The opposite of news.

The Heckler's Veto remains alive and well on campus, so this is just another in a litany of "Dumb Tweets For Me But Not For Thee" incidents:

"In practice, Georgetown is revealing a double standard in which conservatives must avoid giving offense while progressives are free to express any unguarded thought."

Many such cases. Sad!

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Tell me you've never seen a Cheech & Chong movie

 ...without telling me you've never seen a Cheech & Chong movie.

Somebody getting all geeked up on something and shooting? Sure, we've all seen Scarface.

Somebody tripping balls on hallucinogens and mistaking the neighbors for zombies? Plausible, okay.

But smoking a blunt and still having the energy & ambition for a shooting spree? Nah, dog. pic.twitter.com/COjIbs16ZG

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 7, 2022

QotD: Infringement Edition...

Keith Finch on New York state's latest round of legislatin'...

New York, California, and Illinois love their marathon to infringement. They’ve never seen a gun control measure they hate, regardless of how absurd. It is a sad state (or three) for the nation that we are looking at alarmist solutions.

It doesn't repeat, but it rhymes?

An interesting take on the Ukrainian situation, from an historical angle...

The outcome of the battle for the Donbas may well determine Ukraine’s fate for years to come. Local defeat looms but that need not become strategic defeat: that depends on Kyiv’s military moves right now. Time is the most undervalued aspect of warfighting but also the most difficult to grasp. War invariably develops its own logic. In that sense, war never changes, particularly when it involves Russians.

Automotif CCCVII...

A 1973 or 1974 Dodge Charger. Without a better look at the rear bumper & taillight configuration, my Mopar-fu is too atrophied to make a solid call.

 Shot with the Nikon D7100 & 16-80mm f/2.8-4E VR.

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End of M

Rumors of Canon discontinuing the EF-M line of crop sensor mirrorless cameras have been swirling for a couple years now.

While I liked my M6 body just fine, I eventually grew frustrated with the lack of good lenses in the format. Sure, I had an adaptor for my EF glass, but sticking that big glass on the bitty mirrorless body sort of defeated the purpose of the exercise in the first place. Back in April I wound up packing up all my EF-M stuff and dropping it off at Roberts, swapping it for a Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8 DX lens and some store credit.

Turns out that Canon was on the same page as I was, since a couple weeks after I divested myself of the EOS M and EOS M6, Canon announced the crop-sensor R7 and R10, along with dedicated APS-C lenses for the RF mount. 

This pretty much effectively puts paid to the EF-M system, which has been limping for years with only some tepid model upgrades and no new lenses since 2018.

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Age of Empires

The Venezuelan Crisis of 1895.https://t.co/Bm3aQtvbNx pic.twitter.com/gfpeA1DfWn

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 6, 2022

Automotif CCCVI...

Here's a dope 1965 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight sedan.

The standard...and only...engine offered in the Ninety-Eight that year was the 10.25:1 high compression version of the 425cid Super Rocket V8, rated at 360 SAE gross bhp.

I miss the days when Detroit gave motors cool names like Super Rocket, Turbo Fire, and Golden Commando. (Well, it was technically before my time, so I mostly miss them at one remove.)

QotD: Work From Home Edition

Bobbi on the management types throwing tantrums about the WFH revolution that was turbochargeded by the Time of the 'Rona:

It's one thing if your job involves manipulating the physical world, but those workers, everyone from fry cooks to spacecraft assemblers, farmers to butchers to chemical engineers, were the last to go home during the pandemic and the first to return to work (if they ever left). What do I care if Customer Support is in the office in Duluth, home laying on their couch, or some cubicle warren in Mumbai? What does their boss care? He sure didn't when Mumbai was cheaper!

This Calls for Backup

I might have mentioned that earlier this year a friend gifted me with a Nikon D7100 she wasn't using. Despite being a couple generations old, it's still a very competent 24MP crop-sensor DSLR. In fact, I'd been using an even-older D7000 pretty heavily, so I took the 7000 to Roberts and swapped it for store credit and started using the 7100.

Anyway, this gave me the idea to set up a "grab-and-go" bag for my APS-C (or "DX" in Nikon-speak) gear similar to the one I have for the Nikon FX full-frame cameras.

I started with an F-Stop Gear Brooklyn sling bag, because they look cool and are being blown out on clearance as discontinued gear.

It has a sleeve pocket big enough for an iPad with a keyboard cover. The main compartment comes with three padded dividers, and I've used them to split it into two smaller compartments and two larger ones.

The smaller ones I have holding a Speedlight external flash and the excellent compact 35mm f/1.8 DX prime, Nikon's crop sensor "Nifty Fifty" equivalent. One of the larger ones will hold a longer zoom, probably a 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6 VR. 

The remaining large compartment will hold a backup body... but which one? Having finished my project with the D3000 and the D5000, those got turned into store credit at Roberts months ago. The only two DX bodies I have other than the D7100 are an old D200 and a D2X. Both are pretty hefty bricks, and both are too old to operate the electronically-controlled diaphragm on the 16-80mm f/2.8-4E that is my go-to walking around lens for DX cameras.

Now, "backup body" has two connotations in my life. What I usually use it for is to hold a second lens to minimize switching lenses if I'm shooting at the zoo or a class or whatever.

The other use, though, is to be ready to do all the shooting if the main camera craps out for some reason. Kinda hard to do that if it can't use all the lenses in the bag.

I don't want to spend a ton of money on a spare camera, so I'm probably just going to grab the oldest thing I come across that will run an "E" lens; a D300 or D5100...unless I stumble across a slammin' deal on a D300S.

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Automotif CCCV...

Old school Land Cruiser is best Land Cruiser, if you ask me. (Which, I mean, you didn't.)

Shot with an old school DSLR...it's weird that there is such a thing now...a Nikon D200. It was merely behind the times when I was using one for work, but these days the 10.1MP CCD sensor is positively quaint. In fact, it was Nikon's last pro-oriented camera to use a CCD sensor; after this they were all CMOS. There are some people who claim that the combination of the CCD sensor and the aggressive anti-aliasing filter make it a great portrait camera, giving nice warm smooth skin tones, but I haven't really tested that.

(It's old enough that used ones are going for about a hunnert bucks on Amazon.)

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Gun Running

Mom and Dad wouldn't let me have a BB gun, so I had to get creative, altering a Crossman 760 so it would be easily smugglable. Maybe if they'd let me get it out of my system at an early age, I'd be writing for car or photography magazines now instead. Who can say how things would be different down the other leg of the Trousers of Time?

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Suddenly and Unexpectedly!

"Jeeves, we would find it very convenient if our problem child were unable to attend the festivities. Have him go lick doorknobs or commoners until he tests positive for COVID."#PrinceAndrew https://t.co/pJIIvU6HgP

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 2, 2022

Chewy Humor

A poster on a forum noted that "[r]anchers and butchers have been laughing their asses off over the "bone broth" trend. For generations that stuff was nothing but scrap, and waste, given free to dogs."

I guess finding out that you'd been throwing money away and thinking it was hilarious must be some sort of cowboy humor.

Bone broth & marrow have been a thing for a long long time down South as poor people food, but Southern Cooking got faddish there for a bit and here we are.

You know, the way poor cowboys (and urban Jewish & Irish people) came up with ways to cook brisket, which was junk meat, to make it edible.

I mean, I think oxtail is a key ingredient for the ideal stew, and that was outright poverty food. 

Corned beef, pastrami, and slow smoking are all ways of making brisket edible. 

(And nobody tell these guys that eating a roast chicken was conspicuous consumption for wealthy folks, because what kind of normal person could afford to eat an egg layer until it was too old for anything but the stewpot.)

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Screwing Up by the Numbers

Check out this news article from Missouri the other day:

"Major Ron Martin with the North County Police Cooperative said that moments before the shooting, a man with a rifle had entered the grocery store.

Martin said he was "open carrying" the rifle in a sleeve* underneath his shirt and did not threaten anyone while inside the store.

The man then left the store, and he was confronted outside by another man with a gun, who announced a robbery and demanded his rifle.

The man gave up the rifle, then went to his vehicle and grabbed another gun as the alleged robber was walking away. He fired at the robber, and a shootout between the two began.

The alleged robber was shot several times.

Two innocent bystanders, both women, had just pulled up to the market and were also shot. Their injuries were not life-threatening, police said.

The man who was robbed of his rifle fled the scene. Moments later, police believe a third man came and shot the alleged robber again, then left.

The man who took the rifle was rushed to an area hospital in critical condition."

Now, in case you need help sorting out what in the hell you just read (and I don't blame you if you do), our protagonist

1. Open(ish) carries an AR.
2. Gets relieved of his AR at gunpoint.
3. As the robber is strolling away with the AR, our protagonist retrieves another gun and shoots at the departing crook, presumably while his back is turned. A couple bystanders get hit in the ensuing exchange.
4. Having done this, our protagonist splits before the cops get there.
5. A random third party shows up and shoots the downed robber and then also leaves, because at this point why the hell not?

The injured robber is now in custody, but apparently the police remain as confused by this whole charlie foxtrot as you or I, at least at the time of this writing. If there's video that comes out of this incident, it is going to enter legendary "DON'T DO THIS" status in gun school curricula across the nation.

“See all this stuff everyone is doing here? Don’t do any of this stuff. It’s all wrong. Every bit of it. Literally nobody is doing anything right here.”

*From other reports, it seems the dude was carrying it on a sling partially concealed under his shirt. I don't know where this reporter got the "sleeve' thing.

I can't put my finger on why, either.

A friend remarked on Facebook that this is the Monday-est feeling Wednesday ever. Having pondered on it a bit, I can't say I disagree.

Yesterday I left the house before lunch, rode the bus up into Broad Ripple Village proper, and sweated out the remainder of an article that had been giving me fits for more than a week. I got it sent off, made it home, and mowed half the lawn yesterday evening.

This morning I was just drained and didn't feel like crawling out of bed, but had to drive a friend to a medical appointment, which probably added to the Monday-ness, but certainly doesn't account for all of it.

And now it's back to the word mines for this afternoon.

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Pink Slime

When you run across a headline or lede that confirms all your suspicions about Those Guys and fills you with righteous indignation, how much digging do you do before sharing it?

This is the tale of a fake news story, widely shared by a lot of smart people who so badly wanted for it to be true that they didn’t care that it wasn’t. It is also the tale of the decline of local news in America, the wave of pink slime that is replacing it, feeding destructive partisan narratives about public institutions.

This sort of thing is arsenic for the body politic.

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Automotif CCCIV...

Neptune Green was not a standard color on a '55 T-bird. As best I can tell it was only offered on the Fairlane that year, so if this is factory (which it sure looks like up close; it's just tatty enough around the edges to be unrestored) it was a special order item.

Of course, in '55, you could even special order your T-bird in primer so you could paint it yourself.

Canon EOS 5DS & 24-105mm f/4L IS

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Soup Sandwich

Gorillafritz has a post up with his take on the failtastic police response in Uvalde. While some of what he wrote has been outdated by new information (it turns out that the door through which the killer entered was no longer propped open, for instance) the core elements are still true.

I trained a lot of police agencies in my career. It was rare to see a chief in any of the classes the departments scheduled with me unless the training was a state-mandated requirement. I once had a police chief tell me that he would no longer be coming to my department firearms training classes because “guns are loud and dirty.”

The valkyries ride even longer...

I finally got around to watching Apocalypse Now Redux, where Coppola added back nearly an hour of footage originally left on the cutting room floor to stretch his Vietnam magnum opus to a Wagnerian, bladder-defeating, you-may-want-to-split-it-over-two-evenings three and a quarter hours*.

Lots of cool stuff added back in and it makes for a more complete story... but it's less punchy as a movie than the original theatrical cut.

The fortieth anniversary version, which Coppola dubbed the final cut, is supposed to strike a happy medium between the two, deepening the story without getting too unnecessarily meandering. I'll check it out next.

*The best thing about the streaming revolution is that directors are more free to do 4-to-6 episode treatments of bigger scripts rather than try and pack everything into one sitting.

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