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Article on why there's a distinct lack of color in new cars.
You get the colors that the dealer has, so I doubt that this is customer driven.
When I ordered The Precious in late 2007 I wanted a dark blue. Dark blue was not on offer, so I settled for black.
The customer might want different tints, but the manufacturers don't offer them.
Considering the price of painting a car correctly, people are unlikely to change from the dealer's offerings.
"We're so clever taking Morgan and Morgan's money to buy guns hur dur hur!"
Yes, you can spend that money on guns despite their backing hard core anti-gun politicians.
You might be telling yourself that you've cost them something.
You have not.
Advertising is a business expense.
It's written off.
Net cost to Morgan and Morgan: $0.
If you, after buying your guns, manage to convince even one person to hire Morgan and Morgan and that leads to a win in court or a settlement, you just made the people who support banning you owning that gun a profit.
Aid and comfort to the enemy.
The GunTuber Administrative Results has snagged sponsorship from Morgan and Morgan.
Considering that John Morgan has dropped millions on anti-gun Democrats, I don't think I can continue watching this YouTube channel.
Not even ironically.
Update: As is the norm for the people who do stupid things like this, they're defending it with, "I'm so clever taking his money to buy more guns." May your chains rest lightly...
Emperor Misha's Anti-Idiotan Rottweiler has been down for me the past few times I've gone to visit.
Now, it appears to have died.
Update: An unsigned anonymous comment says that Hosting Matters no longer supports WordPress and that's why it's down. There's a back-up site running, https://nicedoggie.blog/
"Noon?" you ask, "but it's 1:41pm where you are."
By noon I mean local noon, the sun is at zenith.
Almost two hours past clock noon.
Daylight Saving Time is a crock of shit.
Got the time right, put in the wrong day.
The software did what I told it, not what I wanted.
GIGO.
Replying to yet another deleted comment...
"Good luck with your blog" and "You can turn off anonymous comments"
First, I've been at this for 18 years, I'm past the luck stage and moving into dogged determination in the face of relentless opposition.
Second, I know that can restrict the comments to just google account holders. I've known that for more than a decade. There's three or four great people who'd lose the ability to comment if I did. They're smart enough to sign their work and not get petulant about it.
Third, if you're unhappy with the service provided, simply return the unused portion for a full refund.
The first thing I check on a comment that's from an anonymous sender is if they signed it.
If it's longer than a paragraph, I don't go further before I nuke it most of the time. But sometimes I read them.
If there's a flurry of long comments that are unsigned, I just check to see if they're signed before I nuke them.
It falls under the, "This is my soapbox, not yours." rule. Clearly stated, both in the sidebar to the right and in the paragraph where you're making your soon-to-be-deleted comment.
A neat analysis of the movie and book "Lone Survivor".
The story has stunk for a while, this is interesting.
The character stats from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay do not coalesce into anything you can directly convert to GURPS.
The more I read the rules and compare, the more "Kentucky windage" the adaptations get.
Going for feel rather than mathematical precision.
"It's not culture, it's genetics, just look at where the (insert race here) live and see how they are!"
That there is racist.
It's exactly the the lead in that the Klan will give you while they're feeling you out to see if you're a good prospect to join.
The thing is, it is culture.
Indians on reservations fail to thrive because of their culture. This is despite getting the same education the kids a mile away in the United States get. Their culture, the reservation culture, dictates they do nothing with the information and stay put where they're not going to have an opportunity to thrive.
I know lots of Indians who have assimilated into the American culture and they're doing great!
I married one, in fact.
Next time you wanna impugn that it's genes, leave an address for Harvey to harangue you at.
Same same for blacks in the ghetto culture. Same same for hispanics in the bario culture. Same same for whites in the backwoods hollah culture. Same same for most anyone who puts getting high/drunk over the basic essentials of life, like a roof over your head.
Emphatically so for the never-left-the-tribal-culture-behind places in Africa.
But it's not consistent enough for it to be genes. Not like the commenter seems to have thought, anyways.
But I'll offer a "sexist" and "racist" thing for you to chew on.
Why are white men most successful in American culture?
Because only white men are allowed to completely fail.
Wanna add an extra layer? A Jewish man is allowed utterly fail.
There's not much of safety net or support system enshrined in practice, so they have to swim or drown.
When the choice is so stark, one tends to learn to swim.
But this isn't white men being racist or sexist; it's a response to racism and sexism that says, "you got this, you don't need help; and you're not going to get any help."
Think on it.
"Mankind has dreamed of destroying the sun!" M. Burns
I spent a couple hours replacing string and thong with wire today on a couple of items of decoration that The Lovely Harvey loves.
The sun had done e't 'em.
The sun will have a harder time with 17ga solid aluminum.
I keep hearing about sacred lands and Indian burial grounds and seeing this used to stop development.
Something I am starting to develop is recognizing the style of stone tools thanks to trying to learn what sets stone-age Neanderthal apart from stone-age American Indian.
The stone tools in these "Indian" burial grounds are a lot more primitive than the tools used by the plains Indians.
Because they're stone, they might have been sitting there for thousands of years. Maybe even tens of thousands.
The tribes claiming these "Indian" burial grounds are very reluctant to allow any scientific testing of the stone tools or checking the genetics of any bodies uncovered.
The burial grounds are often, literal burials and not in alignment with the practices of the tribes claiming the ground to block development.
In other words, it's bullshit to try and control land they don't own.
Land that they could have purchased, but didn't when they could have afforded it; before the potential development made it valuable.
I'll say the quiet part out loud: You lost the war, and thus, all claims to the lands being contested in that war. I don't care who started it; I know who won.
It's a measure of Victorian era restraint and charity that win didn't proceed to the normal genocide that clashes between civilizations happened before.
Went to the late show at the less fashionable theater.
It's not bad at all.
It ends very abruptly, clearly leading us to want Dune Messiah.
The complete absence of the spacing guild stands out.
As does their keeping the greening of the southern hemisphere a secret...
I'm really hoping that the suit against Hawaii over the effects of climate change is a landmark case that drags state power back inside state borders.
I remember a dragging case here in Florida where New York was attempting to apply their laws to things that happened here.
Eventually they got told to stop and that a legal sale in Florida is still a legal sale even if the gun ended up at a New York Fucking City crime scene.
No laws were broken until the legal purchaser took said gun into the state of New York.
It took forever for that to run its course.
Then there's California and all of their bullshit crap. Too damn long to list even a summary, but you've all seen their Prop 65 cancer warning.
They're trying to dictate how our food is grown and how our electricity is produced because said food or energy might someday be brought into their state.
The sensible response from producers should be, "this is the product for sale, if it doesn't meet your standards, don't buy it." The courts should take a position that California has no standing to force an out of state entity to change anything about how they do business.
They're rapidly chasing everyone who can make anything out of their state, for putting these dumb restrictions on everything.
I'm something of a history buff.
I also love warships.
This makes me love museum ships.
You'd think that this combination would make me want to head to Pearl Harbor and check out the alpha and omega of the US Pacific theater: Arizona and Missouri.
It does.
The problem is, and has been, that Pearl Harbor is in Hawaii.
Hawaii doesn't let me carry.
For a long time, that was sufficient for me to stay away.
For an equally long time, Hawaii has been actively making it less enticing.
Now I won't go there even if I can open carry an AR; and I don't even think I need to open carry an AR there.
But it wasn't the oil companies and globull warmering that made me decide to spend my tourist dollars on something else.
It was anti-gun other liberal bullshit. Never mind a subculture that blames me for shit that other people did in regards to The Sandwich Islands no longer being a sovereign nation. Wasn't me, didn't do it are never a defense to racists.
I avoid places that have de facto institutionalized racism.
So, Hawaii and City of Honolulu; it's not climate change that keeps me away; it's you.
Now you know who you should really be suing instead of Sunoco.
It looks like Candice Owens has gone off her rocker.
Darn it.
She showed so much promise too.
But like Ross, she apparently was nuts and hiding it well.
At the time of this writing, I believe that Florida is the only state with "constitutional carry" which also bans open carry.
Odd that.
I wonder how the other 27 states are keeping the blood from flooding the streets and how the cops manage to function with open carry making their jobs harder.
Humans had been on North America for about 11,000 years and not reached past the stone age, barely domesticating dogs.
The Native American culture so worshipped by the liberals only exists because the Spanish, both intentionally and accidentally, released horses into the wild.
The plains Indian only exists in the historical form because of the act of the colonizing White man.
And they chucked, entire, whatever they were using for culture for their new, mobile, horse-based one as fast as they could accumulate and tame breeding stock.
Horses were currency and wealth.
And they wouldn't have them except for the White man.
It's like a black fly in my chardonnay.
Guinness for STRENGTH!
Jameson for courage.
We miss you Lex.
Y+12
Man arrested for bringing in some harmless R12.
We can stop him, but we can't stop the millions of illegals from elsewhere?
Pull the other one it's got bells.
The R12 ban is a recurring sore spot for me.
We went from discovering the ozone hole, to deciding that HFC's caused it to banning HFC's with unseemly speed.
They don't know if the hole was there from before the common usage of refrigerants. Look it up. They don't know how long that hole had been there.
Then there's the problems of reproducing the ozone depleting catalytic reaction in anything approaching conditions found in the ozone layer.
Plus the highly suspicious "finding" that a heavier than air gas that readily breaks down in sunlight manages to get up there and stay up there where there's even more UV than where it might leak from your car.
I cannot remember the financial bigwig who made a video talking about how every employee must generate more for the company than their salary and benefits consume.
It's expressed rather directly and that caused a YouTuber I can remember to not get it.
Tim at Timcast.
He cited that he has people working for him that don't generate any revenue; so he concludes that the bigwig must be wrong.
But...
You see, Tim, what that assistant is doing is freeing up someone else to focus on generating revenue.
If having a helper means that the revenue generator brings in more money than they and the helper consume in salary and benefits, then it's worth it and the bigwig is correct. Especially if the revenue generating employee brings in substantially more when freed of the tasks performed by the assistant.
I tend to use the communication method that gets the fastest response from someone.
If I get chewed out, or even chided, for using that method I also tend to just stop using any method of communication.
Sorry for talking to you, won't happen again.
I watched a couple of videos in the "what happened to (insert reality car show)?" genre.
You will not have to watch them because I will reveal what happened in a short sentence.
The stopped focusing on the car stuff and focused more on the interpersonal conflicts in the shop until the people in the shop said "fuck this shit" and left.
There. Now you're all up to speed.
Never mind that for a lot of hot rodders the shows were offensive.
"Car spinning" is the same thing as "house flipping."
Buying something, fixing it up a bit and selling it for more than you paid.
If that was how the show was sold, then it wouldn't have offended.
The weekly pitch always starts with "what a cool car, I want it!" then, "Let's fix MY car up and it will be even cooler!" and finally, "I have a buyer, I'm selling it."
You had a buyer from before you spotted the cool car and an agreement to fix it up for them.
This pattern repeated week after week and most of the hobbyists were long gone before the change in format to all-drama-all-the-time.
They're copying a Nazi innovation here, after all.
Happy, friendly, mobile execution center.
I still "love" how people keep trying to make distinctions between socialists, communists and nazis like there's any real difference.
It was a writer from Peterson Publishing way back that spilled the beans.
Everything in that car rag was an ad of some kind.
If they got paid for six paragraphs talking about forged pistons, and how they came to be, it was being paid for by sponsors hoping to sell pistons.
If they didn't get told what to say, you can be damn sure the sponsor also sold cast pistons.
Produce awareness is advertising, it's just more subtle. It gives the illusion of impartiality to the writer and still lets the public believe that the article is simply information being neutrally presented.
It's true of all hobby magazines.
Unanimous rulings on contentious issues are rare from The US Supreme Court.
The other states citing section 3 of the 14th Amendment should take note.
Marv found a video of someone doing a torture test of a PSA upper in full auto.
At 6,000 rounds of doing triple mag dumps and letting it cool down is where the accuracy lets loose.
They complain about visible machining marks in the bolt carrier and chamber.
OK.
But did that impede function?
No mention of it not firing or cycling in this torture test.
Mox nix.
Apparently they did mention that once you've shot your barrel out, PSA will warranty it.
I am amused that the rate of fire they did is far in excess of what the military expects their rifles to sustain.
I took Biggus Macus' and Ammoland's recommendations.
Phil Journey, Dennis Fusaro, Jeff Knox, & Rocky Marshall and "Yes" on the bylaws question.
Let's see if this does any good.
I sure hope it does.
My research for Sabers and... had me trodding some of the same ground as this article.
Take-away quote: "Those who scoff cynically at such explanations as self-serving are often uncritically trusting of oral histories of native societies, swallowing whole such sentimental ideas as their being egalitarian and Edenic, pacific and unspoiled."
Recently a black dancing monkey tried to get out of paying taxes because it was racist to expect the descendants of slaves to owe taxes because of the 400 years that black people had been subjected to slavery in America.
Mr Howard, the United States of America only had the institution of slavery from June 21, 1788 to December 18, 1865. 76 and a half years, or so.
But we should also count the period under the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union from March 1, 1781; bringing us to 84-3/4 years. Slavery has been over in the US for 159 years, almost twice as long as we had it. No living person was such a slave, no living person owned such a slave.
Prior to that, slavery in the 13 American colonies was English. 1585 at the earliest, 196 years of British slavery plus 85ish years of US is... 281 years. We're 119 short of 400 here.
Prior to THAT, slavery in the Americas was... the indigenous people had slavery when Columbus showed up, but you're blaming Europeans for the problem so I guess we'll blame Spain.
If we go from when Columbus showed up to the 13th Amendment, we're still short of 400 by 27 years. And Columbus didn't start right in on taking slaves. It was right behind him, but that makes us even shorter from 400.
However, I think it's very important for anyone who wants to blame America for slavery to remember a couple of time periods and dates.
April 12, 1861 to May 26, 1865 is an important time period.
This is the American Civil War. A war damn near literally about the issue of "will there still be slavery in the United States?" There's a bit of nuance, but it was a war about slavery.
Mr Howard, make note that the side opposed to slavery won that war and gifted your ancestors freedom.
365,000, predominantly white, predominantly men, died to to free your ancestors.
December 18, 1865 is the day that slavery is banned by Constitutional Amendment in the USA. You probably didn't know that date after getting Juneteenth shoved at you.
But all of that is a round about way of saying, "The war is over, our side won, you're free now and free citizens of the USA pay their taxes regardless of our ancestry, ethnicity and creed."
Also of note: Being a descendant of slaves is not a unique to African-Americans in the US and CS experience. Plenty of us white people are descended of slaves. Particularly Italian immigrants to the US, because we're the folks the Romans enslaved and had shitty prospects in Italy because of the stigma of having once been Rome's slaves. Look it up.
Then being prejudiced against is also not unique to being black in America. Chinese, Irish and Italians were subject to everything black people went through right up to living memory.
Maybe it's time to stop feeling sorry for yourselves and making excuses.
It's definitely time for you to stop rewarding the people who insist you're not as good as me. I call them race-baiters and they've got you convinced they're on your side.
They're not.
If it weren't for them, we'd be past all the past and we'd all be better off.
Perhaps your tax burden would be far smaller, Mr Howard.
PS: Mr Howard, while you spew that racism and bigotry are keeping you down and causing you to owe a million in taxes... At the highest tax rate that means you owe taxes on nearly three million dollars in income. My lily white ass doesn't make that much in my entire working life. Must be all that white privilege I'm doing.
I'm getting sick of a lot of memes.
The Republican candidate/president is LITERALLY Hitler is the tippy top of memes I'm sick of.
No, you fucking idiots, only Hitler is literally Hitler.
It's right up there, though, with "the Nazis weren't socialists" except if you read their founding materials and... IT'S RIGHT IN THE FUCKING NAME OF THE PARTY!!! National Socialist German Worker's Party (original German Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei).
I'm still baffled that Nazis are "far right" when they're barely right of the communists.
But then, one would have to read and not have been subjected to the socialist takeover of the universities and, perhaps most importantly, not be European.
Europe has the problem of trying to explain how their socialists are distinct from communism and the nazis so that they can remain in power.
The truth of the matter is that both communism and national socialism (and fascism) are variations of socialism. Almost all literally "Marx was so very close, but we fixed his mistake and this is REAL socialism!" Almost all...
Trying to distance socialism and Nazis by declaring the former "left wing" and the latter "far right wing" is splitting hairs over the implementation of the evil and not really acknowledging the evil.
Considering the reaction from the left wing about doing an honest, representative, republic; I think being accused of being ultra right wing is a badge of honor.
The right steals less, gets us into fewer wars and FREED THE SLAVES. The left side of the aisle... not so much.
I am at a loss as to whom to vote for.
Anyone got a favorite?
I am loathe to vote in the same dickheads who got us where we are now.
Mind Flayer (Illithid) (OG AD&D Monster Manual p.70)
729 Points
Attribute Modifiers: IQ+6 [120].
Secondary Characteristic Modifiers: FP+2 [6]; HP+1 [2]; SM 0.
Advantages: Astral Projection (Jumper-World, Limited Access, Astral Plane -20%, Projection, Psionic -10%) [70]; Blunt Claws [3]; Mind Blast (Affliction 4, Incapacitation-Paralysis +150%, 5 yard wide Cone +100%, Will Based +20%, Telepathic -10%) [104]; Probability Travel (Jumper-World, Link +10%, New Worlds +50%, Psionic -10%) (Affliction 1 (Jumper-World +1600%, Aura +80%, Cosmic-No Resistance +300%, Link +10%, Melee Attack -30%, Psionic -10%) [345]; Extra Arms (4 Tentacles) (Extra-Flexible +50%, Short -50%) [40]; Flight (Psychokinetic -10%) [36]; Magic Resistance 10 [20]; Mind Control (Telepathic -10%, 2 FP -10%) [40]; Mind Reading (Universal +50%, Telepathic -10%) [42]; Sharp Beak [1].
Disadvantages: Dependency (Fresh Brains, Sentient Only, not more than one minute old, monthly) [-10]; Intolerance [-10]; Odious Racial Habit (Eat Humanoid Brains) [-15]; Reputation -4 [-20]; Selfish (12) [-5].
Racial Skills:
Many of the monsters in OG AD&D are actually races, Mind Flayers are such.
I think I managed to convert the critter's effects into GURPS correctly, but a second set of eyes would be welcome. But how many people are familiar with both games?
I did this a long time ago, and I'm warming up for racial conversions for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1e.
I think I'll do the Skaven first. I like those chaotic fuzzy rat dudes.
The Beast is actually white! Heron White for those scoring at home.
She was getting pretty bad. Very dark gray in places, but the wax was holding...
Shadow is home and resting from being spayed.
She's loopy as heck still, but the operation went as it should.
One way to tell you've matured as a wrencher is remembering to buy something before you need it.
Full maturity comes when you have a spare for when you run out...
Baby steps.
The Beast is like a whole new car with the front end all replaced, aligned and tires balanced.
I guess I will have to break down and give her a bath now, huh?
