Might Not Be Here For A Bit

Book 9 of The Expanse series just hit my Kindle.

Might just be busy reading it rather than attending to the blog.

Chat among yourselves while I read my book.

No Red Bucket No Irritating Bell

Buying groceries at the local Winn Dixie and I noticed that the Salvation Army bell-ringer and their red bucket were missing.  Edit: To be clear, they were there last week.

I wonder if they were getting an earful over the white guilt bullshit.

I see they've withdrawn the request for white people to apologize, but I think the damage might be done.

Phil Probably Has A Car That Uses These

 

Does anyone know what these glass domes are for in the dash of a Bentley Blower?

I feel like I used to know what those things did...

It'd be amusing to find that they're just lights.

Oh, read about the car they're from here.

Ce N'est Pas Rétro.

Watching this video:

And I am struck.

No flat-top is retro.  An A2 upper is not retro.

Retro ends with the fixed carry handle with a rear sight you need tools to adjust the windage on.

Retro:

 Retro:

Retro:

Retro:

Retro:

The battle was fought and the A2 and later were deemed to not be Retro.

Even if you mount a Trijicon reflex on a detachable carry-handle on your otherwise A4 clone.

We WERE Joking

While discussing the alternatives to using cream of mushroom soup to make green bean casserole, we all speculated about cream of bacon.

Campbell's already makes it and Publix lists it as a normal stocking item.

We're going to the store tomorrow!

As Good As The St Crispin's Day Speech

 

Bill could write, you have to give him that.

Nobody Does Coriolanus

She does a great job with the works of Shakespeare.

Worth a watch for the LOLs.

Fuck It Let's Nuke South Africa

We're shutting down air travel from Africa for a disease that presents with the same severity as jet-lag.

"It presents mild disease with symptoms being sore muscles and tiredness for a day or two not feeling well," Coetzee explained. "So far, we have detected that those infected do not suffer the loss of taste or smell. They might have a slight cough. There are no prominent symptoms. Of those infected some are currently being treated at home."

Coetzee reported around two dozen of her patients that tested positive for the coronavirus and displayed these new symptoms. She alerted officials to the possibility of a new variant, which the World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday designated the omicron variant.

Most of the patients were men who reported "feeling so tired," and half of them were unvaccinated. The patients comprised a range of ages and ethnicities. 

Jesus Fucking Christ can we end this hoax now?

Oh noes!  I might feel run down for a couple days!  The horror!

Wu Ping Cough is following the classic trend of corona viruses and getting easier to catch and less severe as it mutates.

I wish some scientist had done groundbreaking research on this (almost two) decades ago...

Oh, wait.

A paper that basically explains that there's really no need to get a vaccine running because the disease you're trying to prevent will, in essence, cease to exist by the time you're ready for production and what remains will be, essentially, harmless.

It also mentions that the super-high mutation rate lets it get around therapies and immunities.  That worries me that the mRNA therapy we're passing off as a vaccine is making an incubator for variations which are better at infecting people and make them sicker.  It'd definitely be a case where leaving it to run its course would have been the best decision.

It's not an easy read for the layman.  Hard enough that I worry I cited the same paper I read ten years ago...  If I got the wrong one, lemme know I'll look harder for the right one.

Cleaning Up The Sidebar

Many of the blogs on the sidebar have gone silent or dark.

I've moved them down to "Blogs That Used To Entertain".

Anyone who hasn't posted in a year gets moved there.

It's a sad annual task.

Many of those blogs I looked forward to seeing new content from.

What remains is often very much worth wading through the archives.

It Wasn't Skipped

They didn't skip Ξ.

ALL the Wu Ping Cough variants are Xi!

Now I want a picture of Winnie the Pooh wearing a ΞΞΞ fraternity shirt!  Thanks Marv!

COVID-19 Omicron

Hey, fucksticks, shouldn't that be something more like COVID-21 Delta?

But using the accepted systems of naming these things would mean explaining it to people, wouldn't it?

And explaining things like you do, tends to lead to doubts about your competence, don't it?

Something I am definitely not seeing with regards to this new variation is any mention of lethality.

Did anyone else notice the shift in the reporting going from people dying to just being infected?

I'm thinking that Wu Ping Cough is doing what corona viruses do as they age and mutate.

Get more infectious and less lethal.

Otherwise we'd be hearing about how many dead there are.

The media is definitely unaware that we've been observing their methods for a while now.

Information You Needed To Know

 

The Secret

The Lovely Harvey, noting that we love, for the most part, completely different foods; wondered how it was we stuck together so long.

"You don't take my food, I don't take yours.  We're not competing for the same resources."

This is the secret.

Don't take the other's food.

Donate generously to the right, you're welcome.

The Battle of the Rosebud

George Crook made it within 30 miles of the location of the Little Bighorn battle.

About a week before Custer got to the location of his demise...

Crook's column was combat ineffective after this and they turned around.

They were still close enough to the Custer massacre to see the smoke from the wildfires started by the fight.

It gets forgotten that the Indians were concentrating in that area and looking to fight.

They were, in part, being driven together by being pressed between Crook and Terry's columns with Custer's supposed to link up as the other two came together.

Notice that Custer was a week behind getting there than Crook.  This is despite leaving anything using a wheel behind as it would be slowing him down.  I am thinking, the more I study this, is Custer got a late start and was looking to make up time by leaving the wagons and Gatling guns back at Fort Abraham Lincoln.

Major Reno had even scouted the Sioux encampment on the Rosebud two days before Crook's column was engaged.

So close...

I wonder if Reno's reconnoiter had resulted in turning Custer towards the Rosebud and linking up with Crook would have had an entirely different outcome for both Crook and Custer.

I also speculate that Custer not acting on this intelligence might not have been a deliberate attempt to avoid sharing credit with another commander and thus diminishing his chances at a post-service political career.

Custer had a reputation of leaving others out to dry if it conflicted with his goals.

El Presidente

Forget your Judges and Governors!

Chamber a revolver in .38-90 Winchester Express and you win!

Taurus, Keltec, you can just mail me checks for the idea.

Rifle Sniper 155mm

The US military might seem to have struggled in getting a sniper rifle to the field when you look at the whole history of the M21 program.

The XM21 did well in Vietnam and the "production" M21 was also fine.

What developed is aging rifles weren't field serviceable because of the special bedding the action got.

By the late 80's this was getting to be a serious problem with the rifle.

But the US Army had never really considered a moderately wide issue of sniper guns.

Why?

Because artillery.

Why drop $1.50 worth of .30 caliber on someone when $300 of 155 HE-quick will do?  Especially since anyone with a radio and a map can do the latter!

The traditional US response to sniper fire is mortars and flattening the suspected area.

It's not an infantry problem, it's a specialist problem.

I am not saying that snipers have no use, but it's a specialist role.

The M21 is also a program that can be compared to the M60 machine gun.

Did you know that The Pig was the greatest automatic weapon ever fielded?  Did you also know that it's the biggest piece of shit ever made?

Those two diametrically opposed views happen when the people talking are literally talking about the same gun.  Not the same model of gun, the SAME gun.

When it was new, in Vietnam, it was a reliable workhorse.  Twenty-five years later in Germany... not so much.

The XM21 and M21 in the inventory were very long in the tooth in 1989 when some general complained about them being unserviceable in the field.

Oh Most Didn't

In writing about the effects of .38 Long Colt on a juramentado, it should be noted that the berserker Moro that got to bolo range is the exception rather than the rule.

Most of them died well short of machete range well ventilated by .30-40 rounds from the infantry.

The scale of the firepower brought to bear was actually astounding by the standards of the day.

That's It I'm Out

I have finished watching the first season of Apple TV's Foundation.

It is emphatically not the Foundation I read in high school.

Worse.  It's just not that good.

It's very pretty, of course, but every time they show the sky over Terminus I scream, "IS THERE NO ROCHE LIMIT IN THIS UNIVERSE!?!"

I gutted it out to the end of the season and I don't think I will be returning for the second.

I don't care about the two main characters.

It's not because they're black women.

Did you know they're black women?  Entertainment media sure wants to make sure you do know that.

It's because they're not interesting characters.

I like the bit about the Emperors, but even that is getting old by the end.  An empire ruled by such petulant bitches deserves to die in a fire.

I was kind of excited to see them get to The Mule, but they've fucked it so hard so far that they can fuck up The Mule without me watching them do it.

Zoon

J Kb at Miggy's says, 

That was the whole point of the Rittenhouse trial and why so many were invested in i

That was the whole point.

The state had to convict Rittenhouse to protect their unofficial Brownshirt thugs in Antifa.

The people needed him acquitted so that Antifa knew we could defend ourselves from them.

The people won and Antifa is shitting itself.

Good.

The Left wanted us to have to cower in fear of Antifa.

The Rittenhouse verdict defies that.

I hope every time some Antifa thug assaults someone they get blasted.

In reply to Andy Ngo's:

I would suggest to Antifa that if you don't want to get shot, stop being violent thugs.

But I notice the tone is more along the lines of upping the violence rather than taking the hint.

A hint they should heed, because they're not in the majority and there's way more red pills out there than they have people.  People are waking up to the idea that mobs need to be opposed.

Buffalo Farts

In 1850 there were more American bison in North America than there is cattle today.

I don't think that cow farts are a significant contributor to climate change because we didn't have a massive drop in global temperature in 1890 after we'd essentially wiped the bison out.

Wisconsin Is A Happening Place Lately

 Racine County Files Charges Against State Election Officials

I Have Questions

The FBI says that a gun was missing from Laundrie's parent's home.

"When Brian Laundrie’s parents reported him missing in mid-September following the strangulation of his former fiancée Gabby Petito, they turned over all of the firearms in their home to the FBI – but one was missing, sources close to the investigation tell Fox News Digital."

They don't mention how they know that one was missing.

Did the parents notice at the time they turned over their guns?

Did the FBI know how many guns were there before they took the guns?

Why did the parents have to hand over their firearms in the first place?

Well I Am Awake Now

As I was on my way to get a glass of water, I heard the front door knob being turned.

Just as I was about to ask Harvey why she was at the door, she says, "who's at the door?"

Mission to get water, cancelled.

AR fetched, round chambered, front light on.

All I can see is the top of a head through the peephole.

"Who are you?"

"Unintelligible..."

She looked up at the peep now, a drunk appearing woman.

"You have the wrong house, go away."

"OK, unintelligible..."

Probably a genuine drunk lady, but I've read stories about people opening the door for the poor vulnerable drunk girl to be snowplowed by her associates.

I'd have been happy to call the cops for her, if she'd asked.

Aquavit

 

The dill did not come in as strong as hoped.

The cloves are very strong.

It is aquavit.

And far cheaper than Linie.

A happy experiment.

Next batch I will skip the cloves.

The Elk Can Tell

Technomad is upset at the vast array of cartridges available out there.

He indicates that he nearly bought a box of 9mm Largo for a 9mm Parabellum gun, but a fast thinking gun shop employee caught it in time.

That raises the question, "just how many 9mm rounds are there?"

A fuck-ton. A metric fuck-ton.

9mm Action Express
9mm Largo aka 9x23mm, 9mm Bergmann-Bayard, 9mm Bayard Long
9mm Browning Long
9mm Federal
9mm Glisinti
9mm Luger aka 9mm Parabellum, 9x19mm, 9x19mm NATO
9mm Mauser
9mm Steyr
9mm Ultra 

9mm Winchester Magnum 

9x17mm aka .380 Auto, 9mm Browning, 9mm Corto, 9mm Kurz, 9mm Short, and 9mm Browning Court

9x18mm Makarov
9x21mm
9x25 Dillion
9x56mm Mannlicher
9x57mm Mauser
9x57mmR Mauser
9x63mm
9x70mmR Mauser
9x71mm Peterlongo 

Normally I would say, "Check what's inscribed on your gun," but too often older guns just say 9mm on them.

Spanish guns in particular don't make a distinction between 9mm Largo, 9mm Parabellum and 9mm Browning Long.  They just say 9mm!

That means that if you're going to be buying old pistols, you need to do some research and find out what calibers it was chambered in and double check before buying ammo or going shooting.

It will save you money and could save your life.

But that's just 9mm.

There's a seemingly endless list of cartridges that don't have a real distinction between them except that they don't interchange and what model gun chambered them.

This leads to Uncle Robert on Mom's side eating Christmas dinner with us and Uncle Bob on Dad's side eating with us on Christmas Eve.  As far as the deer can tell, there's not a hair's breadth difference in terminal performance between .30-06 and .280 Remington.  I bought a rifle in .270 Winchester just to stoke the fires of that fight.

There's literally no difference downrange between .30 Remington and .30-30.  The difference is the case.  .30 Remington works in the semi-auto Model 8 and 81.

The deer likely wouldn't be able to tell if it was killed with either of those or .300 Savage.  Or .30-40 or .30-06 or .308 Winchester.

Jeff Cooper used to go after new rounds which duplicated the performance of existing rounds all the time.  He took the position that a bolt gun was a bolt gun and there's no need for new rounds in them that are identical in performance to the older round.

And that's not even the beginning of why there's so many rounds.

Everyone who sits down to make a new cartridge thinks they're breaking new ground or finding an improvement over something that exists.

Don't worry about it.

Buy what you like, make sure you can identify and find the ammo for it.  Go shooting and have fun!

Ideally, you will not need to know about more than five or six cartridges.

Me?  I love to play with all sorts of actions and designs.  That leads to a plethora of different cartridges here in many different kinds of gun.

I have a sorting system and I use it.

I learned the hard way that a box marked .30 Government can mean .30-40 AND .30-06.  Happily, I knew someone with a Krag who was perfectly willing to trade round for round.

Oh, none of this touches on the rounds which can be fired from the same gun despite being different cartridges; like .38 Special and .357 Magnum (and others).

Non Peer

The US Army has not often faced a peer or near peer opponent.

Most of the time it's facing irregulars and rabble.

It was a surprising realization.

The Indian campaigns.

Philippine insurrections.

20th Century trips to Mexico.

Haiti. 

Some of Vietnam.

Afghanistan.

Latter half of Iraq.

You'd think we'd be better at it.

Because of my research for Sabers and Sorcery, I have been reading a lot about the Philippines.  I can even spell Philippines correctly on the first try most of the time because of it!

How America fights insurrections is to find a pocket of resistance, put overwhelming firepower on it, put out the fires started, bury some bodies and leave the area.

...And let the pocket get all resisty again.

Lather.  Rinse.  Repeat.

In most cases we quit before the resistance is completely crushed and dead.

The Indian campaigns being the giant exception here.

I'm getting history lessons on this too.

Something that needs to be said loudly and a lot more often about the American Indian and their clashes with the United States is there was going to be a war between these people one way or another.

One people or the other was going to win that war.

The specifics of how the war started and why it was fought don't really matter as it was going to be something, sooner or later, so why not what actually happened?

It's a conflict that seems entirely too brutal to modern eyes.  What with our Geneva and Hague Conventions and rules of war and such.  It was not exceptionally bloody by the standards of the day.  In fact, the constant willingness to accept a surrender and create the reservations was considered very compassionate.

Eradication was how war would have been fought just a couple hundred years prior; and that manner of warfare was key in why the Sioux were so far west when what we think of as the Indian Wars were going on after the US Civil War.

But Is It Easier To Find

Is your Astra 400 marked like this on the barrel?

This means your Astra is chambered for both 9mm Largo and .38 ACP.

It is important to not get .38 ACP and .38 Super confused here.

If you handload, .38 Super brass is readily available...  But keep those rounds segregated!

Though everyone is out of stock, .38 ACP is cheaper than 9mm Largo at places that still list them.

Let Them Walk

You didn't even have to pay much attention to what I've written to get the idea that I think the McMichael's and Bryan are culpable in the death of Mr Aubery.

But now there is a threat of violence if the "correct" verdict is not made.

Now I want them to be let off.  Judge dismissing with prejudice and saying, "you threaten a riot over a verdict and the defendant is innocent."

The New Black Panther Party and BLM75 are no different in their behavior than a mob of KKK members outside a court building demanding that a black man accused of...

IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT THEY ARE ACCUSED OF!

It's mob justice.  In the KKK example, a literal lynch mob.

The rule of law finds this sort of threat repugnant.

The proper response to these mobs, all of these mobs, is belt fed and water cooled.

I don't care what color the racists and bigots are.

Watching A Tree Grow

I have lived where I live for an unusually long time for me.

Even when I lived in Ames I would change address every couple of years.

So I never got to see something like this before:

September 2012, plus a bonus pic of my tubby ass.

August 2015.

January 2017.

May 2017.

November 2021.

When I moved in we had an orange tree just to the left of where the palm is now.  That tree died and the palm grew from a seed that ended up in our yard however such seeds end up in yards.

We've been doing our amateurish best at keeping it groomed.

Wow

The crop of pansy dancing monkeys we have these days...

[Oliver] Reed died from a heart attack during a break from filming Gladiator in Valletta, Malta, on the afternoon of 2 May 1999. According to witnesses, he drank eight pints of German lager, a dozen shots of rum, half a bottle of whiskey and a few shots of Hennessy cognac, in a drinking match against a group of sailors on shore leave from HMS Cumberland at a local pub. His bar bill totalled a little over 270 Maltese lira (almost 450 GBP; about 590 USD). After beating five much younger Royal Navy sailors at arm-wrestling, Reed suddenly collapsed, dying while en route to hospital in an ambulance.

One wonders if those sailors were brought to the masthead and flogged.

"One old man out drank the five of you?  The honor of Her Majesty's Ship Cumberland has been stained!"

From SEALs To Sci Fi

I just noticed that security chief Michael Garabaldi in Babylon 5 has a S&W Model 15 in the season 3 episode "Gray 17 is Missing".

 

It was his grandmother's when she worked the Boston PD.

Any Time You Wanna Say You're Sorry Is Fine Miggy

You were a firm opponent to open carry when you lived in Florida.

But now that Hogg agrees with you, you flip flop?

Welcome to the party of supporting OCW.

Go ahead and comment with a "I'm sorry."

Fucking People

I've had to interact with two people this evening that I seriously worried would be sporting 9mm holes in them.

The first was at Wal Mart and this really twitchy nervous guy kept edging closer every time I tried to look for the elusive funnel.

If I looked right at him for a few seconds he'd back off, but as soon as I wasn't looking right at him he'd start closing in again.

I did remember to keep an eye out for someone in the other direction.  Pats self on back.

Finally I exited stage left to see if there were other places Wal Mart hid funnels.

Eventually I ended up back were Mr Twitcher was and he started sidling towards me again.

So I said, "I think you need to get away from me.  Now!"

He looked like I'd slapped him across the face, but depart he did.

That left me time to find the funnel.  And see the shoplifter...

Looking back, I wonder if loss prevention was so quick because they were watching twitcher.

The second time is at the liquor store.

Just your basic panhandler.

He was accosting a different customer in their car when I arrived, but was loitering nearby when I came out.

After pointedly keeping my car between him and I by going down the passenger side instead of the driver's side it appeared that he was going to ignore me.  But as soon as I had deposited the IPA in the hatch and opened the driver's door he started over.

"Go away!" I said in my best Sargent's voice.  That worked like a charm.

But some people are pushing the boundaries lately.

Keep your head on a swivel and your wits about you.

But I'm An Irredemable Bigot Because I Am White

I have news for BLM.

Nearly all of "us" support black suspects getting the same defense and acquittal that Kyle Rittenhouse got.

Nearly all of "us" are horrified by the behavior of the prosecution and wonder how often their malfeasance went without note because the media wasn't trying to crucify the defendant which attracted an uncommon amount of funding for the defense.

"We" don't want innocent people going to jail.

I'll happily support you getting that in place.

But YOU have to stop doing crime to make your point.

You're attacking the innocent as surely as the corrupt DA is.

YOU need to cull your ranks of criminals.

If you really are a grassroots organization with wide support, then we shouldn't have had four out of four assailants of Mr Rittenhouse turn out to have criminal records.

It is not your goal that "we" oppose, but your methods.

You might also want to consider holding off on the protests and riots and waiting to see if the person the cops shot is someone worthy of such a response.

I notice that when a white shitheel criminal gets dirt-napped by the cops white people don't riot.

But we have protested when innocent white people get killed.  It does happen.  Where were YOU when we were protesting police violence?

More Violence In Wisconsin

Apparently someone decided to run their SUV through a parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

There's video of gunfire coming from the truck as it speeds away.  Update: The gunfire was the police trying to stop him.

There's a person of interest in custody, and not a peep about them.

That's normally an indicator that the perp is not a law abiding straight white man.

Too soon, at this point, to know for sure.

I have a feeling of dread about this being RoP, BLM or Antifa.

Update:

No word in being straight, but not a law abiding white guy.

Civilize Them With A Krag

Starting at the same 10 yards as with the pistol, our corporal fires his M1896 at the charging juramentado.

As with the revolvers, shot placement matters.

Bad rolls will fuck you here.

Assuming we're aimed at the beginning of our turn at 10 yards, we fire at +2 to skill for a 14 to hit the torso and 11 to hit the vitals.

If they don't drop or you miss, 11 for the torso at 5 yards then 13 at contact.

Going for the vitals hit normally drops them dead right there with a single shot.

Getting two torso shots normally almost gets to the berserker stopping -5x HP.

Three torso hits occasionally fails to stop them right at your feet.

Funnel

The nearest Bed Bath and Beyond has gone tits up.

Target had no funnels at all.

I was forced to enter Wal Mart the same week as Thanksgiving to find any funnels at all.

Happily, they have the size I was after.

The lack of funnels made me wonder if aging scotch is more popular than ever.

The shoplifters are out in force.  I had my phone out trying to see if there was an alternative to the funnel I was considering and someone started pocketing shit right in front of me.

Loss prevention was on them like stink on shit though.

No, Ms Teacher-Lady, I will not support an increase in teacher salaries.

I was repeatedly promised by your unions and yourself that increasing your pay would improve student scores and increased graduation rates.

I was repeatedly promised by your unions and yourself that increasing school funding would improve student scores and increased graduation rates.

I was repeatedly promised by your unions and yourself that decreasing class sizes would improve student scores and increased graduation rates.

I held up my end of the bargain, and you've gotten more pay, higher budgets and fewer students per teacher for the two decades I've lived in Florida.

What I don't have is increased scores and improved graduation rates.

All that extra money and staffing did was cost more for the same outcome.

I'd kind of accepted it as a status quo thing... until...

Until you petulantly refused to work after Wu Ping Cough had been shown to not be a real problem.

Until you pressed for useless mask mandates.

Until you demanded that students be forced to be immunized against Wu Ping Cough, but fought be exempted yourselves.

"FUCK YOU!" is as delicately as I can put it.

I am thinking that we need to return to the model where school is in walking distance and that's as far away as the funding and control comes from.  This model pares things down to JUST the 3R's and doesn't have time for all the indoctrination.  Plus, should time for politics be found, the people who control the school only have to walk over and express their displeasure and fire the offending employee.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

GASP

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Taking castle doctrine to the next level when the castle defends itself!

He won't do that again!  Even our aspiring rap stars are Florida Men.

The Potential

S&W has just released the M&P in 10mm.

I have a case of kinda-wants.

But an alternative that's just as alluring to me has occurred.

.38 Super.

It needs a pistol that takes the longer overall length that .45 ACP and 10mm have.

L -> R: .45 ACP, .38 Super, 10mm Auto

Glock and S&W both make a .45/10mm versions of their plastic fantastic pistols now.

There's no reason that they don't make a .38 Super variation except a perceived lack of interest.  Really just need a new barrel and magazine.

I think I shall write a letter or an email.

I think a .38 Super M&P would be delightful as the .45 version fits my hand well.