May 062021
 

Oh, this looks like it’ll be an endless source of amusement:

Communist group touts plans to burn Anne Frank’s diary, calls her ‘bleach demon’

This groups website is jam-packed with whackaloonacy.

These racist goobers are trying to build a self-sufficient city of their own. Fine, great, wonderful. At an altitude of 10,000 feet in the Colorado Rockies. Snerk. I cannot express how much I support them in their efforts and wish them to gather as many of their like-minded ideologues as possible within the confines of their arid, anoxic little gulag. I imagine their ranks are just *filled* with all the talent they’ll need in the areas of high-altitude farming and irrigation and power generation and construction. I bet their first full winter there will be spectacular.

 Posted by at 11:21 pm
May 062021
 

… but this technology is pretty much available *now* and I can see this app hitting the market soon. If something like Google Glass ever makes a return, I can see an app like this running in real time, providing an augmented reality overlay letting the user know the enemy-status of nearly everyone they see on the street. Such an app would be used by extremists on both sides in order to find people to ambush and assault; it would be used by the vast majority in the middle to find those that they should avoid.

The existence and widespread adoption of such a thing would speed the process of people disguising themselves in public. A year ago I thought sure that the pandemic would do it, but instead we’ve got goons beating the tar out of people for wearing/not wearing simple  and dubiously useful masks.

 Posted by at 5:58 pm
May 052021
 

“Once again, people who live near George Floyd Square want to know when Minneapolis police will respond to their calls for help.”

Huh. Who could have seen that coming. A place that became a no-go zone for the police has turned into a lawless hellscape… and the police have no interest in going there. And why should they? I feel sorry for the people who lived there/owned property/businesses before all this happened. But there is a simple fix: BLM and it’s leaders have made *buckets* of money. The locals should sell out to BLM at a fair market price based on the pre-riot value. Then BLM can do with the property whatever they like, safe in the knowledge that the cops won’t get involved.

Even When Residents Call For Their Help, Minneapolis Police Won’t Go Near 38th & Chicago

 

 Posted by at 6:08 pm
May 052021
 

It looks like SpaceX has finally succeeded with a true soft landing of a Starship. More than 10 minutes after landing, it’s still pointed straight up. There was a fire at the base for several minutes, but after some judicious venting the fire seems to have gone out. Oddly, SpaceX doesn’t seem to have covered the flight. There were numerous interruptions of the video feed from the vehicle itself; with luck it was recorded by the cameras and will be recovered.

UPDATE:

SpaceX has posted a video.

 Posted by at 5:42 pm
May 042021
 

The Serbu SN-50 is an odd gun: a single-shot .50 BMG that you have to kinda disassemble to reload. It’s little more than an M2 machine gun barrel with some modifications; that makes it less expensive ($1259 rather than the seven-plus grand you can expect for semi-auto .50s), but is seems like a lot of bother to go to between each shot. Still, Serbu has a good reputation and the design seems pretty rugged. Yet… one of them underwent rapid unplanned disassembly right in the shooters face, doing him a lot of bad damage. The firearms side of YouTube has taken notice and lots of people are trying to figure it out.

Yow.

 

This guy focuses on the rather unique ammo, as well as unfortunate design features:

Same guy revisits the issue, and is rather more explicit in his opinion that the RN 50 is not a weapon to be fired:

Forgotten Weapons covers the topic of firearms exploding:

 

Mark Serbu made a comment:

Serbu may, depending on the results of the analysis of the rifle, be in a spot of trouble.

 Posted by at 8:18 pm