I don’t think he liked Sweden

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Jun 032021

If this is even *half* accurate… no wonder my ancestors left that country for brighter shores.

The YouTuber here repeatedly repeats the error of calling Sweden “socialist,” an error popular among those who want to laud the Scandinavian system. But Sweden isn’t socialistic; like the other Nordic countries, Sweden is a capitalistic country… but one with an overpowered nanny state.Sweden tried socialism, decades ago; and as socialism always does, it failed. Sweden bucked the trend in getting rid of socialism without mass bloodshed… but it kept a lot of the trappings of socialist brutalism.

As well, it is culturally burdened with the dismal “Law of Jante,” a set of rules that have helped to normalize the “ghastly egalitarian” nature of Scandinavian culture.

The ten rules state:

You’re not to think you are anything special.
You’re not to think you are as good as we are.
You’re not to think you are smarter than we are.
You’re not to imagine yourself better than we are.
You’re not to think you know more than we do.
You’re not to think you are more important than we are.
You’re not to think you are good at anything.
You’re not to laugh at us.
You’re not to think anyone cares about you.
You’re not to think you can teach us anything.

These not only stand in stark contrast to American norms, they stand in stark contrast to Viking-era norms. These rules are touted as reasons why the Nordic countries are so “happy,” but the metrics used to determine that happiness seem at best dubious… more “acceptance” than “actually happy.” The result of Jante culture and government policies is a gray middle where nobody is too poor and nobody is too rich. Basically, this chops off both ends of the cultural bell curve. Sure, it gets rid of a lot of awfulness… but it also gets rid of a lot of greatness. And in actual fact, the existence of exceptional greatness, even when paired with equivalent awfulness, promotes actual forward progress. Look at Elon Musk: had he not been allowed to become stinkin’ rich, and not been allowed to flaunt that cash, we wouldn’t have SpaceX. And I’m more than happy to accept unhappy Amazon delivery guys if it means humanity becomes a multiplanetary species. We’re not going to see an exuberant Swedish space colonization effort anytime soon.

Of course, this culture won’t last. Sweden is replacing both the Swedish people and their culture. Shrug.

A thought about misgendering

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May 122021

Apparently, if some shrieking weirdo appears to be a male and you refer to them as such and they think of themselves as female – or something else entirely – you have just “misgendered” them, and that’s terrible and bad and wrong. Not because what you’ve said is objectively factually inaccurate, but because they simply don’t *like* to be called male.

Fine, whatever.

In recent years, an effort has been pretty successful to start referring to people who identify as what their bodies are as “cisgendered,” “cis-male,” “cis-female.” This terminology was not chosen by your average “cisgendered” person, but has been dropped on us without our consent. So… referring to a “cisgendered” person as such seems to me to be a form of “misgendering.” Such misgendering should, it seems to me, be countered with something like “I’m not ‘cisgender,’ I’m ‘normal’.” You can then launch into a five-minute rant about how the other person is ignorant and in need of education and how it’s not your responsibility to provide, free of charge, the emotional labor required to train them up in the recognition of such things.

Discus.

For reference:

General update

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May 092021

Might have noticed that blogging has been reduced mostly to posting YouTube vids and very brief grumbles of late. It’ll probably be much the same or even less for the next month or two… I’m hard at work on “B-47/B-52” and that takes precedence. Just passed 200 pages of diagrams; a few more left to do, but text is the current priority and I’m a slower writer than draftsman (and I don’t draft that fast).

Side note: Amazon has decided that I might be interested in these. Amazing! How do it know?

Storytime: “Artifact L-374-Alpha”

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Apr 252021

I wrote this around about the time I moved from Utah. It’s not a story exactly… no real plot or characters or any of that. It’s written as a report describing an artifact and what could be done with it. It is an attempt to meld a Certain Well Known Sci-Fi Franchise with a level of cosmic horror… but since this is a first draft, I’m dubious that it came off right. Probably needs a *lot* of editing, perhaps far more than would be worth doing. As originally planned it would have had a fair number of illustrations, but I only got partway through that when work stopped on it due to Actual Book Project 1. Still, I thought it might be of interest. There’s no charge for downloading and reading it, but if you like it – especially if you’d like to see it finished – consider hitting the Tip Jar.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mq8kqgxzvy3klho/Artifact%20L-374-Alpha.pdf?dl=0

Let me know in the comments what you think, positive or negative. Feel free to point others here who you think might be interested.

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A good shoot? Discuss.

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Apr 222021

A cop comes up on a rock-throwing guy who pulls out a knife, takes about one step towards the cop, then catches a bullet. I think in the strictest sense, this was a legitimate shoot; cop told the guy several times to drop the knife, and instead he advanced towards the cop. But it all happened *real* fast. Britlanderish blog readers might well point out that their cops deal with knife wielding criminal types all the time and hardly ever shoot them… I believe the approach is the bring in a whole lot of backup and whallop the tar out of them with billyclubs (or to just let them go; I’m not really sure). And of course there are Tasers, of sometimes dubious reliability.

So, what should be the preferred approach in such circumstances? The subject is armed and aggressive, but if the cop retreats the subject probably does not pose an *immediate* threat. But if the cop retreats, the subject, who is clearly a menace to society, could get away. BUT simply being a probable threat may not be adequate cause for the deployment of deadly force. And on and on.

My view: I’m all in favor of “no duty to retreat.” Someone comes at you with a knife, *especially* if you are pointing a pistol at them, you – any form of “you,” from cop to soldier to housewife – have every right to do whatever you feel you need to to defend yourself. And on the other hand, those who are tasked with enforcing the governments’ will should probably be held to a reasonably high standard.

At least they can’t fault the cop for shooting off a wild volley of rounds. One shot and the guy seemed to be dead before he hit the pavement.

Once again, a situation that could have been more peaceably resolved if we had access to phasers with heavy stun settings. Or dart guns that fired transporter-lock tags: shoot the guy and he gets beamed directly into a jail cell. Sigh. It’s the year 2021, but where are the flying cars? I was promised flying cars. I don’t see any flying cars.

Bitcoin recommendations?

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Apr 212021

I guess it’s getting about time to consider getting into Bitcoin, now that it’s a friggen bajillion dollars and I’ve probably long since missed my chance to get in while the getting was good. A few days ago I noticed that a “Coinstar” machine at a local grocery store had the option to convert cash to Bitcoin, as well as the usual Amazon gift certificate approach, so in preparation for using that I went and started to sign up for the require “Coinme” account. I got as far as the part where it demanded that I send in a photo not only of my drivers license but also a current selfie, and my interest began to fade pretty drastically; some Googling to make sure that Coinme wasn’t a scam showed that a *lot* of people are really ticked off about the service. Very high fees, lots of requirements, difficulties in cashing out… meh, interest has dropped to zero.

So… anyone here have any Bitcoin stories that *aren’t* horror stories? Recommendations on who, what, where and most importantly how?

Fictional Aircraft: a vague notion

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Apr 142021

I’m kinda swamped with actual aerospace history stuff to do. But at some point, that will probably come to an end (at least a temporary pause), at which point I will launch back into producing US Bomber Projects, US VTOL Projects, US Launch Vehicle Projects, etc. But another idea occurs: a somewhat similar sort of publication but on fictional aircraft. Why? Why not.

What I’m thinking right now is to limit it to:

1: Aircraft, not spacecraft
2: Movies and TV, not books, comic books, etc.
3: The aircraft must be at least mostly realistic
4: The time setting: from any time in the past to the relatively near future

What I’d kinda like to do is produce not just the sort of diagrams I usually produce (with an eye towards model makers), but technical specs and, if at all possible, “in universe” descriptions. Descriptions that could conceivably put all the designs into the same universe. probably formatted for printing in 8.5X14 or 11X17

.The list as it currently sits:

1: “Starflight One”
2: BV-38 Flying Wing, “Raiders of the Lost Ark”
3: Switchblade, “I Spy”
4: “Blue Thunder”
5: “Airwolf”
6: “Firefox”
7: Whispercraft, “The 6th Day”
8: Luckup Peacemaker “Deal of the Century”
9: F-19, “Deal of the Century”
10: Skyfleet S570, “Casino Royale”
11: Rutland Reindeer, “No Highway in the Sky”
12: Willis JA-3, “Chain Lightning”
13: B-3, “Broken Arrow”
14: F/A-37 Talon, “Stealth”
15: EDI UCAV, “Stealth”
16: Hyperion airship, “Island at the Top of the World”
17: VTOL corporate jet, “Contact”

So… thoughts? Something of interest, or a giant “meh?” And are there any designs I’ve forgotten?

There are other designs I’ve considered but seem to be beyond the scope… the aerial HK’s from Terminator 1 &2, the numerous MCU aircraft, the Orion III spaceplane from “2001,” *anything* from Gerry Anderson, etc.

“Nazi Sun Gun”

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Apr 142021

A YouTuber who has, ahem, come to my attention before has produced a video on the concept of the “Nazi Sun Gun.” In a nutshell, it’s the idea that the Nazis had plans to orbit a gigantic mirror in space; the mirror would focus sunlight to a point on the Earth and burn cities to ash. As a yarn it’s entertaining enough; as history it’s a bit dubious; as physics it’s laughable magical thinking up there with car engines that burn water.

There are two major problems with the “Sun Gun” story:

1: It is very poorly documented. There were a few news and magazine articles on the topic immediately after the war; both the New York Times and Life covered it. But none of these stories provide any documentary evidence for the claims. It *appears* that someone who didn’t know any better stumbled across Herman Oberth’s ideas for an orbiting mirror from the early 1920’s. And while his ideas were reasonable enough given the time, his ideas were to provide some illumination at night, not make cities burst into flames. In all probability, some reporter, or perhaps a military officer looking for some press, heard something they didn’t quite understand and, using the journalistic integrity that CNN has demonstrated so well, blew it far out of proportion for the 1940’s equivalent of internet clout.

2: The physics does not work *AT* *ALL.*

The difference between providing useful levels of illumination and light so intense that wood catches fire is many, many orders of magnitude. For example: on Pluto, the sunlight is about 1/1500 less intense than it is on Earth… and that’s still more than adequate to read by. The full moon, which is strong enough to do useful things in, is only 1/400,000 as intense as full sunlight. In contrast, starting a fire with light requires light *far* more intense than plain everyday daylight. Whether using a parabolic mirror or a glass lens, you have to focus a lot of sunlight into a small area to get fires going… and typically you have to hold it for a while to do that.

OK, so why is this a problem for a space mirror? Because the sun isn’t a point source of light. It is a distinct circular area, about one half of a degree in apparent diameter. This means a parabolic mirror or a lens can *not* focus the light to a point, but to a circle. This limits how intense the spot can be. To first approximation, the best you can do, given really, really good workmanship, reflectivity and aiming accuracy, is to make your mirror look as bright (from the viewpoint of the target) as the sun. If you do it right, and your mirror is as big in the sky as the sun, your target will receive the equivalent of full daylight. So if you aim this fantastic mirror at a city that’s currently in night-time – and it would be difficult to do so with a daylit city – you will provide the city with the equivalent of normal daylight. Blue sky, chirping birds, all that. But that is far, FAR from causing fires.

And even that would require a truly VAST mirror. If your mirror is orbiting at 200 miles, about ISS altitude, it would have to be 1.75 miles across to look as big as the sun. And think of the geometry: you’re trying to reflect sunlight down onto a city. But if you’re only 200 miles up, that means most of the time when you’d be in position to fry a city, there’d be a *planet* in the way. Your mirror would be in darkness. So, move it out to 5,000 miles, as the “Sun Gun” articles suggested the Nazis were planning. In order to be as big in the sky as the Sun now, since you are 25 times further away your mirror would need to be 43.75 miles in diameter. We’re getting on to about the size of the Death Star… and all you can do is turn night into a pleasant, brief day for some city or other. If you want to start fires, you need to be *hundreds* of times more powerful… which means you need to have tens the diameter. A 400+ mile diameter mirror is something that is beyond stupid.

This is not physics only discovered post-war; this has been known for centuries, ever since children discovered the psychopathic delights of frying ants with magnifying glasses. Imagine being that ant and looking up to see a magnifying glass being moved into position in order to burn you. In the moments before your compound eyes fail and your brain melts… just how much of the sky does that magnifying glass take up? A very large percentage of it. An orbiting mirror meant to burn cities would have to be equivalently huge.

This is not mysterious; this is basic. So whenever I see a discussion of the “Sun Gun” with no mention that the idea is simply unworkable fantasy that defies logic and optics, I get a little miffed.

Now there’s a shocker

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Apr 102021

The current President babbled out some nonsensical prattle about some proposed executive actions to infringe on the right to keep and bear arms. included in this are his desire to ban pistol braces as well as “ghost guns,” the scare-term used to describe incomplete gun “kits” that people can buy legally without registration (because they are not actually guns at that point) and then finish into guns.. Right now these generally revolve around what are called “80% lowers:” generally a block of aluminum in the shape of a lower receiver (typically of an AR-15) that can be finished with some drilling and milling by a competent machinist. If he somehow succeeds in making 80% lowers illegal, people will just start selling 75% lowers, or 49% lowers, or even just rectangular billets of aluminum. Currently the receiver is the only part of a firearm that is regulated; you can buy all the barrels and trigger assemblies you like without having to file paperwork. Sniffer Joe might want to change that, however.

Turning a billet into a finished receiver is becoming easier and easier with modern CNC mills; witness the “Ghost Gunner.”

Ghost Gunner 3

Ghost Gunner is a general purpose CNC mill that gives you the ability to finish a growing library of mil-spec 80 percent lowers to completion. With simple tools and point and click software, the machine automatically finds and aligns to your 80% lower to get to work. No prior CNC knowledge or experience is required to manufacture from design files. Legally manufacture unserialized rifles and pistols in the comfort and privacy of home.

AR-15
AR-308
AR-9
AR-45
Polymer80
1911
Engraving
Serialization

The Ghost Gunner 3 pre-orders for $500 (deposit, as was pointed out in the comments. total price is about two grand). This is the approximate price of a modest AR-15 or a decent 1911… but it should allow you to make an indeterminate number of receivers. Right now it seems to need “80% lowers,” rather than just rectangular blocks of aluminum… but some future iteration of the Ghost Gunner no doubt will be able to achieve that. Hell, soon enough you’ll be able to melt down a bunch of aluminum cans, pour the molten aluminum into a sand or plaster mold, shove the crappy casting into the GG#X and it’ll bang out a serviceable receiver.

Of course, most people are not even aware of the option they have of making their own firearm. Most people only think of firearms procurement in terms of buying one from a gun store. So what has been the result of Temporary President Bidens mumblings about executive actions? Let’s got to the tape:

It’s beginning to look like Biden will be a better firearm salesman that Obama ever dreamed of being. At the same time that the far Left is openly talking about locking up millions of Americans in Federal prison, more and more Americans are lining up to be the targets of the Lefts pogroms.

That said, Biden did make an interesting point:

Biden on the Second Amendment: ‘No amendment is absolute’

And this is true. It is now time for the press to confront Biden about the lack of absoluteness with regards to, say, voting rights.

What will this do to his insurance?

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Apr 082021

So yesterday a murder suspect fled from the cops, leading them on a two-hour high speed chase. The chase only ended when a semi truck driver intentionally put his truck into the path of the suspect. The small pickup truck drove smack into the semi, damaging both vehicles, ending the chase with no deaths, no guns fired.

Clearly the semi driver is to be applauded here. he stepped up and saved the day. But… technically he drove recklessly, putting his truck into danger. The semi took a substantial hit, probably tens of thousands of dollars in damage. The insurance company, if they are smart and PR savvy, should pick up the tab with a smile and *not* whack his insurance rates. but… how often are such companies actually that smart. Plus, he could be criminally charged, I suppose, if a prosecutor *really* wanted to be an officious dick.

I have little doubt that if the driver here is hit with a massive repair bill that the insurance company refuses to pay, he could take care of it with a crowdfunding effort.

So… what will the damages to this guy be? Could his insurance company and/or employer dangle him over an edge?

—

This incident also potentially illustrates the reality of “doing the right thing.” We’ve all seen videos of people giving to charities or homeless people or the poor or whatever… while filming themselves doing it. Playing the role of “hero” for clout or internet fame or maybe even making money. They are free to do so, and I would not stop such people from doing so, no matter how selfish their motives. But *true* heroics comes with a different motive. Going into a situation with a “How will I turn this to my advantage” mindset is not heroism. “Can I survive what I’m about to do” might well be. If you do something praiseworthy and your thought isn’t “now to profit from this” but “how can I recover from this,” you might well have done “the right thing.” The difference between “behold what I have done” with a smug smile and “I could have done more” while you break down in tears.

You know you’ve done the right thing when you feel broken, I guess.

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