A good shoot

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Sep 302023
 

Is it proper to shoot a stranger who follows you around at close distance, behaves menacingly and has his buddies film you? This jury said “yes.” My main question: “Why did this even go to trial?”

Jury acquits man of main charge in Virginia mall shooting of YouTube prankster

This is a good precedent. Pranksters suck. They *pretend* to be an immanent threat, then when faced with physical force, claim “It’s just a prank, bro!” Naw. Acting like a threat makes you a valid target for responding to you as if you are a threat. Maybe instead of trying to terrify people for clicks, you do something productive.

Sadly, the victim was convicted of some firearms charge, which doesn’t make sense given that the jury recognized that this was a self defense situation. Never forget: even in the most obvious self defense situation, where everything is as clear as can be… we’re operating in a  system of anarcho-tyranny where the government *wants* you to live in fear of actual criminals. Defend yourself, your stuff, your friends or family, the government will do what it can to drop an anvil on you. Because you defending yourself offends the powers that be somehow.

Here’s one of the videos of the incident filmed by one of the villains co-conspirators:

 Posted by at 11:52 pm

So…

 blather, Book X, books, cyanotype blueprints, Hmm..., news, politics, projects  No Responses »
Sep 282023
 

Astute blog readers will have noticed a slight dip in blogging activity of late. Why is this?

1: Some personal/family/veterinary issues.

2: Twitter, now that it’s no longer controlled by whackaloons, has become a more useful platform, and has taken a lot of the load.

3: I now have cyanotype blueprints regularly, commercially available. Check them out HERE.

4: Annnnd… I have a contract for Book Five, and I’ve been working on that. Book Five is similar in concept to “US Supersonic Bomber Projects Volumes 1 and 2;” it’s a stand-alone volume, but will, if it sells well, result in Book Six.

So, been a little busy.

 Posted by at 5:28 am

Oh, sure, let’s give the agents of the state a monopoly on force

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, Gah., news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Sep 242023
 

Pennsylvania State Police trooper charged with strangulation, official oppression

According to a criminal complaint, Davis obtained an involuntary commitment under the Mental Health Procedure Act for a woman with whom he had a relationship.

There. Right there. That’s enough to go “Hold up, wait a minute, something ain’t right.” But even better, he found her out in the wild, tackled her and rolled her around on the rocks. Weird enough, but he’s substantially larger than her. In the video she *seems* reasonable enough under the circumstances. Of course the video starts with the action already in progress; perhaps she was going bugnuts prior to this. But what seems to be an ex boyfriend cop hunting down a woman out with another man, is a story that doesn’t sit right from the get-go

Some of the comentariat are complaining that the cameraman – possibly the new boyfriend – isn’t physically intervening. I get the impulse to do so… but I also understand that documenting the event is in all likelihood the best approach. Are you going to fight off the cop? Maybe, but then *other* cops will come hunt you down. Assuming the first guy doesn’t plug you or arrest you. Stand back, film, and see justice done in the end. Not as manly, not as satisfying… but a lot smarter.

Note that states that have laws against “high capacity” magazines and “assault” rifles typically have set-asides for off duty cops.

 Posted by at 8:34 pm

Some good news

 awesomeness, Hmm..., news, politics, weapons  No Responses »
Sep 232023
 

Still needs to go to the USSC, but it’s another step in the right direction:

US judge strikes down California ban on high-capacity gun magazines

California’s ban on standard capacity magazines was struck down not on some technicality, but because it’s blazingly unconstitutional.

Ruling here:

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6082773/149/duncan-v-becerra/

 

Woe to the victim who runs out of ammunition before armed attackers do. The police will mark the ground with chalk, count the number of shell casings, and file the report.

 Posted by at 10:17 am

Drone Crime

 AARRRGH, aircraft, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., Hmm..., news, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Sep 072023
 

Russia’s war in Ukraine has driven home the usefulness of dropping things from quadcopters. They can carry surprising payloads a good distance and place them with some fair accuracy; in war, payloads such as grenade, mortar shells, RPG warheads are obvious and useful choices.

But then there’s this:

It’s not immediately obvious why the owner of a heating & cooling company would use a drone to drop dye packs into private and motel swimming pools. This makes the pools undesirable for swimming and costs the owners large sums to not only flush the pools but clean them. And it does not seem like his business benefits from that; if his company specialized in pool maintenance, it’d make sense. Maybe he just doesn’t like swimming pools.

The dye packs seem unlikely to be much of a health hazard… even if they are somewhat toxic, the sickly green color would dissuade people from getting in the water. But there are other things that could be easily dropped that would be much less obvious and far more dangerous. If the drone operators goal was terrorism or simple mayhem, I can think of a *lot* of things that could be dropped in a pool (or elsewhere) that would be nightmarish.

The goal of *most* crimes is not terrorism. Most criminals, I suspect, would be just as happy if their crimes went un-noticed. In those cases, drones are somewhat limited. They are useful for smuggling… crossing borders with drugs, say, or dropping drugs, phones, weapons, cash into prison yards. Most crime would seem to involve some sort of theft, and, so far, quadcopters seem of limited utility there. Given that shoplifting is not only a largely unopposed crime, in many of the worst districts it’s not even a *crime* anymore, you hardly need to make much effort to technologically innovate in the field.

Maybe there’ll be a bank robbery (or a heist movie) where the thieves get out of the bank and, instead of trying to escape with large sacks of cash, they hook them to waiting drones. The cash flies off, and now the thieves are unburdened as they attempt to make their escape.

And then there’ll be the *darker* bank heist movie: drones are used to make off with the sacks of cash. But that’s not the end: on some sort of predictable basis, subsets of that cash are released by drone over a public area. So people begin to gather in their masses to snag the bills. And then once a big enough crowd is gathered, another set of bills is dumped on them. This time, though, the bills have been soaked in smallpox or some such…

 Posted by at 8:14 pm

Blue Beetle Bomb

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Sep 062023
 

It sure seems like the era of “superhero movies” being a license to print money is over. Granted the DCEU flicks have not had  a great track record, but the latest outing, “Blue Beetle,” seems to be shaping up to be a *disaster.*

The production budget was $104 million. The marketing was probably the same, so the cost of the movie was $208 million. As of today, it has taken in $59M domestic, $46M foreign. But the studio only gets half the US box office ($29.5M) and about a third of the foreign ($15.3M), for a total of $44.8M. The movie was released 19 days ago, so it still has time to rake in some more moolah, but unless some amazing miracle occurs I have trouble seeing it reaching $60 in actual returns to the studio. If it does it will have lost Warner bros “only” $148 *million* dollars.

Couple “superhero fatigue” with “Blue Beetle? Who’s that?” and you could have predicted that this wouldn’t do so great. Add in the disastrous marketing (a DC superhero movie that features a prominent character calling Batman a fascist is not a great idea) and this flick was doomed from the get-go.

 Posted by at 11:17 pm

Yay, we’re doomed

 AARRRGH, Hmm..., news, science, Worldwreckers, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Sep 022023
 

Methane levels in the atmosphere seem to be rising steeply. Since methane is a much more potent “greenhouse gas” than CO2, this could, perhaps, maybe, result in the end of the ice age that we’re currently in… within a few decades. The one good thing is that methane does not have a long lifespan, getting oxidized within a few years. But that’ll only help if the methane release – which seems to be coming from African wetlands – stops. of course, if the climate suddenly gets way hotter, the African wetlands releasing methane via decomposition of dead vegetable matter might turn into desert area, resulting in the eventual end of the methane release. Which means within a dozen or so years of that the methane will have burned out and the climate can descend back into good ol’ ice age status. *Proper* ice age, with glaciers covering continents and land bridges everywhere.  This will be aided by the fact that humans will have been largely wiped out at that point. Doubtless industrial civilization will have either moved off-world or simply been exterminated; and with no easy access to oil or coal anymore, anthropogenic CO2 emissions will be minimal.

Yaaaaaay.

 Posted by at 12:21 pm

Good news/bad news

 awesomeness, blather, Crazy, Forward!, Hmm..., news, politics, science, Worldwreckers, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Aug 242023
 

First, good news from the world of medicine:

UK’s first womb transplant deemed ‘massive success’: ‘Over the moon’

One woman (40) donated her womb to her sister (34) who was born with a malformed womb. So both women can have kids. This is good news. The first uterus transplant was in 2013 in Sweden, so this has been going on a while, if not widely.

 

But since we can’t have anything nice, here’s where this will go:

Trans womb transplants ‘10 to 20 years’ away after UK’s first successful operation on cis patient 

Weird enough that some people want to transplant wimminbits into biological dudes. But it gets weirder:

 

Taxpayers should fund $300,000 UTERUS transplants to help transgender women get pregnant, suggests authors in AMA Journal

 

The curious thing is that the Venn Diagram of “people who support taxpayer funding it so guys can get pregnant” and “people who thing we should reduce the population if western nations” probably overlaps a *lot.*

 

Besides the basic insanity of using surgery to affirm delusions, there’s the issue of what it’s gonna do to the prospective offspring. At the least they’ll know that they’re the product of Mad Science; they will also be raised by someone claiming to be their mother, but who does not have the upbringing of a woman. *THEN* there’s the issue of… even if the womb works, what’s going to happen to the fetus? DudeMom won’t produce the same hormones a woman does. HShe’ll doubtless have to spend the term of the pregnancy constantly getting shot full of drugs and hormones in a desperate attempt to give the embryo a hope in hell of gestating correctly. And then, there’s the end: the new womb probably didn’t come with a new pelvis. The male pelvis does not have space for a proper birth canal. So any offspring resulting from this will, like French Bulldogs, likely have to be brought about via C-Section.

 

And then there’s this to consider: in the second article above, it’s suggested that it’ll be 10 to 20 years before transplanting wombs into males becomes a reality. But… in 10 to 20 years, chances seem decent that bespoke organs can be produced via 3D bio-printing, cloning, etc. Use the “mothers” own DNA to create a womb with “moms” own DNA.

And then there’s this: in 10 to 20 years, the United Kingdom will be a fundamentally different place. When the UK becomes London writ large, the culture will be upended. It seems a bit unlikely that these sort of surgeries will be performed in a Britain, any more than they’ll be performed in Uganda or Saudi Arabia.

 

 Posted by at 9:29 pm
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