Progress

I ordered a replacement back-up camera.

I connected it to the TV on the back porch and hooked it to a 12v scooter battery...

Unlike the other one, this one sends an image!  It's a little hard to tell with all the reflections here, this camera appears to work.

Next step is to rig up the wiring in the car and see if it still works.

In anticipation of this being successful I added a rubber bellows for the wires to go from the trunk-lid to the trunk.

It amuses me that this is a BMW part.

Giggle

Douglas Cole made a formula to calculate the damage if you knew the real world stats of a bullet.

The inputs are in inches for bore size, feet per second for velocity and grains for bullet weight.

A 115mm HE round is about 230 thousand grains going about 3 thousand feet per second.

I giggle about the big ass numbers I'm throwing around here.

I didn't save it, but I've used this formula to figure the damage for a 16"/50 Mk7.

A lot.  Plus an explosion.  6dx62(2) pi++ and a linked 6dx26 [6dx2].

There's some tank rounds that are approaching the penetration, but none which have that explosion afterwards.

One For All

I got it.

I am not sure Harvey did.

The Bad Batch has a character sacrifice himself for the others.

It was a bit dusty when he did so, because, "one for all."

I Grok in its fullness.

Do you?

"All for one, one for all."

It's simple, complex and overpowering.

Do you Grok?

Surprises

The 115mm 3BM36 APFSDSDU round for the T-62 is almost as good as the 125mm 3BM20.

I did not expect that to be true.

It's making me wonder if the Russians putting all them T-62M1's in the field is as stupid as some people have made it out to be.

Of course, how many 3BM36 rounds are there?

Chilled Speech

I am stating, for the record, that there's a lot of hyperbole that I have not posted here since Florida passed its red flag law.

Hyperbole meant in jest, but could definitely be twisted to "prove" I was someone at risk.

Because tyranny loves to take, "an extravagant statement or assertion not intended to be understood literally," literally.

My right to free speech has been chilled.

I am stating this, for the record.

I am uncertain how I get to to the point of nuking this damn ignorant law, but...

I Rather Like The Cut Of His Jib

America First 2.0

He sure says the right things.

And it would be racist to vote against him... ;)

I think this and Ron DeSantis are showing something we need more of on the R side of the aisle.

Candidates who fight.

The worst part of the gorram RINO's is the only people they seem to be willing to stand up to are their own constituents.

But Why

One of the huge down sides to the 152mm gun in the Sheridan and M60A2 was the range.

There was a bit of a gap between the max effective range of the conventional HEAT round and the minimum range of the Shillelagh missile.

I understood why the conventional round petered out, that's a stubby barrel with a low muzzle velocity.

But I didn't understand why the missile needed almost two seconds after launch to start guiding.

Height over bore!

The missile doesn't climb into the beam of the controller unit until it's gone about 800 yards.

Once it's in that cone it's pretty much the same control paradigm as a TOW missile.

Every once and a while I wonder if the TOW was being made as a back-up to the Shillelagh in the MBT-70 because it's got the same diameter.  <-- Speculation not based on any facts!

Pumpft

When you have the M60 done, it's simple to make the M728 CEV.

Big damn HESH round!

Because it's slow, it doesn't seem impressive from the KE compared to other rounds, just 6dx7(0.5) pi++.  It's the linked 6dx15 cr ex from 35 lb. of Comp A3 that makes this round shine!

Out to a max range of 3,600 yards...  and a flight time of 4-1/4 seconds.

Hey!

I can play GURPS: Waco now!

Update:  The average hit from a 6dx7(0.5) pi++ round still does 292 points to the typical unarmored person.  Minimum damage is 82!  60 is enough to get to auto-death.  110 is enough to reach unressurectable.

Do not taunt happy pumptf ball.

Mostly Because It's Fun

Been chipping away at making GURPS stats for T2K tanks.

Got the M48A5 and M60A3 TTS done today.

The US did not subscribe to the German doctrine of thinner armor and higher speeds in the 1950's.

Frontal armor on the M48 is MUCH thicker than the Leo 1.

DR 606 on the M48 vs 385 on the Leo front slopes.

Surprisingly, the M60 is more lightly armored than the M48, except on the front of the turret.

DR 736 for the M48 turret and DR 981 for the M60.  That sloped pinched nose really helps from the front.

I got to make stats for the, hated, M219 MG as well.  It's the same stats as any other 7.62 NATO MG with it's own weight and RoF entries and a Malf of 16.  That's actually an improvement over the M73's Malf of 14!

I am so happy I never dealt with them, the M240 was coax on all my tanks, M60A3 TTS, M1(IP) and M1A1(HA).

Since I statted out the M551 Sheridan and it's gun/missile system; just for giggles I might make stats for the M60A2 "Starship."

Twilight:1970 might be a lot of fun.

I definitely need to make stats for the old Soviet shit too.  The first time I made a GURPS conversion I had enough on my plate with three T-72's, two T-80's, two T-64's and speculation about T-90 and or Black Eagles.  Making the T-54/55 and T-62 was off the radar.

Gonna Give This Another Go

Most signs are pointing to crib death in the camera.

The company that made my kit sells a smaller version of that kit with fewer mounting brackets.

It should be here tomorrow.

I will hook it up right away so I can return it if it doesn't work.

The original camera sat around for near a year before I even tried it.

The Beast Is Having A Day

My windshield WASHERS decided to go tits up.

I dumped about half a gallon of fluid on the ground.

The end I could find didn't make sense for where the fluid was coming out because the reservoir is under the driver's side headlight.

The hose to the sprayers is under the driver's side corner of the windshield.

Holden routed the line under the radiator, up the passenger fender then under the cowl to the driver's side!

The line under the cowl was that motherfuckingcocksuckingratfuck brittle ass nylon shit that GM is in love with for small lines.

Unlike GM Norte America, Holden stuck to a common size for their nylon and it was the same OD as standard 3/16 ID brass.

That means I can use fuel line from the passenger side to the driver's side and since it's low pressure, some 3/16 barbs will connect them without clamps!

And so it is.

Function restored and better than new.

I even took the time to make it pretty.

So Much For That

It should have been a clue when the camera didn't work plugged into the RCA port of the TV.

I connected everything, but routed outside the car and it still didn't work.

I don't want to spend any more time or money on this.

Just A Cup

Forgotten Weapons is raffling off a genuine M17 formerly owned by the 101st Air Mobile Division.

For just $50 you get a coffee cup emblazoned with "Death From Above" and a chance to win.

For every person but one, that means you get an expensive coffee cup.

I think I shall skip this one.

No link, you'll need to find the vid to enter if you're interested.

$200 Later

Reading about Floridawomen getting busted with a pile of pipe bombs and, essentially, walking on the charge because she's bug-nuts crazy...

Got me to thinking...

OK.

Drop the $200 for the tax stamp for a destructive device.

Wait six months to a year.

Drop the $40 to make a real nice one.

Blow myself up.

Prolly blow up Marv, who was innocently holding my beer at the time, too.

Go to the afterlife and have Newton explain where I screwed up the math.

Yeah.

Not a good idea even doing it legally.

Look Ma No Key

 

Got the back-up camera mounted!

It's not connected, yet, but it's mounted!

Marketing

Two things hit me over and over with Bud Light's chosen brand representative.

The first is they managed to expand their market to new beer consumers many times without offending their core demographic.

The second is when courting a new demographic you have to be certain that it will increase business.

I suspect it's willful ignorance that led to what's going on.

But they did it in the manner which would most offend the people who were literally their core market.

Now they have to figure out how to keep the lights on without it.

I doubt that the trans community is going to step up and buy that much beer.

The Two Enter Two Plus Heresy

 

It would explain a great many things.

Essentially

In essence, the people pushing the grooming and radical transgender issues lied.

They lied to both sides.

They always meant to completely remake society to suit them, and them alone.

The problem they are having is that it's a familiar lie.

We got this lie from women's rights.

We got this lie from civil rights.

They complain about being or becoming second class citizens while trying to make themselves the only first class citizens.  Equality was never the goal.  Supremacy is the goal of all of these movements.

Perhaps at the very start it wasn't, but it certainly is now.

They wish to fuck everyone but them.

But, for the first time, there's solid pushback.

The people most hurt will be the people who are trans and who only wanted equality.

They're going to be smushed like grapes.

I strongly suspect that there will be a lot of people who will fervently wish that the majority will go back to ignoring them, which is where they were before the radicals started after the kids.  They might even find themselves wishing they were second class citizens, because it would be a definite step up from where they've landed.

Thanks to the radicals who went after the kids.

Slow.  Clap.