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Beeper has figured out the gap between the two baby gates.
The good news is Shadow watched her jump through the gap and just stayed where she was sitting.
That's an amazing amount of progress for our kitten who's afraid of her own shadow!
I've placed a pillow to block the gap to see if that deters or inspires Beeper to go over the top.
80 years ago, this very moment, Enola Gay released Little Boy over the city of Hiroshima marking the first time a nuclear weapon was detonated in war.
Ironically, ground zero Hiroshima looks better than downtown Detroit today.
This channel posts a lot of Russia is doomed stuff that has not, yet, come to fruition; but they continue to make decent points that deserve further investigation.
The assertion that they're not even spending China levels on maintenance for their nuclear deterrent is something to pay attention to.
China is kind of famous for not having the means to deliver much of its arsenal, on top of corruption that definitely hobbles its utility.
On paper the Russians have more nukes ready to fly than the US, but aren't even spending as much as France or the UK, whom have much smaller numbers of warheads and missiles?
One wonders, just exactly, how many of their delivery systems still work.
The mention of how old many of their ICBM designs are isn't necessarily valid. Our main missile is the LGM-30G Minuteman, first fielded in 1970! Our main missile is C&R eligible! But we test ours on the regular, it appears that Russia doesn't.
A common refrain of minorities is that White people are fine with them as long as they act like White people.
The claim is it's racist to expect them conform to "white" society's norms.
But it's not, really.
How do we know?
Because an actual racist doesn't care how well the minority conforms to the norms.
The extreme example, of course, is The Holocaust. A Jew could not be law abiding enough. Jews could not be secular enough.
They could not conform enough.
I've experienced a disconnect a couple of times when I have to notice a friend is a minority. Newt is not my black friend. Newt is my friend.
We're friends because we have similar outlooks on life and compatible senses of humor with a lot of shared experiences.
His being a Jarhead comes up far more often than his skin tone.
A Black person conforming to the cultural norms of the US doesn't have problems, in my experience.
Cultures expect conformity from people who would live within them.
Cultures have a right to reject those whom will not.
Some cultures ARE better than others.
The American culture with its traditions of freedom and liberty is actually quite color blind. The people who abhor those freedoms are generally at the core of attempts to make race and creed a central theme. They do so to undermine the traditions of liberty.
All that can sound pretty damn racist.
It's no mistake that this speech was included in The Blues Brothers:
White men! White women! The swastika is calling you. The sacred and ancient symbol of your race, since the beginning of time. The Jew is using The Black as muscle against you. And you are left there helpless. Well, what are you going to do about it, Whitey? Just sit there? Of course not! You are going to join with us. The members of the American Socialist White Peoples' Party. An organization of decent, law abiding white folk. Just like you!
Sounds a lot like, "if you just join our society and act like us, everything will be fine!" doesn't it?
But it's not the same. It's not directed at the minority to relax and join the majority. It's directed at a majority to STOP the minorities. It's to create division, not unity. To prevent minorities from joining the greater society at large as equals.
Racists and bigots are often very good at convincing people of things.
But remember; that speech by the head nazi from Blues Brothers was given by a character shown to be an idiot at every turn. They actually went to Wrigley Field before realizing Elwood had falsified his address.
Don't fall for it.
Something that came up a lot when I used to deal with college age people when I was far older than college age myself while living in a university town...
Seeing the bias in something but not being able to articulate it to someone who was lacking the perspective to see it.
I had noticed that NPR had a bias and I couldn't cite specific examples because I'd stopped listening when the bias became apparent.
To prove my point to their satisfaction I needed to have recent and blatant examples.
To get them, I would have had to subject myself to listening to that garbage again, so I declined to do so.
The advent of the internet made it worse.
Because after the internet I could find examples of the bias and cite them, but counters to those examples were provided by the places who were biased and since they fully vetted media with layers upon layers of fact checkers... Fuck my lying eyes.
I do notice that the places that were making money pointing out the bias were taking screen shots. I prolly should have done that instead of copying links. Either the link would be dead or what I was complaining about would be edited.
Now that Trump is going through things like a scythe, I am feeling more and more vindicated about my observations from 10 plus years ago. I say ten years because that about when I last talked to one of them. The last of them...
I finally remembered that I wanted to see what the explanation for there being no hole in the ozone later over the arctic when nearly all of the CFC emissions are in the Northern hemisphere.
It's because the polar vortex in the antarctic is stable compared to the same weather structure in the arctic.
What hit me in the explanation is the reason for the hole appears to be a "wall" of weather that keeps atmosphere from the outside from mingling with the inside and this, combined with colder temperatures than up North, allows the ozone to be depleted inside the vortex.
The cold also explains why this catalytic reaction doesn't run rampant across the rest of the planet.
You need chlorine and bromine radicals attached to sub-freezing ice crystals in an isolating environment for it to destroy ozone.
Since this vortex is cyclical, the "wall" dissipates and fresh ozone from the outside can flow in.
What this also means is this was never a world-wide threat to ozone. It's a local phenomenon.
Ever find an online auction where there's no action going yet, put in a lowball and find yourself the leading bid?
I'm there on a Glock 17 Gen 1 Classic right now.
It's pretty much inconceivable I will win it for the bid I've made.
But I'm in the lead and still have some slack before my max bid is reached.
Crispy has been, random and capriciously, locking up.
Which is a bummer because I like my old Lenovo.
But a lightbulb went on...
A few days ago, Harvey's laptop crashed hard when her Logitech trackball decided to up and die.
Crispy uses the same model trackball, and it always locked up when I was using it. Mostly while scrolling.
Last night, before I started up my sleep movies, I removed the receiver from the USB port and ran it from the trackpad.
I even did my morning surfing with a movie still playing, something that previously caused the locking up.
So far so good!
Of course, this is being typed out on DerpyPuter...
Unrelated, or maybe related...
I am a big fan of trackballs.
The old, wired, Logitech Trackman Wheel was an outstanding mouse. Rugged and durable.
Logitech stopped making wired trackballs in this format, so we migrated to the similar but wireless M570 and M575.
Looking at my order history at Amazon, I am wondering why I've been so loyal. We have three machines using these mice and I've ordered 7 since 2017. Harvey has ordered three.
FuzzyGeff recommended a different model, Elecom EX-G that's been what I've been using on DerpyPuter. Durability test in progress.
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I remember when we were kids and they'd give us a pack of smokes every morning and we needed to have half of them gone before lunch or we didn't get recess.
It was never a problem because we'd compete to see who could smoke the most before the end of the day. Our parents would measure the nicotine stains on our fingers and mark them on the family cigarette case.
Kids these days will just never understand like Gen X and older do.
Babylon Bee posted this.
I quoted ""Everybody hates the Jews!" - T. Lehrer."
People are mad at me.
Uncultured swine didn't even look the quote up.
C'est La Vie.
The Lovely Harvey found an animal's burrow in our back yard by collapsing the roof of it and falling into the resulting hole.
Visions of sinkholes dancing in our heads... We probed around and found the ground to be nice and solid beneath and around the collapsed area.
Today I moved from dirt from the corner behind the shed to the crater/burrow.
All better.
I think it's an abandoned turtle/tortoise burrow. It's the right size and shape and we get scooters every time we get a lot of rain in sort period of time when they move, temporarily, to higher ground.
Watching what happened in Cincinnati and looking at their government officials apologizing for the perpetrators and condemning the victims it's easy to blame race.
People of color beat two white people very severely.
But it's not their color that caused them to be violent.
It's a culture that's been built around them that allows for and encourages violence.
There was racism on display, and it wasn't the victims.
Update: Fox News reports that someone uttered the dread CENSORED at some point. Not clear if it was the victims or not.
I would not be shocked to find that it was a person of color uttering CENSORED. I mean, they're allowed to say CENSORED because double standards.
There is racism in the concept that the people of color cannot be held to the same standard as white people and therefore should have a culture lowered to their ability.
The people encouraging that notion are rarely people of color.
They've been selling this idea since before the Civil War.
They've been proven wrong more than once, but keep managing to reclaim the debate and get their ideas about race put forward as policy.
Now, any attempt to hold these people of color accountable for their actions in the same manner as any other American is claimed to be racist.
But it's not.
To give them a pass based on race is.
If they really want to take this to its fullest, they're going to find themselves confined to their ghettos (ghetto being used in its original meaning here) and no longer allowed to interact with the surrounding culture at all.
It's interesting that every single case of someone who originated in such a ghetto, adopted western society's norms and moved out thrived.
American Indians, Blacks, Catholics, Chinese, Irish, Italians, Japanese, and even Jews have all had their moment in the box and everyone who abandoned their native norms for American norms became just another American.
Never forget; the melting pot is a crucible, not a stew pot.
When re-reading some stuff about the adoption of the M17/M18 pistol I noticed something I missed.
The double action for re-strike requirement was dropped.
Back in the XM9 trials, that prevented FN and Glock from entering the competition.
But it was must-have back then.
I wonder what changed in the minds of the people writing the specifications.
Perhaps it's what changed in their wallets? But none dare accuse them of taking bribes.
Some of it must be the changing winds of fashion and trainers changing from, "pull the trigger again," to, "rack the slide," in the event of a failure to fire.
What do you do when you have two cats that cannot be in the same space and you cannot close the door to the bedroom because your, new, $6,000 air ducts don't push enough air into the room?
You install a couple of baby gates!
If they were smart, they'd figure out they could get through the gap between them, but they aren't.
International Milspec has beat me to production.
I can see several differences between the real E4A and what they've done; and I might just steal their changes for mine when I finally get around to making it.
Posted for prosperity. I got an email from SIG the other day.
P320 Safety Information
Recently, there have been a number of reports and claims regarding the safety of the P320 pistol and its use by the U.S. Military and law enforcement agencies. We understand you may have questions. We want to address your concerns and provide you with full, complete, and accurate information.
SIG SAUER has ALWAYS and will continue to put the safety and security of the U.S. Military, the law enforcement community, our consumers, and the public first. To this end, we want to be sure concerned citizens have access to complete facts.
The P320 pistol is one of the safest, most advanced pistols in the world -meeting and exceeding all industry safety standards. Its design has been thoroughly tested and validated by the U.S. Military and law enforcement agencies at the federal, state and local levels. In addition, the P320 has been rigorously tested, and is currently in use by militaries and law enforcement agencies around the world.
FBI Testing and Report
A recently publicized internal report from the FBI’s Ballistic Research Facility (BRF) created some confusion and raised questions about the safety of the P320. The FBI prepared this report for the Michigan State Police after an officer was involved in an accidental discharge. SIG SAUER engineers met with the FBI and Michigan State Police on several occasions to review the report and the incident. Ultimately, the FBI conducted a more detailed, repeatable, and comprehensive battery of testing using compatible equipment. The subsequent testing resulted in zero instances of failures and the Michigan State Police are now confidently issuing officers P320 based pistols. The FBI BRF have yet to make any official claims or statements regarding the safety of the P320 pistol or any of its variants. However, we are urging the FBI BRF and FBI Director Kash Patel to release a full and complete testing and evaluation report on their updated P320 safety testing.
Department of Homeland Security
An internal memo from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)/ U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was recently posted online stating the agency was halting its use of the P320. Many online media outlets immediately sought to attribute this to the above referenced FBI BRF report, which is incorrect. DHS has never raised any safety concerns about the P320 and ICE has since extended their existing contract with SIG SAUER another two years. Since DHS has yet to comment publicly correcting their improperly leaked memo, or any statements questioning the safety of the P320, we are now urging ICE to release all information on P320 testing. SIG SAUER is honored to continue aiding ICE in their mission to protect America.
U.S. Air Force M18
There was a recent tragic incident at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming which resulted in the death of an Airman. Because the incident involved the discharge of a (P320 based) M18 pistol, the Air Force is actively conducting an evaluation of M18 pistols within the specific Command where the incident happened. This cautionary step is standard procedure. We proactively offered assistance to the U.S. military as they investigate the incident. Contrary to several online reports, (P320 based) M17 and M18 pistols remain on active duty with all branches of the U.S. Military, including the U.S. Air Force, defending freedom around the world. We have absolute confidence in the U.S. Military’s ability to conduct a thorough investigation and report their findings. As we learn more information about the investigation, we will continue to provide updated information.
P320 Range and Training Bans
Following several of these inaccurate reports, a number of ranges, training providers, and training facilities made the reactionary decision to ban the P320 and its use in their facilities. We are actively working to provide these individuals with accurate information along with a detailed understanding of the P320 and its safety features. If you are impacted by a P320 range or a training provider ban, we urge you to reach out to SIG CUSTOMER SERVICE: 603-610-3000 Option 1 or send a message here so we can clarify any misinformation and provide the truth.
The P320 CANNOT, under any circumstances, discharge without the trigger first being moved to the rear. This has been verified through exhaustive testing by SIG SAUER engineers, the U.S. Military, several major federal and state law enforcement agencies, and independent laboratories. This video provides a detailed view into all of the various safety features of the P320 and provides a detailed explanation of how the safety system works; for further information on the P320 please visit here.
As with any gun, the P320 will discharge if the trigger is pulled to the rear. Accordingly, SIG SAUER continues to remind its customers, employees, and the public to employ all safe gun-handling practices as spelled out in detail in our product manuals. The SIG SAUER Academy remains a resource to customers, employees, and the public in offering various firearms safety courses.
We respect the public’s concern and are actively working to provide as much information as possible. We sincerely thank you for your continued support of SIG SAUER and urge anyone with additional questions or concerns regarding the P320 and/or safe firearms handling to reach out to our customer service team.
This is some very carefully phrased stuff.
Personally, I don't think all that many guns are affected by whatever the problem is, but it's the behavior of SIG over it that's the real issue.
I've watched S&W and Ruger deal with possible safety problems far better than this. Even Kel Tec was more proactive.
SIG is acting like a company that's fully aware of an issue they know cannot be fixed.
It's starting to look, to me, like they know it's an inherent problem with the design and can't be solved and are trying to "wait it out" until the military contracts are done.
If I'm wrong, it's kind of in their court to convince us otherwise.
The "It ends today" press release and this email are not doing that.
This is why I hate it when conservatives get some power.
They don't roll back gun control but they do start going moral majority on stuff "for the children."
Fine, we don't want kids to access this stuff, but they invariably choose age verification methods which make it nearly impossible for legitimate adults to access it.
This is because it's not about the children getting at it. It's to eradicate it because it's immoral.
Immoral because their imaginary friend says so.
I've been sick of this imaginary friend since the first Satanic Panic and being proselytized at while trying to play Traveller.
Traveller didn't even have the stuff in it that the Jack Chick was worried about!
For fuck's sake, I don't even need the spell checker to know how to spell proselytize thanks to having to learn the word for what they're doing.
WKRP had a decent rundown of how it works.
The more I'm enjoying a series I'm bingeing, the more I notice shit they're getting wrong.
In this case, though, is Hollywood's deliberate ignorance in how gun laws work.
Time and time again a character waltzes into a pawn shop and, despite being a prohibited person, walks out with a firearm.
In this instance, a 9mm pistol with a suppressor!
I know that the NFA branch and the SilencerCo kiosks have sped things up but it's not same-day.
Which means the pawn shop owner would have to be committing a felony themselves by not doing a background check at all.
Hollywood either thinks that pawn shops don't do background checks or that they believe that every pawn shop just breaks the law and sells to felons without checking.
It's also giving examples of why you cannot simply tax or fine businesses and expect those costs to not be passed on to to consumer.
Corporations do not pay taxes, the people that buy their stuff do. They just don't pay them directly.
Anything that makes something more expensive to make will make it more expensive to buy.
ANYthing.
Pay attention here Unions.
I've long held that regulation and union labor are the two driving factors that shoved so much manufacturing offshore from the US.
Reducing the CAFE fine to $0.00 should either dramatically reduce the price of cars or increase the profits of the car makers. If either happens, or a bit of both, then I think I've been vindicated.
Watching gangster TV shows and movies I am struck with two realizations about the people who played criminals in most of my game worlds.
They are not near immoral enough to be TV bad guys.
AND
TV bad guys pale compared to the depravity of the real world.
Players will steal and murder, but I can only think of one rape. No pederasty. No selling people of any kind. They'd smuggle things, but never drugs.
Oftentimes they'd act against their fellow criminals who did.
Murderhobos with a code! Queue 'A-Team' music.
Octospheromancy doesn't work because it's really icosahedromancy.*
Adjust your spell books accordingly.
*Yes, I just made up those two words.
I learned something fun today that prolly everyone else already knew.
Arctic is because of Arktos, or there's bears here.
Antarctic is the opposite of bears; or no bears here.
Because of the penguins!
We could label the north pole AntpinguÃnous because it's the opposite of where the penguins are.
I just got back from the neuro doc.
I don't have neuropathy!
Just pain.
I guess I will keep dealing with it without knowing why, just like the last 35 years.
Medical mysteries are so much fun when you get to live them.
On the plus side, since it's not neuropathy, it's unlikely to get worse.
Two things about the theory that the yutes hit the manhole casement with their car.
1. To hit it at the angle of the drag marks, they would have had to start inside the fenced-in yard of the house to the south of the empty lot AND gone through a telephone pole.
2. There are no tire tracks in the grass around the casement.
Thank you for your time.
As a veteran, it's nice to be deferred to on military topics because I'm a veteran.
BUT!
A veteran, with no other qualifiers, isn't an expert on everything military. Especially if the veteran is a Marine.
The USMC seems to inculcate the idea that they are subject matter experts in everything military and that they should expound on it every chance they get.
I'd put my being a history and military technology nerd over being a veteran as to why I know what I know.
The military technology nerd thing fueled my decision to join, as a matter of fact.
That nerd factor is why wanted to see how things work, and take them apart.
So don't defer to someone just because they're a veteran because you end up with BS like, "The M9 pistol is too heavy and bulky when you're already carrying 100 lb. loads."
Sweetie, damn few soldiers carrying 100 lb. loads get a pistol. And most of them get that load spread out to the rest of the platoon.
I looked it up. There's a TM on it. I used it when I was geeking out making Twilight: 2000 stuff.
So, either our veteran is/was an officer, radioman or a non-rifle support weapon... Or they weren't lugging those loads on their back.
I was issued a pistol. Past basic I never lugged a significant load on my back with that issue pistol. The tank carried a shit-ton of gear. Me not much.
When I "got" to lug heavy loads around, I wasn't issued a pistol. I wasn't an officer, didn't carry a radio or a specialized weapon.
As to the M9 being too heavy and bulky? As tankers our main complaint with them was the janky Bianchi shoulder holster. We all changed back to the old, leather, M9 holsters as soon as we were allowed. The gun fits, so why not?
Tobacco didn't make it to Europe until the latter half of the 16th century.
The 16th century is in the latter half of The Renaissance.
That means it's out of place in so many medievalesque fantasy settings.
But you see a lot of pipes in the artwork for such settings, don't you?
I blame Tolkien and his "pipe weed."
Fantasy settings are chock-a-block with anachronisms.
I've found another case of Mandela Effect.
The home-row location bumps have been on F and J (under the index fingers) since the bumps were added, around about 2002.
If you remember them on a different key, Mandela has you.
Update: The internets, they be wrong. Again. I suspected they would be, thus the post title which riffed on the old meme, "I read it on the internet, it must be true."
And he's a hero!
Another thing the media gets wrong; the police didn't just roll up and shoot him to death for being black and having a gun. Almost like there isn't systemic racism in every police force and hardly any cops are bastards.
Go figure.
Last night I heard a lot of thumping outside.
It sounded like repeated slamming of car doors and that got me wondering which of my neighbors was having a domestic.
Peeking out the window of the front door I could see two cars parked straight across from my house, but no obvious activity.
So I went around to the side of the house and looked out my gate for a wider view and saw four teens moving the manhole cover casement from the sewer.
They fled before I was even done giving my information to the 911 operator.
What I saw after they left:
When the deputies arrived they both did a, "What the Hell?"
I have no idea WHY they'd do this at all.
They got it back over the hole for the sewer and I expect the county to have someone out Monday to fix it for reals.
Added the SIG P225 as the P6 and the H&K USP as the P8 to my T2K GURPS conversion.
It's minutia like this that keeps me amending the thing.
The P5 got skipped for being a police pistol, but not nationally issued.
It happens every time I try to use the word, 'asterisk'.
I try to spell it asterix.
It's wrong and spellchecker catches it, but suggests, 'aster ix,' 'aster-ix,' 'aster,' and 'testatrix.'
Considering that 'asterix' is the most common misspelling of 'asterisk', you'd think that spellchecker would suggest it, no?
OK, TikTok, why are murderers, sex offenders, and pedos censored with a little asterisk?
It's not so we can't figure out the word.
It's not like those three words are like the dread CENSORED.
Are you worried that murderers, sex offenders and pedos will be offended by being associated with illegal aliens? If that's so, why aren't gang members, human traffickers, fentanyl dealers and drunk driver's censored with a little '*'?
I keep reading about 9mm 1911's.
When I look into it, they're not actually 1911's, they're double stack 9mm that look like a 1911, but have almost nothing in common with one.
That sounds like another gun...
The more things change, the more they stay the same?
Ye Olde Grande Pussiance ticks a lot of the same boxes as a some of these newer guns do; plus style!
Update:
While I was referring to the current fad of 2011's, Willard is correct that a Star Model B is the true 9mm 1911.
And it's as close to the 1911 mechanically as the current crop of 2011's so it still qualifies by their standards!
Ray Donovan, despite being entertaining, has some serious problems with police procedure, evidence and forensics.
Ray is a fixer.
He's the guy who makes problems go away for the rich and famous in LA.
If only he was fucking better at it...
His boss, in a fit of rage, kills a former lover with a fire-poker.
Ray and his crew clean up the scene for the boss and create a false trail that the ex-lover stole a bunch of money and fled the country.
Someone who Ray had previously fucked over figured out Ray was involved.
This guy then gets into Ray's storage unit AND FINDS THE FUCKING MURDER WEAPON BEING STORED THERE!!!!!
He threatens Ray's boss over it and blackmails him into accusing Ray of committing the murder.
Boss's daughter doesn't back the accusation and tells the, truthful, story that Dad had murdered his lover.
Boss goes jail, happily ever after!
What about that whole accomplice after the fact and hiding the body and sanitizing the crime scene to hide evidence?
Ray and associates are still guilty of that!
Isn't that something the cops should look into? We never see anything suggesting there was a bribe or an exchange of favors.
FFS!
Don't even get me started on an earlier episode where Ray's daughter was laying in the back seat of an SUV when the driver and front passenger were shot at close range. The killer didn't notice her and she snuck off. She was covered in glass and blood; but forensics didn't notice that the back seat wasn't?
He's right, you know.
Watching shows on Paramount Plus means getting commercials.
One that's in high rotation has a 1LT Nuña (I might have spelled that wrong) talking about how it gave her lots of opportunities and blah blah blah.
One of the pictures of her in the montage is her in a West Point uniform.
What bugs me about the commercial is how much this first LT has ballooned.
Don't female officers have PT standards?
Considering she's a ring knocker, she can't have been active duty for very long, so she gained that weight fast!
Or she hasn't been a very good officer and has been in almost the max allowed time for "up or out" and she's almost out.
Neither seems to be a good spokesperson for the service to me.
Crispy might be on its way out.
Three lock ups for no reason.
Darn it, I like that computer.
I am shocked, however, at just how affordable newer versions of the T-series have become.
A bigger screen might be nice.
Crispy's main job is to play the same five movies at night to give my brain something to focus on besides what's going on my head so I can sleep.
Related: Going through another bout of my periodic nightmares.
Derpyputer has been my daytime surfing machine. I need to get serious about upgrading the drives so that it can take over fully.
