The Right Gear

Yesterday afternoon, just before strolling home from lunch, I noticed this little tiny little doggo lounging in the shade on the sidewalk out in front of Twenty Tap.

Now that shot was taken from my seat with the 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5 II zoom on my Olympus E-3, an excellent walking-around lens, cranked all the way out to 54mm. With the crop factor of the Four Thirds sensor in the Oly DSLR, that's the equivalent of a 108mm lens on a full-frame camera.

I wanted to get a closer shot, so I either needed to get closer or get more focal length. Thing is, get too close to the dog with the camera and he's going to stop laying there and get up and try and see what you're up to and it blows the whole shot.

I also wanted to be able to get the shot at the camera's native ISO of 100 to minimize noise...

Fortunately, that green blur at the bottom edge of the snapshot there is my camera bag, and in that bag is my secret weapon for a situation like this: The Zuiko 150mm f/2.

Et voila!

ISO 100, f/2 @ 1/250th, trusting the in-body image stabilization of the E-3 to do its thing...

Automotif CCCXLV...

Here's a 1976 Cadillac Eldorado ragtop in Calumet Cream with what appears to be a Light Ivory leather interior.

Power was provided by the 500cid Caddy V8 in its final year of production. Now fully catalyzed, EGR'ed, and 8.5:1 compressioned, the ginormous "8.2 Litre" that had been introduced with 400 SAE gross horsepower in 1970 struggled to make 190 net horses six years later. (You could bump it to 215 by ordering the optional fuel injection.)

By the mid-'70s, convertibles were vanishing. They were heavier and had worse aerodynamics than fixed-roof cars, which hurt gas mileage, and they had a hard time with NHTSA rollover standards. Cadillac marketed the 1976 Eldorado ragtop as the last American convertible and quite a few of the roughly 14,000 sold were driven straight into garages and parked as investments.

When Cadillac launched a new Eldorado convertible eight years later, there was a class action suit as a result.

Truth in Advertising...

Here's an Aston Martin Vantage in...hand to God, this is the actual name of the color...Kermit Green.

Photographed with an old Canon EOS 7D & EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM in Aperture Priority mode, ISO 200 and wide open on a cloudy day.

Automotif CCCXLIV...

The side marker lights and grille tell us this Mist Green Plymouth Road Runner with an Antique Green vinyl top is a 1968.

The fact that it's a hardtop means it was made in the latter part of the model year, since the Road Runner was originally only available as a pillared coupe with a bench seat.

The 440 badges on the hood, if they're not lying, mean that someone's upgraded things in the engine bay from the original Road Runner 383 V8, since the '68 was only available with a 383 4bbl or a 426 Hemi. (The standard Road Runner 383 was a 335bhp version, with a hotter cam and other tweaks exclusive to the model, unless you ordered A/C, in which case you got the same Super Commando 330bhp 383 4bbl as in Uncle Lester's Fury.)

Lucy's got her football out...

https://t.co/ZD7qfllnze pic.twitter.com/AxS8cGQgVL

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) September 23, 2022

Brrr!

Did I say it was going to get down to 49°F this morning? I was mistaken, or rather the weatherdude was. It was 47°F when the alarm clock went off here at Roseholme Cottage. Summer has officially ended.

Yesterday it was 67 degrees and breezy and in the shade, wearing my summer attire of blue jeans, a short-sleeve t-shirt, cotton socks, and a very lightweight gun burkha, it actually felt a little chilly. Understandable, since it had been 94 the day before and the indoor temperature at the house was hovering around 75.

Not quite time to drag out the wool socks, long-sleeve t-shirts, and heavier gun burkhas, but that's probably less than a month away. Call it three or four lawn mowings to go before lawn care involves rakes and leaf vacs.

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Wish it into the corn field!

We do have a problem with people who seem to have an entirely too detached and casual relationship with violence, and an overlapping problem with people viewing guns as problem-solving tools. This is visible in plenty of non-gun areas, too. People are on a short fuse and have been for a while, with the events of 2020 and beyond only exacerbating an existing societal tension.

Part of it is that people can't chill and let go. We carry rage-generation machines around in our pockets. I'll bet the people I muted in that discussion are still raging at me. Don't know, don't care. My arguing-on-the-internet days are long over.

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Falling like a rock...

Man, the season's fixin' to change with a bang here in Hoosieropolis.

Yesterday at sunrise the temperature at IND was 73 degrees, the same as it was in Destin, FL, and the day's high was a sticky, humid 94°F with not much of a breeze. Last night, though, a front dropped through from the north and it's currently in the mid-sixties out there.

Tomorrow morning it's supposed to be right around 49°F at sunrise.

Fall will truly be in the air.

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He'll yeah, borther! 'Til Van Halen!

Mike Pannone drops some real-talk about all those “mindset” fantasies and the false assumptions we make in training.
👉https://t.co/NbRi3G1gfH👈 pic.twitter.com/Oj9VEDp0Id

— Tactical Tangents (@TacTangents) September 22, 2022

"Mindset" and "Awareness" are two massively over- and mis-used words in tacticool land.

For starters, they aren't verbs. You can't awareness at a potential danger or mindset at a threat.

"I'm situationally aware!"

Great, that means you noticed the dude across the parking lot abruptly change the direction he was walking in reaction to your presence. That's a big pre assault indicator.

Now what?

"I've got combat mindset!"

Cool, cool...because he's got 'stick a gun in your face and demand your wallet mindset', too. What are you able to do about it?

To quote Annette Evans of On Her Own, "Awaring without skill only means you get to watch the train come at you from further away. Yay?"

The people who do well in these situations not only see the situation developing, they recognize it for what it is, have a plan to execute in that situation, and the skills available to execute the plan.

Credit where it's due, I totally stole "awareness is not a verb" from Craig Douglas.

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Kubrick was a prophet.

"Do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk, ice cream? Ice cream, Mandrake? Children's ice cream!...

You know when fluoridation began?...1946. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works. 

I first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love...Yes, a profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I-I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence. 

I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women, er, women sense my power, and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, Mandrake...but I do deny them my essence."

 

“Mandrake, have you ever seen a commie drink a glass of water?” https://t.co/bBE9f0SqLZ

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) September 21, 2022

Nature is Healing

Local fave restaurant Twenty Tap went through the Time of the 'Rona a couple years ago with a great deal of ingenuity.

They set up a bunch of outdoor dining in the parking lot two doors down that got them through the winter of '20-'21 with big heaters and even a couple of CONEX outdoor "dining pods".

Thankfully that's all over and done and it's been business as usual over there since probably the middle of last summer, except one thing...

Like every restaurant, they've been critically short-staffed, and their solution to the staffing situation was to open at 4PM on weekdays, basically just cutting out the lunch shift. 

The majority of their biz is the evening crowd anyway, and lunchtime competition here in SoBro is cutthroat. You've got a fairly small population of local office workers and work-from-home types in the neighborhood, plus a constantly fluctuating number of various trades and construction types, and that's it.

But apparently things are easing up, because my beloved "Office Away From Office" is starting up weekday lunch service again, as of today.

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Ancient Traditions

Whatever your opinion on the archaic institution of the British monarchy, the funeral was worth watching. If you didn't, I'm sure it's on YouTube someplace.

Nobody does this kind of pomp and ceremony quite like the Brits, and they never will again. 

If you're alive and fifty or younger, it's odds on you're going to get to watch the next royal funeral and it's not going to be a patch on this one because Chuck's reign will last less than a third as long as his mum's, and the monarchy itself is a dwindling institution. If it endures, by the time they get around to planting George VII  in 2107AD or whenever, it'll probably be a thirty minute affair, not counting commercial breaks.

Anyway, if you watched it and had questions like "Are those Gurkhas? Mounties? Who are those dudes carrying what look like bowstaves*?", the Beeb has a lavishly illustrated explainer of the troops and personages marching in the procession. Granted, you'll probably still need to look up who the "Silver Stick in Waiting" is, but it's a start.

*Those are the Royal Company of Archers.

Turn, Turn, Turn...

Here's a neat animation showing the relative rotational velocities of the planets, as well as their axial tilts relative to the plane of their orbits.

This is how planets of the solar system rotate pic.twitter.com/vVNoyOxg2e

— How Things Actually Work (@tech9icaIs) September 18, 2022

The thought of Jupiter turning that fast is wild, especially when you consider that it's so huge that its famous (and shrinking!) "Great Red Spot" would easily swallow the Earth, nothing but net.

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Change of pace...

It was too hot out at high noon for a heavy meal, especially since Bobbi was planning to grill steaks for dinner, which we'd eat while watching the latest ep of Rings of Power.

Twenty Tap has a great smoked turkey Cobb salad. The smoked turkey is from Fischer Farms which means that it hasn't even entered interstate commerce except in the vaguest and most hand-wavey Wickard v. Filburn sense.

Thing is, I've really gotta be in the mood for turkey, even the smoked locavore kind, and I wasn't yesterday, so I asked them to hold the turkey...and I think they went heavy on the bacon just to make up for it.

That's a damn good salad.

Automotif CCCXLIII...

Here's a '78-'79 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham in Colonial Yellow.

The late Seventies were a dark time for Cadillac, much like they were for the rest of Detroit*. 

The '77-'86 Fleetwood Broughams were the first time the Fleetwood name was used as a separate model designator, rather than a trim level on the most upmarket Caddies.

Still, the Fleetwood Brougham is hard to distinguish from a contemporary Sedan DeVille without looking at the badges. Most of the difference is in the plushness of the interior.

Along with downsizing the car, Cadillac also came out with a new, smaller engine. The new 425cid V8 shared the same basic architecture and bore centers of the older 472/500, but had a reduced bore and a lighter block. It was available with a 4bbl carb as the L33, putting out 180bhp, or with electronically-controlled port fuel injection as the 195bhp L35.

This early electronic port fuel injection system was developed with Bendix and was a weird platypus of a system, being analog controlled and not having an oxygen sensor or any other kind of feedback device. It wasn't entirely a success and was replaced in the early Eighties with a digitally controlled throttle body system. There's a good description of it at this Curbside Classics piece.

*The Eighties were even worse for Cadillac, with the disastrous V8-6-4 engine, and some really weak badge-engineered variants on other GM cars. It wasn't till the Fourth Generation Seville debuted in the early Nineties that Cadillac experienced anything like a renaissance.

Automotif CCCXLII...

Here's a 1972 Cutlass Supreme in Antique Pewter. These could be had with 3- or 4-speed manual transmissions or a 3-speed auto, and an Olds Rocket V-8 of either 350 or 455 cubic inches. There were a variety of levels of output from those two basic powerplants, ranging from the base 160bhp version of the 350, with a single exhaust & a 2bbl carburetor, up to the 270bhp dual-exhaust 4bbl 455.

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I LOL'ed

Conservative Twitter yesterday be all like...

pic.twitter.com/iiORbKbUu1

— Kirk Freeman (@KirkFreemanLaw) September 15, 2022

Jeep!

Dude here is obviously living his best life and knows it. I'm not any sort of whiz on WWII Jeep esoterica, but the hive mind on the Book of Face says this is a Ford GPW.

It's a lot breezier than this thing...

But did he have clown shoes?

Cops in Pennsylvania arrested an armed dude in a clown wig who said he was undercover to restore Trump and kill liberals.

Police say an officer who was in the area met the man as he was coming out of the store and took him into custody without incident. Police say the man had a loaded .40 caliber handgun in his pocket, and that a search found two more loaded handguns in his vehicle.

"The male continued to state that he was 'undercover' and then stated he was 'working to restore Trump to President King of the United States' and that he was armed to 'kill Democrats and liberals' and protect himself from 'drug traffickers,'" police said in the statement.

These GOP primary candidates are getting wilder all the time.

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Super Sevens

I'm not really an early adopter, especially of electronica. I made two gear upgrades five years ago, in the fall of 2017. 

For one, I sold my Nikon D200 and upgraded to a Sony a7. That was going from a 12-year-old camera to a 4-year-old one. I also upgraded from the iPhone 6S I'd been using for a year and a half to an iPhone 7 Plus. Both the iPhones were about one model behind when I got them.

The Sony a7 didn't last long as my main work camera, being almost instantly supplanted by an a7 II the following spring, which was in turn replaced by my current Canon EOS 5DS just before SHOT in January 2020. The 5DS was launched seven years ago, but after two and a half years, I'm still happy with it.

Unlike my camera fluttering, the iPhone 7 Plus had a rock-steady five year run. It was still working fine, too, holding plenty of battery charge despite being used daily as a mobile hot spot. Still, though, it was the cheapest variant, with 32GB of storage, and app bloat and my incessant camera use had the memory slap full for the past year or so.

After the announcement of of the new 14's by Apple, my carrier put all the older models on sale, and so I finally upgraded again. If I get another five years of of this 13 Pro Max, I'll be tickled pink.

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True Crime

This story out of Oklahoma is wild...

Today, the UAB remains active, still tied to gruesome homicides and big drug cases, according to court papers and news reports. In August, nine UAB-linked suspects were charged in the killing of a rival gang member who prosecutors say was lured out of his motel room, tortured and dumped in a ditch.

The missing people authorities have mentioned in connection with the Logan County case are mostly men with long histories of drug arrests and prison stints. One exception is 21-year-old newlywed Audrey Slack, who hasn’t been seen since Jan. 11.

That morning, Slack called her family from a motel outside Oklahoma City while on a road trip with her husband, Stephen Walker, who is more than twice her age and whose tattoos signal membership in another white-supremacist prison gang.

Slack said to expect the couple home by 8 p.m., but they never arrived. Their black pickup truck was found with a bullet hole and traces of blood and bleach on the interior, according to a search warrant filed Aug. 2.

Given some of the tales I've heard about those prison gangs, none of this story is particularly surprising to me, gruesome as it all is.

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"I mean NO!"

Annette Evans of On Her Own will be doing a three hour class on pepper spray employment at the Sig Sauer Academy in Epping, NH this weekend.

It's a great chance to learn the ins and outs of the proper use of "Canned NO!": When to use it, when not to use it, and what it can and can't do. There'll even be the opportunity to practice with inert training spray, like Melody Lauer is doing in the photo below.

(These days I'm a big fan of POM. It's good spray, in a compact form factor with a flip-up safety lid that's safer to carry in a pocket, and when you get the right colors, it doesn't even look like pepper spray on casual inspection.)

Action Shot...

Michael Grasso with the FN America High-Power at the range on Monday.

The D800 and 24-120mm f/4 VR is a handy combination.

This was my first range trip just for the fun of it in a long, long while. Well, I did get some work done, but mostly it was fun spending time with a friend.

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Keep on truckin'...

My Ford-fu is not the strongest, but from all the tells I can make out, this old F-1 is from the very first generation of the F-series, the 1948-1952 "Bonus Built" trucks.

The grilles were restyled for the '51 model year, so this is a '48-'50. 

Days of Chrome and Cursive

Here's that 1967 Buick Skylark convertible in Arctic White we saw motoring up College Avenue last month. A peek at the dash shows us it has the 2-speed Super Turbine 300 automatic transmission.

The base powerplant in the convertible was the 300cid 2bbl Buick V-8 rated at 210bhp SAE gross. If you wanted the Super Turbine transmission, you could also get an optional 340cid 4bbl "Power Pack" V-8, basically a stroked 300 that also bumped the compression ratio from 9.0:1 to 10.25:1, rated at 260bhp SAE gross.

Like the all-alloy 215 to which they were related, the 300/340 Buick small blocks had aluminum heads, intake manifolds, and accessories, and were fairly light for Detroit V-8s at only a little over 400 lbs.

The photos here were shot with the 36MP Nikon D800 and should embiggenate nicely. You can read the climate controls on the dash and everything.

Dialed In...

Got the Swampfox Justice on the Five-seveN sorted and the old-fashioned RMR on this little thing is dialed in now, too.

Let the reviewing commence!

Wanna Get Gooder at Pistol Shooting?

There's an opportunity to take Technical Handgun: Tests and Standards with John Johnston in southern Indiana later this month.

It's a really good two-day class purely focused on handgun shooting mechanics. From the class description:

This class is fast paced intermediate/advanced level 20-hour class where we will dive into the weeds on technical shooting standards, and the fundamental skills it takes to be successful performing them. The two day curriculum is heavily student driven, and will vary slightly from class to class. A heavy emphasis will be placed on pushing people to new levels of automaticity. Multiple tests and assessments will be shot, cold, for recorded score, and the class's top shot will receive a “Major Award”. Expect a SIGNIFICANT amount of one on one time.

Shooters will be expected to already be proficient with their chosen handgun and carry method at the beginning of class. This class IS NOT SUITABLE as an introduction to formal handgun training. If you have never attended a handgun shooting class, please DO NOT sign up without first speaking to the instructor.

It's evolved somewhat since I took it a few years ago. In the level of instruction, I'd say it's broadly comparable to ToddG's Aim Fast, Hit Fast class.

If you're in the Indianapolis-Louisville-Cincinnati area, here's a chance to get some quality pistol instruction without a ton of travel expenses. Sign up by clicking here -> LINKY.

Derp... derp never changes...

You know that the dialog in the picture is...

Kid: "Pffftt... Bullshit you and grandpa killed all those mammoths with fire-hardened wood spears. Everyone knows you can't take a mammoth down without an obsidian spear point."

Dad: "Kids today and your tying one thing to another thing with rawhide! What happens when the stone and wood spirits fight and make your spearhead fall off? It just ain't natural!"

Purple Reign

This is the second groovy hot-rodded '48-'49 Cadillac coupe I've seen running around the neighborhood.

It's a slightly different school of aesthetics from the red one, but I wouldn't kick either one out of the garage for dribbling oil on the floor.

Let's try that again...

Going to take another whack at getting the dot on this thing dialed in today. 

My last effort, I went to Indy Arms Co and forgot my big range bag containing the little screw fiddler in the trunk of the Zed Drei and was too lazy to go back out to the parking lot and get it, so I just did some big, goofy mag dumps function-testing and went home.

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I wield incredible power, apparently.

Out in the kook-o-sphere, someone got big mad at my post yesterday afternoon, the one explaining why I hadn't gone out of my way to make a special 9/11 post.

My lack of doing so, as a matter of fact, is (and I quote) "why it will happen again". 

I had no idea that my posts here on this low-traffic D-list blog had such a powerful effect on the fabric of reality.

I got worried.

So I scrolled back through the September 11ths of the last few years on this blog, making it as far back as 2018 before I got bored. I have really been slacking off in my performative angst, because none of those years had a stock photo of the burning towers and some glurgetext.

Worse, it's been a while since I made a special post on December 7th, so I've been putting the entire Pacific Fleet in danger from the Chrysanthemum Menace with my neglect.

Meanwhile, the mad dude in question keeps calling for the disbandment or defunding of the actual agencies who really do work to prevent another 9/11. He thinks they're the "deep state"*.

It's strange out there sometimes.

*I can't remember if he thinks they were actually behind the first one or not, but the odds are at least 50/50.

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I'm done with that.

I remember 9/11.

I remember where I was and what I was doing when those awful events went down.

I've spent years blogging about it on this date.

Y'know what? We invaded countries, some justified and some not. We overstayed our welcome in almost all of them. We bodied the dude in charge of AQ that day and turned him into an artificial reef in the Indian Ocean. We've passed dumb laws, most of which haven't done any good and should probably be reviewed with an eye towards repeal.

But I'm done with donning a ceremonial hair shirt on this date on this blog.

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Automotif CCCXLI...

Here's a 1968 Cadillac Sedan DeVille in Baroque Gold.

It's a classic "hardtop sedan", with "hardtop" signifying that there's no B-pillar supporting the roof between the front and back doors. No B-pillar meant the door glass was frameless and when the windows were rolled down it was just one big opening from the A-pillar to the C-pillar.

The '68 had the 375bhp 4bbl 472 cubic inch V8 as the standard (and only) power plant option.

Lockheed Martin Whoopsie!

The CNN headline makes it sound worse than it is, though...

Pentagon halts deliveries of F-35 fighter jets after discovering a component manufactured in China

It would be easy to read that and imagine that some contractor installed, I dunno, Huawei-made self-destruct chips or anti-stealth RF transmitters in one of their subassemblies, but that's not the case.

The Pentagon says it's temporarily stopping deliveries of Lockheed Martin Corp's F-35 aircraft after learning from the manufacturer an alloy made in China was in a component of the stealth fighter jet, violating federal defense acquisition rules.

The Pentagon said a magnet containing the alloy used in part of the integrated power package posed no security issue.

This isn't completely surprising, since China is huge in the rare-earths industry, which means the stuff magnets are made of. 

We only want American (or, I guess, allied nation) dirt in our jet fighter magnets, though, for what should be obvious reasons.

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Retconned...

If you're a Tolkien nerd like me, you've watched Galadriel get retconned a bunch. The character Galadriel who was introduced The Lord of the Rings was expanded some and had background material added in The Silmarillion. Then there was a whole chapter centered around Galadriel and Celeborn in Unfinished Tales that rewrote a bunch of her past (and this is where she got retconned as the prime mover of the anti-Sauron alliance of the Second Age).

Heck, the Galadriel in the footnotes at the end of Return of the King doesn't entirely jibe with the character we met in the text.

If you want a good thumbnail of how her character evolved over time, this essay is a good encapsulation.

Seen in this light, some of the sperging around the Amazon Prime series has been pretty droll.

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Automotif CCCXL...

I told ya these were relatively common for a "special edition".

That one from a few weeks ago had side pipes and wore BF Goodrich Radial T/As, while this one has no side pipes and is rolling on Goodyear Eagle GTs.

I've seen two '78 Pace Cars in the 'hood, out of approximately 6500 built, and two third generation Toyota Celica GT-S ragtops...out of only 4500.

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Bingo.

The argument was made, even before the Russian invasion, that Vladimir Putin was being driven by fear of NATO expansion and was seeking a neutral buffer to protect his country. While Putin doubtless disliked the idea that Ukraine could enter NATO, this was not his real motive. Ukrainian membership was never imminent. NATO expansion was not a plot hatched in Washington, London, or Paris to drive the alliance as far east as possible. It was driven by the former satellites of the former USSR, which had been dominated by that country since 1945 and were convinced that Russia would try to do so again once the balance of power turned to Russia’s favor.

I can't be alone in remembering that the free world never accepted the Soviet annexation of the Baltic nations. No frickin' wonder they'd clamor for entry into NATO as soon as the Iron Curtain collapsed into rusty flakes. Also don't forget that it took the Kremlin's state security organs well into the Fifties to stamp out the last armed resistance in the Ukrainian SSR.

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The past was another country...

Sorry for the crap photos. It caught me by surprise and I had a lousy vantage point...

Here's a 1965 Pontiac Catalina in Fontaine Blue. The '65-'70 Catalina coupes, with their Coke-bottle flanks and fastback rooflines are some of my fave cars of the period, probably the peak years of Detroit dominance.

Of course, it also carried the seeds of the eventual fall.

See, the base setup in this car was a 256bhp 389 V-8 with a 2bbl carburetor and a 3-speed manual transmission. Or you could get the same 2bbl 389 with a higher, premium fuel only, 10.5:1 compression ratio and the 3-speed Turbo-Hydramatic gearbox, rated at 290bhp. There was also a no-cost 265bhp low-compression 389 available with the automatic, if you wanted to burn cheaper gas.

Optional engines included a 4bbl version of the 389, as well as a Tri-Power 389 (three 2bbl carburetors), a 4bbl 421 V-8, a regular Tri-Power 421, and a 421 H.O. also with triple deuces. The performance "2+2" package added further options like a Muncie 4-speed manual. 

That's something like three transmissions, seven or eight engines, no fewer than five different final drive ratios, et cetera, ad nauseum.

That's a lotta SKUs, as it were.

You could really tailor your car to your tastes that way, but when the Japanese hit the market with "You have a choice of maybe two engines, two transmissions, three option packages, and pick your color," it really simplified things.

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #218...

If ever a pistol was made for an electronic heads-up display targeting system, it's the futuregat from Fabrique Nationale. I'm surprised it took this long.

Especially because the thing shoots crazy flat, so it's easy to track the dot between shots without it leaving the window, even if you have a thoroughly mediocre grip like I do.

The optic I'm trying out here is the Justice, kindly sent for the purposes of the test by the folks at Swampfox.

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All downside, no upside.

"Belly gun"? Suppose it's not a belly fight?

Why would you deliberately handicap yourself by having a handgun with no sights? There is no upside, but tons of potential downsides.

More thoughts at this link...

A pistol with no sights was dumb when H&R (top left) did it a hundred years ago, and it's just as dumb today.

Lessons Unlearned

From the national news:

A gunman who livestreamed himself driving around Memphis shooting at people, killing four and wounding three others in seemingly random attacks, was finally arrested after crashing a stolen car, police said early Thursday.

The hours-long rampage had police warning people across the city to shelter in place, locking down a baseball stadium and university campuses and suspending public bus services as frightened residents wondered where the man might strike next.

They shut the city down. Canceled a baseball game. Buses and trolleys stopped running. All for one dude driving around a metro area of over a million people and occasionally popping rounds out the window or carjacking a fresh ride.

The fact that this was possible was then broadcast across the nation by prime time national news, no doubt reaching the ears of any potential copycat who cared to take notes.

Oh, also, he had a switch on his G-lock. Didn't he know those are illegal?

#USA 🇺🇸: A gunman carried out a mass shooting in #Memphis and broadcasted the shootings live on Facebook.

The gunman seems to be using a Glock 19 pistol with full-auto switch and extended magazine. pic.twitter.com/8WmASRqJ8a

— War Noir (@war_noir) September 8, 2022

That felt weird...

With Quinn getting close to graduating high school, it felt weird to have Marko's blog in the sidebar still listed as "The Munchkin Wrangler".

I'm terrifically resistant to change, but even I have a point where I have to acknowledge the facts on the ground...

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Gun Curious

The latest vid from Professor Yamane...

The world turned upside down...

Russia is buying millions of rockets and artillery shells from North Korea to support its invasion of Ukraine, according to a newly declassified US intelligence finding.

A US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said on Monday that the fact Russia’s defence ministry had turned to Pyongyang demonstrated that “the Russian military continues to suffer from severe supply shortages in Ukraine, due in part to export controls and sanctions”

Imagine trying to tell your Late Cold War self that in 2022 Russia was going to be reduced to buying Iranian drones and North Korean artillery shells and rockets.

This is totally bass-ackwards from the way the world used to work.

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #217...

Here's the final pistol of the four that were introduced at FN America's event back in March, the 509 CC Edge:

In addition to the straight, tabbed trigger, grip texturing, and mag & slide released from its larger sibling, the competition-oriented 509 LS Edge, it's got a QD compensator, a trendy gold barrel peeping out through the speed holes in the slide, and weighted anodized aluminum baseplates on its 12- and 15-round magazines.

Tab Clearing...

• A brief history of qualification targets.


• Some background on the guy who tried to play Redneck Mohamed Atta in Mississippi this past weekend.


• "Mainstream media f$cked itself, and now we're paying the price."

"We've got Santa at home, honey."

Awakening to an Amazon delivery that hits the porch just as you were waking up has a certain Christmas Morning feeling to it, even if you did have to do everything but drive the sleigh yourself.

It helps that it was a couple cartons of caramel, almond, & sea salt Kind bars, which are delicious and addicting like candy bars but supposedly slightly better for you.

Ten-year-old me would have loved the idea of summoning candy to my front door any old time I wanted.

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Fun With Physics

Visualising the effects of gravity on different planets in the solar system.pic.twitter.com/sTt90SYTSa

— Space Explorer Mike 🇺🇦 (@MichaelGalanin) September 4, 2022

I love the way the car is floating on its springs in some of the lower grav environments, and practically bouncing on its tires even at rest on Pluto, whose surface gravity is only about .06g. 

(Don't worry, the car's not going to bounce right off Pluto. Escape velocity there is still something like 2,700mph. It'd take a pretty small asteroid for the Duke boys to be able to yeehaw themselves clean out of orbit, aside from the fact that there'd be no atmosphere for the General Lee's 383 to breathe.)

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Shelf life...

One thing that really dings the utility of an occasional-use camera for me is how long the battery will hold a charge while the camera sits unused. I've had a couple of really nice little Samsung pocket cams that took great photos and had all the features I want in a compact (full PASM mode selection and being able to shoot RAW), but the batteries would drain over the course of sitting a week or two unused. It's a problem with the little Pentax Q mirrorless series, too.

On the other hand, the other day I picked up the Nikon Coolpix S6500 that I'd bought way back in 2014. I can't remember the last time I'd had it out or charged the battery, but it has to have been more than a year. When the power button was poked, it made its little chime noise and extruded the lens and the battery indicator on the LCD screen still showed a full charge, or close enough to full, anyway.

I threw it in the document pocket of my gun burkha and took it along to lunch on a whim...

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I have sprained my eye-rolling muscles

Sounds like a one-man Death Panel to me, but what do I know? https://t.co/zGfOHSPrOq

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) September 3, 2022

All these ridiculous stunt candidates show me that the current GOP is fundamentally unserious.

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Automotif CCCXXXIX...

Here's a super-straight 1978 Buick Electra 225, from the last era of rear-wheel-drive, body-on-frame GM C-bodies (the Electra, Oldsmobile 98, and Cadillac DeVille.) For the '85 model year the Electra nameplate was moved to a much smaller front-drive unit-body platform, along with its Olds and Caddy stablemates.

If I had to define the dark ages of cars in America, it'd be '77-'84. The impact of smog controls and CAFE regulations was being felt across the board, and the only way to comply was to lower compression ratios, go to crazy-tall final drive ratios, stick catalytic potatoes in the tailpipe, and pray.

The 455 disappeared from the Electra's engine lineup with the '77 downsizing, leaving customers the choice of a 4-bbl Buick 350 V8 rated at 170bhp, or an optional Oldsmobile-sourced 403cid 4-bbl motor wheezing out 185. The more potent of the two motors might crack the 10-second 0-60 barrier if you flipped the air cleaner lid over for better breathing (the only performance mod you could do to mom & dad's car that they wouldn't find out about) and brake-torqued it until it almost threw the accessory belt. You might even get a chirp from one of the back tires that way.

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Oh, please.

Imagine typing things like this with a straight face...

I'm trying to figure out how to explain to our descendants that the decline of Western civilization was pushed across the event horizon of the New Dark Ages by people farming rageclicks to sell vitamins and dick pills.

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Oh, Twitter, never change.

You’ll never out twitter twitter, it can’t be done pic.twitter.com/ZZ79CpwZkz

— Jane Coaston (@janecoaston) September 2, 2022

I do have to say that watching people who've spent the last two years buying up "Let's Go Brandon" and "#FJB" merchandise and calling so many people "communist" and "groomer" that the terms have been diluted into meaninglessness suddenly and theatrically clutch their pearls at "semi-fascist". Especially when the pearls being clutched are draped across the front of a "TRUMP 2020: FUCK YOUR FEELINGS" shirt.

Everybody all excited about Trump in 2016... "We love this guy! He fights!" ...is whining because their fee-fees are hurt now that the guy they've been calling "PedoHitler" had the gall to punch back and be "uncivil". 

(And I agree with Matt Yglesias that the whole "Trump won because he fought back!" is largely a myth.)

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Book Report

Finished Centers of Gravity yesterday afternoon.

It jumps right into the action, which is to be expected. If you hadn't already deduced it by the cliffhanger ending, Orders of Battle and this book were basically one mega-novel that needed to be split for reasons of practicality.

This eighth novel basically wraps up the storyline of viewpoint character Andrew Grayson, while leaving the universe of the Lanky wars wide open for further tales.

The former has to be a relief for Marko. He wrote that original novel in first-person present tense, which is (like told him yesterday)  "normally stunt writing for MFA types. Doing a high-quality 8-book genre fiction series that way… one that maintains or improves quality across the whole series …is one of those records like paddling yourself in a hollowed pumpkin the furthest down the Mississippi." 

The latter, leaving the Lanky-Human wars open-ended, has to be a relief for his publisher. The series has sold very well (Centers of Gravity was at #57 overall on Kindle yesterday morning) so the possibility of revisiting it with other characters probably makes the folks at 47 North plenty happy.

If I had to pick one thing I really enjoyed about the whole series, it's how well Marko handled interpersonal conflict between Andrew and various antagonists over the years. It's real easy for an author to fall into the trap of making anyone who dislikes the protagonist a one-dimensional baddie, but the Frontlines series, which is extremely character-driven and character-focused, demonstrates that sometimes otherwise decent people just don't get along.

For a series we jokingly refer to as "Space Kablooie", it's refreshingly mature.

It's been very enjoyable watching Andrew Grayson grow up.

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Automotif CCCXXXVIII...

Here's a nice, clean 1970-1971 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia in Elm Green motoring down College Avenue on the last day of August.

The weather was wonderful, eighty degrees and hardly any humidity.

Photographed with a Nikon D700 & the ultracompact 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6G travel zoom.

Launch Date

Unlike Artemis I, the launch of the eighth (and final?) volume in the Frontlines series by Marko went off without a hitch and on schedule.

If you preordered it, like me, it was magicked onto your Kindle while you slept. If not, you can get it here now.

I'm off to watch the Lankies hopefully get their comeuppance this afternoon.

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Crafting the Hellmouth

This explains it all...

Indianapolis is the Gate of Hobby Lobby Hell. pic.twitter.com/jIqaLDBU0y

— Candice Dare (@CandiceDare) August 26, 2022

Space Fail

Artemis will not be going to space today.

The launch of #Artemis I is no longer happening today as teams work through an issue with an engine bleed. Teams will continue to gather data, and we will keep you posted on the timing of the next launch attempt. https://t.co/tQ0lp6Ruhv pic.twitter.com/u6Uiim2mom

— NASA (@NASA) August 29, 2022

Serious Steel

Love this absolutely gorgeous hot rodded 1948 or 1949 Cadillac coupe. The cosmetic differences between those model years (and between the Series 61 and more upmarket Series 62) are esoteric and a lot of them involve chrome trim bits which have been removed from this sled.

Speaking of heavy metal, the photo was snapped with an EOS 1D Mark III, a three pound magnesium brick that was Canon's premier sports & photojournalism camera back in 2007. Now it's just an old used camera...but a cool one.

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Anti-Globalism?

The money quote from a very read-the-whole-thing sort of post...

"The American nationalist intellectual movement was mobilized by a book, The Virtue of Nationalism, written by Israeli intellectual, Yoram Hazony. Its political leader is Viktor Orbán. Its second conference was held in Italy. Its conferences’ speakers include Hungarian, Italian, and French politicians. And its Catholic members want to move the U.S. capital to Vatican. They are obsessed with what is happening in Australia and Canada and Finland. What bleeping nationalism is this?

Alternative Explanation: They are not nationalists. They are the same globalists they hate, just that they want a different kind of globalism."

I'd always been a little confused by the reflexive leg-humping of foreign strongmen like Orban, Bolsonaro, and Putin by the pseudo populists who have grabbed TRUMP flags from the merchandise booths and elbowed their way to the front of the MAGA parade (and I say "pseudo populists" because they are, almost to a man, upper class coastal types and Ivy League grads larping as trucker-hat-wearing, country-music-listening, gun lovers), but this essay nails it dead center mass.

Put another way, "As Orwell understood, when they see someone wielding the whip, they want to get their hands on it."

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Automotif CCCXXXVII...

I'm almost certain that this 356 Speedster is a replica (the wiper arms don't look right, for one), but some of the best 356 replicas are made right here in Indiana, so...

Photos shot in Broad Ripple with a Nikon D2X & 18-70mm f/3.5-5.6 DX lens.

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Giving away your position...

"Basically, any time someone’s biggest objection to something, be it a flashlight, glowing tritium lamp or laser is “It’ll give away my position!” I have to wonder what sort of attacker they’re preparing for. If he doesn’t know your position, how is he attacking you in the first place?"

How do you say "giving away my position*" in Turkish?

*While I'm not a huge proponent of WML's on CCW guns, I do like them on a home defense gun, provided the user gets training in how to use it properly. There is, however, one particular use case for having a light on your CCW piece. Specifically, if you carry some off-brand gun hipster pistol that's hard to find quality holsters for and it has an accessory rail that will accommodate a Surefire X300, you can always carry it in a PHLster Floodlight or Bawidamann Gotham.

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Communist Infiltration...

And I mean actual communists, as in the Chinese government, not your neighbor who disagrees with you over what should be the top marginal tax rate.

"Since at least 2017, federal officials have investigated Chinese land purchases near critical infrastructure, shut down a high-profile regional consulate believed by the US government to be a hotbed of Chinese spies and stonewalled what they saw as clear efforts to plant listening devices near sensitive military and government facilities.

     Among the most alarming things the FBI uncovered pertains to Chinese-made Huawei equipment atop cell towers near US military bases in the rural Midwest. According to multiple sources familiar with the matter, the FBI determined the equipment was capable of capturing and disrupting highly restricted Defense Department communications, including those used by US Strategic Command, which oversees the country's nuclear weapons.

While broad concerns about Huawei equipment near US military installations have been well known, the existence of this investigation and its findings have never been reported. Its origins stretch back to at least the Obama administration. It was described to CNN by more than a dozen sources, including current and former national security officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly."

Audience Capture

Influencer culture weirds me out...

"When influencers are analyzing audience feedback, they often find that their more outlandish behavior receives the most attention and approval, which leads them to recalibrate their personalities according to far more extreme social cues than those they'd receive in real life. In doing this they exaggerate the more idiosyncratic facets of their personalities, becoming crude caricatures of themselves.

The caricature quickly becomes the influencer's distinct brand, and all subsequent attempts by the influencer to remain on-brand and fulfill audience expectations require them to act like the caricature. As the caricature becomes more familiar than the person, both to the audience and to the influencer, it comes to be regarded by both as the only honest expression of the influencer, so that any deviation from it soon looks and feels inauthentic. At that point the persona has eclipsed the person, and the audience has captured the influencer."

Coda

Tim at Leicaphilia has made a final post...

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