You probably weren't doomering hard enough...

Latest forecasts don't envision petroleum traffic to return to anything like normal through all of 2027.

Hey, look! (No, seriously, look. Don't just see.)

On the difference between seeing and observing:

The first step in the decision cycle is Observing. This is analogous to the “situational awareness” that is often mentioned but rarely defined.

If it’s described at all, it’s with phrases like “Checking one’s six” or “scanning the environment”, but it’s entirely possible to look around and not see, and even seeing isn’t the same as observing. Reducing it to the simplest example, if you are lying on your back in your bed and you wake up and open your eyes, then photons are going to bounce off the ceiling and hit your retinas. You are looking at the ceiling, you are even seeing it, but you are not observing the ceiling, let alone the entirety of your room...

Go RTWT...

How many people in this picture are really aware of their surroundings?

Pleasant Reading...

• Lessons From a Madman


• A Complicated Birthday


• Tips for not losing your cool...

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More on the Black Gold Situation...

Automakers are contacting dealers and changing recommended oils as certain blends are harder to get. Refineries are going on allocation.

Normie outlets like Motor Trend have picked up the story.

This has the potential to turn into another situation like toilet paper in the time of the 'Rona. Dudes at BimmerPost were talking about picking up enough oil for their next two oil changes as far back as the end of March.

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"You Have 60 Days"

You'll note that the video was published on April 8th.

Like clockwork, comes this AutoZone memo...

The Start of the Killing Season...

If you read this blog, you almost certainly know that yesterday marked the 251st anniversary of the clashes between trained bands of militia and the Crown's regulars at the towns of Lexington and Concord.

Other notable events on the 19th of April include the start of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943, the fiery denouement of the siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco back in 1993, and the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

This week also contains a number of notable anniversaries, and if there's anything both unhinged weirdos and terrorists both like, it's doing their mass casualty events on historically significant dates.

Keep an eye out and think about where you want to be for the next few days.

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Realistic Objectives

Greg Ellifritz makes a good point here about why to keep a lock on the gate to your backyard privacy fence.

You're not trying to duplicate the security level of Fort Knox, here. Like keeping the doors on your house locked and your windows secured, you're just trying to make breaking into your place a hassle. Most casual daytime burglars don't want to deal with that level of work. If they did, they'd have jobs.

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Shoot Gooder

There's a neat training opportunity in Texas at the end of the month. The class is called "Near and Far: The Complete Handgun Fight", co-taught by Greg Ellifritz and Jeff Gonzales.

Greg describes it thusly:

"The course combines a day of my extreme close range gunfighting concepts with a day of Jeff teaching the long range handgun curriculum he developed for a federal law enforcement agency in the context of active killer/counter-terrorism engagement."

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Writing Elsewhere...

• People toss "the OODA loop" (aka Boyd's Decision Cycle) around a lot, but what does it mean in the context of personal protection?


• Modifying a Mosin? Why? What do you expect the result to be?

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Elsewhere…

• 1970 big block Corvette convertible


• How, why, and when to use your CCW handgun

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Tab Clearing...

• The 1878 bridge over Loughery Creek in Ohio and Dearborn Counties in Indiana is the last one of its design in the world


• The Suicide Song of the 2nd Lanai


• Practically Tactical

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Planning ahead prevents disappointment.

Slipping out of the house for lunch yesterday, I hopped on my bicycle with my Pentax K7 slung around my neck, hoping to get some car photos on an unusually warm autumn afternoon.

Glancing at the LCD screen on the camera's top panel as I turned it on, I noticed the dreaded "----" in the space where the "Shots Remaining" readout would be. Oops, that's right... I had the SD card from the K7 in the card reader on my desktop. D'oh!

However, because I've had this happen before, I was ready this time.

In my peregrinations about the neighborhood, I carry a little canvas tote that holds my iPad, an umbrella, a wind shell stuffed in a little pouch, a pint glass koozie... and waterproof little memory card holder that looks like a teeny Pelican case. Inside it I keep a couple CF cards, a few SD cards, and even a MicroSD just in case.

Problem averted!

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Reading the signs...

Excellent video from Craig Douglas of Shivworks here. Really worth the watch.

If you haven't trained with Craig, you really should.

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The Imperceptible Handgun

Rhett's one of the most outside-of-the-box thinkers in the CCW training space today. This is a great series.

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Beware this man!

He may look like a normal, unassuming nice guy firearms instructor, but John Hearne is actually a fiend in human form who spends hours at a time in solitude behind the wheel of a truck trying to come up with new ways to make people think hard when they employ a handgun to solve a problem.

And you should definitely take one of his classes.

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Tab Clearing...

• The latest front on the AI slop war: Hours-long "boring history" videos driving out actual history content.


• Shivworks on "Perceived Disrespect". These are things to think about if you decide to go armed in public.


• Leaked info on 2019 DEVGRU operation in North Korea that went south fast.

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Spray Tip

If you're buying defense spray, avoid CS spray or the kind that claims to mix CS in with the normal OC (oleoresin capsaicin) pepper spray.

CS takes a while to actually take effect (ask your friends who've had to go through the gas mask stuff in military basic) as the crystals dissolve and release their evil magicks, whereas OC takes effect as soon as it comes in contact with a mucous membrane.

I don't know about you, but it doesn't do me any good if a bad guy suddenly gets all teary-eyed and runny-nosed when he's thirty seconds or a minute into beating my ass.

Get Pom. Compact, good range, and an innocuous-looking dispenser that doesn't draw a lot of attention when sitting in a pocket or on a keychain.

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Overheard in the Hallway...

RX: "I had multiple copies of The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook because my family members kept gifting them to me."

Me: "I have one you can have if you want it."

RX: "Oh, I still have one..."

Me: "I mean just in case your copy caught fire."

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Tab Clearing...

• Deepfakes, Scams, and the Age of Paranoia


• It's a good time to be a goldbug.


• Hipster Tactical review of the US-made SIG Sauer P210.

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Tab Clearing...

• Why you'll never see me type "Remember to mash that Like button and subscribe!"


• If I had a bajillion dollars and built a custom home, it sure wouldn't look like a suburban municipal library circa 1998.


• It's that time of year again.

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