Urban Defense EDC: The Drop Wallet

 h/t Zero

While this is probably an EDC item in NYFC, a Drop Wallet, AKA "Mugger Wallet", is a handy piece of gear to carry in urban areas, while travelling, or any time you feel the need, and per recent discussions over at Commander Zero's's blog, something not everyone has heard of.

The idea is to have a plausible wallet you can fork over, ideally by dropping or tossing, when getting stuck up for your wallet and other items on your person.

1) Get a decent wallet.

2) Load it up. Some people advocate a few real bills, . Personally, the amount of real money I'm prepared to hand over is $0, but you do you.

You can obtain, for $10 + shipping, a dozen cinematic US bills, totalling $372, 2@ of $1, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100, all used in motion pictures (and clearly marked as such), from BezosMart. I'd rather do that, and salt it with enough to be convincing.

Looks real. Totally fake. Look closer.

Fake cash only gets you part of the way home though.

3) Lard the card slots up. How?

Grab a mittful of gift cards the next time you pass a rack of same at the store.

Cost: $0. Actual value: $0. Decoy value: Priceless. Make especially sure to get a couple with the VISA and Mastercard logos, and place them prominently up front.

A few higher-end merchant gift cards won't go amiss to pad the section.

4) Some people will tell you to put old picture IDs or driver's licenses in there too.

BAD idea. a) Why give someone a handle on your real identity? b) And BTW, if they have an old address on you, they can cyber-stalk you to your true address now for a little payback, for a few dollars. Why make that easy for them?

Instead, work a little harder. Get any number of fake I.D.s, again from online sellers (I'm talking the ones you can buy and have without doing 5 years in the pen, not teenager fake IDs, which if you buy online, you'll send the money, and never see the money nor the ID ever again.)

Try these instead.

Find a state that works for you. Then rework them with a fake name and address, change the details, and put in an old photo of yourself. Copy that in color and laminate it (FedEx/Kinko's is your friend here). In fact, make 5-10 copies, so you don't have to do all this again after you toss the first wallet. You want to be Fred Flintstone, Kelly Green, or Bob Sledder? Knock yourself out.

5) Throw in some random business cards and miscellaneous crap. 

Need family pictures? They sell those too. Go to any store with photo frames, and find some shots of "your" kids, wife, husband, girl/boy friend, etc. Photocopy to size, cut to fit, and now Bob is literally your uncle.

Carry the fake wallet for a while to break it in, wear and tear it, etc.

When it comes to every day carry, obviously, put it in a different pocket than your actual wallet.

Maybe put the fake in your hip pocket, and hide the real one somewhere else.

When need presents itself, hand it over, drop it, or even toss it, to create distraction, giving you the chance to beat feet, create a little more space between you and Mr. Robber, or misdirect them long enough for more active measures.

Dealer's choice there.

Bonus points:

A) Leave another one in your house, 24/7, especially when you're away/out of town. Ideally, right in front of that hidden 4K color nightvision camera, so you and the cops get a great look at the burglar who lifts it.

B) Put one of the new small GPS tags in it. Not so much to find the bad guy (though if they oblige by taking it all the way home, so much the better), but to give the detectives a great trace of the route the thief took, hopefully past some other people's surveillance cameras (Ring, traffic cams, etc.) on the way to wherever they dump it.

If you want to put OC powder, UV dye, or itching powder on the bills and such, we won't tell.

C) Given the price of cell phones, carrying an old dead one (or better yet, a really cheap crappy burner phone that was never activated, traceable to no one) to fork over, and keeping your actual one more concealed isn't a horrible idea either.

At any rate, you now have options that don't include getting robbed of anything beyond an old wallet, some movie props, and a junk flip phone, and giving any would-be stick-up folks a reason to split with the goods rather than hang around and screw with you, without giving them anything that would lead them back to you, and might lead the po-po to them.

Win-win.

Do what seems best to you.

Breaking News: Capitalism FTW

The pics are from back when the future Senator Kneepads
 was more popular with male voters. At least for 20 minutes or so.

Sunday Music: Sisters Of The Moon

Hidden gem, originally released on Fleetwood Mac's 1979 Tusk double album, and the fourth single released, which barely charted at the time. A song that lets John McVie's bass line stretch its legs and drive the song, while proving the fundamental truth of the classic Mac lineup: 1+1+1+1+1=11; the sum of the group was always greater than the parts. Also a great mood-setter rolling into Halloween.

(Censored) Let's See What Happens When I Re-Post This...

{ALCON: Blogger yanked this back in July (7/5/24 to be exact.). To be fair, it was only about the second post in the history of the blog they killed. I think one of their hall monitors was just feeling butthurt about reality that day. Just testing the algorithm today by reposting it. -A.}

 h/t WRSA

We have happily disagreed with Denninger when he has tiptoed into medical waters over his head, which has been frequently, and we will likely do so again, but this post is not any of those times.

In so many words, two judges out of three at the 9th Circus have ruled that the COVID-19 mRNA shots are not vaccines, and therefore there is no basis under U.S. law by which they may be required as a condition of employment nor any other compelling rationale, and that any such requirements necessarily constitute a violation of the individual's personal right to make medical decisions for oneself.

TL;DR: Suck it, Vaxxholes. Strong message follows.

You are heartily encouraged to hie thee hence and RTWT, as this decision affects not just the Death Jabs, but pretty much every other so-called vaxx currently in existence.

Any injection which, unlike the smallpox vaccine (no longer given since that disease was eradicated in humans decades ago), does not prevent acquisition and transmission of a disease is merely an elective medical treatment, and as such, entirely within an individual's sole personal right to accept or reject all by themselves, solely as their own counsel and conscience dictate.

1) Giving TPTB the middle finger is now back in style.

2) The lawsuits for damages for employers who held to the contrary are now green-lighted, and are going to be a growth industry for the next 80 years, including against former military  service members vs. the DoD, and anyone else terminated for their refusal to take the Jab.

O frabjous day! Callou! Callay!

The case will likely end up in front of SCOTUS because of the DoD component when someone files and cites this decision (which was on behalf of LAUSD education employees), but it's unlikely to be reversed at any level.

Meaning countless employers who went all Gestapo in 2020 are about to take it right up the ass, sideways, with a rusty chainsaw, and deservedly so.

Mandated medical treatment just had an oak stake driven through its heart.

And the court just ruled what we've said all along:

NOBODY ON THE PLANET HAS BEEN VACCINATED AGAINST COVID-19.

Never. Not once.

And in case no one clued you in, no one's looking for a vaccine, either. At least, no more than OJ was ever out looking for "the real killer".

Think about that.

The government's medical authorities knew everything the 9th Circus ruled was true, years ago.

So ask yourself, that being the case, why they pushed the Jab button so hard, for so long.

From where I'm sitting, it looks like the Suddenly™ Effect was intended as a feature, not a bug. And that five year timeline to developing pericarditis kicks in starting next year. I hope not, because I don't like to think about work without 2/3rds of my colleagues. But choices have consequences, and some mistakes in life you don't get to make twice.

There could be an awful lot of "Help Wanted" ads coming soon. Pay close attention. Time alone will tell.

Sunday Music: Silly Love Songs

 

Post-Beatles hit for Paul McCartney & Wings from 1976, and McCartney's direct rebuttal to those (including John Lennon) who complained he only wrote sappy love songs. So it only zoomed to #1 on the charts, promptly becoming McCartney's record-setting 27th #1 hit.

McCartney's response, just like in the lyrics: "What's wrong with that?" 

Just Saying

Comedy is wherever you find it.

Thought For The Day

let's see if I can get auto-post to work...

Road Trip

Another long, and long overdue, vacation. 

Work has been especially grim the past week, due in no small part to teenagers who shouldn't be drinking at all, combining that stupidity with driving, and knocking people off in job lots hereabouts.

We could live a long and happy life not listening to devastated families wailing with grief they feel down to their bones, over jackassically slaughtered loved ones cut down in the prime of life.

So we're getting the hell out of Dodge for some well-earned anything-but-trauma time. Coastal Califrutopia is beautiful this time of year, and we may even get as far north as San Franshitsco, while bumming along taking in the highlights of the central coast. There is also an excuse to do some continued book research during our travels.

There may not even be a Sunday Music post this week (which hasn't happened since the last computer crashed into a smoking hole in the ground some years back), because we may not be anywhere near internet access for a week or more.

Our best wishes to everyone, including a number of correspondent fellow bloggers, currently under God's thumb in central Florida.

By all means, entertain yourselves with the Usual Suspects' Political Sh*tshow, and the bloggers over on the right, while you prepare for sporky times over the next couple of months.

We are temporarily closing comments in our absence, and only during our absence, purely out of a desire to avoid having to wade through any amount of spam and/or bile upon our return. They will re-open immediately upon our return to our humble digs.

Administrivia Note: 208Silver Miner (who evidently couldn't comprehend how low a priority his squabbles have on our life, nor the meaning of "wait your turn") has apparently elected to spank himself on our behalf. Having skipped most of the classes on hydraulics, while learning just enough to activate his internal Dunning-Kruger Switch like a rat in a crack cocaine experiment, he evidently proposes to show how little he learned of logic too, by attempting to prove a negative, and showing the world what he cannot accomplish, as if that somehow disproves what others can. While we invite him to ponder the phrase "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence", we yet wish him well, and hope he doesn't leave too purple a mark when he pulls his own pants down on the internet for your entertainment. He would be better advised to hope and pray we fail when we attend to his comeuppance, and realizes that him failing only proves his own incompetence, without settling anything. But we never interfere when our opponent is making a colossal blunder.

Meanwhile, we have a bag to pack, and a gas tank to fill. If we had our druthers, we'd be signing on as a burglar with a wizard and a company of dwarves, but this will have to do in the meantime.

Sunday Music: Windy

 

#1 hit for The Association in 1967, since used in about a million places, from commercials to elevator muzak. It sat there on top of the charts for the entire month of July, the peak of "The Summer Of Love", and the Beatles were nowhere to be seen until the end of the month, when "All You Need Is Love" finally showed up at #71.

Douchebags Gonna Douchebag

 h/t TL Davis