Seems weird to have a restraining order against your own *state*

 Hmm..., I'm from the government, news, politics, weapons  No Responses »
Feb 022023
 

Makes one think that the state government might not be filled with right-thinking honest folks who have the upholding of the Constitution as their primary goal.

Illinois assault weapons ban: Court upholds temporary restraining order

The primary cause of the restraining order against this law is the equal protection clause, because while it bans the average citizen from buying a common firearm, it allows untrained security guards to have them, along with retired cops and a few other classes of people that you ain’t. The restraining order when originally issued only protected the eight-hundred-some plaintiffs in the case; it has now been made state-wide.

 Posted by at 11:53 pm

Could Illinois become a Second Amendment Sanctuary State?

 awesomeness, blather, Hmm..., news, politics, weapons  No Responses »
Jan 312023
 

The Dem-dominated government of the state of Illinois passed an “assault weapon ban” that bans not only commonly owned firearms but also standard capacity magazines as part of their policy of decriminalizing violent crime while criminalizing the law abiding. But the law was so badly written – and badly conceived – that I wonder if the inevitable boomerang effect might end up with Illinois finally entering the twenty first century and ditching *all* of the unconstitutional tyrannical nonsense that has been on the books. Consider:

Appellate Court Affirms DeVore’s Equal Protection Argument, Assault Weapons Ban Temporary Restraining Order, Binds Courts Statewide

The ban on common rifles is clearly unconstitutional on second amendment right… but it’s *also* unconstitutional – state and federal – on “equal protection” issues. Because while it bans *some* people from owning, say, an AR-15, it exempts current and retired police, current military and security guards. The point is often raised that the same politicians who rail against average schmoes being able to defend their homes, persons and property with a semi-auto rifle often have armed guards packing semi and even full auto weapons.

One can hope that the court smackdown of the “assault weapon ban” will hit so hard that other existing gun laws in Illinois will be brought down. By over-reaching, the gun-grabbers might well have assured that all gun control laws across the US end up before the US Supreme Court. It would be spectacular if the NFA winds up going the way of the dodo, as it should. There are few enough arguments that support banning fully automatic weapons; there are none for bans on suppressors and short barreled rifles and shotguns.

 Posted by at 11:33 pm

Bomb + Iran = Earthquake?

 Hmm..., news, nukes, politics, science, weapons  No Responses »
Jan 302023
 

Interesting if true. A 5.9 magnitude earthquake as a direct result of an explosion would indicate a yield on the order of one megaton. more likely would be a sizable *bang* near a fault line, which would be stupid in its own right. The epicenter was apparently a number of kilometers below the ground, so it was almost certainly a perfectly natural quake… but hardly impossible that it was triggered by a sizable explosion.

 

 

 

 Posted by at 8:00 pm

Ha Ha NOOOOOOOOOOO.

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Forward!, Gah., politics, science, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 292023
 

Once again, virtually inevitable technology. And once again, people are dreaming up terrible uses for it. In this case, brain wave monitoring devices to track your mind while on the job to make sure that:

1) Your mind doesn’t wander from the task

2) That you don’t think about other employees

3) That you don’t make plans with other employees for things the company doesn’t want

 

 

 

Any tech like this that can be legally allowed to be mandated by an employer is tech that a government can make legally mandatory for all subjects.

 

 Posted by at 8:56 pm

Workplace… or shopping mall?

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, politics, Worldwreckers, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 272023
 

Granted, there are people who actually *work* at shopping malls. But these “tours” of the Google offices in LA really don;t seem like tours of work sites. There are not a whole lot of people in evidence, and the vast majority of those seen doing something are shown relaxing, playing, eating, drinking.

 

I’m sure hiring a large percentage of the workforce to simply tick quota boxes seemed like a good idea to *somebody.*

One might wonder why I’m suddenly yammering on about this. I think it’s because this sort of thing offends me… it’s not that “work” should be an oppressive, dreary existence (been there), but because works should be about The Work. Granted I used to be an aerospace engineer, not a software worker; if Google’s latest update is a little wonky, who cares. If the latest jetliner is a little wonky, people *die.* So industries that actually matter should take themselves seriously. No goofy TikTok dance videos, no on-site clowns or cry-closets. The things that made our society successful have in recent years been not only neglected but denigrated. This has included objectivity, being on time, having a good work ethic, recognition of cause and effect and so on. I see these adult daycare centers as part and parcel of this. The people who work there seem to *not* actually work there. Granted *somebody* has to be doing the job; Price’s Law suggest that the square root of the number of employees are doing half the actual work. Regardless of how true that is, any place where *anything* gets done has to have some people who are actually working. And surrounding hard workers by slackers who are getting paid just as well as them and who are visibly being coddled… that has *got* to be a morale-killer among the productive. And doubtless many of the slackers would have turned into hard workers who would derive great and substantive meaning from being productive… but they’re being indoctrinated into a culture of bland excess and sloth.

 Posted by at 11:27 am

What a flamboyant response

 awesomeness, Crazy, dumbassery, Hmm..., humor, politics, science, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 262023
 

Yesterday Project Veritas released footage of a Pfizer employee on a “date” talking about how his company is “mutating” the Covid virus. I’ve seen a lot of people losing their minds over this, seeing it as evidence of the virus being weaponized. But I can honestly see it the other way: If you are in the business of producing vaccines, you want to stay ahead of the diseases out there. Figure out where things might be going so you can produce vaccines *before* nature does its thing. If the employee is a bit drunk, or not exactly scientifically versed in what’s going on (this is a marketing guy, after all), then a basic, valid explanation can be described poorly and come off like supervillainy. I don’t know, and since there’s legitimate room for doubt, I didn’t think much of the story. Seemed like a nothingburger to me.

 

But then today. As Project Veritas generally does, they released a second video where they confront the subject openly. Typically the subject does the only thing they can and scuttle away, saying little. But this guy… boy, he’s *special.* I think he’s borked both his career *and* his dating prospects.

 

What we seem to have here is someone who has lived a fairly sheltered and entitled life, and the moment things don’t go his way he loses his little mind. One minor decision different in his life a year ago and I suspect instead of a PV video, we’d be watching him on an Adult Daycare video showing all the snacks he eats in a day, then pissing about how unfair it is that he just got laid off from his six-figure, zero-effort job.

 Posted by at 11:12 pm

My tenuous, tangential link to the “adult daycare centers”

 aircraft, art, blather, Crazy, Forward!, history, Hmm..., Meh., politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 262023
 

Because in present Day, everything has to be All About Me…

 

Several years before I left Utah I was contacted by an aerospace historian/ museum feller about a potential project. It seemed that a big tech company was purchasing an old Hughes Aircraft hangar with the intention of turning it into office space; I was asked if I might be interested in building a large (IIRC, wingspan in excess of twenty feet) replica of the Hughes H4 Hercules “Spruce Goose” to be hung in the  large open space.  My response was something along the lines of “hell yes,” but it didn’t go much further than that original discussion; like a lot of things it just faded away. Still, I’d dug out what plans I had of the Hercules and started dreaming up how I was going to do it… I’d model it in 3D CAD, lay out the internal structure and have ribs and longerons and frames and all cut out of quality plywood, clad probably in *really* good, really thin plywood, sanded baby-ass smooth and painted appropriately. I had discussions with a local wood shop about getting the many, many parts CNC milled. Woulda been a thing of beauty… and something I could have built several of and presumably made bank on. But it was not to be, and in the years since I’ve not given the project a second thought. Until yesterday…

 

So there was this TikTok video by some vapid person yapping about her day of meaningless food consumption and unproductivity at the Google LA office, built into a former Hughes hangar. Lo and behold, on display is a “sculpture” of the Hercules hanging from the ceiling, visible about 8 seconds in:

My old brain fired up and I contacted my acquaintance who had originally presented me with the idea years ago… and, yup, that’s the place, and that sculpture is what they went with rather than my planned subscale replica. More info and a decent photo of it is here:

HistoricHangarBecomesHistory-MakingWorkplace

There are a number of things that jump right out at me. First, the volume of space available in the hangar is vast… and it *seems* like the volume of space actually used for offices and such is *small.* It appears to be horribly inefficiently utilized. And second, here’s the description of the Hercules sculpture:

Comprised of 2,800 individually hung chrome spheres, this perceptual sculpture by Michael Murphy appears to be an amorphous silver cloud until seen from the sole viewpoint where it reveals itself as the “ghost” of the Spruce Goose.

 

It’s a “perceptual sculpture,” only visible correctly from a single vantage point. Basically, it’s not “real” as such, it’s kinda like a hologram made of ball bearings. That’s… interesting, I guess. but I can’t help draw some analogies: What I had suggested was a real, tangible Hercules, visible as such from all aspects and viewpoints. What they went with was smoke and mirrors. What I had believed the place was going to be was a workplace where people got stuff done. What it ended up being was, apparently a holding facility for people who did nothing of value all day.

 

Would have been a nice project though. Oh well.

 Posted by at 8:42 pm

A busy news day in politics

 Hmm..., news, politics, russian empire, weapons  No Responses »
Jan 242023
 

Up first:

U.S. Poised to Provide Abrams Tanks to Ukraine

Of note here is that this will, theoretically, spur the Germans to send their Leopard 2 tanks. The Leopard 2’s would likely be more advanced than the M-1s; and while there are more M-1’s in the world, the Leopards are closer to Ukraine and there are a number of countries willing to send Leopards. This is of course not pure altruism; they’ll likely be sending the older tanks that were about to be mothballed or scrapped; and if not, these donations will leave tank-shaped holes that will need to be filled with the latest and greatest. “You don;t need new tanks, we’ve got enough at home” no longer works as an excuse if you don’t actually have enough at home.

Additionally: the Russians might finally, rather overdue, be getting their crap in gear. So if they are faced with modern western MBTs, they’ll almost certainly launch their best anti-tank weapons at them. And sad though it may be for Ukrainians to hear, I’d rather modern NATO tanks get battlefield tested now, with Ukrainian crews, than later with NATO crews, on NATO territory. Losing these tanks to Russian weapons now will allow western designers to produce counter systems for when we need to fight Russian forces in Poland or Finland or Estonia or Wales.

 

Also:

McCarthy formally blocks Schiff, Swalwell from Intel panel

Never forget: Swalwell was the one who banged a Chinese spy and threatened to nuke American cities. He should *really* be the center of FBI attention, not sitting on the House Intelligence Committee.  As for Schiff, he tried and failed to tie Trump to Russian collusion. Lots of people tried that, including some who should have known better at the FBI. Speaking of which…

 

Retired FBI counterintel agent reportedly involved in Trump-Russia probe arrested for ties to Russian oligarch

 

Also also: In recent years the NRA has become pretty much worthless in the fight to maintain Constitutional rights, even as they remain one of the Democrats primary boogeymen in *their* never-ending quest to render the citizens of the US into helpless subjects. But they’re finally stepping up a bit:

NRA sues over Illinois ban on semiautomatic weapons

 Posted by at 11:52 pm
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