Mar 192022
 

California lawmaker found with loaded handgun in his luggage at Sacramento airport

Not just any lawmaker… this is Assemblyman Jim Cooper D-Elk Grove, who in 2016 authored a bill to ban the right to make your own firearm. He doesn’t want *you* to have a gun, but boy howdy he sure wants his own.

If this was *you,* you’d spend a good chunk of the rest of your life in prison. This guy? No charges. In fact, they held onto his gun for him, returning it as soon as he got back from his trip. Why? Because he’s former law enforcement, and they’re allowed to have firearms in certain areas of the airport. Where they’re *not* allowed to take a firearm is on an airplane, where he was trying to take his gun, stashed in his man-purse.

If these jackholes didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all.

 Posted by at 4:57 pm
Mar 192022
 

An ok-quality youtube documentary on the Inflatoplane (it caused me to twitch a few times, such as when the “airmat” material was several times called “airman” for some reason). The Inflatoplane was pitched as a way to rescue downed pilots, a role it could still serve. Also potentially useful as  a way to infil/exfil special ops forces; if it could be made practical with a quiet propulsion system (electric motors? distributed propulsion?), then it could probably be *really* good for that role. At the end of the mission it could be fairly easily destroyed to keep it out of enemy hands. Another proposed role was as a light aircraft for the commercial market; this one I’m less thrilled about. A rubber aircraft would be necessarily not a long-lived aircraft; basic wear and tear, everything from scraping on the ground to repeated inflations, temperature cycling and ultraviolet light would cause the rubber to degrade over time. if the rubber parts could be made *really* cheap – a few grand, perhaps – such that the owner could swap out the rubber bits and retain easily-swappable propulsion, controls,  avionics, seats and such, then maybe it would be ok. Might make a dandy battlefield recon/ missile platform if made to be unmanned… a sizable aircraft with a decent payload that is small on radar and IR, difficult to shoot down shot of a direct hit, and dirt cheap. Replace the original nylon and rubber in the original airmat material with kevlar, carbon fiber and, say, teflon, and you could have a *really* tough little airplane you could fold up and stuff into the back of a car. Might be interesting to study the design pressurized not with carbon dioxide and water vapor engine exhaust, by *hydrogen* for added lift. Sure, it’d be a risk of catching fire, but if enemy action is already poking it full of holes it’s lost anyway. Might as well have it burn up before the enemy can get to it.

 Posted by at 3:33 pm
Mar 182022
 

Anyone who has watched videos from Ukraine – or, let’s face it, Russian dash cams – could be forgiven for thinking that the Ukrainian and Russian languages are composed of nothing but the sounds “blyat” and “suka” arranged in various artful ways to convey the full range of human ideas and emotions, stretching the gamut from “angry” to “enraged.”

English has that same capacity, as these two Indian fellers demonstrated. This is far and away the funniest thing I’ve seen in *days.*

And the captioned version:

 

And because why not:

 

 Posted by at 11:22 pm
Mar 182022
 

… is that they’re *efficient.* Witness Russian cops sweep in to take out opinions they don’t like… and opinions they think they might not like if allowed to be expressed.

This is so much like a Monty Python skit that I kinda wonder if maybe it is some sort of skit. But if so, it seems to be a pretty substantial one, with a large cast. The sign the first woman holds up says “two words.” Which I gather is an allusion to “no war,” sort of a Let’s Go Brandon euphemism that clearly doesn’t get past the censors over there.

 Posted by at 9:05 am
Mar 182022
 

Oh yeah. This is looking up.

Putin chillingly calls for ‘self-purification’ of Russia from ‘scum and traitors’

Going this far off the rails seems to indicate that the war isn’t exactly going to Putins plans. Yammering on about phantom Nazis and the like indicate an Antifa-like divorce from reality, which is just *awesome* to contemplate considering he’s got access to thousands of nukes.

 

 Posted by at 1:19 am
Mar 162022
 

A remarkable video depicting the last moments of Russian tank, as seen from an overhead drone. The tank looks to take several anti-tank rockets… probably smaller, short-range types, but they eventually get the job done. It gets a track damaged by a hit, and as it backs up it sheds the track; one crewman (looks like the driver) escapes, rolls off the front and runs away. But he doesn’t get far before an exterior explosion (mortar?) knocks him down and sets him crawling. A few seconds later, some *stuff* comes flying into view and crashes down onto the road; at first I thought it was a body, but on review it just looks like… well, stuff. The camera switches view and it looks like there might have been a second tank to get trashed not far away, perhaps it exploded and tossed bits of junk into the earlier view. No infantry support is in evidence. The operation seems to be run on Stupid Mode.

This Special Military Operation sure seems to have one hell of  pricetag.

 Posted by at 4:27 pm
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