Things are gonna change, I can feel it.

I have the feeling that 2024 is really gonna turn around for me today. The rest of the year is gonna be fantastic!

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Last Call For 2024 Memes...

Gap Week Memes...

This is getting lulzy...

The Bulletin of Atomic Shitposters have moved the hands on the Lowtax clock to 2 minutes to midnight.

Reading the Priorities Tea Leaves...

Some crystal ball work on the military priorities of the incoming administration from War by Other Means:

Instead, CENTCOM is a Tomahawk monster that can only experience joy when it is stealing Tomahawks from INDOPACOM and launching them at patches of desert. Since you cannot deprioritize CENTCOM, they will continue to launch Tomahawks even when Boltzmann brains begin to emerge from the ether. Resources will have to be found elsewhere from regions we deprioritize.

This brings me to my central point here—INDOPACOM will never experience happiness.

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Hot Take...

Maybe it's just my inner GenX'er talking, but Better Off Dead is the most criminally underrated Christmas movie of them all.

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Meme Delivery...

Merry Christmas!

From all of me in the computer here to all of you in your computers out there, I'd like to wish you a very Merry Christmas!

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I suppose it's time...

I've been using a ruggedized external 2TB hard drive for physical photo storage for years now. It's plugged into the Mac mini here at home and travels with me and gets plugged into the MacBook Air on the road.

Thing is, not only is it a spinning platter drive, but it's also USB. In the short term, I can use a USB-C-to-USB adapter to keep using it with the new desktop and laptop for the immediate future, but it's probably time to upgrade to a USB-C native SSD drive.

Time marches on.

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Monday Meme Day...

Sci-Fi Hot Take...

BROKE: Firefly was the best SF ever.

WOKE: Firefly’s effect was blunted by too few episodes, shown out of order.

BESPOKE: In retrospect it’s probably for the best that it went the way it did because Whedon would have eventually ruined it somehow.

This way we’re left with warm, magical, happy nostalgia and not bitter recriminations and acrimonious debates about whether it went south in season two or three.

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Meme Dump...

Overheard in the Hallway...

Me: "I think the worst part about it is realizing that this soreness and stiffness and pain isn't because of some ailment or odd position in which I slept, but that this is just what waking up feels like now."

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Night Wolf will now barf up the Sun Maiden

Happy Winter Solstice to my fellow SADsers! We made it! 

 52 days until pitchers and catchers report!

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End-of-Week Memes...

New (to me) Cyberspace Deck...

So the refurb M1 MacBook Air showed up and I got all my Microsoft Orifice and Adobe Creative Cloud apps installed and I'm ready to get down to writin' on it. Even stickered it all up so it feels lived in.

This thing is blazin' fast compared to the old one, which is unsurprising because the old one was a dual-core i5 machine from early 2015 still running the Monterey OS. I'd go to start up Photoshop and then find something to do for the ten-Mississippi count it took for the icon to stop bouncing in the toolbar and the program to launch. Now it just pops right up. I can't imagine how fast the M4 mini is gonna feel when it gets here.

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Awful Night...

Woke up from a nightmare involving a bear snuffling at the door of this flimsy tool shed like building where I was camping in the woods to find my heart beating hard enough to make the bed vibrate like someone'd put a quarter in it. Lay there tossing and turning and unable to do more than doze fitfully for a couple minutes at a time for the next few hours.

I do not recommend this if you want to wake up on Friday morning feeling all rested and refreshed and ready to attack the day.

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Tab Clearing...

• Marko has pictures from a working vacation in Quebec.


• Jim Grey's ten favorite Old Cars Parked from 2024.


• No, Don, you can't revoke the FCC licenses of networks that say mean things about you. Does not work that way.

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Christmas Themed Memes...

Ugh, Nextdoor...

I rarely actually peek in at the Nextdoor website... or as I like to call it, "Karens.com" ...because it's mostly people panhandling or looking for a lost pet (from three neighborhoods away) or reporting that they saw a Black person walking around.

But I still get email notifications, which I routinely route straight to the trash. My favorite posts are the ones that are "Be alert! Our car got broken into!" and when you go look, what happened was they left their car unlocked with stuff visible inside it.

Friend, if it's not locked, it didn't get "broken into", by definition.

In my opinion there are two approaches to automotive security. Either leave nothing of value in the car, at least visibly, and lock the doors. Alternatively (and this works best if you have a detachable faceplate stereo) leave literally nothing of value in the car and leave the doors unlocked.

That's what I did when I parked the Porsche and Fiero on the street back when I lived in Atlanta. There were a few times when I came out to find my car's door ajar and the windows on the car on either side broken out.

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Tuesday Memes...

For the nerd in your life...

A twee little retro-looking "television" that'll store ten hours of video (but only has a 2-hour battery). It even has a speaker, so presumably the volume knob is an actual volume knob!

Just in time for stocking stuffing!

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Meme Dump...

Well, it finally happened...

Adobe was pestering me with popup windows to let me know that I was using an out-of-date version of Photoshop.

"That's weird," I thought, "I'm pretty sure I have it set to update automatically." So I went to the Creative Cloud control panel and went to update it manually, only to get the admonishment that the latest version of P-shop would run like hot ass on my creaky old Mac mini.

I knew this day was coming. I already was largely unable to use the AI features in Photoshop which was fine because I don't do much in the way of 'shooping anyway, just removing dust spots and the occasional power line.

But this computer, a Late 2014 2.6GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5 mini that was already no longer cutting edge when I bought it and a similar-vintage MacBook Air from Marko back in 2018, is only still usable because of how long Apple hardware stays viable and the fact that I don't use it for gaming. I'm already a couple OSes behind as it is.

So, ho-ho-ho and Merry Christmas to me, I just blew a smoking hole in my bank account for a new Mac mini and a refurb M1 MacBook Air.

If they last as long as the previous duo, this is gonna be about $100/yr for a decade's worth of computing, so I've got that going for me, which is nice.

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Squirrel!

This little fella was snapped with an 18MP Canon EOS 7D and an EF 70-200mm f/4L IS zoom lens, so he should embiggenate quite satisfactorily.

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Meme Dump...

Snitch Culture on the Skids...

The anonymous Pennsylvania McDonald's employee who dimed out the CEO shooter could have a hard time collecting his reward.

The FBI's reward payment system is contingent on conviction, and the NYPD gives you a special PIN code when you call in a tip that is necessary for receiving reward payments and the fast food worker called local 911 and not the NYPD.

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Brace for the Arglebargle...

The laws surrounding the manufacture and sale of firearms, or even of what is and isn't a firearm in the first place, are complicated enough that event the majority of gun owners aren't familiar with even a fraction of them. (Remember that if you would list "guns" or "shooting" as one of your hobbies or interests, that alone puts you in a minority subset of people who own firearms.)

When I saw the video of the dude capping the UnitedHealthcare CEO, like Ian over at Forgotten Weapons I knew it wasn't (like idiot spokespeople at the NYPD claimed) a B&T VP9.

At the time, I remember hoping that it was at least a factory clone and not an 80% kit build or a 3D-printed frame because that would unleash a tidal wave of stupid from the sort of people who not only know nothing about guns or gun laws, but also don't like them very much.

And here we are...

At first glance, the gun in the police photographs — the one the authorities believe Luigi Mangione used to kill the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare — appears to be a Glock-19, a 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol used by military forces, police officers, civilians and criminals all over the world.

But upon closer inspection, it is clear that the weapon was not factory-made, but was at least partially produced by a 3D printer. The giveaways are subtle: The Glock logo is absent from the pistol’s grip, where it would ordinarily be imprinted, and the angle of the grip is peculiar. Indentations on the grip, known as stippling, are patterned in such a way that the gun’s “fingerprint” can be directly linked to a unique free-to-download 3D-printed design known as the FMDA 19.2 Chairmanwon Remix.

In the first sentence I'm already annoyed by the hyphen in "Glock-19" and it doesn't get much better from there.

Boomsticks: The new Ruger/Magpul RXM...

Testing continues on the Savage Stance XR.

Meanwhile, I can finally talk about the new Ruger. In a world where there are already several Gen3 Glock 19 clones of varying quality, it's easy to go "Ho-hum, another one..."

But Ruger and Magpul are both manufacturers that know what they're doing; this isn't some back-alley operation in Istanbul.

Plus, it's not a Gen3 Glock clone, but rather a vastly product-improved pistol that happens to have used the G19 as a jumping off point. It has a direct-mounting optical system that is similar to that on the Echelon that will accommodate the three most popular optic footprints (RMR, DP Pro, RMSc) and comes with co-witness sights including a tritium insert up front with a high-viz surround. The fire control unit is in a true chassis, for grip-swapping customizability. Best of all, the price point is...aggressive.

Everything good about a Glock MOS and then some, without having to put up with Glock's adapter plate setup, which is frankly starting to look like hot garbage compared to everyone else's, at a screamingly low price? That's likely to make a dent in the market.

Testing is underway for an upcoming feature-length review in Shooting Illustrated.

Meme Dump...

Squirrel!

These were snapped with the Olympus OM-D E-M1X using the M. Zuiko Digital 12-200mm f/3.5-6.3 superzoom. That lens is one of the great things about the Micro Four Thirds format, as it has an equivalent focal length range to a 24-400mm lens on a full frame camera yet is smaller than a soda can.

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Midweek Memes...

Upside-Down World racing news...

So Cadillac is going to be fielding an F1 team and intends to design their own powerplant for the series, but it's going to take a couple years to get from the drawing board to race-ready.

In the meantime?

Ferrari has announced a "multi-year agreement" with Andretti Formula Racing to supply the Cadillac Formula 1 entry with power units upon its entry to the championship in 2026. The team, led by TWG Global - which recently took over the running of Andretti Global - and General Motors, was provisionally accepted onto the grid from 2026 by F1 last month, though full confirmation must yet be given.

This feels so Bizarroworld: A car sporting big GM logos and a Ferrari motor..

That must have been a rush...

Most journalists go through their entire careers without an opportunity to write a headline like this.

10/10. Perfection. No notes.

Parenthetically, while "Stylish But Illegal Monkey" is a bit of a mouthful for a band name, you could always call yourselves SBIM. Throwing this idea out there for free if anyone wants it.

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On the upside, and on the downside...

On the upside, I am vindicated for all the times over the last couple days I've had to explain to people that "No, I don't care what the NYPD spokesperson said, it's not a B&T Veterinary Pistol, it's a regular recoil-operated nine. Probably a G19 or clone."

On the downside, now I have to brace for a tidal wave of derp about so-called "ghost guns" and 3D printing.

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Meme Dump...