Meme Dump...

Tab Clearing...

• Russian GPS jamming out of Kaliningrad messes with Western commercial and government aircraft operating into and out of the eastern end of the Baltic.


• When heterodoxy runs amok. (Might be paywalled.)


• The surreal experience of being a guest speaker for the CIA's creative writing group.

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Light, Shadow, Shape, and Texture

This photo was shot with the handy EF 24-105mm f/4L IS general purpose zoom lens mounted on the Canon EOS-1D Mark III.

It was shot in RAW and processed through Adobe Photoshop's RAW converter using the "B&W with red filter" setting.

Like I usually do, I have the 1D Mk3 set up to record both a RAW file and a high res monochrome JPEG. Even though I (almost) never use the straight-out-of-camera JPEG, this ensures that the image shown on the back of the camera is in monochrome and helps me keep my head in that B&W mode, looking for light, shadow, and texture rather than colors.

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Automotif CDLXXVII...

The real find last Wednesday, though, was this immaculate 1965 Chevrolet Impala Super Sport coupe parked out in front of Good Morning Mama's on 54th Street while its owner was inside enjoying a delicious brunch.

In Crocus Yellow with a black vinyl roof, this thing sure is a looker. While the late third generation "six-four" Impalas get all the love, I think the more flowing lines of the early fourth gen cars make them the best looking Impala SS of them all. That sloped rear window blending into the sculpted rear fenders is an aesthetic improvement over the more vertical rear window on the '64.

Despite what you might think, not all Impala SS's came with V-8s. The base motor on the 1965 Super Sport was the 140 horsepower 230 cubic inch "Turbo-Thrift" inline six. Next up on the option list was the 2bbl L77 283cid V-8, rated at 220bhp.

The "327" fender badges and single exhaust outlet tell us that the buyer of this car sprang the ninety-five bucks for option L30: which was Chevy's 327 cubic inch "Turbo-Fire" V-8 with a 4-barrel Carter WCFB carburetor and 10.5:1 compression ratio for a rated output of 250 SAE gross horsepower. (For $138, they could have gotten the dual-exhaust 300bhp L74 327.)

 Dig those groovy taillights!

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Automotif CDLXXVI...

Also from Wednesday's car-spotting session was this Cascade Green 1964½ Ford Mustang convertible. Officially, according to Ford and the VIN plate, it's a 1965 model, but the first Mustangs built from the spring of '64 until the actual start of Ford's 1965 model year later that fall are known by fans as "1964½" cars.

By building a sportily-styled 2+2 coupe with front bucket seats and a console-mounted shifter on the basic underpinnings of their compact Falcon sedan, Ford created a whole new class of automobile for the American market: the "Pony Car". It sold like gangbusters and was immediately* joined by the Plymouth Valiant-based Barracuda and, later, the Chevy Camaro, which shared the front subframe of the Nova compact.

The fender badges say it has a 289 V-8. Prior to the official start of the 1965 model year, there was no 2-barrel version of the 289 offered in the Mustang, with the cheap V-8 role being filled by the 2bbl 260cid Fairlane V-8. The 289 would be one of two 4bbl variants, either the 210bhp 9.0:1 compression version, or the hi-power "K-code" motor, which was considerably beefier, with an output of 271 SAE gross horsepower.

From a period Car and Driver road test:

"Crankshaft design for this engine became the subject of a special study. The crank is made of precision-cast alloy iron and runs in five main bearings. About 70%of the total unbalanced couple is balanced by counter-weights on the crankpin webs, and the remaining 30% is balanced by two external counterweights—one mounted in front of the timing sprocket and the other integrally with the flywheel. In most previous passenger car applications of this engine, the fourth harmonic unbalance occurs beyond the normal speed range. But on the high-performance 289 the fourth harmonic comes within its 7000-rpm range, so the vibration damper developed for the Indianapolis engine, with enlarged rubber contact areas and tuned for higher crankshaft speeds, was adapted. The high-performance 289 also has the cross-bolted crankcase from the Indy engine, plus a number of special design features such as high-tensile strength connecting rods, copper-lead alloy bearing shells, chrome-plated valve stems, mechanical valve lifters, and a high-lift, high-overlap camshaft. The cylinder heads give a compression ratio of 10.5-to-one, and the air intake system consists of a low-restriction air cleaner, an opera-throat four-barrel carburetor, and direct manifold passages. The exhaust system boasts individual headers merging into twin tail pipes. Power output is an impressive 271 bhp at 6000 rpm with a maximum torque of 312 lbs-ft at 3400 rpm.Naturally this unit can be tuned still further for racing purposes by such patent medicines as Dr. Shelby's Cobra Elixir (or imitations available from your local Performance Drugstore). Over 300 bhp may be reached without impairing engine reliability. Specific output of the hottest production model Mustang engine is 0.95 bhp per cu in, as against 0.73 for the standard 289-cubic-inch power unit."

*...and when I say "immediately", I mean immediately. Mopar fans will gleefully point out that the Barracuda was actually the first Pony Car to go on sale, having beat the Ford to showrooms by almost two weeks. The Mustang program was a poorly-kept secret around Detroit, and the rush program to put a glass fastback and bucket seats in a Valiant got iron on the streets before Dearborn did.

Safety First, Accidents Last

Still among my finest moments in prose:

If you’re standing in the produce section at the grocery store and some dude pops out of the cereal aisle going all mass-casualty on the place and you successfully use your AIWB-carried blaster to save the day, it’s going to take some of the shine off the moment if you forget to de-cock your P226 Legion and shoot yourself right in the meat department while putting it away.

Practice hitting that decocker or applying the safety every time you come off the sights.

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Attention Seeking

“A lot of the so-called mischievous behavior of cats is simply an attempt to get the owners’ attention,” Serpell says. “They’ve learned by trial and error if they sit on your desk and throw your pens on the floor, eventually you’ll give them attention or get up.” Taking an extra 30 minutes every day to interact with your cat could lead to a happier dynamic.

I don't know where the cultural trope of 'aloof cats' came from. Whenever my ex would lounge on the sofa to watch TV, his big black tomcat, Lucifer, would perch on his shoulder like a parrot on a pirate. No sooner would I lay down on the bed than Mittens would come a-running from wherever she was in the house to curl up next to my head.

When Huck gets anxious for attention, he'll rare up on his hind legs and knock stuff off of desks with a swipe of his paw. Holden will get upset that I'm paying attention to the strange flat glowing panel in front of me, rather than the cat, and mill around in the footwell of my desk while mewing plaintively until I finally pick him up and balance him in my lap for a bit (which is awkward because Holden is way too large to fit in a lap and it takes both hands to keep him balanced there.)

Meme Dump

Still Here

Roseholme Cottage didn't blow away last night. All we got was a pretty spectacular light show, lots of thunder, and a few spurts of rain. Not even any hail.

Quite a few places across a swath of Indiana just north of us weren't so lucky, however.

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Automotif CDLXXV...

Spotted on Wednesday afternoon rolling northbound on College Avenue was this Monza Red Corvette Stingray coupe.

I had the Nikon D700 with the compact 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6G travel zoom. Plenty of focal length to grab details!

I love that style of wheels on muscle cars and pony cars of the era, but I'm not sure how I feel about them on a sports car like the 'Vette. They look pretty good on this one, though.

Telling a 1970 and a '71 apart from a distance like this is well-nigh impossible as best I can discern. If it has amber front turn signal lenses (which this one does not) it's a later '71 model, but earlier '71s seem to have had clear lenses just like the '70s.

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What's Old is New, and Then is Now

Have you ever had to check to see if a muzzle loading firearm was loaded? If you haven't, it's not that hard.

First you make sure that it's not primed or cocked, and then you drop a long dowel down the muzzle, and mark it at the crown. Then pull it out and hold it alongside the barrel with the mark even with the muzzle end. If the other end of the rod doesn't come even with the breech end, there's a powder charge and a projectile in there.

It's obviously easier with revolvers, whether cartridge or cap 'n' ball, since you can observe the contents of the chambers directly.

When self-loading pistols were first introduced, a lot of thought went into various ways to ascertain the chamber's status without having to cycle the action. Many early autos, like the Luger, had extractors that doubled as visual/tactile loaded chamber indicators.

Savage's Model 1907 pocket auto originally had a clip that encircled the breech, shaped kind of like a pocket clip on some pens, with a tab that extended rearward and would be forced outward by the rim of a chambered round.

Later models dispensed with it, as it required separate machining steps to both the barrel and slide, added an extra part, and could tie up the slide if the finger-like indicator tab were to break off.

Besides, loaded chamber indicators are very much a "trust but verify" sort of thing, as far as I'm concerned. I'd rather check the chamber manually regardless.

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I LOL'ed.

The Atlantic titled a story about the social media theories swirling around Kate Middleton as "QAnon for Wine Moms" and I just want to recognize greatness in title-writing when I see it.

Well played.

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Automotif CDLXXIV...

There is literally a zero percent chance that this Porsche 356 Speedster is not a kit car, but really, who cares? You can get kit cars that will handily outperform the original, plus a real Speedster is a seventy year old car that is worth the best part of half a million bucks these days, and who's gonna flog an investment like that out in traffic where any yo-yo in a Kia could bunt you into penury by running a red light?

Plus with a real 356 at this point, sheer economics mean you need to keep it as close to stock as possible, while you could set a kit car up for maximum hoonage.

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A Jog Around the Blogs...

• The best Monster Truck Rally story I've read.


• I had completely forgotten about Screaming Yellow Zonkers.


• How much do shooting skills degrade over time if you don't practice?

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Garbage In, Garbage Out

As more and more AI-generated product finds its way onto the 'net, Large Language Models are going to increasingly find themselves trained on the output of other LLMs...

"After the world's governments began their above-ground nuclear weapons tests in the mid-1940s, radioactive particles made their way into the atmosphere, permanently tainting all modern steel production, making it challenging (or impossible) to build certain machines (such as those that measure radioactivity). As a result, we've a limited supply of something called "low-background steel," pre-war metal that oftentimes has to be harvested from ships sunk before the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, including those dating back to the Roman Empire.

Generative AI models are trained by using massive amounts of text scraped from the internet, meaning that the consumer adoption of generative AI has brought a degree of radioactivity to its own dataset. As more internet content is created, either partially or entirely through generative AI, the models themselves will find themselves increasingly inbred, training themselves on content written by their own models which are, on some level, permanently locked in 2023, before the advent of a tool that is specifically intended to replace content created by human beings.

This is a phenomenon that Jathan Sadowski calls "Habsburg AI," where "a system that is so heavily trained on the outputs of other generative AIs that it becomes an inbred mutant, likely with exaggerated, grotesque features." In reality, a Habsburg AI will be one that is increasingly more generic and empty, normalized into a slop of anodyne business-speak as its models are trained on increasingly-identical content."

Go and RTWT.

Open wide!

The Fujifilm X-T2 is the least fossil-y camera I have. Despite being three generations old (Fuji's up to the X-T5 now) its release date in 2016 makes it the newest interchangeable lens camera I own.

As a result, the low-light performance is mind-boggling to me. If I'm shooting indoor candids by available light, I'll open the lens aperture wide and let the camera pick the ISO and shutter speed.

These photos were both shot with the Fujinon XF 50mm f/2 R WR lens cranked all the way open. The camera selected ISO 2000 for the upper pic and a whopping ISO 12500 for the lower.

The sharpness achieved at a five-digit ISO seems amazing, considering that a decade earlier anything over ISO 400 was an unusably noisy mess.

I really like the 50mm "Fujicron". It's so compact but offers a good focal length and fast aperture for indoor candids.

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A bustle in your hedgerow

There's a house in the neighborhood that has its sidewalk flanked by a couple tall stands of some sort of ornamental tallgrass.

As I strolled past yesterday on the way to lunch, there was an explosive rustling noise and I turned to my right to catch sight of an Eastern cottontail doe. She froze in the yard and I looked away and got the camera up in front of my face before turning back toward her.

Exploiting the old trick that little animals get panicked by two forward-facing predator eyes pointing at them but are a whole lot less sure what to make of a camera, I was able to take three slow, sidling steps in her direction while snapping away before she lost her composure and bolted away.

Snapped with the Canon EOS-1D Mark IV and EF 70-200mm f/4L IS combo, which is a fave setup of mine for critter pics.

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Incremental Improvements

I'm currently working with a Rost Martin RM1C for an upcoming review in Shooting Illustrated.

It arrived with an RMR-compatible optics plate, and the Swampfox Justice I had on hand bolted right up.

I like the fact that all RM1C's are optics-ready, rather than the annoying tendency, all too common among manufacturers, of releasing a non-optics model first and then...one or two SHOT Shows later...releasing an optics cut model like it's some big event.

Normally, here in 2024 I'd gripe about the fact that the optics cut wasn't deep enough to allow the normal height irons to co-witness, and the fact that the slide required adaptor plates rather than being cut to allow direct mounting using the RMSC or 507k footprint. Rost Martin gets a bye from me on this one, however, because it's not an entirely new design, but rather an Americanized version of the AREX Delta Gen.2 from Slovenia.

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Stop It!

People need to stop pointing guns at themselves.

Especially in retail & gunsmithing spaces, I see a lot of bad gun-handling habits get reinforced because "they're unloaded".

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Git Gud Scrub

Say "Moose and Squirrel"

Did you see the one about the retired light colonel who got catfished into giving away secrets on a dating site? Check this stuff out:

"Please my handsome beloved, give launch codes."

Jesus, this clown makes A1C Teixeira look like Kim muhfuggin' Philby.

"She is communicating with you through her soul and her deep, penetrating eyes you have conjured up in your imagination based on a few almost naked pictures she has likely posted. She thinks you're great and hot and successful and masculine. She loves you! The way no other woman has before. Oh, Svetlana, I love you, too! You’re super hot, but I also love you for your brains. We share an interest in US national defense issues! You’re a rare gem who gets off on talk about military targets. Yeah, baby. Let me tell you about my missile!

But actually, this is Svetlana: An overweight Russian named Boris who is slugging vodka and belching up borscht while typing with potato fingers."

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Clownshoes

In today's episode of "Real life or The Onion?"...

This is some fundamentally unserious nonsense.

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A Jog Around the Blogs...

• Like Vegas, Orlando is a series of ever-finer sieves designed to filter the money from a vacationer's wallet.


• A nice fountain pen is a good thing to have.


• An all-new film camera from Pentax!

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Don't Just Do Something, Stand There

Contrary to popular belief, NYC is not a particularly high-crime city. It's certainly no Memphis or St. Louis, and the borough of Manhattan in particular is actually unusually low-crime for its size. The majority of the crime that happens between the Hudson and East rivers is likely of the white collar variety; it's too expensive for normie criminals. The era of "The Bronx is burning" and Escape From New York is decades in the rearview mirror.

But low crime is not no crime, and a couple high profile incidents in the subways have caused the powers that be in New York to decide that Something Must Be Done... and that "something" is a doozy, let me tell you.

You can tell from the way the dude in the center is wearing his Safariland dropleg rig that we're not exactly dealing with operators here. I suppose it's too much to expect for them to at least be deploying MPs? There's a whole frickin' battalion of them based right there in the city, after all. Hopefully they're using those local dudes. I'd hate to picture SPC Jablonski, a 91B from Binghamton, getting excited and cutting loose with an M4 amongst the theater rush.

City Zoo, Internet Jungle

If you, like me, are a fan of the Indianapolis Zoo, you might want to be aware of a social media scam that's circulating.

The Indianapolis Zoo is warning guests of a scam that is making the rounds on social media offering a ticket giveaway.

The zoo posted the alert Monday evening showing a Facebook post that claims to be offering 200 people a chance to buy four tickets to the zoo for $6.95. The post includes a photo that features the Indianapolis Zoo's Facebook profile photo and the claim that the zoo is turning 80 years old.

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Just because you can...

Just because you can carry something in Condition One doesn't make it a good idea.

The Walther PD380 is an extreme example, sure, but most DA/SA guns that can be carried "cocked & locked" really aren't optimized for it. Safeties are often less than ideally ergonomic for the task (heck, the original GI M1911A1 thumb safety ain't that hot; the giant aftermarket for improved ones wasn't just for cosmetics.)

Further, they are often lacking in a serious detent to keep them in the on-safe position. Few things are as puckering as discovering a cocked and unlocked pistol in your holster. It's not like a modern striker-fired pistol intended to be carried that way. Many pistols of this type, especially older ones, have hardly anything in the way of passive safeties when cocked.

Learn to shoot double action for the first shot. De-cock between strings at the range. It's not a difficult skill.

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Automotif CDLXXIII...

Photographed with a Nikon D300S & 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR II

The eggcrate grille lets us know this is from the final two model years of the second generation of Chevy's C/K pickup trucks, aka the "Action Line" trucks. The rearview mirror being attached to the windshield marks it as a '72, since the mirrors were attached to the cab roof on the '71 models. 

The stance and the "454" fender badges, along with the healthy exhaust rumble, let us know it is pretty far from stock.

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Still a bad idea...

Ugh, the low-IQ garbage that washes ashore in my inbox is so tedious. 

Check this ad out. I like how they get so close to the truth here and then still manage to miss completely.

"It's truly one of the best places to keep your gun whenever it isn't either locked up or on your person" burbles the ad copy.

Look, here is a complete and exhaustive list of the best places to keep your gun, especially in your car:

1. Locked up securely.
2. In a holster on your person.

That's it. That's the whole list.

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Automotif CDLXXII...

Here's a post-facelift W126 Mercedes-Benz S-class, specifically an '86-'91 300SEL. Back in those days, the alphanumeric code on the decklid would have signified a 3.0L engined Sedan, with "Einspritzung" (fuel injection) and a "Lang" (long) wheelbase.

The long-wheelbase S-class sedans were hefty rides, stretching almost every bit of seventeen feet from nose to tail and only a couple hundred pound short of two tons. The single overhead cam 3.0L port fuel injected inline six was reasonably potent for the era, rated at 177 SAE net bhp in North American trim, but definitely had its work cut out for it hauling this bougiemobile down the road.

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Strongmen Love Jet Fighters

Recep Teyyip Erdogan changed his "nay" vote on Sweden's admission to NATO to a "yea" after a bit of logrolling that involved Congress approving the transfer of F16 fighters to the Turkish Air Force.

Now we have Orban removing his objections coincidentally after Sweden agreed to sell Hungary four Saab JAS 39C Gripens (the Magyar Légierő currently operates a dozen leased Gripens as its fixed-wing combat strength.)

The moral of the story: If you want a thuggish autocrat to send you nice Christmas cards, get 'em the hookup with some spiffy jet fighters.

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This is not an advertisement.

When I write a firearms review, I tend to follow a pretty standard template.

In the first part of the article I give a little bit of historical context to the blaster I'm reviewing. I try and give some context for why it exists and what market niche it was intended to fill.

In the second part of the article I give a physical description of the thing itself. I'll describe the sights, control layout, its weight and dimensions, probably a description of how to field strip the thing, if applicable.

I'll wrap it up by giving a report on how the thing functioned (or didn't) in actual use. At most, here, I might mention that I'd carry the gun myself, or that I think the thing has good sales prospects. There will then be a data box of some sort with specifications and the manufacturer's suggested retail price.

Inevitably, I will receive inquiries asking whether I thought it was "good" or "bad" and should my inquirer spend their own hard-earned dough on one?

Friend, I have given you all the applicable information you need to make that decision. It's up to you to compare that data to your needs and wants and determine whether you want to buy one or not. 

I've practically chewed your food for you, Gentle Reader; I'm not going to rub your throat to help you swallow.

Similarly, when I write about a cartridge, it's not because I "love" the cartridge or "hate" the cartridge. I was once the sort of dork who had a "favorite caliber" (it was 10mm, in case you're new here) but I also once laboriously made tedious little top ten lists of my favorite songs, too. I was a kid. Kids do dumb and tedious stuff and get really serious about it; hopefully most people grow out of that phase.

So when I write up some five or six paragraph explainer about what Federal was thinking when they came up with .327 Fed or .30 Super Carry, for example, it's not because I want you to like the round. Or that I want you to hate the round. I'm just explaining why the round exists in the first place. I don't care one way or another whether you like it or not.

And yet every time I do, I get someone doing this...

Narrow Focus Cartridge

Taurus 327 Defender TORO

When the .357SIG cartridge was still in fairly common law enforcement use, just the mention of it was a red flag for a certain sort of old-timer on the gun forums.

Someone would refer to it as "Designed to be the equivalent of .357 Magnum, but in a semiautomatic pistol" and they'd be buried under an avalanche of replies from posters with user names like "WheelgunFan" and "SixFerShur" and "Cowboy Bart" pointing out that the revolver load could fire 158gr and 180gr and even 200gr bullets at velocities that were simply not possible with the bottlenecked pistol cartridge.

Which was fine and good, but the .357SIG was intended to duplicate one specific .357 Magnum loading for one specific purpose: The 125gr JHP load that had such a good reputation with some law enforcement departments, and especially Highway Patrols.

Similarly, the .327 Federal Magnum is not designed to be a "do everything" cartridge. It's designed to do one thing, and that's offer pretty much identical terminal ballistics to the 9x19mm 124gr +P loads that are pretty much the benchmark loads for law enforcement today.

.38 Special doesn't do that. People tend to equate .38 Special and 9mm, but the fact of the matter is that 9mm... especially in +P form ...is a lot closer to .357 Magnum than it is to the old .38 Special.

Witness the following maximum pressures:

• .38 Special: 17,000psi
• .38 Spl +P: 20,000psi
• 9x19mm:  35,000psi
• 9mm +P:  38,500psi
• .357 Mag: 35,000psi

The problem is that .357 Magnum is limited to five shots in small frame revolvers. So the .327 Federal Magnum was designed to offer six shots in a Ruger SP-101 (or the newer Taurus 327) that gave terminal performance equivalent to the common medium-velocity 125gr .357 loads... and, by extension, the 9mm +P 124gr. It does this by virtue of operating at higher pressures (40k psi) and the 100gr .312" bullets having slightly greater sectional density than the 125gr .357" ones.

I suppose if you really wanted to hunt rabbits or target shoot with a .327 Fed revolver, you could load it with .32 S&W Long or .32 H&R Mag, but the .327 Federal Magnum cartridge itself is really only intended to do one thing.

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Meteorological Spring

Punxsutawney Phil may only be right between thirty-five and forty-one percent of the time, but he frickin' nailed it this year.

It's supposed to possibly get into the seventies tomorrow here in Indianapolis, and it won't even be the first time this year.

Fingers crossed...

Looks like it's time to reread Neuromancer. (Just kidding. It's always time to reread Neuromancer.)

Automotif CDLXXI...

When it's 29 degrees outside in Indianapolis on the morning of the first of March, it's nice to warm up with memories of a warm August morning at the State Fair, where I snapped pictures of this 1937 International Harvester D-series pickup truck.

That’s a helluva dunk!

The Indiana governor’s office is about to be vacated vis term limits and the junior Hoosier senator is campaigning for it on a platform of being an “outsider”, because that’s a buzzword that plays well with the low-info GOP voter.

Bobbi is not impressed…

[S]top tryin' to buffalo me, buster -- if a Senator is on the outside, there's no inside left.

She’s got him dead to rights on that bit of goofery.

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Burst Mode

One of the problems with early DSLRs, especially when shooting in RAW, was the time it took to record image files to the storage device.

Back in 2001, the Nikon high-res D1X pro body would shoot at 3 frames per second, but it filled the buffer with only six RAW (or NEF, in Nikon-speak) frames. A couple years later, the consumer-grade Canon EOS Digital Rebel could nearly equal that frame rate at 2.5 FPS, although it filled its buffer in only four shots and then required a full "five Mississippi" count until the buffer was cleared.

The big revolutionary breakthrough was the Canon EOS-1D Mark III. Released in 2007, it came with a pair of Canon's DIGIC III image processing chips (as opposed to the lone chip found on lesser Canons) and these worked in parallel to allow not only a blistering 10 frames per second max speed, but it took a full thirty RAW files before the buffer finally tapped out and needed time to catch up. If you just wanted to shoot JPEGs, you could hold the shutter button down for a full eleven seconds before the buffer needed a breather. This was a 20% increase in frame rate and a 50% increase in buffer capacity relative to the 1D Mark II it replaced.

The sound of a mirror and shutter working at ten frames a second is noticeable...

Secondhand Lessons

The use of commercially-obtainable data has had a profound impact on the war in Ukraine, and the U.S. military has been paying attention.

"52nd Infantry Division policy at NTC forbids the use of personal cell phones in the division area of operations but we know that soldiers depend heavily on these devices for all manner of personal needs and parting with them is often socially difficult and inadequately enforced. Recently, NTC has begun purchasing the same advertising technology data used by commercial advertisers to track device locations over time. While individual identities remain masked, simple aggregated operational security analysis can quickly reveal which company or battalion is where throughout the area of operations by correlating clusters of devices with unit headquarters locations back at home station. As a recent example, data purchased by NTC showed a cell phone taking a circuitous path across the desert in excess of 120 miles per hour. Analysis of this device correlated it with an attack aviation battalion headquarters at home station. We were then able to determine the exact route an Apache took to evade OPFOR air defense systems because one of the pilots presumably carried an active cell phone in the cockpit."

Click through and read the whole thing. It's fascinating.

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Automotif CDLXX...

Here's an '89-'93 Porsche 911 Carrera 4 Cabrio. Back in the early '00s I was idly hoping to maybe get an early 964 Carrera 2 or 4 when they'd depreciated sufficiently, but the bottom of their depreciation curve lasted a mere eyeblink because the water-cooled 996 generation triggered massive nostalgia for the old air-cooled sixes.

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #251...

The Walther PD380 isn't exactly a new model. In the auto industry, this is what would be called a "mid-cycle refresh" of the PK380. Not that there's anything wrong with that; Glock's been doing in for something like forty years now.

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"Incompetent trust fund failsons"

I've known some bush-league versions of the type of dudes he's referencing...

"As usual, you have to go over to independent media outlets like Defector to find something vaguely resembling the truth: that Vice was run into the ground by a rotating crop of utterly incompetent trust fund failsons who created unrealistic, hype-fueled company valuations, hoovered up exorbitant salaries, implemented numerous incoherent strategy pivots, and set giant piles of money on fire on a rotating crop of increasingly stupid ideas..."

It's a specific GenX/Millennial digital age variety of the Jack Welch-flavored idiocy that has gutted numerous American businesses.

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Groggy.

In retrospect, it was probably a rumble of thunder that woke me.

All I know is I was laying awake in bed and the curtains over the window flashed white. I thought that someone must have been in the yard, playing the beam of a flashlight across the house. As I sat up and pulled the curtain aside to peek out, the tornado sirens started going off.

I decided to go wake Bobbi, who turned on the TV, and sure enough we were about to get smacked by a hella strong front, barreling straight for Indy at 55 miles per hour.

The house rattled with hail, like someone was throwing handfuls of pebbles against the walls and windows. Bobbi was like "Okay, if we head for the basement, you grab Holden and I'll get Huck," and for a hot minute that seemed like a possibility, but then the first wave was past us and the weather settled down to a normal, albeit heavy, rain. At least it would have been easy to grab the cats, because when it started blowing outside, they both jumped up on Bobbi's bed, looking for some soothing.

There were at least two more lines that passed over us behind that first one, but neither was anywhere near as dramatic.

Still, I didn't get a lot of sleep between two and five AM...

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Shotgun Rocks

I thought this photo was interesting.

Rifled Foster-type slugs from a semiauto 12ga with some sort of inexpensive folding backup irons, either Magpuls or a knockoff, mounted atop it. Notice the smoke from the muzzle brake and the not-yet-ejected spent shell still traveling rearward visible in the ejection port.

Between the brake, the gas operation, and the inline nature of the stock, the recoil is driving the gun straight to the rear with virtually zero muzzle climb. However, the inertia is also causing the rear folding BUIS to flop rearwards.

Differently Triggered

We live and we learn... Well, hopefully we do. I know people who haven't changed an opinion in years, or even decades. In my most recent column at Shooting Illustrated, I talk about triggers...

"This is going to be another in an intermittent series of columns examining the various topics on which I’ve changed my mind over the last 20 years or so as a result of being hip-deep in the defensive-pistol world.

This particular column is going to be all about triggering people by discussing what I’ve learned about triggers over that time—and why what I thought I knew about triggers before then was wrong, possibly even counterproductive..."

I really wish I'd gotten the Model 19-5 onto Denny Reichard's bench before he passed. I suppose I can just swap factory springs back in myself, but it ain't the same.

Casualty Vampires

A writer on the death of Vice:

"I feel like running the very famous and cool brand Vice – especially with how little they paid people – would be a slam dunk self sustaining business if only 45 people at the top doing nothing weren’t making like $19 million a year.

The death of Vice is the same story as the death of every other company in this country. It's a story of extraction of wealth at all costs for the few with malign indifference for the workers who actually gave the thing its (vastly overinflated) value in the first place."

It happens in all kinds of industries now. Buy a thing, slash costs to boost profits, extract as much value as you can, sell off any parts of the organization you think you can make a buck off of & outsource and/or offshore their functions, and if you can't find a buyer for the husk, just toss it. We've seen it happen with everything from Remington to Sports Illustrated. It's happening in slow motion with Boeing right in front of our eyes.

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The digital sewers will overflow...

Internet jackholes are hopeful that the Supreme Court will rule that they have a constitutional right to say the N-word on Facebook.

Folks who moderate the comment sections on their blogs should brace for nuisance lawsuits if SCOTUS upholds this.

It'll be lulzy.

Remember, kids, it's either put up with jannies or be hip-deep in literal Nazis.

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Currently Reading...

Professor Yamane sent me an advance copy of his forthcoming book, Gun Curious, which will be shipping in June.

I'm enjoying it rather a lot, as he's not only a smart and thoughtful dude, but also a pretty decent writer. I've known more than one PhD who couldn't write their way out of a paper bag when it came to crafting engaging prose, and this book ain't like that.

Anyway, it's available for preorder at BezosMart. Publishers really like pre-orders. You should do that if you want to help him get the word out.

Why you need a quarter (to call someone who cares.)

Ubiquitous (adj.) : existing or being everywhere at the same time : constantly encountered : WIDESPREAD

Sam Waterston just appeared on his final episode of Law & Order last Thursday night. Do you know how long he'd been playing the character of Jack McCoy? Well, when he first appeared on the show in the mid-Nineties, detectives Briscoe and Logan still had to pull over and use pay phones to call the precinct.

Pay phones were everywhere, just a part of the landscape. There were banks of them at the airport, and you'd use them to call home to let them know your flight had arrived and you needed a ride. If you were broke and had a bit of larceny in your heart, you'd place a person-to-person collect call to "Homer" and they'd know you were ready to be picked up, saving you that crucial twenty-five cents.

The neighborhood weed dealer would be loitering by the pay phone out in front of the Majik Market waiting for calls from customers so he wouldn't have to talk about that stuff on his own phone line.

Once, when out for a late night walk with a friend, we were drawn to one whose kiosk was glowing hypnotically blue in the muggy Georgia summer night. On jiggling the coin return handle experimentally, it disgorged several bucks worth of silver like a slot machine that had just come up jackpot. We bought sodas and Slim Jims with our windfall and continued our stroll.

Nowadays? They're practically gone. It's an oddity to see a free-standing payphone these days. It's probably safe to say that the majority of Americans under thirty have never used one. I can't remember the last time I did, but it was almost certainly before I finally gave in and got my first cell phone in '03.

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