"[T]his disaffected bloc of Americans (and the poor souls living in swing states) will have to endure months on end of extreme partisan rhetoric, negative advertising, cable news vitriol, and people losing their minds on X, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok about other people’s political views and choices—all fueled by billions of dollars in unaccountable funds from wealthy sources and activist groups that are perfectly content to see the country break in two for ideological or financial gain.
[SNIP]
The only rational form of self-protection from this madness is to refuse to engage in America’s misshapen partisan politics and to instead pursue other forms of citizenship.
Focus on something other than politics. Talk with friends and colleagues about anything other than partisan divides and culture war clickbait. Turn off and disable the media and tech sources spreading partisan negativity. Turn the mind towards something positive and constructive in life rather than imbibing party propaganda designed to make people anxious, confused, angry, or vengeful."
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| Kodak Easyshare at Knob Creek in 2011 |
"For sports fans of a certain age, the memory of running to the mailbox to see what was on the cover of the latest weekly issue of Sports Illustrated is indelible. For decades, the magazine’s photographers, writers and editors held the power to anoint stars and deliver the definitive account of the biggest moments in sports, often with just a single photograph and a few words on the cover. It was the most powerful real estate in sports journalism."Over time, though, it became less an exhibition of action photography and more and more of a celebrity showcase.
"“It became less of a news thing and more of a personality thing,” said Al Tielemans, a staff photographer for almost 20 years. He described an evolution of editors’ wanting the key moment of the game, and then a good photo of the star of the game, and then a photo featuring the most famous person in the game, and then finally just a headshot of a star."SI laid off all its staff photogs in 2015, and now the publication itself might be a goner.
"The internet, and social media platforms like Instagram, mean that more photography is showcased to more people than ever before. Now that fans see every angle of every game, with highlights and shots available instantly on social media, no single image has the same power that Sports Illustrated’s cover once did."Checking their online schedule, it looks like the first weekday matinee home game for the Indianapolis Indians is on Wednesday, April 17th. I guess I'll mark my calendar and get ready to go larp as a sports photojournalist...
It’s not unusual for paleontologists to disagree about ancient animal bodies — sometimes with a ferocious intensity. Gottfried recalled witnessing some scientists get into a heated disagreement over the angle of the thigh bone when assembling a triceratops specimen.The bit about shrink-wrapping the skin around the skeletons was interesting. I have a book on my Kindle shelf titled All Yesterdays that's a neat look at how illustrations of prehistoric animals have evolved over time, and also has some freaky-looking pictures of modern animals if they were reconstructed by yesterday's paleontologic illustrators from skeletal remains. You'll never look at cows... or your cat ...the same way.
John Hutchinson, a professor of evolutionary biomechanics at the Royal Veterinary College at the University of London, is part of the team that put forward the controversial 3D model of the megalodon. He said that the stakes are always high in science, but particularly when working on species that attract both public and scientific fascination.
“The more celebrity an extinct animal has, and the rarer it is, the more competitive or heated the disagreements can be,” Hutchinson said. “I know this all too well. I worked on T. rex.”
Hutchinson said that, early in his career, people used 2D illustrations of fossilized skeletons and shrink-wrapped skin around them, making them quite skinny. Based on these models, people believed Tyrannosaurus rex was around 11,000 pounds. But now, using various methods, scientists mostly agree that an adult T. rex would have been somewhere around 17,000 pounds.
"If a K-frame-sized .32 is an offering, a seven-shot gun would be a better idea."The answer, of course, is that the 856/327 revolvers from Taurus are not exactly K-frame sized, although they're a hair fatter than a J-frame. There's not enough meat in the cylinder for seven .32 charge holes. In fact, that's the reason that they still catalog the 5-shot 605 in .357 Magnum with the older, smaller diameter cylinder and there isn't a .357 Mag version of the 856.
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| Erick, dressed for success. |
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| Not my actual pyjamas. |
If you’re launching a brand new pistol at SHOT ’24 and it uses adaptor plates to attach slide-mounted optics, you are three years behind the curve.
Adaptor plates are a retrofit kludge for existing designs. New pistols need to direct-mount the most size-appropriate footprints (RMR and 507k on full size double-stacks, 507k on compact/single stack.).
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| FN’s Reflex knows what time it is. That optic is attached directly to the slide. |
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| I remember reading this article in my senior year, in the back row of my AP U.S. Government class. |
Despite efforts to deter them, the Houthis have refused to back down, vowing to retaliate and welcoming the prospect of war with the United States with open delight.Thing is, we have no intention (or desire) to fight the Houthis in Yemen. We're all regime-changed-out over here. The Yemenis are just going to have to sort out their problems on their own.
“Yemen is not an easy military opponent that can be subdued quickly,” Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a senior Houthi official, said in a post on the social media platform X after the American-led strikes.
Kailee Blalock, an interior designer in San Diego, posted a video to TikTok last month that sought to define bookshelf wealth and school viewers in achieving the aesthetic in their own homes.I wonder if I can get a job working for an interior designer where I break the spines on books, dog-ear a few pages, scribble a random note or two in the margins, and maybe leave a yellowed old Fresh Market receipt in the pages like a bookmark.
“These aren’t display books,” Ms. Blalock, 26, cautions in the video, which has been viewed over 1.3 million times. “These are books that have actually been curated and read.”
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| When I'm shopping for a store-brand John Wick, I look for a dude with his finger on the trigger of a derp tier AR that looks like a Cheaper Than Dirt catalog threw up on it. |
"Perhaps you’ve run across the term “mondegreen”? I’ve long known it to mean a misheard lyric or bit of poetry, but its full meaning I learned only minutes ago — because I finally deigned to investigate. “Mondegreen” was coined in 1954 by writer Sylvia Wright to commemorate her having misapprehended the phrase “laid him on the green,” in this line from a Scottish ballad: “They have slain the Earl of Moray / An’ laid him on the green.” Wright heard wrong, thinking there were two slaying victims, the earl and “Lady Mondegreen.”"Bobbi's been pushing me to read Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style, and I think the linked column has pushed it to the top of my to-read pile.
"Unless you’re involved with the illicit narcotics trade and living in a trap house, or your place is home to an underground gambling ring, the number-one threat won’t be armed men breaking in raid-style, but instead theft — people breaking in when you aren’t home and burgling your stuff. When we talk about home-defense firearms, there’s a balance to be struck; you want the firearm to stay safe from tiny hands and sticky fingers while still being easy to access."From a piece by Greg Ellifritz on threat assessment:
"Have you ever considered the difference between being in a dangerous situation and being in one where you have limited response options?That post linked above is one that a lot of the "rawr I'll never go anyplace where I can't carry a gun rawr" crowd need to read and heed. As Melody Lauer put it, “Don’t let your desire to protect your life keep you from living a life worth protecting.”
I think a lot of us in the gun/self-protection world get those feelings confused."
...whether the west is going to keep shooting down $20k RPVs from Ali's House of Discount Drones with multi-million dollar SM-2 and Sea Viper missiles, or are we going to try a strike using carrier aircraft and cruise missiles to knock out Houthi launch sites and storage facilities.Well, we have the answer to that question, as yesterday saw airstrikes by Navy Super Hornets and RAF Typhoons, as well as a barrage of sub-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles on Houthi launch and weapons storage facilities in Yemen.
"A Houthi spokesman, Mohammed Abdul Salam, said on social media that the group would remain by Gaza’s side. He said there was no justification for the strikes on Yemen because its actions do not threaten international shipping, and vowed that the group would continue to target Israeli ships and those heading to Israel."Which seems like a weird thing to say when you've been launching drones and missiles at random ships which have nothing to do with the Israelis, but the Houthis don't exactly strike me as a very organized bunch. Also, "I blame the Jooooos!" focus groups well, especially in that corner of the world, so I guess it's worth a try.
”Morons are nature’s original renewable resource.”
"Searching Amazon doesn't produce a list of the products that most closely match your search, it brings up a list of products whose sellers have paid the most to be at the top of that search. Those fees are built into the cost you pay for the product, and Amazon's "Most Favored Nation" requirement sellers means that they can't sell more cheaply elsewhere, so Amazon has driven prices at every retailer.The other day I realized I needed a fresh batch of winter socks and so, not wanting to drive over to Meijer, plugged "wool socks" into Amazon's search dingus.
Search Amazon for "cat beds" and the entire first screen is ads, including ads for products Amazon cloned from its own sellers, putting them out of business (third parties have to pay 45% in junk fees to Amazon, but Amazon doesn't charge itself these fees). All told, the first five screens of results for "cat bed" are 50% ads."
"As a cynic might expect, the credentializing and professionalizing of these institutions has not always led to excellence: In the golden age of American newspaper journalism, reporters and editors were in the main people who had not graduated from any college with any kind of undergraduate degree, much less one in journalism. In this, the toilet age of American newspaper journalism, promising prospects and leaders are expected to have graduate degrees in journalism from Columbia, Northwestern, or Penn. Dozens of big tech firms started by dropouts and uncredentialed upstarts celebrate the romance of their garage days but would need an extraordinary reason to even consider hiring someone like one of their founders for the most ordinary job, while the HR departments are barnacled over by otherwise unemployable grievance-studies graduates. Public libraries that were run for generations by volunteers or by bookish generalists now are in the care of people with advanced degrees in something called library science, under the management of whom our libraries have been turned into makeshift mental wards and masturbatoria for vagrants making the most of the public internet connections."(Williamson signing on at The Dispatch is what pushed me into subscribing.)
