Breathless

I remember the press reporting the plummeting DOW and NASDAQ numbers as we prepared for the inauguration of  president Obama as no big deal.

It contrasts with the reporting of the DOW and NASDAQ being in flux from the changes wrought by the tariffs being imposed on all sides.

Except the 2008 numbers WERE a big deal.  Watch the movie The Big Short for a complete idiot's guide to that debacle.  It's even an entertaining movie. 

I think the current numbers aren't a big deal.  Changes to taxes always stir up the market and it settles down once the effect of the tax changes are evident and accommodation for them is made.

I could be wrong, of course, but I think I've got the fundamentals right this time.

Is It Just Me?

Is it just me or do many of the "anti-fascist" and "anti-nazi" attacks on Tesla dealerships and chargers look a lot like pictures post Kristallnacht?

Why is it the people who claim to oppose fascism keep doing exactly what fascists did?

Corollary

The corollary of "the police aren't coming" is "the police aren't coming."

Criminals haven't thought this all the way through.

Citizens in Italy, apparently, are ahead of the curve and vigilantism is getting a resurgence.

Fun fact!  Did you know the organizations we know as the mafia originate from vigilance societies?

So far the Italian police have been as ineffective in stopping vigilantes as they've been at stopping crime.

Vigilante is what you get when the government abdicates it's side of the criminal justice agreement.

There's solid reasons to have a neutral, not directly involved in the crime, party do the arresting and trials.

Not least of which vigilantes mete out "justice" when their blood is up and they have a tendency to snag the wrong person for lynching.

But it's not as big a percentage of those punished as you'd think.

Lucifer's Hammer

A plot point from the book Lucifer's Hammer is the constant reassurances that the comet is going to miss... right up until it hits.

Every time I read the reduced chance of 2024 YR4 hitting I think of Niven and Pournelle's book.

Yay?

 

And They Lost

SIG has issued a statement about the P320 and rather belligerently stating there's no problem with their guns.

Summary can be found here.

I'd like to inform SIG that Remington did a better job communicating to the public that the triggers in the Model 700 weren't dangerous and the perceived problem wasn't as widespread as some would have it.

And Remington lost in court.

Evolution Of F-4 Phantom In Combat Flight Simulators (1989 - 2025)

I've played a few of these games and they never seemed as bad as they clearly are now.

Willing suspension of disbelief is real!  I was more willing then than now.

I Think It's A Hollow Threat

OK, we got our minerals deal from Ukraine.

We're suing for peace from Putin.

What's his incentive to stop the "special military operation?"

I'm pretty sure we're not going to war to make sure we can access those minerals.

I doubt we're going to put miners in the way of Russian ordnance to extract them.

What's Russia get?

Land already in their possession?

Considering how much of Ukraine's mineral wealth is under the ground they've taken, not a bad deal.

Bad precedent.  It will encourage future wars.

I can't help but compare Russia invading Ukraine to Iraq invading Kuwait.

We went all in to expel Iraq.

I'm too lazy to really do a comparison. 

Update:  Counterpoint

 

No Scroll Lock

The scroll lock key doesn't light up the scroll lock light on DerpyPuter.

It would appear that Ubuntu doesn't support scroll lock by default.

There's a terminal command to turn on the key for the current session, but it resets when you end that session.

I did not know that and I was worried because I'd recently put a new keyboard in her.

Knowing how to toggle scroll lock is important on Windows especially when you're dealing with a spreadsheet.

Hoof Bump

Happy birthday to the gunblogosphere's bratty little sister Erin Palette!

Being Creative

We once played in a world where only silver weapons could affect were-creatures.

Non-silver weapons would pass harmlessly through them as if they were insubstantial.

The problem was that silver weapons sucked for all other purposes, so we tended to not have them when we needed them.

FuzzyGeff came up with the solution.

A very thin silver wire, under tension, and completely supported by another weapon surrounding it.

His example was a club.

Against normal opponents, it was still a club.

Against werewolves, it was a cutting instrument. FuzzyGeff came up with a lot of evil things like that.

I Still Wish Both Sides Could Lose

No, nothing Ukraine did was casus belli.

Russia is definitely the belligerent here.

Russia did not take their preferred leadership being deposed well.

They didn't care that the Ukrainian leadership was corrupt as long as it stayed in their pro-Russia lane. 

The US stopped caring about that same corruption as soon as the new leadership was corrupt FOR a certain family from Delaware.

But still corrupt.

When Russia took the Crimea, it should have been job one of the Ukrainian government to make sure it couldn't happen again.  I admit they adopted a more Western doctrine, but didn't spend near the money on defense as they should once they had a neighbor that had proven a willingness to take parts of their country by force.

The time to get ready for a war is before the war starts.  Some Chinese bloke said that, that or the cook on Alice.

Russian separatists and Neo-Nazis don't make the situation any easier or better.  Another sub-conflict there where I wish both sides could lose.

But there's some reality to accept on the part of the pro-Ukrainian side.

Without substantial outside help Ukraine cannot hope to keep Russia at the present front lines.  Even with substantial outside help, they will not be able to reclaim any territory lost to Russia.

To get back what they lost requires a cooperative Russia or a bigger war from bigger nations.  The bigger nation most capable of doing that isn't likely to do so because we don't want to get into a nuclear war.

In short, they be fucked.

The best they can expect is to get the war to stop at the present lines.  Worst is losing the entire place.

Russia isn't looking too great here either.  They've spent a lot more than they planned.  Even complete victory will be Pyrrhic.  Even with Europe continuing to buy their petroleum, it's going to be a long time before their economy recovers and most of the sanctions will likely remain in place as long as they squat on the eastern section of Ukraine.

Which brings us to why the fuck was the US involved in the first place?

Well, we don't like it when a bully kicks a little guy, so we were sympathetic to Ukraine and felt a little guilty about letting them get run over in 2014.

Plus the family from Delaware had a vested interest in Ukraine.

Selling them guns is a good choice.

Giving them weapons when they're never going to be able to pay us back because they're never going to win...  Bad choice.  Best to stay out of that.

But we did give them weapons and did so at a time when the coffers were pretty dry.  We've our own financial house to get in order and spending money on a lost cause isn't good business.

How much more do we need to spend until Russia decides that it's not getting any more of the place and decides to quit in place?  How long before Ukraine pays that back?

I'd love for them to be able to win, but what do we get from it?  What's our interest in making and keeping Russia an enemy?

I'm not saying we should be friends, but why are we making them a foe?

For what?

To keep Europe from being invaded?

That, still, sounds a lot more like a Europe problem than a USA problem and they fucking hate us anyway so fuck them!  I know, not all of them, but enough.

Besides, I'm sick of their lopsided tariffs and trade practices.  I'm especially sick of their protectionist hypocrisy and trade practices. 

You will note that I am not allowing comments on this rant.

Well That Was Fast

Canada decides to back off their tariffs when they see we're serious about ours.

I guess a two front trade war against both the US and China was a bit too much for them to contemplate.

Lumanumb

According to Pyramid Magazine 3/85 the DR of an inch of "high strength" aluminum is 35.

This is different from what I'd found earlier.

It makes more sense too, I think.  Otherwise we'd have gone to aluminum armor for MBT's before we realized how it liked to burn.  We made a LOT of Bradleys before we admitted that.

Centurion vs Patton

I was reading about the match up that Pakistan and India had between the M48 and Centurion.

It was noted that the 20-pounder could, in fact, penetrate the armor of an M48.

The Shot Mk.1 APCBC round does 6dx16(2) pi++ and that will penetrate DR 672.

The glacis of an M48 is DR 606.  The front of the turret at the thickest place is DR 716.

So a 20-pounder will punch the glacis on average, but not the turret from the front.

Side protection of the turret is just DR 314, so...

This GURPS!

Of course, it's no coincidence since I used real world numbers to get both the penetration of the round and the armor values.

Fucking LBJ

Lydon Baines Johnson.

That fucker is the author of so many things that fuck with my life and I just read that he's the cocksucker that signed off on daylight savings time.

FUCK!

We just need a bill that erases everything he did and I think we're going to be better off.

Possibly related:  Have you noticed that we haven't won a war since we passed the uniform time act?

Also, we keep expanding the "savings" which doesn't really save a fucking thing.  Most of the so-called benefit comes from the days getting longer because of the axial tilt of the planet and not because we fucked with the clocks.

If we'd left it alone we'd still be on Standard Time until April 27th.

Also also: We tried doing Daylight Saving Time year round for a year and four months from Jan 74 to April 75.  It was a disaster.  It even got some kids killed going to school in the dark.  Dark?  How could that be?  Because the nights get longer even if the clocks are shifted because of the axial tilt of the planet.

If You Just Repeat What They Say Why Do I Need To Listen To YOU

I have three YouTube channels that I am subscribed to that are sponsored by Ground News.

They're basically paraphrasing what Ground News says about whatever world event they're talking about.

So I am sitting here wondering why I would need them to read me the news from Ground News when I can just read it there.

I think I can unsubscribe now.

3/08

 

Because there's no 62nd of July.

How Many Legs Is A Spider Supposed To Have

Because GURPS: Technomancer limits the spider Chimera to a total of 8 limbs.

Two arms on the human torso, two that are shitty arms and can be used as legs and 4 that are only legs.

This is the only image of a spider person in either of the two sourcebooks.

 

But that doesn't match my mental image.

This does (in an anime sort of way).

https://safebooru.org/index.php?page=post&s=view&id=1890273

This gives this for stats: (if the cute little human looking legs are actually crappy short arms)

Chimera, Spider (Homo Sapiens Arachnae) (Pyramid 3/115 p.30 aesthetically modified)

40 Points

Attribute Modifiers:

Secondary Characteristic Modifiers: SM 0.

Advantages: Binding (Webbing) 15 (Accessibility, Target must be grappled, -20%; Engulfing +60%; Melee Attack, reach C, -30%; Sticky, +20%, Takes Recharge, 15 seconds, -20%) [7]*; Binding (Webbing) 10 (Rapid Fire 7, +70%; Retractable, +100%; Reduced Range, 1/10, -30%; Sticky, +20%; Takes Recharge, 15 seconds, -20%) [48]; Claws (Sharp Claws) [5]; Clinging [20]; Extra Arms 2 (Short -50%, Ham Fisted, -5%) [9]; Extra Legs (Eight Legs) [15]; Lifting ST 6 (Accessibility, only applies to lower “spider” body, -20%) [15]; Night Vision 6 [6]; Speak With Animals (Specialized, Spiders, -60%) [10]; Teeth (Fangs) [2]; Toxic Attack 1d (Poison, Cyclic, 1 hour interval, 5 cycles, +40%; Follow-Up, Bite, +0%; Resistible, HT-4, -10%) [6].

Perks: Climbing Line [1]†

Disadvantages: Appearance (Ugly to humans and other non-spider chimera) [-8]; Dependency (Mana, Constantly) [-25]; Lunacy [-10]; Social Stigma (Minority Group) [-10]; Vulnerability (Depleted Necronium or silver x3) [-30]; Weakness (Depleted Necronium or silver, 1d/minute) [-20].

Quirks: Bulky Frame [-1]‡

Features:

* Alternative Ability (x1/5 cost) to other binding advantage.

† As long as you have “shots” of the Binding advantage available, you can create a climbing line, allowing you to use the “rope up” or “rope down” options for climbing (p. B349)

‡ While spider people are technically SM 0, their large lower spider half means they find narrow spaces intended for upright humans awkward, imposing -1 to all tasks that involve fitting or squeezing into something.

 

I think this fits what my mind's eye says a spider chimera should look like better than the official rules.

$90 Rental

If you feel that you MUST have the latest ruleset to keep playing your fantasy RPG, Wizards of the Coast has bundled all three core books of D&D 2024 edition for $89.97.

They are not actually selling you these books.  They are granting you access to them through their D&D Beyond service.

A service which could be eliminated at any time if WotC decides it's not making enough money.  Or if your browser doesn't meet some arbitrary standard.  Or if your OS isn't on the list they support.

So you pay a one time rental fee for the rules.

I've already rejected this model.  I didn't know, at the time, I was participating.  But I have an old WinXP install that cannot play the legit copy of IL-2 I paid for because the server that authenticates the install is no longer there.  Or XP can't talk to it.  But since the game won't play on a newer version of Windows, it hardly matters which.

So I started paying attention if the game I wanted needed online authentication.

This is more of the same with a prettier web page.

Maybe it's the Gen-Xr in me, but I can recall dragging my books, dice, paper and pencils out to the woods and playing around a campfire.

You cannot do that with the digital version of the new rules.

The good news is WotC still sells physical books!  $149.97 for the three core books ($179.97 for both physical and digital).  $50 for each hardcover book is what books like this sell for.  I like paper copies of the rules.

Paper is handy when you need to flip back and forth between two paged and are WAY easier to bookmark frequently used pages.

I also like pdf versions.  They're easier to search and can be used offline.  Though they are less useful camping because of battery life.  pdf also lets me have a copy of rules that I don't really play, but want to reference.  Drive-Thru RPG is great for accumulating nostalgia rulesets!

So far, only WotC has gone subscription service access to the books you've paid for.  We should discourage others from following their example.

The Day The Unbearable Lightness Went Out

 

13 years since Lex went into the beyond.  I still miss him.

Just going for courage this year.

Mules

Spider-people in Technomancer have extra lifting ST with their lower bodies.  ST 16 for carrying stuff with the spider part instead of the normal 10.

That's gonna change some SLA Marshal equations and some unit equipment distributions.

A spider-person can lug a few recoilless rifle rounds round without undue effort where a normal human would struggle.

I might just rearrange my grenadier...

Two Hours

DerpyPuter did a bit more than two hours of normal surfing with YouTube running.  It was showing 48% at the two hour mark then 18% 17 minutes later.

The charge remaining is not being very linear, but this is just the second time I've run it down since I installed the new battery.

ALICE For Garand

Greece hung onto the Garand long enough to issue M1951 style pouches.

Each one will hold two en-bloc clips per pocket, for 32 rounds per pouch.

I'd never seen these before.

Kinda neat! 

You can get them from Apex Gun Parts (where I stole the pictures)

Still More Shots

When I was issued an M1911A1 they gave us two spare magazines.

That'd be 21 rounds if war were declared.

When I was issued an M9, they only gave us one spare magazine.

That's 30 rounds.

But two spares was cemented in my mind.

I took two spare magazines to the Czech-German border for my Glock 17 and harangued them to issue me 51 rounds.

We were, emphatically, forbidden from carrying one in the chamber.

Over The Edge

A buddy of mine, Bill Gerber, once tried to entice me into playing the RPG "Over The Edge."

I was mainly interested because everyone else was already making a character when I got to The Union.

Despite being told I could make any character I wanted, I gave up after five of my ideas were rejected.

I simply couldn't figure out what Gerb wanted me to make for a character that I wanted to play and the fastest way for me to give up on a collaboration is for the other party to have a veto when not actively helping.

He wouldn't even give any details about the setting to help me figure out a hook to make a character around.

That he was championing a "libertarian" setting with strict gun control at the same time I was particularly raw over the recent passage of the Clinton AWB did not help.  "I don't think that someone understands what 'libertarian' means," is what I said at the time.

Every once and a while I remember the setting exists and I re-read the wikipedia article on it.

This little nostalgia trip always reminds me of another esoteric setting he tried to get us interested in, The Empire of the Petal Throne, aka Tékumel.  The less said about that and MAR Barker the better, I think.  A Muslim who's anti-Semitic?  REALLY?  That's never happened before, or since...

The Sherman Was A Fine Tank

In point of fact, the Sherman was in the inventory of all the winning Armies in WW2.

People keep talking as if we won the war in spite of the thing.

They concede that it was OK if you consider the Firefly (which is a horrid adaptation).

The fact is that most Shermans had the "ineffective" 75mm M3 gun.

What one has to do when determining if the M4 was a good tank or not is to remove German propaganda from the research.

No, the M3 gun isn't as good at punching armor as the 76mm M1A1, but it was good enough against the Panzer IV right up to the end of the war.

It was definitely used incorrectly often, but that's not the fault of the design.

It's armor wasn't as thick as some other tanks, but it was enough to win most engagements.

No, it didn't catch fire more often than other tanks once it took a penetration.

Even if it did, you were more likely to escape from it than most other tanks.

No, it was not designed as an infantry support tank, even if infantry support was one of the main tasks tanks were expected to perform.

Grok

This past week I finally understand why so many bloggers just stopped without saying goodbye.

I grok it in its fullness now.

I Just Realized

John Moses Browning designed the cartridge that killed Hitler.

His hand touched everything that won the war!

Kit Bash Goal

What if you put the turret from a Bradley and a 120mm main gun from an Abrams on an M3 Lee hull?

 I wanna build this!

Non-Events

I have had racism, sexism and religious bigotry in my game worlds.

I use historical settings a lot.

I've had many LGBTQ players.  I've had many minority players.  I've had a few female players.

It's just never been a problem.

Old West campaign where the prevailing opinion is the Indians are prairie n-words and a player wants to treat them like people?  Totally OK.  It happened in history too.

Trans player wants to play trans?  Gets told that they cannot in the setting because medical technology and social norms have gotten to the point that a trans person just has the operation and is all better.  With both remaining birth sex and changing to identity sex as options.  Therapies for both are developed.

Same same for settings with supernatural and powerful deities.  The Gods don't make things that aren't what they are not.  "OK!" was the response.

A black player playing a black character wasn't a problem.  I came up with an explanation for them to be where they were and they put up with their skin color being a novelty.  "He's not a Drow, he's BROWN, not black!"

The black players playing black characters did come up playing Twilight: 2000 in the New America arc.  New America is racist, so they were racist towards the player's characters.

It made for a strong, motivational, adventure hook.

I've never had a disabled player insist on playing a disabled character.

I came closest by playing a character without legs once.  But he was a super hero who could fly...

The Bat never made a character who was blind.

FuzzyGeff, never took asthma.

We were perfectly free to make characters that "looked like us" and we often didn't.

The entire point was to make a character who wasn't us.

I am not a wizard.

I am not a knight.

I am not a dwarf.

I am not an elf.

I am not a pseudo dragon!

I am not a super hero.

I am not a space pirate.

I did not survive the nuclear holocaust.

I am not a prohibition era gangster mage.

Repetitive

In GURPS terms some tanks are exactly the same when they differ noticeably in the real world.

The British Centurion is such a case.  The gun changes twice and the armor changes once.

Other details change, but the stats are about the same.

Thank goodness for copy-paste.

 

I'll Bet Someone Wishes They'd Worn A Suit Now

Aid to Ukraine has been paused according to several news outlets.

The Americanization Of Emily

The Americanization of Emily is an enjoyable movie.

Julie Andrews in a non-singing role and James Garner in high form.

With James Coburn too!

I rented it from Amazon after seeing a break-down by The Feral Historian.

If you have the time, give it a watch.

PS: Warner Brothers: I spent the money to rent it because of The Feral Historian's evaluation and you copyright struck his video off YouTube.  Without his review, I would never have heard of the film nor spent any money to see it.

Flea Feasts

Something that happens EVERY time we answer the call of the cat distribution network is we get fleas.

It's part of the deal of bringing a kitten in from the cold, cruel world.

The sucky part is waiting for the new kitten to finally get big enough to hit with the good stuff.

While the package says 1.9 lb., we've had to make too many trips to the vet with a sick kitten from the flea stuff.  Waiting until 5 lb. seems to work best.

Mist made 5 lb.!

So they got dosed today.

Shadow sits at my elbow on the desk most of the time and they are making a ring around her as they jump off and die.  It's nice to see such positive feedback to the treatment!

Check Your Citations

I got into a little tiff on Facebook about the value of metal detectors in several places in Orlando.

They took the position that such things were a small thing to deal with when it's keeping mass shootings from happening.

I countered that most, if not all, mass shootings in Florida have occurred in such gun free zones.

They then posted a list of mass shootings in gun free zones.

I said, "Thank you for supporting my position."

They didn't understand and a third person had to explain it to them paraphrasing what I was saying.

I hope it was a revelation for them and they change.

Last Ukraine Post For The Day

It's nice to find that one is in agreement with VDH.

Victor Davis Hanson is also Cassandra.

Also

The Budapest Memorandum is a prime example of something I despise about Democrat foreign policy.

They meddle where they don't really belong and set up a place for failure with an agreement that doesn't obligate us to help prop up what we just broke with our meddling.

Get rid of your nukes and we'll support your cause at the UN was unnecessary.  But everyone was singing kum-by-yah at the time...

Ukraine, at the time, had a leadership that was friendly with Russia so the idea that Russia would ever invade seemed remote.

What great philosopher once said, "Never underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up?"

It seems pretty clear that the Delaware Crime Family did some toppling of leaders in Kiev and that put some people who were  pretty hostile to Russia in power there.

And they got a war out of the deal.

The people responsible aren't punished.  Hell, they got pardons! 

Here's the important part, at least as far as the US is concerned:

The United States has no national interest in whom runs Ukraine.

Mr Biden had a personal interest in keeping the place aligned against Russia while he was president, but the United States didn't have one.

That's why we sent aid.

It's really cool that we got real world testing of some of our weapons, but that not enough of a return to keep doing it now that our president has no personal stake in the outcome.  It wasn't all smooth sailing with them either.

The current president, our ambassador, state department, etc., working with their counterparts in Ukraine, had hammered out an agreement to both create a national interest for us AND establish a trade balance that would allow the US to recoup the money spent.

All their president had to do was put on a fucking suit, smile for the cameras, enjoy lunch and sign the documents.

He chose, on camera, to be a petulant, entitled, demanding little prick just like he was two years ago when he was making demands of someone who wanted to help for personal financial reasons.

The American response to this kind of gratitude has always been, "have fun, fuck off."

Zelensky is the big problem for getting aid to Ukraine, he's been getting it despite himself because up until now the people he was dealing with had reasons to ignore the ingratitude.  

Those reasons are now gone.

PS: Lots of people said that giving up their nukes was stupid at the time, but everyone was riding the "end of history" wave and forgetting their Kipling.

Wait I Know This One

There's a LOT of misunderstanding about the Budapest Memorandum.

Despite what President Clinton said, and was reported by the press, and repeated recently: It is not and never was an agreement to defend Ukraine.

The defend Ukraine part is an agreement to have discussions, bring it to the UN and issue sternly worded resolutions in the event that Ukraine is invaded.

All of that happened in 2014 when Russia didn't get their way over a leasing agreement of their navy base in Sevastopol and they invaded and took the Crimean peninsula.

"Treaty" obligations fulfilled!  Done.

Anyone who expected more was an idiot.

Yet more was provided.

The Bidens, I think, are the true architects of the Crimean annexation.  I've no proof, but the kids were thick over there and billions of dollars was sticking to their hands.  Allegedly...

The aid that was being provided, also allegedly, was getting kicked back to "The Big Guy" so the Bidens were getting paid to protect their investment.

But there's almost no US interest in being involved in this.  Except as the Bidens have interfered with shit, allegedly.

Traditionally and historically this sort of thing has been handled with either a "sorry about that" and hanging the nation that was meddled with out to dry OR with a costly war that has the same effect of leaving that nation out to dry.

Almost every argument for continuing to supply Ukraine with the arms it desperately needs by the US boils down to the sunk cost fallacy. 

It's in the US national interest to stop supplying those weapons unless we start getting paid for them.  Well, we all know how that went.

Maybe the UN will help.

Cassandra

I knew I'd posted about Zelensky's attitude problem before.  Two years ago almost to the day.

This is not a new behavior for him at all.

It's really lending credence to the idea that the meeting going the way it did was sorta planned.

DEI Boycott Day

I bought two tanks of gas for The Beast and a tank each for the Equinoxes.

Harvey bought groceries from both Wal Mart and Publix.

Today is also a Fuck Earth Day™ day.

I drove an hour just to have lunch with a buddy.