Alec Baldwin back in the news

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Hmm..., news, weapons, wisdom  No Responses »
Jan 192023
 

Couldn’t happen to a nicer fella:

Alec Baldwin to be charged with involuntary manslaughter in ‘Rust’ film shooting

The argument seems to be that Baldwin was screwing around and negligently fired the weapon. However, it also seems to be the case that he was given a gun and told by the armorer that it was not loaded. Assuming those, I’m dubious that a solid legal case can be made against him. The prop master is in serious trouble (and is also charged), no doubt, but Baldwin was told it was safe. That said: I’m never, EVER trusting a weapon to be unloaded and safe until such time as I have personally inspected it. Do I trust the person handing me the weapon? Quite possible. But “trust” has a hell of a time stacking up against “oops, I accidentally shot myself/someone else.”

 

So jail time for Baldwin? I’m uncertain. A massive fortune-thinning lawsuit? Oh yeah. Kind of a given.

 Posted by at 9:14 pm

Barrett now belongs to gun-banners

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Jan 162023
 

This should prove interesting and quite possibly terribly sad: famed manufacturer of .50 caliber rifles Barrett has sold out to an Australian defense contractor, meaning it is now a company run by a government that does not allow it’s subjects to own such things. Will production remain in Tennessee? Will they continue to sell to the US civilian market?

 

All management and staff at the Murfreesboro manufacturing facility in Tennessee have been retained and production will continue as normal. Over time it is expected that manufacturing activities in Murfreesboro will be further expanded.

Uh-oh. If history has taught me anything, an official statement that “all is well” results in “everybody panic.” It may be that this is part of the strategy t make the deal profitable: a *lot* of people are going to believe, and not without cause, that Barretts for the US civvie market are going to dry up, and will therefore panic-buy. This will lead to an infusion of cash pretty quickly. It will then be up to the Aussies, from the same Australia that went full Big Brother the first chance it got when the Commie Cough hit, to decide whether to keep the golden goose alive, or to slaughter it.

 

NIOA acquires US manufacturer Barrett Firearms

 

Barretts are, of course, a particular favorite firearm to hate for the gun grabbers… not because they are actually used in crimes, but because these people are scared of big things they don’t understand (along with little things they don’t understand). Yanking them from the civilian market is something these authoritarian tyrants would love to do. One straightforward way to do it is simply buy the company and stop selling them to peons like us.

 Posted by at 11:10 pm

FASA miniatures: an odd request

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Jan 152023
 

Back in the mid 80’s, one of the things I got a kick out of was the FASA Star Trek starship combat game. Not just the game itself, but all the books and miniatures that went along with it. I bought, assembled and painted a number of the little metal ships, and have tried to keep them through all the decades since… but through numerous moves and general attrition and entropy, a bunch of the ships have vanished. Recently I’ve had an itch to take the ones I’ve got, strip their decades old paint and try again, and to replace the ones I’ve lost. I’ve looked for replacements on ebay with limited success. Most of what’s available are still in their packages, which means the prices are nuts, and the ones I really want to replace haven’t popped up.

 

So… does anyone have a collection of these things – or even just one – that you want to unload for a reasonable sum? If so, let me know.

 

 

Also: am I alone in having an attachment to these lead/pewter miniatures that simply doesn’t exist for plastic ones, including modern 3D printed versions? There just seems to be something special about them. Perhaps it’s the weight… and perhaps it’s the fact that these were what I had when my brain was developing connections that have ossified since I became an adult. I’d accept either or both explanations, but the fact remains: metal > plastic.

 

 Posted by at 1:46 pm

“Transporter Accident: the Statue”

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Jan 152023
 

Ummm….

 

 

It looks like a lot of things. Like MLK, though, is not one of them. Disembodied limbs doing naughty things, sure. What Starfleet got back from that transporter foulup at the beginning of ST:TMP, sure. But an actual recognizable human? Not so much.

 

Perhaps it was made specifically to get torn down. In recent years it has become standard practice to tear down statues of historical figures who have the slightest hint of unfortunate or problematic aspects… and, well…

 Posted by at 10:19 am

So… is this a good thing?

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Jan 132023
 

In general you want your opponent to be dumber and less capable than you. In matters of war and serious geopolitics, you want them to believe things that just ain’t so, to be generally gullible. But at a certain point, those who oppose you can start to believe in false stories that are *so* dumb – the “wage gap,” “white supremacy,” ‘trans women are women,” and so on – that they begin to pose an all new kind of threat.

And so… to Russia:

Russia Is Afraid of Western Psychic Attacks

Psychic powers and the supernatural are, on their own, wholly unthreatening. Things that don’t exist can’t hurt you… the Kremlin can have their psychic warrior beam Bozo Rays at me all day long, won’t harm me a bit. But such things *aren’t* on their own. A belief in nonsense could end up with Putin, say, believing a “psychic” who tells him that the United States just launched a thousand cloaked warheads at Moscow, each filled with a Sith lord dolphin powered by Mary Kay brand dark matter. Since the Russians don’t have an anti-Sith dolphin defense shield, their only recourse would be to strike back at the US with a full nuclear barrage.

In general I fully support my enemies spending as much of their time and treasure trying to gain the upper hand in psychic warfare. Every ruble spent on Miss Cleoski is a ruble not spent on an AK-47 or a MiG or an ICBM. But at some point they go a little too far. Hell, imagine if the Russian leadership began to believe that their psychics were capable of stopping a full US nuclear strike on Russia. That might incentivize a Russian first strike.

 Posted by at 12:00 pm

It belongs in a museum

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Jan 122023
 

Big bomb laid to rest

An article by Sandia Labs discussing the disposition of an old, old, OLD Mk 17 nuclear bomb “trainer.” Obviously this isn’t, never was, an actual thermonuclear weapon, but a training device; as such, it doubtless included a lot of the same parts as the actual bomb.

The Mk 17 was a giant of a bomb, deliverable only by the B-36; with a yield of about 15 megatons, it was delivered in 1954, withdrawn from service in 1957. Consequently, this thing is pushing seventy years in age. The article states that it was “transported to Kirtland Air Force Base for its end-of-lifecycle dismantlement and disposition.” One *hopes* that means it’ll be lovingly restored and sent to a good museum for display. One fears it means it’ll be disassembled and scrapped. That *seems* to be its fate based on the vague descriptions of what’ll happen to it.

 Posted by at 11:58 pm

This must be some sort of Golden Age

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Jan 112023
 

On the one hand, earlier today the FAA ordered a “ground stop” to all domestic flights, basically shutting down the aviation economy:

Buttigieg responds to latest transportation crisis as he faces continued criticism

On the other hand, eggs are becoming a luxury good, unavailable to regular folks.

Egg Shortage: What’s Behind Soaring Prices – and When Will They Go Back Down?

In the Midwest, a dozen large eggs cost an average of $5.17 last week, compared with roughly $1.50 in January 2022 and 94 cents in 2021. …In California last week, the average price for a dozen eggs reached $7.37, according to the USDA’s Egg Market Overview report.

 

This is apparently due to a bird flu wiping out chicken in industrial quantities.

 Posted by at 10:10 pm

Things don’t look great for Virgin Orbit

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Jan 102023
 

Virgin Orbit is Richard Bransons space launch company. Their launch system, LauncherOne, uses a 747 to haul a more or less conventional expendable rocket into the air for launch to orbit. yesterday they flew a launch attempt, the first orbital launch attempt from the UK. Note “attempt.” It got close, but something went wring and the vehicle didn’t attain orbit. That’s never a good thing, but things apparently weren’t good at the company before then.

Even before Monday’s launch failure, Virgin Orbit’s finances were dismal

The math seems weird:

Independent estimates suggest that, over that time, Virgin Orbit spent as much as $1 billion to develop and test its LauncherOne rocket and air-launch system. The company made its first successful launch in January 2021 and has averaged one mission every six months since then.

An obvious question is this: With such high development costs and a low cadence for a rocket that sells for $12 million per launch, how can Virgin Orbit be financially sustainable?

How indeed. $12M per launch would require 83 launches to make a $Billion, and that’s forty years at the current rate. And $12M is the selling price of the mission, not the profit.

 Posted by at 11:15 pm

Classified Documents: Cautionary Tales

 AARRRGH, dumbassery, Forward!, Hmm..., news, politics, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 102023
 

The President of the United States has at least one absolute power: the power to declassify secret documents. There is some discussion about the process, but is *seems* that all he needs to do is say “this document is declassified,” and that’s that.

The Vice President does *not* have that power.

 

Biden and his legal team don’t know what’s in classified documents found in his private office, sources say

 Posted by at 9:17 pm
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