Sunday, February 16, 2025

It's Huck!


A rather dramatically-lit Huck is lounging in a platform halfway up the cat tree in the living room.

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Saturday, February 15, 2025

That's Not How That Works...

I'm watching the old Steve McQueen western Wanted Dead or Alive on MeTV and McQueen's character, Josh Randall, is confronting the lady who did the criming.

She says to him:
"At least I have a clean conscience, Randall. I did what I did to save my life. You're a man; you can use a gun. I'm a woman."
I was like "That's not how that works, lady! I've read probably thousands of instruction manuals for guns and not one of them contained a sentence that began 'Using the penis...'."

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Tab Clearing...


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Weekend Memes...




Friday, February 14, 2025

Meme Dump...




I'm about to palm my face off.

First this:
The United States will increase military sales to India starting in 2025 and will eventually provide F-35 fighter jets, U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday.
Hey, why not just send them to Beijing via Moscow and eliminate the middlemen? This is absolutely feckless. Fortunately some responsible adults are giving that statement the whole "Well, it's just a proposal to initiate a study and we'll look into it" treatment. Hopefully they can slow walk it for long enough for POTUS to get bored and find another shiny object.

Then this:
All probationary NNSA employees terminated

Word came down this afternoon
That's 300-some people. A sixth of the National Nuclear Security Agency. The people who, among other things, guard warheads being transported and are tasked with keeping the Super Bowl from glowing in the dark like in one of Clancy's later, too-long novels.

But don't worry! This is all in the hands of DOGE, who is running their server with an unsecured database on a service being hosted by one of Elon's broccoli-headed minions like it was Hillary's emails or something.


thisisfine.jpeg

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Thursday, February 13, 2025

An Army About Five Minutes After Sunup

Most pop culture understanding of the Battle of Kasserine Pass comes from the movie Patton or the book An Army at Dawn.

This in-depth Substack essay offers a counterpoint to the typical narratives...
This article explores those characterizations, and while the Battle of Kasserine Pass is often remembered as a humiliating defeat for the U.S. Army, this perspective oversimplifies a far more complex and dynamic engagement. The battle, part of the larger Tunisia Campaign, exposed flaws in American leadership, coordination, and combat experience, but it also showcased the resilience, adaptability, and sheer firepower that would define the U.S. military in later battles. Although initial German advances created chaos and forced American forces to retreat, the tide soon turned as U.S. artillery and infantry stiffened their resistance, ultimately repelling the Axis offensive. The battle was not a catastrophic failure but rather a painful learning experience—one that forced the U.S. Army to rapidly evolve into the battle-hardened force that would go on to liberate Europe.

Oh, come on...

SEE EDIT AT BOTTOM...

The Cybertruck... also known as the "Wankpanzer" or "Incel Camino" ...from Tesla has been one of the most spectacular flops since the Edsel, bedeviled by recalls & production issues, and with unsold units piling up.

That's okay, though, because the First Buddy found someone to take $400,000,000 worth of the lemons off his hands. You, the taxpayer.

Don't worry, though, they'll make up the cost by slashing the budget at the VA or maybe grandma's health care.

So, a reporter for Gizmodo dug into this story:
The saga of the Armored Teslas is important. It’s a story where multiple things are true at the same time and a warning about how we consume information over the next four years.

Here are the four conflicting truths. The first is that State buying $400 million worth of armored Teslas is not strange. The second is that most of us don’t know how to read a federal budgeting document. The third is that Musk is the richest man on the planet with billions in government contracts. The fourth is that editing an innocuous budget document after someone notices “Tesla” has a line item is weird and speaks volumes about how the federal government is operating under the Trump-Musk presidency.
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Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Sorry

I spent the day with the most amazing technicolor headache and it shows no signs of wanting to go anywhere.

Hopefully I'll feel better in the morning.

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Saturday, February 08, 2025

Started. Going.

In the day, it was assumed that this was going to be the electric car of the dystopian cyberpunk future:



There was no way of envisioning this:



Meme Delivery!

 



Clown. Shoes.

I thought you needed at least a high school diploma to be an ICE cop? How do you get to that point and not know that Puerto Rico is part of the U.S. and Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens? Maybe we need to increase funding for education...

(Bonus points for the guy they were hassling being not only a U.S. citizen but a retired Philly P.D. officer. I about sprained my eye-rolling muscles.)

Friday, February 07, 2025

How cool is too cool? How retro is too retro?


A realistic look at relying on an older gun as your primary defensive piece:
If you want to carry a blaster that’s outside the mainstream, it’s important to know where the mainstream is, and what rocky rapids await those who paddle beyond it.
How much do you actually shoot? If it breaks, how hard is it to fix? How hard is it to come up with holsters or night sights or whatever?
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Time Flies Like an Arrow...

I can’t imagine trying to explain to early-mid Nineties me that Billy Joel and Sting would be touring together in 2025.

When did the arcs of their credibility trajectories intersect on the coolness graph?

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Tab Clearing...



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Babies and Bathwater

Once upon a time Nigeria was the center of internet scams, as any fan of the old 419eater site will remember. These days it's centered in Southeast Asia. Most of those bogus followers sliding into your DMs are essentially slave labor.
Over the past five years, dozens of “scam compounds” have been constructed in Southeast Asia, particularly within Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia. Run by organized crime groups, which often have links to Chinese nationals, more than 200,000 people from 100-plus countries have been trafficked into the compounds—often under the pretense of getting a legitimate job. These people are often held captive, beaten and tortured, and forced to work long shifts running online scams targeting people around the world, including in the United States. While the compounds engage in a range of fraudulent activity, so-called pig butchering scams have been the predominant focus, with global losses estimated at $75 billion or more.
The State Department has been spending quite a bit of money fighting that, including supporting numerous NGOs that are helping trafficking victims get to freedom and escape the gangs that imprisoned them. A lot of this money was funneled through... you guessed it ...USAID.

Another victim of this "haircut with a chainsaw" budget trimming? U.S. farmers, who sold tons of food to agencies that distributed it via USAID.
Now U.S. businesses that sold goods and services to USAID are in limbo. That includes American farms, which supply about 41 percent of the food aid that the agency, working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, sends around the world each year, according to a 2021 report by the Congressional Research Service. In 2020, the U.S. government bought $2.1 billion in food aid from American farmers.

Purchases and shipments of U.S. food aid worth over $340 million — including rice, wheat and soybeans — have been paused during Trump’s foreign-aid freeze, according to officials and an email obtained by The Post. That has left hundreds of tons of American-grown wheat stranded in Houston alone, Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota, the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, said Tuesday.
Also whacked? Clinical trials of a vaccine for HIV that could potentially save millions of lives.



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Friday Memes...




Thursday, February 06, 2025

They just keep getting bigger...

When I compared the sizes of the Honda Fit to the second generation Honda Accord from the early Eighties, it was a surprise.
The wheelbase of the older Fit is the same as that of an '82 Accord hatchback, and the newer Fit outweighs that Accord by a quarter ton.
This Vivid Blue Pearl '07-'08 Fit Sport has a 1.5L 16V VTEC four making 109 horsepower, while the Accord had a SOHC 1.8L carbureted engine that was rated at a very Malaise Era-feeling 75 horses.
 


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Memes for all!




Slumping

While EV sales in Europe are still trending upward, that doesn't seem to apply to every manufacturer.
In the United Kingdom, registrations are down 7.78% over January of 2024. That’s not that bad and can be attributed to an old lineup of products. But in Germany, where they know a thing or two about Nazis, registrations are down 59.5%. In France, it’s 63.4% down.

In the words of Elon Musk, “Let that sink in.”

In Spain, Tesla might as well be dead with a 75.4% drop in new Tesla registrations in January. Overall, across the continent, new registrations are down 50.4%.
I've said it before: Tesla's challenge was to learn how to make a car company faster than established car companies could learn how to make Teslas.



Shopping Local

Is there any retail space as soul-crushing as the interior of a Dollar General?

Walmart is uplifting by comparison and Target is the goddam Louvre.

I've expressed my distaste for Dollar General on this blog before, in the context of a scathing expose piece on the chain, but apparently there's increasing pushback on their expansion into some areas now, such as coastal Maine.

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Wednesday, February 05, 2025

Monday, February 03, 2025

Too bad...

The Northstar V-8 gave the Cadillac Allanté legitimate performance chops. It's too bad that it only showed up for the 1993 model year, which was the car's last.



Some people are having a worse Monday than others...

Short sellers are probably doing okay, though...
President Trump’s decision to impose sweeping tariffs on some of America’s largest trading partners sent shock waves through markets across the globe on Monday.

The dollar strengthened, oil prices rose and major stock indexes in the United States fell at the start of trading on Monday, with the S&P 500 down roughly 1.5 percent, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq down around 1.8 percent. Markets in Asia and Europe also tumbled.

Shot:


Chaser:

I hope all you guys are getting your "I DID THIS" Trump stickers ready to plaster on gas pumps...


The Canadian oil price hike is going to have an especially heavy effect in the Midwest and Rocky Mountain states.
Many U.S. oil refiners rely heavily on imported crude because their facilities are configured to run heavier grades, such as those coming in from Mexico and Canada.

[snip]

A tariff on oil imports could drive up the cost of crude, pushing refiners to cut the amount of oil their facilities process. Refineries in the Midwest process about 70% of the 4 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude imported from Canada.

Phillips 66 said there could be production cuts in the U.S. Midwest and Rocky Mountain region where alternative crude supplies are limited if tariffs take effect. The refiner expects the 457,000 bpd of Mexican crude that comes into the U.S. could be displaced and move to Europe or Asia.
I sure didn't sign up for higher prices on everything.

ETA: Mexico announced it had reached a deal to delay tariffs by a month and the markets bounced back somewhat. It's gonna be a busy and chaotic day. Trump inherited a Dow at historic highs from the previous administration and if there's anything he cares about almost as much as television ratings, it's the stock market. A worse market than Biden's would sting him where it hurts.

Monday Memeday...




Sunday, February 02, 2025

Dumbing Down the News...

Whether it's the local TV station or newspaper, getting snapped up by a national conglomerate has deleterious effects on the quality of output.
The Emory and Stanford study dissected both the content and viewership of 743 local news stations over the latter two thirds of 2017, analyzing some 7.41 million 2.5-minute segments. The study found that when Sinclair acquired a local news outlet, it unsurprisingly resulted in a notable spike in nationwide news coverage, and a notable decline in actual local reporting.

Often that’s simply a matter of cost. Covering local town halls, political campaigns, and regional issues often requires a lot of legwork larger companies aren’t keen to pay for at scale. Still, the end result is a public that no longer really understands what’s happening in their own towns and cities, opening the door to less meaningful oversight of local politicians.
In the earliest days of this blog, twenty years ago this August, I remember discussing this with Knoxville newspaper journos.

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Meme Dump...




Thanks, Phil.

Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow this morning, predicting six more weeks of winter.

"Why are you smiling, then, Tam?"

Because Phil only bats about .170, so that's about as close as you can get to a statistical guarantee of an early spring.




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Saturday, February 01, 2025

Meme Dump...




Hey, look!

For many years, revolvers from mainstream wheelgun purveyors like Ruger and Smith & Wesson stuck to six-shot rimfire revolvers no matter the frame size, purely out of tradition. You had to venture off the beaten path with a High Standard Sentinel or Harrington & Richardson 999 if you wanted the experience of a nine-shooter in .22LR.

Smith & Wesson’s small-frame .22/.32 Kit Gun had been around in one form or another since the early 20th century, but is wasn’t until the late 1990s that the cylinder received an extra two charge holes, bumping the capacity by 33 percent to eight rounds.

The current J-frame offerings, in 8-shot .22LR or 7-shot .22WMR form, combined with newer rimfire loads designed with personal defense in mind like the Federal .22LR Punch or Speer’s .22 Magnum Gold Dot Short Barrel, offer a viable alternative to the recoil sensitive or folks with infirmities that interfere with using a heavier caliber.

Meanwhile, in larger revolvers like Ruger’s Single Six and the medium frame Smith & Wesson 617, the larger cylinder can swallow as many as 10 shots of .22LR. This is a capacity equivalent to most rimfire semi-auto pistols, as well as delivering the same potential benefits to the double action trigger pull as the eight shot N-frame.
Click through to RTWT...

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Opposites...


Someone commented that the Staccato C and the Ruger RXM from Wednesday's range trip were on opposite ends of the spectrum, but I think the actual opposite end of the spectrum from the Stack-a-Toe would be this high-cap Makarov with a bargain basement CTC optic.

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It only takes one side to make war.

Following a string of... er, "incidents", NATO is stepping up patrols in the Baltic...
At least 11 Baltic cables have been damaged since October 2023 — the most recent being a fiber optic cable connecting Latvia and the Swedish island of Gotland, reported to have ruptured on Sunday. Although cable operators note that subsea cable damage is commonplace, the frequency and concentration of incidents in the Baltic heightened suspicions that damage might have been deliberate.

There also are fears that Russia could target cables as part of a wider campaign of so-called “hybrid warfare” to destabilize European nations helping Ukraine defend itself against the full-scale invasion that Moscow has been pursuing since 2022.
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