A Little Systemic Mini-Seizure

 

For reference only. Not my actual cart.

Relatively small potatoes, but SoCal is not Georgia, so we get severe summer thunderstorms hereabouts so infrequently I can count the remembered ones in the last decade on my thumbs.

Including today.

First rain, then hard rain, then a little hail, followed by crack-BOOM, with lightning inside the 5-second (one mile) zone, followed by power out. Half hour later, same thing at Big Box store.

Which took them out for 45 minutes while their system rebooted. Several hundred of us stood patiently wondering when they'd get their digital sh*t together. No ATM or credit processing, and even if you'd had cash, they couldn't ring anything up, because computerized single-point-of-failure PLUs.

Folks were well-behaved, except for a couple of opportunists trying to create lines rather than waiting in the ones already there, which didn't work out well for them, and store management handed out water to those waiting. And waiting.

Weather was southerly, thus it was Hawaii-hot-and humid, but not Florida/Africa-hot-and-humid, but both worse than California dry, and after about 45 minutes, they rejoined the 21st century.

Silver lining: after a 30-month absence, they had canned roast beast, so those supplies got a long-overdue topping up.

But come harder days next fall or winter, woe betide anyone trying to get up to speed on preps they should have had well in hand by mid-summer.

My personal timeline goals are measured in years, but adding another 6 months' worth of calories today is always a good feeling, and it isn't like the price nor availability of canned meat (or anything else) is going to get better any time in the next year.

I don't own the roof under which I sleep, so solar panels there are right out, but plans are afoot for at least a few that can be placed in south-facing windows, to keep a couple of needful things running indefinitely.

The best time to get ready for hard times is always five minutes ago.

Today's minimal incident was a gentle reminder.

You'll Never Clear That Shark, Fonzie

 

Don't be this meme.

On June 14th, awa posted the following article on Gun Free Zone:

What about the little puppies? 

In a nutshell, some whackdoodle outside L.A. decided not to adopt pets to anyone who owns guns, and doesn't kiss Gun Control's pustulent suppurating ass.

By all means, RTWT.

It's an obviously outrageous insertion of woketard politics into a pet adoption process where it has absolutely no business whatsoever.

Being up and about shortly after it appeared, I posted the first response to the post:

1) Aesop June 15, 2022 at 12:25 am 

And they ascertain this information from people…how, exactly?

Seance?
So this is simply wholesale cost-free virtue-signalling.
QED

BTW, Thousand Oaks is in Ventura County. It’s a very pricey L.A. County-adjacent suburban neighborhood, plus consistently one of the Top Ten “Safest Cities In America” for as long as anyone has kept track.
I’m guessing that pet shop would like to change that.

You have to wonder how long before they experience a totally random BLM attack on their establishment, with no witnesses.
Might drive ’em right out of business there, and scuttling back to almost-no-gun-shops-within-city-limits Los Angeles.
Boo frickin’ hoo.

To which fellow commenter Divemedic helpfully replied later that AM:

Divemedic June 15, 2022 at 5:06 am

Reading their website, they insist on an hour long interview where you will be grilled on your beliefs about gun control and other liberal talking points. They also insist on inspecting your home to ensure that it is suitable, and if you rent, they will also interview your landlord. If you lie to them about your stance on guns and they find out, they claim that they will sue you for fraud. They are meddling, nosy cunts. I wouldn’t want to buy a dog collar from their store.

They are a 503(c) tax exempt organization. It is illegal under IRS regulations to engage in or advocate for a political cause as a tax exempt. Not that the IRS ever enforces the law against liberals. They are also getting killed on yelp. https://www.yelp.com/biz/shelter-hope-pet-shop-thousand-oaks

My response to him, which is what evidently triggered the subsequent hyperventilation - and probably one of the most innocuous things I've ever posted - was as follows:

 Aesop June 15, 2022 at 5:25 am

I suspect their monthly fire insurance premiums are about to exceed their annual income.

Whereupon blog admin awa evidently lost his grip on reality:

awa June 15, 2022 at 8:45 am

This is not a discussion. This is not an argument. This is a statement from one of the blog admins.

This sort of comment is not acceptable. The implication that part of this community would commit arson is not acceptable.

Don’t do it. We don’t allow physical threats, we don’t allow implied threats, we don’t bad mouth the community as a whole.

Then circled the wagons, and doubled down.  (I.e. "Let's form a circular firing squad, and call Aesop a dick, and see how that works out.")

Uh huh. Not getting enough attention, are you?

Part of this community???

Where in blistering Hell are you pulling that "inference" from?

I neither said that outright, nor implied that, unless you're ascertaining that inference by seance.

If you're butthurt by the reality that there are people out in the big wide world (which is what I did say) who will likely do something illegal or immoral, that's entirely your free choice.

Considering random incident-of-violence videos demonstrating exactly that phenomenon are routinely posted [at GFZ] (I passed at least two such between today and this old post [I was wrong, there are at least two more I forgot about. -A.]), that seems a little silly, but it's your choice, and it's a free country. You can be as silly as you'd like.

Saying what I said is not "being a dick". It's breathing oxygen, and having open eyes.

Why post the story at all, if you think everyone in Creation is just going to yawn and say "Tsk. Tsk."?

Criminal and/or crazy people are absolutely going to make ridiculous threats, sure as the sun rises every morning.

That's how we know they're criminals and crazies.

Insurance agents and companies are going to note those realities when assessing policy premiums.

It's what they do.

That is exactly what I said: no more, and no less.

So now noting the obvious, that 2+2=4 is "unacceptable"?

Noted, Mr. O'Brien. Big Brother is watching.

(George Orwell would like you to call his office.)

I'm not advocating for any such illegal response.

I'm certainly not going to do it myself, nor would I advise nor incite anyone else to do so.

(And unlike 98% of the nonsense covered here, that shop is actually well within a tank of gas from where I'm sitting. Just like it is for about 25,000,000 other people.)

Saying "X is likely to happen, because human nature" is a simple statement of reality.

To suggest that observing the facts of actual human nature in the real world, and stating those realities is "unacceptable", is quite simply asinine.

Do what you like with this comment, and the original one.

But don't put words in my mouth nor impute motives to me based on someone's wildest imagination, and absolutely nothing I said nor implied.

That's what ABCNNBCBS are for.

But if you - or anyone else - seriously think no one is going to do any such thing as what I suggested will happen, I'd love to hear an exposition of the thinking behind that opinion.

No, really.

I don't think anyone who reads Gun Free Zone is going to run right out and burn down some asshole's pet shop. I'm not going to do it. And I would counsel anyone from doing it as well. Nor did I say that. Nor, in even a fever-brained analysis beyond the bounds of sanity, could it be inferred. Not even with a dowsing rod and a ouija board.

Word to your mother, yo.

But I get paid fabulous sums of money to babysit the exact lunatics in question who will do exactly that, and more. And their real-world actions have real-world consequences. Including higher insurance premiums.

So when you go waving a rhetorical lightning rod around in a thunderstorm, like the pet shop owner in the OP, it's going to bite you in your ass. That's all - and exactly what - I said, and awa and anyone with an IQ higher than room temperature in a igloo knew that before they went shark-surfing on this topic.

Hyperventilate all you want.

But get a grip on reality. And stop pulling recockulous inferences from out of your underpants, and trying to pin them on other people. If noting that Some Asshole's going to receive karmic payback for their idiotic actions is imputing the motive to do so to the gun community, then posting articles like "Get a CCW, and keep your head on a swivel" is telling people to go hunting and killing people. 

That's the exact argument being made about my post response(s), and exactly how fucktardedly recockulous it is to say you can psychically "infer" I was suggesting any community (other than crooks and crazies) are going to do something illegal and heinous.

(If you're defending that "community", you're on your own.)

The word for that in the trade is projection, and when last I looked, the DSM-5 identifies it as a symptom of delusional thinking.

Don't imagine you can read my mind based on things not said, and I won't do the same thing to you either.

That would seem to be the sort of common sense most of us learned in our formative years, but some people may have been sick that day in school.

Don't be that guy. Please.

ZFG regarding any butthurt this, or the original responses, caused. Wield your banhammer with glee, if that's how you want to get off. But life's gonna be hard if you don't pull up your Big Boy pants, and deal with Reality as it is, instead of wetting your pants because you imagined someone said something that offends your tender sensibilities, purely from the depths of your own tortured illogic. I hold no brief to catering to delusional behavior. Neither should anyone else. Start doing that, and the next thing you know, people will be criminally charged for using the wrong pronouns, which even courts in Califrutopia threw out as a First Amendment violation. So don't be crazier than that.

If you're blogging for psychotherapy, there are people trained for that, but they charge by the hour.

What isn't so, isn't so.

And BTW, and not for nothing: Standards  are a fine thing. Except the Double kind. I mention that because calling someone out for "being a dick" in two separate posts violates your own Rule Three. Oops.

I own what I write.

Own what you write.

I didn't take any pot-shots at you or anyone on GFZ when I posted, and I don't think it's beyond reasonable to expect no less courtesy in return.

Maybe even have a chat with a Vietnam-era vet about the origin of the radio call "Receiving friendly fire, returning same with a smile..."

There are a lot of decaffeinated brands out there that are just as tasty as the real thing...

So, did you really want to talk about the weather, or...?

BONUS: More non-incitement to not get one's panties in a wad about...:

what-happens-when-the-silent-majority-rebels

after-the-guns-were-removed-the-killing-fields-began

moonbat-blames-religious-right-for-gas-prices

cultural-enrichment-or-the-biggest-genocide-in-human-history

car-with-anti-trump-stickers-plows-through-store-selling-pro-trump-merch

softness-to-traitors-will-destroy-us-all

introducing-our-newest-social-justice-warrior-trigglypuff

remember-rape-gangs-in-britain

if-gun-control-saves-lives-then-why-are-california-and-new-york-state-so-dangerous

from-gun-owners-of-america

republican-scumbags-who-voted-to-take-your-guns

And that's just a selection from the last 24 hours.

In case someone gets tired of red-flagging their own commenters, and needs some fresh meat to go dog-whistling after.

Warning: Nukes May Drop

 

Nope. Nothing to do with Ukraine, Russia, et al.

Two SCOTUS decisions are pending: one re: abortion, and the other re: NYFS's jackassical gun laws.

They'll apparently have to be released Thursday, since they didn't drop today. So the best guess is all the justices are trying to get to min. safe distance before detonation.

Plan your life accordingly, knowing that there's a better than even chance one or both decisions will lead inevitably to all three things Conan the Barbarian declared are best in life.

We'll soon see whether they acted like actual justices, or whether they crawfish on the Constitution.

Imagine SCOTUS declaring the obvious: Abortion isn't in the Constitution, and the 2nd Amendment is. 

At the very least, grab some earplugs, if you don't have any handy. If this goes wrong for the Leftards, it will break windows on the International Space Station, and dogs in the other hemisphere will be howling from the mere echoes of anguished screams emanating from Greater Leftardia.

If the leaked abortion opinion is anything close to reality, it may turn out that Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh all went in on an order for 10,000 marbles.

UPDATE I: NYSRPA Wins!

Roe v. Wade Aborted

Dungball Review: Without Remorse

h/t Pergelator

Pergelator liked this flick. Well, it's a free country. And we hate to harsh anyone's mellow, but...

Equal time for an opposing view: 

Au contraire.

Based on a Tom Clancy story, which isn't the same thing at all.

It's Hollywood-speak for "fornicated the original story up past 11, and all the way to FUBAR." Which, as is tediously predictable, they did.

Anyone who read the original book probably shot their TV screen to pieces by 10 minutes into this craptastic bastardization of Clancy's story.

The flick wasn't shot before a live audience, but the writers, producers, and director - oh, and even Jeff Bezos, CEO of flick-producer Amazon - of this steaming pile of feces definitely should be.

Garbage reworking of his stuff was why, after the third horrible re-write out of four movies, Clancy vowed they'd never get another one of his books to ruin, unless it was over his dead body.

Well, he died in 2013.

So, here's what you get.

If one never read the source novel, from which they lifted the main character's name, and the title, before they burned everything else in a fire, take Clancy's name off this, as should be done, and try to sell it otherwise, and it's nothing but a D- piece of straight to low-budget cable and Albanian distribution dungball movie. It's Cheeze Whiz on a cracker pretending to be caviar.

Without Remorse mainly refers to the way the authors of this cinematic pantload took a crap on Clancy's work and legacy.

At that, it succeeds beyond their wildest expectations.

If somebody gives this to you for free, give it back. You'll be happier, and it's 20 bucks (had you bought it), and 109 minutes of your life you won't have wasted. If you can't turn it down, take it to the skeet range, and glue it to a clay pigeon. Best use of it I can think of.

Our Rating: Watching this movie is like licking your dog's butt. Just less fun for your dog.

AAR

 

Sunday Music: Start Me Up

 

Top cut from the fifth of eight consecutive Number 1 albums in the U.S., the rocking single from the Rolling Stones peaked at #2 in 1981, and stayed there for three weeks.

Stumblefuck Poopypants I, Imperator -The Big Crash

 

At least double-bagging his Depends© worked this time.

This is a metaphor for this entire misbegotten Chiquitastan fraudulency.

Thinking he can still function, while actually landing on his ass.

And if he was brain-damaged by the crash...how could anyone tell???

Fake Elections have consequences.

The Democrats' two greatest fears are

1) Stumblefuck doesn't survive to run in 2024;

2) Or worse than that, he does.

Both thoughts keep them awake at night.

My money is still here:

Heavy Metal

 

Oberst Reisner of the OB just uploaded another briefing, this time in English.

Not much up-to-the-minute info, but two takeaway factoids worthy of note:

1) Original briefings by US DoD people stated we would be sending a whole 18 M777 howitzers to Ukraine. That's three batteries, which is one bare battalion. Which ain't a helluva lot in a 100,000-man 600-mi. long frontline. Color me unimpressed at the time.

Obst. Reisner's briefing reveals that, from all NATO sources, Ukraine has actually received 114  M777 howitzers.

For reference, that's 19 complete artillery batteries, and more artillery tubes than you would find in a USMC division. That's comparatively yuuuuge. It is, however, not enough to support anything like the entire front line.

2) Also notably absent from Reisner's latest briefing:

Any wild headless-chicken nonsense about the Ukrainians in headlong retreat, collapsing, or in any serious difficulty. Unlike, say, multiple online Putin junk-garglers who have declared Ukraine lost, and the war already over. Pretty much like that 90-day long victory in Mariupol (where after three months of waiting hopelessly for Russia to actually win, the Ukrainian military command ordered the regiment+ of troops still fighting there to go ahead and surrender).

So, you can believe the non-NATO disinterested third-party expert analysis of a certified military genius with full access to real-time military intelligence about that, or you can go with the uninformed bloviations from the least thoughtful gasbags on the internet.

That's a pretty easy call for me to make; you're on your own.

Comedy Relief: Russia never invaded Ukraine, there is no war there, and a free and independent country like Ukraine cannot be allowed to decide its own destiny or alliances.

And Yet They Keep Jumping On The Landmine

 

This Has To Be Said - BFYTW

 

Rules? There Are No Rules Here...

 h/t Kenny

Consequences are for after. In the moment, there are no rules. Survivors write the aftermath, and the history books will clean it up.

Beware Of Falling Stockbrokers

 Tam FTW:

And now, an appropriate chorus:

By Gene Burnett

Why Bob Dylan, Bocephus, or Willy Nelson haven't covered this song is a mystery for the ages.

Mariupolic Victory = Pyrrhic²

 h/t WRSA

RTWT.

The full spectrum of likely outcomes in Ukraine, based on reality and facts on the ground, not naked fanboyism.

Nota bene  that in exactly none of the article does van Creveld suggest

"Outcome No. 6: Russia parades victoriously into Kyiv, having wiped out the Jewish Nazis (oxymoron alert) previously ruining the newest Russian slave state, and Putin is carried bodily on the shoulders of his ardent supporters in a glorious victory parade in Moscow, as Russia assumes its rightful place of power and influence, with all of Western Europe humbled and in thrall before their indomitable might, as the Globohomo rainbow forces of Joooooooooooos and decadent faggotry flee shrieking in anguish, while Vlad reinstates all that is good, right, and manly in world affairs." 

Because it's far more likely that flying monkeys will shoot out of yer ass, than that anything approaching that nonsense will ever happen. Both Russia and the West come off the worse for wear in this war in nearly every scenario he outlines; the main difference between the choices he presents is how shitty life is afterwards for Ukrainians. Which isn't surprising, given where the conflict is being waged.

But there's still no such thing as "winning" anywhere in the cards for the Moscow Maniac.

Which is why it's far likelier that Vladpoleon is going to end up the same way his idol did: dead of arsenic poisoning, and relegated to oblivion. After grinding his own forces into semi-helplessness.

In The Dictionary Under "Confirmation Bias"

 

Perhaps consider that the guy you accuse of only being in this to pimp for cash may be overstating the magnitude of things a wee bit for exactly his own ends. IOW, believe your own fairytales consistently, not just when it suits your alternate version of reality. Not doing this is how you step on your dicks, and show that you never believed your own bilge either, you're just shitposting in service of your own bias. NTTAWWT, but own it up front, for what it is, and what it isn't, and stop squealing like stuck pigs when you get called out for exactly what you've been doing all along. The plural of bias is not "data".

If the shoe fits, take it out of your mouth.

Trying to have things both ways just makes you look like a schmuck for trying the "heads I win, tails you lose" streetcorner hustle gambit. No one's buying into your three-card monte games.

This won't go over the heads of the worst offenders, it'll whistle right through the gaping hole in the middle, but that'll just prove the point, won't it?

Better yet, start looking harder at reports from disinterested third parties (which is why we've avoided either interested party's pronouncements since this started), and take both Putin propaganda and regime narrative out of the equation, to the greatest extent humanly possible. 

If only for the novelty of that approach.

The Bitch-Slap Of Truth Lands...

h/t WRSA

Link: COVID Truth

This is a published paper, copiously foot-noted, by a retired MD (thus immune from career reprisals), detailing the entirety of the COVIDiocy we all experienced and continue to see, from 2020-present.

Read The Whole Thing (take your blood pressure medication first) if you can tolerate it. I'd give it about a 95% accuracy rating (a few of his sources are questionable, but not automatically suspect). It's still an excellent overview, far superior to anything you'd get outside of an honest documentary on the subject, which thing will happen When Hell Freezes Over.

More importantly: go to the right column at the site, click on the "Other Formats" PDF option, and archive the whole thing on your machine. To prevent TPTB from memory-holing all of it, and to use as ammunition when TPTB gaslight this, lest it receive wide distribution, and the torches and pitchforks come calling.

At the end of the day, the DNA-altering not-a-Vaxx was the bigger disease, and the lies used to cover it and its consequences up constitute a modern-day Holocaust, in plain sight. And you were the target.

God help you or yours if any of you got the jab, because the sequellae of that fall under GOK: God Only Knows. By design. Evidence thus far suggests you're screwed, and only those who live long enough will see the next 80 years of fallout from it.

Related story: Severe COVID rare among unvaxxed

And for pure comedy relief... Maybe 5 is the new Magic Number.

{For the inevitable 2 or 3 Low-Comprehension Usual Suspects: If you're going to accuse me, 180° out from the actual reality, of "shilling for" anything to do with this nonsense, go do your homework, find that moment, and post a link to the articles in your imagination where I wrote that, which are all still unaltered, right where I left them, and show your work, or rant on along with the other voices in your head, unlistened to by anyone, and remain there in perpetuity. Words mean things, and when you can't find it, it's because it didn't happen, no matter what the Voices In Your Head tell you. That's how Reality works. If that's too hard for you, enjoy oblivion, and continue to suck on it.}

Pure RUMINT

 h/t NC Renegades

This remains completely unverified, and we have substantial doubts about its accuracy.

But on the chance it's possibly correct, we join those praying for Vlad, and applaud the sentiment.

And if this all pans out and he dies, we'll give thanks that our prayers were answered in the affirmative, and wish him a fond parting benediction as he begins Eternity rotting in Hell.

Nails It

The readership here, not so much. But this is the sort of thing that should be a sticker that appears on busses, subways, and the back of public lavatory stall doors.

Just saying.

Sunday Music: You Can Leave Your Hat On

 

Randy Newman classic from 1972, sung by the incomparable Joe Cocker in 1986, when it peaked at #35. Video bits from 9½ Weeks. If you can get Kim Basinger, or some equivalent, to dance to this, I highly recommend it.

Random @$$clowns

 

FDA-Approved COVID-19 Vaxx Comirnaty Was Vaporware

 h/t Granite Grok

RTWT.

It never existed, and never will.

Money quote:

“Pfizer received initial FDA BLA license on 8/23/2021 for its COVID-19 vaccine for use in individuals 16 and older (COMIRNATY). At that time, the FDA published a BLA package insert that included the approved new COVID-19 vaccine tradename COMIRNATY and listed 2 new NDCs (0069-1000-03, 0069-1000-02) and images of labels with the new tradename. These NDCs will not be manufactured."

 

Just Another Day In Chiquitastan

 

If TPTB are going to prop up this glistening turd and fraudulent pretender for another two and a half years, they're going to need to buy him an airplane that can land on its belly, and drop a handicapped ramp with foam rubber lining, so he can get into the plane without doing a faceplant every two minutes.

If it were up to me, I'd hire commercial tuna fisherman to snag and yank him from the ground with stout poles, and gaff hook him into the hatch, but I'm sentimental like that.

Someone suggested a body harness and a winch, but the WH staff were concerned about squeezing all the stored up pudding out of his Depends on national TV.

Yeah...Not So Much

 

It's foolishly suggested that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has shifted the paradigm of war, demonstrating Russia's grasp of the new paradigm, and hopelessly outclassing NATO.

The trouble with that argument is it ignores facts from both history, and current events.

Battleships didn't become obsolete because of events at Taranto, nor Pearl Harbor, nor even because of the sinkings of two British battleships off the Malaysian coast. In point of fact, ignored wholly by Piggott, battleships continued to be deployed, successfully, for the rest of WWII (he might have noted the final Japanese surrender instrument was signed on the deck of USS Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay, had he the historical acumen to summon that factoid), and Korea, and Vietnam, and GW1, before the final retirement of ships then over 50 years old. Half a century of action after supposed obsolescence is quite a long time. 

And they weren't retired because of obsolescence, but rather because they were simply aged ships, requiring more in staffing and maintenance than they delivered in capability, and their main-gun ammunition was becoming notably wonky. Naval gunfire is fantastic, and nigh irreplaceable, but running oil-fired bunkers on a 2000+-man ship whose capabilities can be parceled out more economically among other platforms was the end game for the battleships. It was that simple. (OTOH, the defense plan if one was rammed by a speedboat IED, or hit by an Exocet or Silkworm in the multiple belts of foot-thick side armor, was to come about 180°, lower a seaman over the side with a brush and a bucket of gray enamel, and paint over the scorch mark in the hull that would result from such an attack.) 

Carriers didn't become obsolete after Midway, either.

Bad carrier tactics, yes.

Carriers, no.

Particularly against people with no defense against them. (Which is most of 185 nations out of 195 total.)

Piggott nonsensically waves the Russian hypersonic scramjet missiles as the death blow for anything in their path. They can cover 180 miles (their operational range) in a couple of minutes.

Okay, spiffy. Russia has new toys, based on technology around since the 1950s, some 70 years ago. So, had he more perspicacity, the obvious follow-up questions would be:

What are you going to do about targets 190 miles away?

How accurate are those missiles?

How easy are they to jam, spoof, or shoot down?

How are you targeting objects BVR?

How many have you got to shoot?

Where are they?

Those are questions a plebe at West Point or Annapolis would have thought of; Piggott, not so much. What he grasps about warfare in general, or in specifics, could be written longhand with a Sharpie on butcher paper and fit inside a thimble, with room to spare.

And the most obvious question is, if these missiles are so revolutionary, why is Russia in an endless meat-grinder conflict, rather than sitting atop the pyramid of victory in mere minutes, as they expected, and Piggott's suggestion predicts?

The obvious answer is, because all those questions show the utter dearth of ability of those "revolutionary" missiles to effect anything that looks like victory.

Might they have some utility? Perhaps. It remains to be seen. 

Are they a "paradigm shift" in warfare? No. They are a fart in a windstorm in the grand scheme.

Grunt Law: When you declare victory, be sure to inform the enemy.

Offense/Defense Corollary: There ain't a horse that can't be rode, and there ain't a rider that can't be throwed.

IOW, fast missiles are anything but world-beating game-changers.

It would take pages to fisk the multiplicity of military errors, from strategy, to tactics, to logistics, that underpin this pile of gelatinous shit plopped out at the link, but suffice it to say that war has not transformed in 6000 years of recorded human history, and neither have the conditions for obtaining victory. (The plural of 27 fallacious conclusions is not "wisdom". When you ask the wrong questions, and draw the wrong conclusions, you get the equivalent of gibberish from a baboon. For but one example, the machinegun didn't make infantry obsolete. It made head-on infantry charges obsolete. Wee difference, but Piggott doesn't know what he doesn't know - or else ignores it because facts mess up the flow of effluvia in his narrative.)

Hypersonic missiles haven't changed that calculus, and the failure of the Russians to sweep all opposition off the chessboard merely underlines the idiocy of the suggestion that they have.

If ICBMs with nuclear weapons didn't make armies and navies obsolete, there's little likelihood that a few missiles will do so now. The suggestion is risibly ludicrous, and only a rank amateur and total military loon would suggest otherwise. The first prerequisite of being the smartest guy in the room, is that one be smart.

Epic Fail.

Somebody wants to talk about actual new tech in this war, we can do that. But this article wasn't it.

Addendum: For the incorrigibly stupid who need this spelled out with wooden blocks, we lost our first aircraft carrier in 1942. Carriers were vulnerable 80 years ago: This is not news. We started WW II with a total of 7 carriers. We were so distraught and paradigm-shifted by the wholly unsurprising news that they could be sunk, that by war's end, we had 99 aircraft carriers afloat by VE day. And if anyone were to start lobbing missiles at any one of the 11 carriers we currently possess and had the misfortune to sink one, the life expectancy of their fleet, and capitol city, would be measured in minutes. Which is reason #27 why hypersonic AS missiles are largely irrelevant to any serious discussion of anything military-related beyond "What's a great way for a country to initiate national suicide by radiation poisoning?".

After all of the preceding, if anyone is still willing to carry water for Piggott's jackassical thesis, kindly turn up the brightness on your keyboard.

Natzsofast

from WRSA :26/27, and one clinker

The difference between a rose, and rose fertilizer, in one quote.

Said Julius Caesar. Genghis Khan. Napoleon. Bonnie and Clyde. Hitler. Mao. Castro. The Manson Family. Pol Pot. The Clintons. MS-13. BLM. Jeffrey Epstein. Some 19 y.o. @$$hole in Uvalde. Ad infinitum. All of whom acted "according to the dictates of" their own consciences. Which was exactly the entire problem there. Kindly show all work if you're going to espouse such claptrap.

This is simply "If it feels good, do it." It's total unadulterated bullshit since its utterance by Simone de Abbatoir. Not to put too fine a point on it, it's literally the exact lie of the Serpent in the Garden of Eden, from which proceedeth all subsequent human error and catastrophe to date.

Anyone you could think of, from Victor Davis Hanson, to Thomas Sowell, to Peter Hitchens, to Jordan Peterson, to Bill Burr, to Ricky Gervais, would make anyone espousing the same wish they'd never been born inside of 10 seconds' simple explanation.

Meme selection fail. Re-think.

MOAR Winning

 

Go, Vlad! Bleed yourself white.  Adopt the conscription policies of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards mine clearing forces. Put the old guys and the kids in those rusty T-62s you've been pulling out of the scrap heaps. That'll show Ukraine who means business.

Sunday Music: Shaft

 

Platinum-selling main theme soundtrack and funk-soul masterpiece from Isaac Hayes, which skyrocketed to the #1 song in the U.S., then followed that by winning the Oscar for Best Original Song at the 1972 Oscars, giving Hayes the first win by any African American in any category but acting, and turned a middleweight blaxplotation flick into a cultural milestone and cult favorite. Hayes performed it at the Oscars, and rocked it again 30 years later for his induction to the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame. Who's A-Number One?

(And to the Anon who queried me about "Why Shaft?"

Well, besides because it's a great track, you tell me: What have you been getting from TPTB for at least the last 2½ - if not 100 - years?. You're welcome. It's now a whole new theme song, i'n'it?)

Newest Tac Gear: Bulletsoaker 2022

MOAR great ones at Miguel's GFZ.

9mm Lungblower

h/t cirsova@twatter and Borepatch

How It Is, And Where It's Headed

Yesterday, Divemedic looked at why we keep seeing criminally insane mass shooters walking among us, and looks at the root of The Problem. RTWT. It's from research on his paper for a BSN, including the things he "can't say in a school paper".

My reply:

1) Keep working on the paper. Don't pull punches.

2) Latest numbers are that Califrutopia now has closer to 33% of the homeless people in the country, which is why I keep telling all the California-haters that they can have their toothless banjo-playing kinfolk back any time, because those crazy folks ain't from around here. I see their SSNs, and you can look up the state of origin [from the first three digits] in about 2 mouseclicks.

2a) 100:1 your state, for any of 49 values of that descriptor, hands the incorrigibly insane something between $5-10K for substance detox. In Califrutopia only. They fly them here, get into rehab, flunk out in a day or two because they're crazy addicts, end up on the streets, and drink or snort the balance of their funds. Then they become everyone's problem. I.E. mine. Ask me how I know, and how many times I've seen that exact scenario replayed again and again at local EDs.

3) They aren't releasing the homeless from prison to make room for the druggies. It's the same population. A Venn Diagram of the homeless, the alcoholics, and the lifelong drug addicts would be nearly one single circle, with all three groups overlapping. A fourth circle containing the convicts wouldn't stray too far from 1, 2, or 3 either.

4) People aren't homeless because they misplaced their homes, they're homeless because they drank it away, snorted it away, or perpetrated it away. No job, no skills, addiction, mental deficiency, and a criminal record is a crappy poker hand for life.

5) Psych meds make patients feel "weird". The rest of us call that weird feeling "sanity". So they stop taking those meds the minute they're released back into the community, with the result that ordinary citizens have to lock themselves inside plush secure home cells, while the crazy people walk around loose and free.

6) But not taking those meds means the voices come back. And the voices always say "You suck. Kill yourself." or "Everyone's trying to kill you. Kill them first!" So they do drugs, alcohol, and/or both. Why?

a) Actual quote from extremely insightful 17-year-old schizophrenic addict: "I take dope and get drunk, because it gets the voices drunk too, and then I can't understand what they're saying!" F**king brilliant, right there.

b) And they get to feel the euphoria of drunkenness and/or "high", which is way better than what sanity and responsibility feels like.

7) When I started in the medical biz decades and decades ago, we got a drunk a week, maybe an OD a month or two, and pot cases never. Now we get 5-15 of all of the above per night, or worse. Don't get me started about banning Narcan when a new batch of anything loaded with homebrew carfentanil (which dealers put in literally everything) hits the streets. The only good thing about it is when it occasionally takes a few regulars out of circulation permanently. But the 20 addicts who hear about that, and want to get the new "hot" batch, more than takes up the slack.

8) At current course and speed, it's only a matter of time before we start seeing open Commitees Of Vigilance, or else onesy-twosey incidents of The Three esSes (Shoot-Shovel-Shut Up) to become commonplace among the homeless/mentally ill/alcoholic/druggie/convicts on the loose. And we're talking when, not if. After a month or two, they'll start skipping the "shovel" part too. Mark my words.

9) TPTB will talk a good game, but the push to track down the culprits will be about as enthusiastic as going after the johns serviced by Epstein and Maxwell on Lolita Island. They'll toss the wretches into paupers' graves, throw the cold case files into some file cabinet in some endless warehouse next to the Ark of the Covenant, and that will be that. It's how California, and a good bit of the rest of the country, cleaned house 100+ years ago. Some ideas never go out of style.

10) The alternative will be a "Three Strikes And Yer Out!" rule for getting placed on a psych hold.

After the third time you're caught running naked down the freeway and throwing rocks off the overpass because you're off your meds, you will be deposited on Shutter Island, and never allowed to return. You can run around naked, chase butterflies, jump off cliffs, eat dirt, pound your head with a rock, whatever. But your civilization privileges will be permanently revoked.

Nothing less than #9 or #10 will avail, and no one's willing to pay for reinstating Bedlam in 50 states, and warehousing the insane for life at public expense. It won't matter what's right, or good, only what works, at that point. And half the population trying to ensure that nothing works is only hastening those two unpalatable conclusions. By design and malign intent.

If we could mandate that the first two times, the insaniacs were set at liberty, it had to be as the permanent houseguest of anyone in favor of the current scheme, starting with do-gooders, judges, and lawyers, it would go a long way toward solving things short of more draconian measures. But that will never happen.

Homeless people turning up all inexplicably dead all over the place? That could happen as early as tomorrow, and I'm frankly surprised it hasn't already started. What a Brave New World mental health do-gooderism has inflicted on us all.

I'm not saying I approve of what's coming. But what cannot continue, will not. Molly-coddling the criminally insane is about to become a luxury the people will not tolerate in perpetuity, and Nature abhors a vacuum, particularly one the state created, and now refuses to backfill.

100 Days, And A Mouthful Of Ashes

 

And loving metrics in a hazy conflict, the media and Putin fanboys are all agog with the news that Russian control now encompasses 20% of Ukraine territory. (They forget that most of that 20% was Crimea and the Soviet puppet "breakaways" in the east they already held before the war began on 2/24 this year, but we'll spot them the difference anyways, just to be sporting.)

So, at that rate, this war will last another 400 days beyond the first 100.

That's also overlooking Russian losses and retreats, but acknowledging the obvious facts there upsets the fanboys to the point of flinging feces from their monkey cages, so we'll spot them that too.

Meanwhile, Russian losses amount to about 10,000 troops/month, by reliable accounts. To take the territory they were certain was already ON their side. More each month than we lost in Iraq and A-stan combined, in 20 years of trying. Three times more men than we lost in all of Vietnam in a decade. And out of missiles, running out of artillery shells, and burning through hard military assets Vlad couldn't replace in another ten years of trying, with a Navy and Air Force largely MIA for weeks, in a land war against an opponent with pretty much neither one. 

So in 12 more months, Russia will perhaps achieve a Pyrrhic (Mariupolic) "victory" over the whole of Ukraine, at a cost of nearly the entire initial invasion force, 150,000 men out of an initial estimate of 180,000, against an army it outnumbered on paper 10:1, but which it only attacked initially at 0.8:1, with a Russian Potemkin army composed of incompetent and unwilling conscripts led by drunken officers and fueled by gun-decked capability and maintenance reports, running now on mothballed tech left over from the 1960s, because it's all they have left to throw at the problem.

Yeah, that's going to do so much better against a Ukrainian ad hoc army that gets better equipment and more experience by the day, over the next 400 days, i'n'it?

Go, Vlad. Bleed yourself dry, only to achieve the capture of scorched earth, at a cost of a quarter of your entire national army, including probably 50-75% of all available actual combat forces, most of your war-making equipment, and beginning the next ten years of a partisan guerrilla insurgency in Ukraine that will make the last Russian foray to A-stan, or the British rule in Northen Ireland, seem like church picnics in comparison, while Russia is forced to genocide most of the surviving populace within Ukraine, and the 7M expats live on, with a seething hatred of Vlad and all things Russian that will outlive his own great-grandchildren.

While uniting NATO like it hasn't been in 50 years, increasing it in size and scope, and putting the entirety of it right back on Russia's borders from the Black Sea to the Arctic Ocean, exactly as Vlad didn't want.

Sanctions work both ways, but Russia spends the next century or two as the Iran of Europe. They couldn't feed themselves once from 1900-2022, but now that they're burning Ukraine to the ground, they're looking at not being able to feed themselves next year, or the five years after that, until the famines have done their job, and their entire population decreases appreciably. Along with that in the West, and the rest of the world. Famine hits the Turd World even harder, because when food gets scarce, the poorest are the ones who do without, not the well-off.

But watching millions starve and threatening global thermonuclear war is a small price to pay for being a worldwide pariah state, right?

Well-played, Vlad. Well-played indeed. Keep banging your head against that wall.

But Srsly

 h/t Daily Timewaster

And I suppose they recruit pilots from the deserts of
BFE who used to bullseye womp rats in their T-16s, right?

CW posted this (he was kidding) as the "artists conception of the SR-81".

But srsly:

Look, we retired the SR-71s in 1999.

Some anonymous soopergenius opined that "satellites replaced the SR-71" and "high flyers aren't coming back".

Bitch, please.

Catch up on anything-but-current-events, from 30 years ago in fact:

(REALITY) The mysterious rumble and bounce has occurred five times since last June, always about 7 a.m. on Thursdays. These were no earthquakes, but a passing aircraft, Caltech seismologists say.

"All I can say is that it's something that's traveling through the atmosphere at several times the speed of sound in a generally northeasterly direction," said Jim Mori, a seismologist with the United States Geological Survey at Caltech.

Analysts from Jane's Defense Weekly, the widely respected London-based military periodical, say that the Thursday morning phenomenon could be a top secret new spy plane, dubbed the Aurora, that can fly up to six times the speed of sound, or about 4000 MPH.

The Air Force denies that any such plane exists.

Jim Mori, Ph.D., anything but dumb, is a SME on earthquakes and seismology. And California is paved with GPS-precise-to-millimeters seismographs wall-to-wall, which made collecting the data easy and meticulously precise. So when a string of "earthquakes" hit SoCal in 1991-1992, always before 7am, always on a Thursday, he plotted the rumbles on the SoCal seismograph network, and did some napkin math.

The minute-by-minute timelines formed an arrow-straight chevron moving at about 70 miles a minute south to north from the Pacific Ocean towards Area 51, and Tonopah AFB beyond that, and based on speed-over-ground, they were moving at 4000+ MPH. Mach 6.

Pre-7am, because this was a project in progress, and on Thursday, unlike Fridays, traffic was lighter, so less people up and about. Project engineers and such tend to be M-F guys. And earthquakes don't punch time clocks.

Ergo, something moving in the air, not in the ground, at Mach 6, and coming in for a landing at one of the two most secured and remote AFBs we have.

Since then, other evidence has piled up:

Black delta-wing unidentified aircraft, frequently seen in high-altitude formation with USAF birds like KC-17s and F-15s, etc., over the USA and Europe. Frequently with contrails suggestive of a pulse-jet, and making an unfamiliar and distinctive sound.

I remind all and sundry that it was years between the SR-71s first operational flights for recon after the U-2s vulnerability was exposed to the world in 1960, and the time the USAF actually admitted to owning and flying the -71.

To date, AFAIK, they've still never copped to the existence of the Aurora, let alone revealed nomenclature, official photos, performance specs, or anything like, in 30 years.

But you think they gave up a world-beating recon and intel asset like the SR-71 (it was still setting speed records the day they retired it), in exchange for nothing? Or satellites? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Sure they did. NOT.

Now, see if you can figure out why China and Russia have spent the last 30 years busting their scientific asses to develop hypersonic missile tech, at a huge cost in effort and treasure.

Hint: It ain't to shoot down recon satellites, kids.

(Sidenote: If the Air Farce had someone really bright somewhere, their most top secret:codeword-level unit would be a couple of science fantasists, and a small crew of welders and carpenters, and their sole job 24/7/365 would be to create whimsical plywood and sheet metal fake aircraft, especially designs that failed spectacularly, and plant them at a few testing airbases, and leave them out for satellite recon and GoogleEarth to find. I'd also have them take a couple of cutting edge planes and paint false black silhouettes on the undersides, and change the shape using light blue over wingtips and such, maybe a couple of smoke generators on underwing mounts to fake additional engines, just to give amateur airplaneologists something misleading to photograph. For that matter, they'd create fake ICBM silos scattered on military bombing ranges, and leave a few SSBNs fake hulls moored at several Navy docksides too, with full guards and foot traffic. Just saying.)

On a tip from a reader - Morons will be morons: The Great Canadian Dronemaster Windbag gets it wrong again. Space starts at the Kármán Line, where the atmosphere ceases to exist, which is 100km (330,000') up, some 230,000' feet higher than reconnaissance aircraft reportedly fly, i.e. nearly 2½ times higher than anything with wings goes since the X-15 stopped going there. This boundary was established in the 1960s, and recon planes don't fly there, because by definition, no one flies where there's no atmosphere within which aircraft (which cleverly has "air" in the description) control surfaces would work. People who fly to space get astronaut wings. People who fly recon flights have ordinary pilots' wings. And they carry their balls in their helmet bags, because they need something that big to hold them. Stick with being massively ignorant about drones, Gasbag. Being ignorant about everything you touch only takes you from sad to utterly pathetic. But thanks for playing, and enjoy the extra looks.