It's Holden!

Photographed with a Fuji X-T2 & 18-55mm f/2.8-4

QotD: Ouch! Edition

"The only instinct human beings are born with is sucking. A good many never get much past that." -Roberta X

Knowing Your Background

Among the great purging of books I'm doing, the filter for keeping a physical hard copy on the shelf is somewhere between "Am I going to read this again?" and "Is it of enough personal significance that I want the actual dead tree book as opposed to just a file on a device?"

The latest series to fall under scrutiny is Jack Whyte's Camulod Chronicles. I really love the premise and late Classical to early post-Roman Britain is a fascinating historical setting for me. In the early Fifth Century, Britain was a tranquil backwater of empire that had been Roman turf longer than there's been a United States, and within fifty years was dealing with increasing encroachment of Germanic raiders and settlers and the collapse of an urban civilization.

The first few books I really love, and it's probably ironic that they're basically a setup piece for the Arthurian stuff...which I've read through once and don't have any real desire to slog through again. I'm currently re-reading the first four books to decide whether I keep only the first three or hold on to The Saxon Shore as well.

The second book, The Singing Sword, has Merlin's uncle, Arthur's grandpa, forging Excalibur from meteoric iron, and it tickles me the way that Jack Whyte tortures himself to come up with a way to have the character "invent" the hand-and-a-half bastard sword while not realizing that the Roman cavalry already had spathas. 

He winds up trying to combine the properties of sword and spear to give the new mounted warriors (because we only have a few books to get to knights, right?) something long enough for a mounted man to hit an enemy foot soldier. Fortunately that bit is mercifully quick and doesn't throw me completely out of the story. Migration-period technology had already worked out how to smack a dude with sharp steel from horseback, and a real Excalibur probably would have looked like this, rather than a prop from the 1981 John Boorman film.

Completely gratuitous sword photo

I get that half the fun is trying to work our way to the Arthurian mythos from Romano-British roots and put some flesh on the legend's bones (Minor Spoiler: While waiting for swordly inspiration to strike, our protagonist keeps the metal stored in the form of the statue of a nymph, which statue he names "The Lady of the Lake",) but some more technical military study to accompany the historic stuff probably would have helped keep war nerds like me happy. 

He's got the Roman troops in late-4th Century Britain running around in lorica, with the shields and weapons of late-Republican/early-Imperial legionaries. A dude with a gladius, pilum, and scutum in a Roman legion of 400AD would look as out of place as a guy with a tricorn and a Brown Bess in a military formation today.

Anyway, I'm having fun with the reread, but I had to vent.

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Automotif CCXIII...

Here's something you don't see too often: A 1966 Dodge Charger just out and about in public. Totally coincidentally, a dude I know knows the person who just sold it, and says it's a 440cid 4-speed car.

The dash illumination in these things was wild and was super science fiction-y for the era.

That huge rear window slope caused problems with lift at NASCAR speeds, and so Dodge quickly got a spoiler offered as a factory option to homologate it for racing, making the Charger the first domestic car offered with a decklid spoiler available from the factory.

Car and Driver tested a 1966 Charger back when they were brand new. The test car was a 383cid car with the 3-speed TorqueFlite automatic and a 3.23:1 rear end, with a sticker price of $3,471.83 FOB Detroit. It managed a 7.8 second zero-to-sixty run and a 16.2 second quarter mile at 88mph. Given the final drive ratio and the bias ply tires, that sounds about right, especially since the 4-bbl 383 big block, even with the 10:1 compression ratio, probably made something like 250bhp or less in modern SAE Net terms and had to push nearly two tons of car. C/D estimated top speed at 120mph.

Knowing this car has a 440 and a 4-speed, and looking at those subtly widened rear rims, I'd bet it's a lot quicker than that.

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Derpeste.

"I have carried a 7.5” Blackhawk in .45 Colt crossdraw in a nylon holster while working at a gun store, and I was only carrying it a little ironically. At least it was one of the more upscale suede lined nylon holsters?

Oh, and it was loaded with Glasers because of course it was. I mean at that point, why not?

Derpeste."

I was being fundamentally unserious. In my defense, it was a long time ago. 

Oh, and "Derpeste" = "The derp in me recognizes and acknowledges the derp in you." 

We've all been there before and we'll all be there again. Self-betterment in any field of endeavor is a constant process and not a destination.

I'm glad that stuff I wrote on gun forums twenty years ago...heck, stuff I wrote on this blog only five years ago...is still out there. Yeah, I cringe a little when reading it, but it keeps me grounded. I've said some dumb stuff in the past and I'll probably say more dumb stuff tomorrow, from the viewpoint of myself five years from now.

Here's one: I really dig this gun, but in retrospect, Mag-Na-Porting on a defensive gun isn't exactly optimal*, and any .41 Mag loads I'd carry for defense would hardly require the porting in a 4" N-frame, anyway.

*And not for the reason the internet told me twenty years ago, which was "You'll blind yourself at night with the flash from the ports." The fact of the matter is that any flash from the ports is going to be swamped by the flash from the muzzle anyway. The real reason is because porting (as opposed to actual expansion chamber compensators) tend to expel jacket or bullet shavings and unburned powder flakes, and if you're shooting from a good thumb-pectoral indexed retention position, you are likely to get tattooed by this ejecta.

PseudoVincent

Yamaha's original Virago from the early Eighties was an unusual cruiser in that it didn't just completely ape Harley Davidson design language. There were no fake rocker boxes on the engine, which instead seemed to emphasize its overhead-camness. Further, since the bike used a backbone frame with the engine as a stressed member, it was just kinda hanging our there for all to see, with no downtubes on the frame to obscure your view of the mechanicals.

As you can see, it makes a great base for turning into a very British-looking cafe racer. It's got kind of a cool retro vibe, enhanced by what looks to be a Bren gun mag pouch for storing tools and incidentals.

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Are you being played?

Did that tweet or social media post get you mad? Did it make you feel despair? Did you immediately want to share it because it pushed your buttons so hard?

"There used to be a distinction between Russian and Chinese activities in cyberspace. While China concentrated on cyber-espionage, plundering secrets from Western corporate and government systems, the Russians were the vandals. They launched destructive cyberattacks while engaging in disinformation and hack-and-leak operations, tactics with their roots in the Cold War heyday of ‘active measures’. Their aim was to sow division, doubt and distrust, spotting and exploiting cracks to weaken the target. Those aims have not changed.

Now Russian and Chinese tactics are converging. Both use social media to peddle disinformation and toxic content, amplifying fringe media, obscure ‘experts’ and conspiracy theorists.

The aim of both is not only to obscure facts but to disorient and depress: when Zhao Lijian pumped out tweets after the Manhattan attack, the content was carefully chosen. The posts he shared were not the angriest, but they were full of despair: ‘What the hell is wrong with people?’, ‘This is incredibly difficult to watch’, ‘Oh my God, what is happening to this country?’ ‘This is a state of emergency.’"

A timely article, because my friends at the Tactical Tangents podcast were just discussing this very thing.

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Automotif CCXII...

Spotted in a parking lot in Martinsville after dinner Sunday evening was this '70 'Vette. Peak 'Murrica here in the heart of American-occupied America:

Much Learning Occurred.

This was such a well-rounded two-day class. It can be a bit of a drink from the firehose, but there's a lot of material that's not covered by yet another five-round drill from the seven yard line.

Identifying and interacting with suspicious-looking (or -acting) strangers. Deselection, avoiding getting entangled in unwanted conversations. How to carry...and when and how to use...pepper spray.

There's basic trauma self-care stuff, things like telling the difference between arterial and venous bleeding, and applying tourniquets and pressure dressings.

The targets were verbally engaged and early on, visual rather than audible cues for drawing and shooting were incorporated. A lot of emphasis was placed on not robotically drawing and shooting.

Of course there was shooting...

...and coaching...

...and watching skills get validated by having to verbally...and perhaps ballistically...engage three-dimensional, moving, interactive targets.

Concealed Carry: Street Encounter Skills and Tactics remains my default recommendation when someone asks me "Hey, I've taken a basic CCW class, but what should I take next?"

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Weekend stuff...

I'm taking pictures again...

Like Stalin said...

..."Dark humor is like food; not everybody gets it."

"Ok, if it flashes blue its a boy and if it flashes pink its a girl." pic.twitter.com/jl8HWUs0AQ

— Codex (@codexrau) April 23, 2021

Ugh, the internet.

"Why didn't he fire a warning shot?"

Okay, first, because even warning shots land someplace. Whose living room would you like it to land in? Second, because she was in the middle of stabbing someone, so there wasn't a lot of time for warning people.

"Why didn't he shoot her in the leg?"

Oh, man, when are we going to rid people of the damfool notion that it's possible to shoot someone a little bit? A bullet in the knee can leave someone crippled for life, possibly resulting in amputation. A bullet in the thigh (or, like I unbelievably heard someone suggest, the "butt") can sever the femoral artery and cause them to bleed to death right there on the spot. Also, she was in the middle of stabbing somebody, so there wasn't a lot of time to play eeny-meeny-miney-moe with bullet placement.

"Why didn't he deescalate?"

The time to deescalate someone is before they start stabbing people. Once they're actively trying to stick a knife in someone, which is lethal force, it is generally accepted that you may use drastic measures before they can finish killing that person.

I don't know everything that led up to the shooting of that girl. Supposedly she was the one who called the cops. Maybe she got tired of waiting and decided to take matters into her own hands? There's also the phenomenon where people call the police and automatically think that it activates the "I'm the Good Guy" light over their head, that the cops will show up, divine that they are the injured party, and back their play. This is how the occasional homeowner gets shot by responding officers when they wander out looking for the burglar with a gun in their hand.

There's a lot here we don't know, and it sure seems crappy all around, but an LEO shooting Person A to stop them in the act of using clearly visible lethal force against Person B is usually pretty cut and dried.

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Automotif CCXI...

Oh, hey, look! It's the new (G42 series) BMW M440i! Hey, that's a pretty slick-looking ride from the side...

Let's walk around to the front of the car and see what's shakin' up there...

EWW! It looks, to steal a line from my friend TC, like a Mustang had sex with a naked mole rat. That, or some sort of angry cyborg attack beaver. That snout is going to take some getting used to, not gonna lie. I realize that, thanks to Audi and Lexus, great gaping maws of grille up front are the style of the time (the latest iteration of the Genesis sedans look like they might accidentally inhale a Smart or Scion iQ) but BMW's traditional split grille does the look no favors aesthetically. 

I get that all the new BMW's are going to be rolling over to the giant beaver-toothed snout. It's the marque's new design language and will be with us for the next 5-8 model years in some variation or another. But Mercedes finally gave up on even the faintest hint of a faux radiator shell decades ago and Lincoln Continentals lost the vestigial fake spare tire hump about the time they lost rear wheel drive, yet BMW is going to find a way to keep the now meaningless kidney blobs on the front end from now til doomsday.

I'd say I was never going to get used to it, but I also have to acknowledge that I used to say that about the Bangle era and now, with the right wheels, the E60 5-series is among my favorite Bimmers.

Everything Old is New Again...

...or, "There is nothing new under the sun." (Although the opinions seen as publishable in The Atlantic have definitely swung a hundred and eighty degrees.)

From June of 1896: 

"But it is not alone that the presumption regarding the immigrant of today is so widely different from that which existed regarding the immigrant of thirty or fifty years ago. The immigrant of the former time came almost exclusively from western and northern Europe. We have now tapped great reservoirs of population then almost unknown to the passenger lists of our arriving vessels. Only a short time ago, the immigrants from southern Italy, Hungary, Austria, and Russia together made up hardly more than one per cent of our immigration. To-day the proportion has risen to something like forty per cent, and threatens soon to become fifty or sixty per cent, or even more. The entrance into our political, social, and industrial life of such vast masses of peasantry, degraded below our utmost conceptions, is a matter which no intelligent patriot can look upon without the gravest apprehension and alarm. These people have no history behind them which is of a nature to give encouragement. They have none of the inherited instincts and tendencies which made it comparatively easy to deal with the immigration of the olden time. They are beaten men from beaten races; representing the worst failures in the struggle for existence. Centuries are against them, as centuries were on the side of those who formerly came to us. They have none of the ideas and aptitudes which fit men to take up readily and easily the problem of self-care and self-government, such as belong to those who are descended from the tribes that met under the oak-trees of old Germany to make laws and choose chieftains."

From April of 2021:

"This is utter fantasy. European immigrants at the turn of the century faced nothing like the restrictions that prospective immigrants face today, let alone the immense, militarized deportation machine Americans have come to accept. They were poor, uneducated, and didn’t even need to speak English to enter the country; a minuscule fraction were excluded. The distinction between immigration before and after 1965 is that in that year, the U.S. repealed restrictions based on race and ethnicity that almost entirely prevented immigration from Asian and Africa. The America First Caucus document’s falsehoods about post-1965 immigration echo Anglo-Saxonism’s pseudoscientific presumptions that recent immigrants are somehow qualitatively incapable of “self-care and self-government.”"

Sploosh

Yesterday morning's typing was interrupted by a loud sound from down the hall. I couldn't identify it, and assumed one of the cats had knocked over something heavy.

Bobbi, on the other hand, identified it immediately. "Oh, no! Holden jumped in the tub!"

Sure enough, a large fluffy cat came tear-assing out of the bathroom into the dining room, where he hung a u-turn and came barreling back down the hall to launch himself onto the typewriter shelf of Bobbi's desk, chirring and whirring with indignation the whole time.

Bobbi scooped him up and swaddled him in a towel. Only his legs were really wet; he must've practically bounced out of the water. I spent the next few minutes with a handful of paper towels mopping up the dining room floor in between fits of giggles.

We don't know if he'd been standing on the edge of the tub and slipped, or if he just jumped in without looking.

Random Holden photo, because the internet likes cat pictures.

Out of Touch

It wasn't an accident. Policing in our country is inherently & intentionally racist.

Daunte Wright was met with aggression & violence. I am done with those who condone government funded murder.

No more policing, incarceration, and militarization. It can't be reformed.

— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) April 12, 2021

"Abolish the police" only plays well with the far end of your base, you know. If you're trying to scare the center back toward the GOP, you're going about it the right way. Crime scares people, and while even the most normie suburbanites are mad at the po-po when they get a speeding ticket, they don't call for social workers when someone burglarizes their house.

This is the kind of mindset that comes from living in bubbles of groupthink.

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QotD: Applied Skills Edition...

From Chris over at Amplified Being:

"My sub-1.2 second draw to first shot or 0.2 second split times (time between shots) aren’t helpful if I don’t understand when I am legally permitted to use lethal force. If I execute that draw to first shot and split times in a legally and morally unjustifiable manner, I’m just rushing to jail-time. In fact, being ignorant and wrong with lots of speed is probably worse than just being wrong, because it’s a lot harder to get on the brakes in time."

It's a good post and you should go and read the whole thing.

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Bonus points if you had a folding grip on it.

(From a friend on the Book of Faces. I LOL'ed and had to share.)

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What she said...

" Whatever else their motives -- mental imbalance, loathing some person or group, wanting to begin war between sexes, races or religions, and so on -- all of these shooters give a credible impression of seeking attention. Of desiring posthumous fame. One strikes and is a three-day sensation in the news online and over the air, and others follow, time and again.

  We've got to stop making these horrible losers famous. Whatever else we do -- and there's a long list of suggestions, from "ban all the guns" to "arm everyone," with stops at "put a policeman on every corner" and various sorts of profiling -- we have got to stop making them famous."

RTWT

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Automotif CCX...

When Alfa Romeo sold their Alfetta 2000 here, they worried that the "Alfetta" name wouldn'd translate well to the American market, so it was called the Alfa Romeo Sport Sedan for the US market. A forty-odd year old Alfa moving under its own power on a public road in the Midwest is the opposite of common.

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