Posts
All Comments
Wayne LaPierre has resigned, as I am sure everyone reading here already knows.
He's a wonderful example of "you either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain."
I met him once at a book signing, still have the signed copy around here someplace.
I wonder if we're going to be able to get the NRA back under the membership's control with him out the way; or if the court case is going to nuke it from orbit.
Nothing to see here, narrative mismatch error.
No mention of the Perry, Iowa shooting on MSN now that we know it wasn't a white supremacist bigot who did the shooting.
GURPS defines the medieval period as TL3.
Players of D&D think they're playing in a medieval setting.
But much of the equipment in D&D is TL4 according to GURPS, which says it's "age of sail."
So much of D&D is already TL4, I wondered if adding the "missing" TL4 item would break it.
That would be guns.
Pathfinder even has a "gunslinger" class.
Critical Role has a main character in their anime, Legend of Vox Machina, who uses a gun.
TL4 is 1450 to 1730. Guns go from cannon lock gonnes to full flintlock in this timeframe.
But does it matter?
The only things that change, besides firearms, is the adoption of what GURPS calls fencing weapons.
D&D is early TL4 where "sword" still equates to the GURPS broadsword and not a rapier or smallsword.
Artwork from D&D clearly shows ships that are obviously NOT TL3, much like the armor available.
Matchlock and wheel lock guns don't break the paradigm.
Multi-barrel and superposed loads (which didn't catch on in the real world) might get more common if there's an, ahistorical, adventuring class.
The existence of armed and armored, but not noble, persons is also ahistorical. Never mind the racial and gender egalitarianism that's been there since day one, despite what Hasbro thinks.
Considering that I don't think it's even difficult to run a fantasy campaign with Old West gear, it's simple to add some early firearms to the mix.
I've also considered the effect of letting the dwarves and elves be the source of TL4 goods and letting people pay double for them.
The Ulfbrecht swords from history are an example. It appears unlikely that the places where such swords are found had developed the furnaces needed for crucible steel. But they did have trade networks to places that had. A pig of crucible steel could readily be hammered out into a far better blade than could be made from bloomery iron by virtually anyone who could make a sword.
Crucible steel is a very late TL3 technology, but it wasn't native to where the swords have been found.
By TL4, it's a normal technology and it leads to making the long, narrow blades of rapiers.
There's a serious case to include the H&K CAWS shotgun with my GURPS conversion of Twilight: 2000 because the gun was in the original game.
But...
I've already replaced the cancelled LAV-75 with the M8 Buford. The LAV was in the original game, the M8 was the FMC CCVL at the time.
The Army never adopted the LAV-25, but the Marines did. I've included it in my conversion.
The CAWS program withered on the vine just after the original T2K was published, and long before the timeline of the game.
There are other, small, changes. By 1997 without the "peace dividend" there would have been progress on many fronts that didn't happen in our timeline.
In the real world, even with the "peace dividend" there were no 105mm Abrams left in the system. OG T2K has an M1, M1A1 and M1A2 (M1, M1E1 and M1E2 by the rules).
By the time I'd joined the Army, two years later, the M1 was gone and 105 armed M1's were the M1(IP) standard which has the better armor of the M1A1, without the better gun.
Even with the end of The Cold War every Abrams prior to M1A1(HA) was removed from service. Continued Reaganesque funding would have put the M1A2 into service years early and what I call the M1A3 being fielded off reasearch from the, abandoned, M1 TTB.
M1E2 from the original rules was a remote turreted tank that was never adopted, but loosely based on the M1 Tank Test Bed.
I replaced the three OG listings with an M1A1(HA) and an M1A3 with a mounting more similar to what was on the Stryker than the TTB. The M1A2 would be the same as our timeline.
The point of all that was, I've made changes to suit reality...
That I've done the work to stat the H&K CAWS means little since I've fully statted out the LAV-75 and skipped it.
FuzzyGeff took an outstanding pic of the "jellyfish" from the Falcon launch.
At the top of the frame you can see the first stage doing it's retro burn, at the bottom, the second stage heading to orbit.
Gods forbid people read this shit and think for themselves...
The Perry, Iowa shooter's social media has, already, been scoured off the internet.
To prevent us from reading the killer's own words and deciding for ourselves if others like them pose a threat, I am sure.
Now we will get what the killer said filtered through the media, and more importantly, the government
Remember, we're still waiting for the Nashville shooter's manifesto to be released officially.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant and we keep shoving this stuff into the dark.
I was this many years old when I finally put together that the TRS in TRS-80 means Tandy Radio Shack.
I'm not, generally, a conspiracy theorist; but it's fucking uncanny how there's a school shooting immediately after major news that reflects poorly on liberals.
Epstein list yesterday, shooting today in Perry, Iowa.
For the M7 bayonets:
BOC, 10.4 oz.
Conetta, 10.3 oz.
Gen Cut #1, 11.4 oz.
Gen Cut #2, 11.3 oz.
MILPAR, 10.7 oz.
For the M8A1 Scabbards:
PWH #1, 5.2 oz.
PWH #2, 5.2 oz.
TWD, 5.3 oz.
VIZ, 4.9 oz.
For the M10 Scabbard:
Gen Cut, 4.0 oz.
I wonder what the target weight was for each. We've got a 1.1 oz. range for the M7's, with the 1960's bayonets being lighter than the mid-80's.
The Beast managed a respectable 24.2 mpg on the 301.2 mile trip.
Not bad for a 4,162 lb., 362 hp V-8 car hauling three people (with two being none-to-skinny).
FuzzyGeff, Marv and I went over to Titusville and watched SpaceX send up the Ovzon-3.
We met up with a buddy from the car world and had lunch at
Dogs-R-Us then went out to
watch the show.
Cameras were present.
I didn't catch the landing burn on account of the incompetence. I failed
to mash the record button, I just pressed near it.
For my birthday, Marv got me a Gen Cut M7 bayonet. It looks to be an unissued, but out-of-package example.
Because it was on sale, for an excellent price, it did not come with a scabbard.
Amazon, of all places, sells bare scabbards. Because I am awash in M8A1 scabbards, I chose an M10 for this bayonet. New in wrap!
Cage code 20014, interestingly enough, is for General Cutlery! The same folks who made the bayonet.
Compared to the vintage M8A1.
The M10 scabbard is 4.0 oz. and that's 0.9 oz. lighter than an M8A1 (both weighed without the shoelace). Interestingly, this M7 and scabbard weighed 15.5 oz. That makes it an 11.5 oz. bayonet. A previous measurement of an M7 with M8A1 scabbard was 15.3 oz. for a 10.4 oz. bayonet.
I'm interested to see what the tolerances on the parts are to give that spread.
In the original game it used standard shotgun ammo.
The CAWS program was long dead before the year 2000, it was dead before the Soviet Union went tits up and the Berlin Wall fell.
So I never included it in my GURPS conversion.
Still...
I've done some easy research and developed GURPS stats for it.
18.5x76mmB is the all brass round. It will not fit in a normal 12ga shotgun.
However, it will accept normal 12ga ammunition.
There are three rounds in 18.5x76mmB, 000 Buck, tungsten pellets and flechettes.
The "full auto" rate of fire is a mere 4 shots per round, barely better than a semi-auto shotgun's 3.
The tungsten pellets hit pretty hard, 2d+2 pi, but they don't quite go as far as normal shotgun rounds. Just 35/675 with an NP of 8. 000 does the normal 1d+2 pi out to 50/900, NP 8. The flechettes are fun, NP 20 doing 1d+1 pi-, but getting 80/950 for range.
NP is the number after the RoF 4x, so 4x20 for the flechettes and 80 shots on the RoF table for a +6 to hit! Bwahahahahaha!
Normal 12ga ammunition uses the same damage and range stats as the lowly Remington 870 you can find in High-Tech.
I'm still debating if I should include it. What's the hive think?
It was probably looking for information about neanderthals that got the Al Gore Rhythm to start sharing stone knapping videos to me on YouTube.
It's amazing how much of a nodule of flint or obsidian ends up on the ground to make one spear head.
It's misleading, most of the those flakes are purposed to other tools. Very little was wasted when this technology was at its peak.
It's sometimes strange to think of this as technology, but it most certainly is.
I'm even starting to learn the differences between early and late versions of the tools, as the technology of knocking chips off gets more refined and elegant.
It's important that only the people who did the crimes be punished for them and only those whom were harmed are recompensed.
There are no living Americans who were slaves prior to the 13th Amendment being ratified.
Likewise, there are no living Americans who owned any of those slaves.
Considering the 360,000 people who gave their lives to free the slaves and make sure those slave owners remained where the laws of The United States would affect them...
America is even with the former slaves and their descendants.
It's not America's fault that you failed to do anything with that freedom...
Except...
The Democrats.
They're the KKK, they're Jim Crow, they're who fought so long for segregation, they're who opposed every attempt to make black people actually equal for decades.
They're the people that are keeping you from succeeding and they're doing it by tricking you into thinking they're helping you.
But, you keep reelecting them...
So my sympathy is somewhat thin.
I want you to have the same chances I do, but you have to accept that will mean you risk the same failures I do as well.
I am no great success, but I know it's my fault, and I blame the correct person for my failure.
You should give that a shot.
PS: You're going to have to abandon your Democrat endorsed toxic subculture and become Americans too. Being an American is actually a pretty sweet deal, you might find it suits you.
PPS: The Democrats actively fought your emancipation so hard that there needed to be two additional Constitutional amendments just to make sure you got rights everyone else thought came with being citizens until the Democrats systematically denied them to all y'all.
Dear indigenous American people who lost the war over who owns that "sacred" land;
In the intervening 100 years since the end of that war, there's been nothing stopping you from buying much of that land back.
Especially with the largess from the casinos.
Yet...
Well, you didn't buy it back, so you don't get a say in how it's used by the present owners.
Marv got me a Crimson Trace CMR-208 light for Christmas!
It replaces the TLR-3 I had on it.
Plus, I think it looks better.
All is not wasted, the TLR-3 can live on Mollie-Bean. There's nothing standard on her, so an odd battery fits right in!
The 2nd Amendment is, indeed, for everyone. Just because that's true, doesn't mean that saying it makes your cause righteous. If you're planning on using your guns to take away anyone's rights or liberties you are not the good-guys. You are the person the 2nd Amendment was written about.
The brew-ha-ha over the KE Arms KP-15 has nothing to do with the quality of the product.
In the red corner we have fascists who think they're freedom fighters. Unrelated to this is a measurable portion of this corner are very pro-LGBT and a noticeable portion are Satanists.
In the blue corner we have Christian bigots who think they're saving liberty from fascism. But they cannot just oppose the brownshirt behavior without mentioning the LGBT and Satanists.
Would that both sides lose.
I just wanted a good product at a decent price.
But the fucktards on both sides fucked that up for the rest of us.
But I'm sure to be called a bigot for wanting equal rights. The same rights for every person. No special rights for anyone.
I've asked before, "are you a person?"
Black PERSON.
Gay PERSON.
White PERSON.
Straight PERSON.
Religious PERSON.
Atheist PERSON.
People have rights, and we all have the same rights.
Denying someone else their rights to exercise your own makes you a tyrant.
Both sides are guilty of this, though they don't appear to realize it.
And this is just skimming the surface in a Cliff's Notes manner.
This guy makes a "documentary" about how much better Switzerland is than US at
understanding our 2nd Amendment.
Colion Noir makes an excellent counterpoint.
The Swiss are pretty good about gun ownership, but the fact remains that they are still Europeans with a European outlook on things.
They also made some serious concessions to the EU concerning gun regulation not that long ago too.
The AN-94 was VERY speculative when I first converted Twilight: 2000 to GURPS, but I figured that if I was going to include the H&K G11, I might as well have the Soviet reply.
It's like a heavy AK-74S that is somewhat somewhat susceptible to debris.
And fucking expensive! Six times the price of the 74 to get that hyper-burst.
For a good long time I was the only person who was willing the be the gamemaster.
I was aching to be a player, but nobody else would deign be creative and make a world to make characters for.
I rather thought I was good at it.
Turns out, I was mistaken. I was just the only one dumb enough to take the extra time and do the job.
Why, yes, I am bitter about that.
It also turns out that I would not be welcome at the table over some slight from nearly three decades ago.
So be it.
But if we're talking about shit where I should have walked away...
How's about not bothering to make characters...
Wait!
Something is clear now.
Every time I came to visit and offered them a world to play in, they had not bothered to make characters until I showed up. It was a stalling tactic, hoping we'd run out of time before we could start playing.
Well. I feel better knowing that.
A little sad, but.
I wonder what I can get for these books on ebay?
I see I must have new readers beyond the the normal thousand a day or so.
So you might be forgiven for not reading the rules over there to the right or noticing the numerous posts like this one explaining to the audience that you MUST SIGN YOUR POSTS.
Failure to sign is the number one way to get the content of that comment deleted regardless of what you said.
Please, though, get butt hurt that your witticism was deleted.
Comment again complaining about it without signing it.
Mocking your inability to read the rules (which are both on the sidebar to the right and repeated in a large block in the comment section) gives me something to do on a slow news day.
After the Civil War, lots of officers were demoted if they remained in service.
George A Custer is a famous example going from Major General to Lieutenant Colonel.
To prevent losing too much face, they retained their higher rank as a brevet rank.
The losses in rank was not applied evenly across the Army.
There was more than a little resentment over whom retained their original ranks and who got breveted down.
Something I've noticed more than once is a brevet who should never have had the higher rank in the first place on account of The Incompetence™.
Custer is, again, a famous example. The man was famously and fabulously lucky; but he was rarely accused of being good at being a commander.
Surely, though, there must be people breveted who were solidly competent, but didn't have the favor of the people making the decision.
I don't recall any stories about them.
I am thinking of making a 1st Lieutenant brevet Colonel who's a good commander, just unlikable. Nothing but competence. No social graces.
The kind of guy who shines when the bullets are flying, but is a disaster at the officer's cotillion.
Eddie Murphy is back as Axel Foley in a fourth installment of Beverly Hills Cop.
The first thing I notice is that he's still rockin' the High-Power!
The next thing you notice is everyone but Eddie has aged significantly.
I'm sure to watch it.
Gun Jeebus reminds me that I missed the PMM for my T2K to GURPS conversion.
High Tech had the stats already, but I had forgotten them, and a citation, in my conversion.
Ian's vid gives additional details about the pistol that will be handy for the T2K user too!
With Zoom meetings being a thing, I wonder if I can reconnect with the gaming group in Ames without the attendant trip to Iowa.
Sabers and Sorcery needs some playtesting.
While the G8 headlight switch granted functionality to the fog lights, the red back lighting bothered me.
Marv, being a deft hand with a soldering iron and knowing what resistors to substitute, changed the LED's on a second switch thusly:
Now it looks much more like a Chevy switch!
Bonus points if you know why the red and green lights are the way they are.
The Tesla model Y battery. It takes up all of the space under the passenger compartment of the car.
To manufacture it you need:
--12 tons of rock for Lithium (can also beextracted from sea water)
-- 5 tons of cobalt minerals (Most cobalt is made as a byproduct of the processing of copper and nickel ores. It is the most difficult material to obtain for a battery and the most expensive.)
-- 3 tons nickel ore
-- 12 tons of copper ore
You must move 250 tons of soil to obtain:
-- 26.5 pounds of Lithium
-- 30 pounds of nickel
-- 48.5 pounds of manganese
-- 15 pounds of cobalt
To manufacture the battery also requires:
-- 441 pounds of aluminum, steel and/or plastic
-- 112 pounds of graphite
The Caterpillar 994A is used for the earthmoving to obtain the essential minerals. It consumes 264 gallons of diesel in 12 hours.
Finally you get a “zero emissions” car.
Presently, the bulk of the necessary minerals for manufacturing the batteries come from China or Africa. Much of the labor for getting the minerals in Africa is done by children! If we buy electric cars, it's China who profits most!
BTW, this 2021 Tesla Model Y OEM battery (the cheapest Tesla battery) is currently for sale on the Internet for $4,999 not including shipping or installation. The battery weighs 1,000 pounds (you can imagine the shipping cost). The cost of Tesla batteries is:
Model 3 -- $14,000+ (Car MSRP $38,990)
Model Y -- $5,000–$5,500 (Car MSRP $47,740)
Model S -- $13,000–$20,000 (Car MSRP $74,990)
Model X -- $13,000+ (Car MSRP $79,990)
It takes SEVEN years for an electric car to reach net-zero CO2. The life expectancy of the batteries is 10 years (average). Only in the last three years do you begin to reduce your carbon footprint. Then the batteries have to be replaced and you lose all the gains you made in those three years.
Michael Fassbender's character in The Killer is a player character.
I highly recommend it.
I am kinda surprised my dad didn't introduce me to The Velvet Underground. It's his speed.
The insurance inspector came today.
He found nothing that should disqualify us from getting our insurance renewed.
Except...
We have a fuse box instead of a breaker panel.
Apparently some companies freak out about that.
I think we're grandfathered because of the build date of our house.
I notice some Tavors in this too!
I guess it was lack of footage making it to the internet than a lack of the guns, but still mostly M16 derivatives.
Camaro... for when you wanted a Vette, but your wife insists there be a seat for the kids.
Or you're single it's the only V-8 rear wheel drive car you can afford because they made metric shittons of them.
I've had two 2nd Gen Camaros.
A '76 Type LT and a '79 Berlinetta.
The '76 was affectionately known as The Rust Monster because it was rusted a foot up from the rocker panels front to rear. Ruined maroon on the outside and red inside.
She's the car I really learned to wrench on.
305 cubic inches and the factory 2-bbl.
Me and The Bat kept that thing running far too long.
We replaced it with The Silver Bullet. Same 305. Same 2-bbl.
I did a lot more with this car.
Put a '72 350 from a pick-up in it.
Put too big of a Holley double pumper on it. Twice.
Bought the wrong intake for the first too big carb.
Hooker headers, thrush pipes!
Three rear ends.
Subframe connectors.
Then I got serious!
A buddy of mine, dying of AIDS, offered his help and we went nuts!
When I let her go, she was a sleeper.
We'd got a Jaguar rear from someone who had a dead XJ in their barn. Gay Eric knew how to weld (he's the one who installed my subframe connectors) and he replaced the wagon springs in the back with the Jag's suspension.
His uncle redid the front suspension geometry.
The Bullet could corner like it was on rails.
I got to hate it.
The raw performance was great. It was too damn loud, sprung very tight and the race seats would grind your ass and back to a nub.
I sold it for far too little, and I cried a bit. OK. A lot.
I only missed it a little bit, after a time.
The next hot rod was a '91 Caprice Classic.
305 a-fucking-gain! But this time throttle-body-injected.
That car morphed into The Biscayne and got the drivetrain from a '95 Impala SS put under her.
I really loved that car, but I couldn't afford to keep her and The Precious. But she's found a good home with the friend I got The Beast from.
I am sure that every hot rodder has their own list of nevers in their cars.
Mine is:
1: No Ford, Mercury, Lincoln. I am three for three in negative experiences with the brand. I got to drive the '73 Mustang a whole 35 miles before being arrested because I'd bought a stolen car. Mercury Lynx is an Escort and teh suxxor. And I had a real Escort too. Sours one on the brand.
Exception: There are a couple of really old Ford bodies I'd own, but they'd have GM engines, transmission and electric in them.
2: No red interiors! The Rust Monster and Lynx convinced me that it's the most brittle and delicate plastic color in the world.
3: 305 never again. I have gotten rid of two of those misbegotten emissions compromised engines and replaced them with 350's and I would have been money ahead both times shopping a little harder for a car that came with the larger displacement mill. It's not like a 4.8L LS motor. You can get decent performance from a 4.8, not from a 305.
4: Throw away all the wiring in any MOPAR. Even Ford does better with electrical systems. Only Lucas does worse.
5: Nothing German. I like simplicity over "elegant engineering".
6: No carburetors! It'd have to be special to give up multi-port fuel injection. My complaints about computer controls is being locked out of making changes and not that there's a computer running the show.
7: Yellow is not a good hot-rod color.
Some strange things appeal to me.
I have a recurring desire to replace an old Chevy inline 6 with a DOHC inline motor. If only the Atlas engine had a more common transmission bolt pattern. If only Toyota had not farmed out their latest I-6 to BMW. If only.
