Here’s an advertisement for homeschooling

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 162022
 

There are three good arguments for homeschooling:

  1. The school board is full of whackadoodle propagandists, pushing political rubbish
  2. The teachers are political propagandists, pushing political rubbish and often causing psychological harm
  3. The other students are… not good to be around.

This one is Number 3.

Moment Texas middle school student hurls CHAIR at substitute teacher, 73, leaving blood pouring from man’s face – with elderly victim then throwing TWO chairs back at unruly teenager

Note that the video news piece says that the school district is cancelling classes and enacting some policy changes. That’s nice… but at least from what’s said here, the response is not just inadequate, it’s wrong. They are banning the use of headphones and cell phones during the day – but this doesn’t seem to have been a cause of the fight in the first place (rather, a student in the wrong classroom, refusing to leave). In fact, the use of a cell phone as a video recorder allowed this issue to come to light. Instead, what the school district *should* have announced is a zero tolerance policy  regarding violent students. If you think it’s the height of wit and wisdom to chuck a chair at someone else, you need to no longer be around other kids. Certainly not at taxpayer expense.

So here it’s a case of students you wouldn’t want your child around until you begin them in combat training, and a school board full – apparently – of corrupt and/or incompetent fools.

 Posted by at 3:39 pm

It’s faaaaaaaaaake!!

 blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, humor, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 152022
 

Earlier today I started seeing people freaking out about this headline:

Here’s 5 Tik-Tok dances you can do to help Ukraine fight Russia

Such as:

On one hand, that sounds insanely and unrealistically stupid. On the other hand, that’s exactly the sort of thing you might expect to see from clueless “influences” and other such ambulatory bipedal cancerous tumors. But before going nuts over how stupid it is, maybe it would make sense to actually try to find where it originates? Turns out it’s not that hard. After about four seconds on Google, the original source is found to be:

Here’s 5 Tik-Tok dances you can do to help Ukraine fight Russia

And what is “Cinch News Network?” From the bottom of their page:

About us

We are a super biased and undependable publication focused on furthering liberal policies in pursuit of a theoretical world where humans don’t act human.

I begin to suspect they just might be a satire site. But to be sure, let’s see what other stories they’re running:

Here’s why Ukraine citizens are good guys with guns, but you’re not

Hidden Federal gun control successfully passes, defeating sexism

Why white people owning dogs is racist

(Note: that last one I actually linked to a couple years ago, not grasping just what was going on…)

Here’s how God might be responsible for racism

White House considers hiring Stephen King to name the next 20 COVID-19 variants

So… yeah.

 Posted by at 6:42 pm

Gunsgunsguns

 Crazy, dumbassery, Hmm..., news, politics, russian empire, weapons, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 152022
 

Brandon Herrara goes through some of the firearms of the current conflict. Unsurprisingly, the Ukrainians are using some odd and presumably obsolete weapons; this should be expected from a small military being steamrolled. BUT: there are Russians equipped with 19th-century-designed Mosin-Nagant bolt action rifles. They are equipped with modern rifles set up for optics, but they don’t seem to actually *have* optics. If I was a Russian soldier, I’d be a little ticked off to be sent into battle with an incomplete firearm; I’d be a *lot* ticked off to be sent into battle with a bolt action rifle. Ukrainian soldiers on the whole seem better equipped than the Russians.

 

And Forgotten Weapons comments on a prior video…

 Posted by at 4:02 pm

Auto mechanics and convoys

 AARRRGH, awesomeness, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., news, politics, russian empire, weapons, wisdom, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 152022
 

Some videos of interest. First: Ukrainian auto mechanics are busy at work converting captured heavy machine guns from Russian armored vehicles into hand-held weapons to turn back onto the Russians:

Second, a video showing trashed Russian vehicles. *Lots* of trashed Russian vehicles. Turns out lining up your vehicles on roads is sometimes a terminally bad idea. And a lot of armored vehicles in a town, destroyed or abandoned.

 

And a tank battle in an urban environment without infantry support. The tank you see here is close enough to the cameraman that he could’ve just *walked* up to it and poured napalm onto it. If he’d had *any* sort of rocket propelled grenade or LAW he could have shot from the hip and bullseye’d that tank and turned it into a pyre. One wonders if the video cut off when it did because he reached for his handy anti-tank weapon for an *easy* kill.

I know a lot of people think that Putin is playing some 4D chess thing here, leading the Ukrainians into a false sense of hope. Well, maybe…  but if so, he’s taking his sweet time on springing the trap and in the mean time he’s squandering a hell of a lot of Russian lives with *stupid* tactics.  One would think that if these sort of videos were widely disseminated among the Russian populace, they’d be pissed off enough to actually do something. It would surprise me exactly none at all if the Russian military has lost more soldiers in the last two weeks in Ukraine than the United States military lost in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last twenty years.

 Posted by at 3:38 pm

Voltaire

 blather, Forward!, history, Hmm..., politics, russian empire, wisdom, Worldwreckers, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 152022
 

A quote has been floating around for a while, attributed to Voltaire: “Those Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities Can Make You Commit Atrocities.” Like a lot of pithy quotes attributed to historical figures, it’s close, but not quite right. The original line in French is:

“Certainement qui est en droit de vous rendre absurde, est en droit de vous rendre injuste.”

This was in “Collection des lettres sur les miracles” published in 1767, available to view on Google Books.  Google Translate renders the line as:

“Certainly who has the right to make you absurd has the right to make you unjust.”

Close, but not exactly the same. But the meaning is probably pretty much spot-on. A history of the quote and it’s slow mutation is HERE. Why do I bring it up now? Well, seems relevant on a number of fronts:

1) If you as a Russian soldier believe Putins nonsense about Ukraine developing bioweapons to wipe out the Russian people, he can get you to wipe out the nation of Ukraine.

2) If you can be made to believe that a .223 is a “high power rifle” round, or that a standard capacity magazine is  “high capacity magazine,” or that rifles in any way pose some terrible threat to society, then you can be made to support laws that empower tyrants, imprison regular folks and embolden violent criminals.

3) If you as a Star trek fan can be made to believe that Michael Burnham is a good character, that Star Trek Discovery is a well-written show, then you can be made to believe that Star Trek is garbage (see also Ghostbusters 2016, Disney Star Wars, and the forthcoming Amazon “Lord of the Rings” fan fiction), and accept garbage shows with garbage messages as quality worth emulating.

4) If you as an English person can be made to believe the England has always been highly multi-ethnic, or if you as a Scandianvian person can be made to believe that the Vikings/Norse were populated with Africans and that Jarl Haakon was a black woman, or if you as an American can be made to believe that Westerns have nothing to teach us but that Americans are awful people, then you can be made to tear your own cultures down and replace them with… what?

The less said about “Drag Queen Story Hour,” the better… and yet, wholly relevant to this quote.

 Posted by at 1:03 pm

Expanding on an idea

 art, blather, Hmm..., humor, models, news, politics, russian empire, youtube  No Responses »
Mar 142022
 

NOTE: I suspect the idea I had that I lay out below is not exclusive to me. I would hope that those who could make this sort of thing happen are already working on it. But just in case I somehow dreamed up something new, I present the following…

– – – –

Because why not, here’s an open suggestion regarding an idea from yesterday about Ukrainian model kits. As I said, I’d plunk down money I don’t need to to buy kits depicting scenes of Ukrainian farmers trundling off with Russian armor… assuming those kits were *Ukrainian* kits.

Right now, and likely for the foreseeable future, though, Ukrainian model kit companies are unlikely to be in any sort of position to do any such thing. In contrast, European, American and Japanese companies *are.* So… how about this: a company like, say, Revell, Monogram, Tamiya, *somebody,* that is in a good situation gets in touch with whatever they can of a Ukrainian company such as ICM, and they collaborate in whatever capacity they can. Revell gets going on setting up the molds and the initial production; the kits are sold as a joint venture until such time as the kit makes back whatever Revell spent, and then the following proceeds go to ICM. And when the nonsense is over and ICM can return to functionality, the molds are transferred to ICM in Ukraine. This would not be done to enrich Revell, but also not to drain their wallets; even if they don’t make a dime from the venture, even if they lose some, it should be good PR.

A secondary issue would be the rights involved. One of my favorite videos that I posted yesterday shows two John Deere tractors hauling off a Tor anti-aircraft armored vehicle. I suspect that John Deere would be amenable to having such a kit manufactured, if one isn’t already available of the tractors shown. As for the Russian tank, if someone complains about intellectual property, now would be the time to tell them to go ᛖᚪᛏ ᚪ ᛒᚪᚷ ᚩᚠ ᛞᛁᛣᚳᛋ, Ivan; Russia has declared that it’s ok to steal the IP from other countries, so *yours* is now fair game.

Russia Legalizes Video Game Piracy, and More

It so happens that I live within just a few miles – heck, within the blast radius of a Russian nuke – from John Deere headquarters.

More videos of interest (who could have ever guessed that TikTok would be useful?):

@fuzzysnakebee

#ukraine #donbas #Crimea #russia #kyiv #farmer #slavaukraine #istandwithukraine🇺🇦

♬ chrisklemens youre coming home with me – Chris Klemens

@primeministersimon

Another farmer takes yet another tank hostage #ukraine #russia #putin #tank #farmer #war

♬ original sound – Simoncali

And this one. Two bits of video, the first I’ve seen before, the second I haven’t; I don’t know what the witnesses are saying, but I love *how* they’re saying it:

@oldrowofficial

SOME FARMER JUST STOLE A TANK IN UKRAINE LMAOOOOOOOOO 😂😂😂 #ukraine #fyp #russia

♬ original sound – Old Row

 

 

 Posted by at 2:16 pm

“They are just goofs”

 Hmm..., humor, news, politics, russian empire, weapons, youtube  No Responses »
Mar 142022
 

An interesting video, purporting to show combat from the point of view of someone embedded with Ukrainian forces. It may or may not be wise to have so little respect for your enemy, but it *is* funny. The Ukrainians seem to have some interesting weapons. Is it too much to ask that the US government hand out such things to Americans?

 Posted by at 12:51 am

About Ukrainian model kits

 art, awesomeness, blather, Hmm..., models, news, politics, russian empire, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Mar 132022
 

As a followup to this idea I had a few weeks ago… a YouTuber with suggestions regarding those interested in Ukrainian model kits and kit companies. Assuming Putin doesn’t nuke or otherwise salt the earth of Ukraine when he’s driven out like the little ᛒᛁᛏᛣᚻ he is, those model kit companies will probably be back… in some form, some day. I don’t doubt that some, many, most, maybe all of them might need to start from scratch; injection molding equipment tends to react poorly to bombardment and exposure to the elements. Relevant part starts around 3:24.

I’m not big on armor models, and I’ve never given a moments thought to building kits of farm equipment. But you know what? When this bullcrap is over, if Ukrainian companies start putting out kits of Ukrainian farmers towing Russian armor… I’ll buy them all.

 

 

 

Nothing runs like a Deere, baby!

 

 Posted by at 5:36 pm
 Older Entries  Newer Entries