Big Horse!

New Percheron at the Indiana State Fair Pioneer Village this year.

These were shot with a Nikon D4, using a Nikkor 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G VR zoom lens.

You can click to embiggenate to their full 16MP glory.

Meme Dump!

Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #265...

If ever there were a pistol with my name all over it, it'd be the Langdon Tactical Beretta 80X Cheetah. It's got a sweet DA/SA trigger, that cool bronze-colored coating on the frame, and it holds 12+1 of .32ACP, my favorite little semiauto chambering.

You can even get holsters from PHLster, a Skeleton like the one in the photo or a fully set-up Enigma Express.

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Midweek Memes!

Tab Clearing...

• Naval Estimates, a browser-based game of warship design in the Dreadnought Era. Looks like big nerdy fun!


• Tales of crossing the Russian border in the Current Era.


• Run by slavers, manned by captives, the internet scam compounds are moving deeper into Myanmar, adopting AI tools.

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Meme Dump!

Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #264...

Ruger P-85 Mark II (click to embiggen) It came with the Hogues. Not a fan.

The original Ruger P-85 had a situation where the firing pin could break and the hammer-dropping safety could thereby cause an unintended discharge.

The fix was adding a block that rotated into place between the hammer and firing pin as the safety lever was manipulated. It was retrofitted to existing pistols and new ones that came from the factory with the improved lever, as well as a few upgrades derived from the military's XM10 handgun trials, were sold as the P-85 Mark II.

Additional improvements to the pistol resulted in the Ruger P-89, which I've written about here and there. Matt at Hipster Tactical has a great deep dive on the P-89 and its antecedents here.

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Rocket Fighter!

Me 163B at National Museum of the USAF

It was fueled by "C-stoff", which was a combination of hydrazine hydrate and methanol, and "T-stoff", which was 85% pure hydrogen peroxide. If there was leftover fuel in the tanks on landing, it could explode. If the takeoff were aborted and the plane nosed in hard, the 275 gallon tank of hydrogen peroxide behind the cockpit could rupture, sloshing into the cockpit and turning the pilot into flieger soup.

One of the few pilots to survive the whole Me-163 program, Mano Ziegler, wrote an occasionally hair-raising memoir titled Rocket Fighter which is available cheaply on Kindle now.

Me 163B1-a at Udvar Hazy

Monday Meme-day!

Tab Clearing...

• China's getting extra frisky with Taiwan and the Philippines, and meanwhile we're stripping our last carrier out of the Pacific to go plug holes in the Gulf. "Pivot to Asia" my ass.


• The deficit continues growing at a record pace, nearing $40 trillion.


• We live in a world of miracles and wonders.

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Indy Flood Update...

I've posted plenty of pictures from the sculpture gardens that surround the Indianapolis Arts Center, including photos of my favorite one, Twisted House, by John McNaughton.

Here's a photo of my friend Dave standing in front of it for scale:

I saw a photo of it in the news yesterday afternoon...

Meme Dump!

Here Comes the Flood

We're fine here in SoBro, but the White River's gonna crest here in north Marion county early this afternoon.

Ravenswood is gonna flood, but Ravenswood floods all the time. They're closing the gates in the flood wall here in Broad Ripple up on 67th Street. This is a novelty to me. I’ve been here close to twenty years now and this is the first time I remember the flood gates getting closed. We'll be fine (they're a bit more than a mile north of us) but the Arts Center is fixin' to get wet.

The big loser is going to be the quaint little neighborhood of Rocky Ripple. Nestled in between the White River and the canal, over by Butler University, it's surrounded by a levee built in 1937 after the historic flood of 1913.

The White River is gonna get higher than it did in 1913 and may overtop the levee by as much as a foot, which will wipe out the parts of the structure that are in poor shape. If that happens, bye-bye Rocky Ripple.

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Meme Dump!

Overheard in the Hallway...

Me: "We need a new holiday for pedants, where we explain everything to each other in tedious detail. Call it Belabor Day."

RX: "So, weekdays. Also weekends."

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Isn't It Ironic?

The Field of Dreams game, played in the iconic ball field in the middle of the Iowa corn, featured advertising on the outfield walls for Fanduel Sports and BetMGM.

Which, I mean... were they trying to torment Shoeless Joe's ghost, or what?

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Memes on a Rainy Friday!