You sickos are all waiting for it. #NAFO pic.twitter.com/eeqRT7txBl
— Sean M. Smith (@ReallySeanSmith) March 23, 2023
Friday, March 24, 2023
Museum Wars
Automotif CCCLII...
Thursday, March 23, 2023
Archival
Interesting...
It's real. According to CIT, Russia has removed T-54/55 from storage. Photographs of a train transporting military equipment from the far east (Arseniev, Primorsky Krai) was spotted. The tanks were identified as T-54/55.
— NOËL 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) March 22, 2023
How do you mean shortage 🙃 pic.twitter.com/LbLYwWvAFN
I wonder where they're going to source 100mm ammo? I guess there's some in storage, and the PRC probably manufactures it. It looks like the tanks on the rail cars still have active infrared searchlights, which would be borderline suicidal to use on a modern battlefield.
It begins...
I've actually been carrying a Taurus revolver so far this year. A Model 327, to be specific, loaded with 100gr Ventura Munitions .32 H&R Magnum lead semiwadcutters, in a Dark Star Gear Apollo holster.
It was only a placeholder until I could get this thing sighted in, though...
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Thanks to Big Tex Ordnance for getting me the hookup with the EPS Carry. |
That's going to be the carry gun for this year, an 856 TORO with a Holosun EPS Carry in an optics-cut Dark Star Gear Apollo. Classes, maybe some matches, and a lot of range work. I'm interested to see how the whole "red dot CCW revolver" concept shakes out. I'm impressed so far, but it's still early going.
.
Wednesday, March 22, 2023
Nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy.
You off-duty cops and legally armed citizens have exactly one role in this situation: Make sure you and your family/friends don’t get shot. That’s it. End of lesson.You ain't Batman and these ain't Supervillains.
[snip]
They don’t want to shoot you. The only way you will get hit is by accident. Don’t go looking for trouble. Don’t try to intervene. There is no “innocent third party” to protect. Let the dumbshits shoot each other. You don’t have to play their game.
End of an Era
Earwormed
I've been earwormed by the idea of a fedora-wearing bard with a neckbeard strumming his lute and singing:
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 22, 2023
"She's got style, she's got grace,
And she swings a spiky mace,
She's milady."
Tuesday, March 21, 2023
Empty-Headed Clickbait
This is the exact sort of performative reaction-baiting that social media metrics incentivize.
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 21, 2023
(...and the fact that I quote-tweeted it for a dunk of my own and shared it here means it worked on me, too. Engagement, baby! Remember: The internet doesn't differentiate between hate-clicks and love-clicks. The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference.)
QotD: Antisocial Media Edition...
"[P]rotracted internet dependence warps your perception of people. It wears down your attention span, makes you irritable, and fractures your day into dozens or hundreds of unconnected bits and pieces." -Addison Del MastroYou should read the whole thing, and maybe the piece he linked, "The Internet is Made of Demons", too.
Secret Weapon
Monday, March 20, 2023
She's a Lady (Smith)
Arguing on the Internet
In terms of who this guy is and who you are absolutely nothing has changed. And yet here you are—arguing with him on Twitter or Facebook. And you, yourself, are being brought to the brink of insanity. But you can’t seem to stop. You have to respond or read the comments of the other people responding and your cortisol and adrenaline levels are spiking and your blood pressure is rising and you’re suddenly at risk of a heart attack.If you just say the right words, surely he'll see that the earth is round, or that we landed on the moon, or whatever...
And the ugly truth is that you’ve become addicted to arguing with the “End Is Nigh” sandwich board guy. The guy you used to quietly skirt, you now seek him out and you bring your friends and for some idiotic reason you think that if you just post a little bit more you’re going to get him to see reason. Or put him in his place.
Rites of Spring
Sunday, March 19, 2023
Archival Research
Saturday, March 18, 2023
QotD: Even Jerks Have Rights Edition...
"Rights protect awful totalitarian people all the time. There are many philosophical reasons for this; one is the recognition that we can’t be trusted to decide who should or shouldn’t get rights, and that arrogating such power to ourselves will inevitably favor the powerful and popular over the powerless and unpopular." -Ken WhiteYou really should go read the whole thing.
Friday, March 17, 2023
Automotif CCCLI...
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Olympus E-510 & Lumix 14-150mm f/3.5-5.6 |
That Nineties Show
Contrarianism.
It's March, But I Ain't Mad
Thursday, March 16, 2023
Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #234...
Best Millimeter
Speir quotes a 1990 Gun Week piece by Mas Ayoob:
"The FTU was given carte blanche to find, or if necessary, create the best possible autoloading pistol for use by FBI agents. Originally, attention had focussed on the 9mm. Expansion of the analysis to include the .45 caliber slowed the process. It was slowed still further when, almost as an afterthought, Hall proposed researching the 10mm as well. When the administration balked, Hall reminded his bosses that a nation was watching them; FBI was a trend setter, and if they adopted a round that turned out to be eclipsed by something else, a disservice would have been done to law enforcement itself as well as to the Bureau."So the cartridge was decided upon, but that kinda narrowed the pistol choice down a bunch.
"Compounding the issue was the fact that The Director Had Spoken; FBI was going to 10mm, despite his FTU people telling him it was a real bad idea; and there were exactly three to choose from... the Colt Delta Elite 1911, the G20, and the S&W. FBI held to the prevailing (at the time) cop perception that any SA gun with a manual safety was bad juju for LE work; one that is still valid today for a general-issue piece. The Glock was still new, and considered by FBI FTU to be the anti-Christ (due to all the negligent injury/wrongful death suits Glock was facing at the time, caused by cops who had not been trained to keep their finger OFF of the trigger, etc.). So that left the S&W.The resulting decocker assembly was a kludge. As Chuck Haggard recollects, the decocker lever itself was derisively referred to as the "Bart Simpson" in armorer's classes for reasons that should be obvious. (Trivia: Kansas City, MO issued the Model 4026 as their first autoloader.)
An amusing aside was the fact that they first approached Sig about making a 10mm P226, and the Sig/USA guys over here said "Sure, we can do that." When the idea was floated in Germany, the Teutonic engineers nixed it, knowing that a complete re-design would be necessary and that an alloy frame would not stand the pounding. What makes it amusing is that , I was told, Sig neglected to inform the FBI of this decision, so after Ted Hollobaugh and his merry men developed the "10mm Lite" cartridge, they informed Sig of this and asked "Where's our gun?"
The answer allegedly was, "Gun? What gun?"
Bottom line, they (FBI FTU) were between a rock and a hard place now, and the S&W offering was the lesser of three evils. The frame-mount decocker was indeed a last-minute add-on. And the rest, as they say, is history..."
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This "Bart Simpson" picture stolen from Midway. |
Didja ever wonder why...?
"You don't need to travel at the speed of light to witness time travel. In fact, all you need is a subscription to Car and Driver to see the theory at work. How else can you explain the way we always send you a magazine dated at least one month ahead of the month of receipt?I should have listened to my grandmother, who thought that FDR was responsible for every evil, from sending grandpa off to fight the Germans to bad weather.
It's not just magazines that appear to bend the space-time continuum. Vehicle model years frequently differ from the official calendar year. Your calendar may display the year 2023, but somehow new-car dealerships across the country are starting to stock 2024-model cars and trucks. What gives?
Blame Franklin D. Roosevelt."
Wednesday, March 15, 2023
"Nova" means "Doesn't Go"
Can't wait to see the new Netflix movie literally called "SUCKS" pic.twitter.com/eweWn1MMTS
— Lalo Alcaraz (@laloalcaraz) March 15, 2023
Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #233...
Tuesday, March 14, 2023
Ballistic Voodoo
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But what if this guy escapes? |
Monday, March 13, 2023
Carrying Off the Beaten Path
As 2022 drew to a close, I began to weigh the options for my next carry-gun project.
Regular readers of this column will know I strenuously discourage the weird habit of the “carry rotation,” whereby one selects one’s CCW pistol every morning based on the color of one’s mood ring or whether its grips match one’s choice of socks that day.
That being said, every year or two I will change out my own primary CCW pistol. Most frequently this is because I’ve wrung out a project to my satisfaction and want to go look at various frontiers of pistoleerdom I have yet to explore. This winter would be an example of that desire...
Fight the Power
"Both Camus and Orwell are rightly credited with being “antitotalitarian” writers. And yet their reasons for being so are not wholly political. They were antitotalitarian not just because they opposed totalitarian regimes, but because they both understood that the totalitarian mindset requires you accept that truth comes from ideology. If the ideas say something is true, it becomes true, and is true. For Fascists and Communists, ideology is not merely a set of values or beliefs, but a cohesive explanation of the past, present and future of mankind."It's a quick and worthwhile read.
QotD: Don't Creep the Creepers Edition...
"If you’re being stalked online, it’s far too easy to adopt the habits of your stalkerMost social media platforms these days include an array of features to mute, ignore, or block people. Use them. Don't obsess back at your trolls or creepers. Block and move on.
Online stalking creates weird, unholy bonds between people. This is why we must be careful not to become that which we are ostensibly fighting against."
Another One Rides the Bus
As long as IndyGo's Red Line remains clean and relatively free of tweakers, I'm a big fan, but if I gotta step over sumdood sleeping it off on the bus platform just to get aboard, I'll be back in my car faster than you can say "gentrification". https://t.co/XvaKZsFp7B pic.twitter.com/O7GrwxKdlL
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 13, 2023
The thing about Indy is it's not a city where people have to use public transport if they have the option of a personal vehicle. In a dense coastal metropolis, where the traffic is brutal and just finding a place to park a car can be a herculean task, there are large enough downsides to vehicle ownership that people are willing to overlook a certain amount of hassle to ride the bus or subway.
Regulation...no, not that kind.
"Let’s start with velocity. A fast bullet will exit the barrel more quickly than a slow one, which means that it will exit earlier in the barrel’s rise under recoil. The result is a bullet that hits lower on the target, all else being equal. The reverse is true for a slower bullet than normal, which can print higher."
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Gratuitous old Model 34 Kit Gun photo |
Sunday, March 12, 2023
Icy Hot Stuntaz
.
ZCQOTD
ZCQOTD: "That's the kind of shit that sticks to everybody's fur."
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 12, 2023
When you need it for a photo prop...
Saturday, March 11, 2023
Size Matters, Except When It Doesn't
Well...
It was an extraordinary denouement less than two days after the bank shocked Wall Street and its depositors with emergency moves to raise cash and stave off a collapse in the face of withdrawal requests and a precipitous decline in the value of its investment holdings. The bank as of Friday morning was working with advisers on a potential sale, a person with knowledge of the negotiations said, and had halted trading in its shares in the wake of a rapid fall.
The F.D.I.C. created a new bank, the National Bank of Santa Clara, to hold the deposits and other assets of the failed one. The regulator said in a news release that the new entity would be operating by Monday and that checks issued by the old bank would continue to clear.
Friday, March 10, 2023
Offset
QotD: Doomer Brain Virus Edition
What doomerism does, basically, is to execute a distributed denial-of-service attack on our threat perception. If we start to see everything in the world as a mortal threat, it makes us incapable of focusing our efforts on the actual priorities. I see doomerism as an extreme version of “polycrisis” thinking — the tendency to see all the bad stuff in the news as part of a mutually reinforcing web, instead of a list of challenges to be addressed one by one.Worth the read.
Meanwhile, in Asia...
Dude just campaigned super well, did amazing in the debates, fundraised like an animal, etc. Gotta hand it to him. https://t.co/1gZtCg7Chw
— Berny Belvedere (@bernybelvedere) March 10, 2023
Xi Jinping got hisself elected to an unprecedented third five-year term as president of China by a vote of 2,952-0 in the CCP's legislature.
Thursday, March 09, 2023
Majordomo of the Forest
Epps Oops
To add insult to injury, now we all know he carries 90gr Critical Defense Lite in the Fuddiest manner possible: with an empty chamber under the hammer.
Police spoke with Epps, who told them he was in town for a show at Gainbridge Fieldhouse and forgot the handgun was inside his backpack.This is a DAO revolver with an enclosed, rebounding hammer and floating frame-mounted firing pin. You could use a fully-loaded Centennial as a hockey puck without it discharging.
According to the report, police found a .38 Special Airweight revolver, loaded with four rounds of Hornady .38 special ammo, the spot in the cylinder with the firing pin was empty.
Wednesday, March 08, 2023
Automotif CCCL...
Helpin' a Brother Out...
What do you call a snowflake made of milk?
Coconut milk has been called coconut milk longer than Vermont has been called Vermont.
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 8, 2023
Don't you have something serious you could be doing, Senator? https://t.co/xMlP17GoPL
Tuesday, March 07, 2023
Sproing
Unsatisfied.
Automotif CCCXLIX...
Monday, March 06, 2023
Rat Bike!
What makes a classic?
Truth in Advertising
You guys, I'm starting to think that Dr. Pepper isn't actually an MD.
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 6, 2023
Sunday, March 05, 2023
Semi-Feral
Lycoming
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In the late '30s, Cord consolidated Lycoming and its other aviation assets under the "AVCO Lycoming" umbrella, which is still around and has been known to make a gas turbine or two. |
Saturday, March 04, 2023
Automotif CCCXLVIII...
You talkin' to me?
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"Blue Steel!" |
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"Come at me, bro!" |
We've been warning you!
Some German officials expressed sympathy for Finland, which is not yet a NATO member and has Europe’s longest border with Russia, some 830 miles. It does not want to weaken its defenses now that Russia has shown a willingness to attack a sovereign neighbor.A whole generation has grown up after the Cold War and let formerly muscular defenses atrophy. The Bundeswehr is an underfunded shadow of its former self. It used to be the brawniest army on the continent and now it has fewer MBTs than the Greeks. And if the Bundeswehr is in such a sad state, imagine what, say, the Dutch or the Belgies are looking like these days.
But some European officials were hoping for a larger contribution from Finland, given promises from the United States and Britain to come to its defense if necessary, even before NATO accession.
Nordic countries such as Sweden, which had long pushed for Leopard deliveries but on Friday offered only “up to” 10, are facing another unexpected problem, several German officials said: While their politicians and members of the public appear keen to offer tanks to Ukraine, their militaries are not.
For decades, European countries enjoying a post-Cold War “peace dividend” had seen war as almost a thing of the past, regularly cutting military support. Now, the shrunken armies tend to be protective of what they still have. At NATO, European militaries are sometimes called “bonsai armies,” after the miniature trees.
Friday, March 03, 2023
Hilarious!
— NE Ohio Regional Sewer District (@neorsd) March 3, 2023
Sleepytime reading...
Automotif CCCXLVII...
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Photographed with a Nikon D2X & 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G VR II |
Here's a sinister-looking murdered-out 1980 or '81 Chevrolet Camaro Z28.
The factory motor would have been a 350cid LM1 V8, rated at 185bhp in 1980. The '81 model year introduced new emissions controls that dropped the horsepower rating to 175.
1981-1983 was probably the absolute low point of automotive performance in the US. The lardy 175-horse 3500-lb boulevardier 1981 Z28 would have squared off against its rival from Dearborn, the Mustang. For the '81 Model year, the top version of the Mustang was the Cobra, with lots of decals and aero doodads.
The Cobra was 900 pounds lighter than the Z28, since the latter was riding on an eleven-year-old platform* that had been designed when Sunoco high test was 35 cents a gallon and CAFE regs were half a decade in the future, while the Mustang was on its third model year of the then-new Fox body. However the top performance motor for the Mustang was the anemic 255cid V8 that sipped gas through a dinky Motorcraft 2bbl carb and only spit out 120 horsepower.
Basically even though the Camaro had been reduced to a plush-bottomed shell of its former wild-eyed glory, it'd still maul the dismally-underpowered Mustang. Those tables wouldn't turn again until Ford stuffed a Holley 4bbl 5.0 under the hood in '83.
Considering that they sold a blue million 2nd Generation Camaros over the eleven-year run of the body style, you don't see a ton of them on the street. I'd wager that rust got a bunch and telephone poles got a bunch more.