A Quick Run Around the Web -- February 25, 2016

From "Rusting rollercoasters, abandoned arcades and a deserted Big Dipper: Eerie drone footage captures former Six Flags Ohio theme park"--The Daily Mail.

Firearms/Shooting:

• "FIME Group To be Exclusive Importer of Molot"--The Firearms Blog. VEPR shotguns and rifles may be coming back to the U.S.
• "Cartridges of the XXI century"--Hunting & Weapons (what I believe is a Ukrainian magazine or blog). A look at the ammunition trends (both commercial and military) over the last two decades. He discusses three general trends: (1) in the military realm, the adoption of calibers for sniper rifles somewhere between the standard .30 caliber round and the heavy machine gun round; (2) introduction of various short magnum rounds from commercial manufacturers; and (3) in both military and commercial fields, an interest in oversized bullet calibers using the standard infantry rifle casings. 
• "What to carry and where – Part 1"--Snub Training. A discussion of different locations/ methods on your body (the "where") to carry, based on different seasons and types of clothing. The author likes to carry two snubbies. 
• "Concealed Carry: Glock 19 vs. Glock 26"--Modern Service Weapons. "I am a fan of Glock 9mms almost in any configuration, but if I could have only one, it would be the 19. It is truly the do-everything pistol." 
• "Highcom 4SAS7: A Seriously Tough Ceramic Plate At A Great Price"--Loose Rounds. "[I]n the 10″ x 12″ shooter’s cut, single curve style that is so popular, the price is $159."
• "Neurological Training for Shooting Performance (Pt. 3)"--The Loadout Room. Testing and training to get the best "gaze stabilization."
• "Four .380 CCW guns compared"--Ballistics by the Inch.  Testing the Remington RM380, Rohrbaugh R380, Glock 42, and Sig Sauer P238.
• "Guns & Ammo Editor Nearly Shoots Himself Proving That Serpa Holsters Suck"--Bearing Arms. Ironically, the video was being shot to show that the holsters were safe.

Other Stuff:

• Sheep dogs and sheep: "Police conspired to protect Rotherham child sex abusers"--The Times. According to the article, certain police officers were even actively involved in the rape and abuse. 
• "No, that's not it"--Vox Popoli. Vox Day explains what the GOP can't seem to comprehend about voter anger:

 ... Americans are struggling economically, in part due to the economic policies that have caused their real wages to peak in 1973. But that merely exacerbates the anger that they feel at their country being subject to the largest invasion in human history, an invasion of 60 million that is nearly 16 times larger than Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union.

They want their country back. They want to see America be great again, not prostrate before the boots and burqahs of foreign invaders.

That is why they are angry.

This election is about globalism versus nationalism, and the globalists are currently in control.

• "I was no-platformed by student 'radicals' for telling the truth about welfare"--The Telegraph. For what was the boffin censored? 

The central argument in my book is that the welfare state is eroding the economic and social prospects of the nation by increasing the proportion of individuals in the population who possess the employment-resistant personality profile. As the book explains, this proliferation of employment-resistant personality characteristics occurs due to the damaging effect on personality development of exposure to childhood disadvantage. Hence a welfare state which sets up perverse incentives that increase the number of children who are born into disadvantaged households (as happened in the UK circa 1999) will increase the number of individuals in the population who suffer personality mis-development due to exposure to disadvantage during childhood.

• Some news from South Africa:

• "The 'WHITE squatter camps' of South Africa: Shanty towns built after the fall of Apartheid are now home to hundreds of families"--Daily Mail. Notwithstanding the text, it appears from the body of the article that it is not whites, per se, but Afrikaners in particular, that have been hardest hit. 

While most white South Africans still land the plumb jobs and enjoy relative wealth, the number of poor whites has steadily increased in the past two decades.

Seeking to undo years of racial inequality - when whites were almost guaranteed employment and housing under apartheid - the ruling African National Congress (ANC) government introduced laws that promoted employment for blacks and aimed to give them a greater share of the economy.

This change, along with the global financial meltdown, has meant many white South Africans have fallen on hard times and are forced to live in slums. 

• "How government is destroying wealth creation in South Africa"--Business Tech. The usual suspects: "Government interference, a high risk labour market and social unrest are all contributing factors are leading South Africa’s failure to effectively create wealth for its citizens."

• "Report: Fighting the Great South African Drought"--Daily Maverick. "South Africa needs 11.25 tons of mielies a year to feed its citizens. This year’s official crop estimates are at 7.438 million tons, according to the national crop estimate committee. The confirmed 2015 mielies crop was 9.9 million tons."

• "Deep Maneuver (Autonomous Robotic Weapons)"--Global Guerrillas. Certain computer viruses can takes weeks or even months in order to move around and through the internet to gain access to a particular target (e.g., Stuxnet). The author suggests that with advances in robotics, a similar strategy could be used with robots: quietly infiltrating the physical territory of an enemy in order to strike at target(s).
• "Ten Counterintuitive Pieces of Advice About Marriage"--Observer. Most of these are pertinent to a person already married, a couple are more relevant to a person thinking about getting married. 
• "Cluelessness Regarding What’s At Stake In The Apple Versus FBI Fight"--The Captain's Journal. "Apple was unlocking phones years ago, when security feature such as system-wide encryption hadn’t been implemented. It was a different kind of 'unlocking.' This isn’t a fight over keys to a single device. This is a fight over encryption, which the government doesn’t want any of us to have, because the government is run by political science and history majors."
• "The disingenuous question (FBIvApple)"--Errata Security. The author argues that instead of arguing over the exigencies of the moment, we look at the bigger picture:

Rather than a "Going Dark" problem, ours is one of "Going Light". We all now carry a GPS tracking device in our pocket that contains a microphone and video camera. We are quickly putting a microphone (and sometimes camera) in every room in our house, with devices like smart TVs and Amazon's Echo. License plate readers line the roads, and face recognition (as well as video cameras) are located everywhere crowds gather. All our credit card transactions are slurped up by the government, as are our phone metadata (even more so since the so-called USA FREEDOM ACT).

The question is whether the "warrant upon probable cause" is sufficient protection for the Going Light problem? Or do we need more limits?

• "So much for Cecil"--Bayou Renaissance Man. I've noted before that liberals don't worry about the consequences of their policies so long as they can feel good about themselves. And this story is a textbook example: After the uproar of the killing of the lion "Cecil" in Zimbabwe, big game hunters stopped going there to hunt big game. Of course, as any person with even a limited knowledge of hunting and wildlife management knows, hunters fund most wildlife preservation programs. And so it was in Zimbabwe. Because of a lack of funds due to the decline in hunts, the wildlife park in which Cecil had resided is now planning on culling 200 lions. The hunter that killed Cecil killed but one lion; the people that persecuted him have killed hundreds.
• "Japan Admits 27 Refugees, Two Already Arrested For Gang Rape"--Anonymous Conservative. As the author explains:

Migrants will tend to be r-strategists, in search of high dopamine at low cost. If a person can kiss goodbye to their family and their homeland easily, as these male migrants without families apparently can (or if they can’t even get along with their family, as in this case), they will tend to have low loyalty and high selfishness. If they travel to the other side of the globe in search of free resources, that is driven by a dopamine addiction. Since dopamine requires money, food, and sex, to be released, you are admitting selfish people, with no loyalty, who have such a strong need for the neurochemical rewards produced by money, food, and sex that they traveled across the globe, abandoning every familial tie at home to do it.

It is not surprising when they go that extra mile and simply take money and sex from vulnerable individuals by force....

• Also from Japan: "Signs of Apocalypse – Yakuza Splinters"--Anonymous Conservative. I wonder what this will do to Japan's vaunted low crime rates? The author comments:

Resource restriction eliminates the amygdala soothing effects of dopamine. If the Yakuza today were enjoying a period of resource glut, with money flowing everywhere, nobody would have gotten irritated enough to precipitate a split. Instead, resources were growing scant, tempers were getting irritated, and all of a sudden, all you were waiting on was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It is analogous to what we will see the in the US over the next few years as our economy grinds along.

The real economic collapse is still years, if not decades away, however. When that hits, splintering will occur everywhere – along nationalistic lines, religious lines, racial lines, ethnic lines, and even geographic lines at the neighborhood level.

Factor it into your planning.