October 25, 2017 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"How To Work With Chainsaws"--Wranglerstar (14 min.)

Firearms/Self-Defense/Prepping:

• "Haste, Chase and Rush: AR Lasers from Bushnell"--The Firearms Blog. I have to agree with one of the commentators that laser sights have minimal use for a rifle unless you are going infrared. However, the Haste laser sight is interesting because it is incorporated into a slant foregrip, which is usable with a pistol.
• It looks like they are going with hollow-points: "M17 MHS Food – US Army’s XM1153 Special Purpose 9mm Round Unveiled by Winchester at [AUSA 2017]"--The Firearms Blog. Nathaniel F. comments:

Winchester representatives at the booth confirmed that the ammunition was indeed XM1153 Special Purpose, and that it was based on the T-Series [i.e., the Ranger ammunition], but re-engineered for the US Army’s specifications. This makes me wonder if the new Special Purpose ammnition is more similar to the older Black Talon round, which uses the same basic design as the T-Series but which is engineered to expand slightly less while giving greater penetration. Or, possibly, the Army had other requirements and this is not the case; I am just speculating.

• "Our Resistance Library: Arming You Physically + Philosophically"--Ammo.com. The folks at Ammo.com have put together a collection of articles on everything from explaining the Second Amendment and the history of various patriot flags, to emergency preparedness and explaining different types of shot (for shotguns) and bullets. I'm still looking through it all, but, so far, disaster preparation articles appear to be pretty comprehensive. Check it out. I'll be adding this to my list of Useful Links as well.
• "'We Have Two Americas:'The Gun Debate According to Michael Owens"--American Digest (H/t Woodpile Report). Owens writes: "... we don’t really have a single America with a moderately high rate of gun deaths. Instead, we have two Americas, one of which has very high rates of gun ownership but very low murder rates, very comparable to the rest of the First World democracies such as those in western & northern Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, South Korea. The other America has much lower rates of gun ownership but much, much higher murder rates, akin to violent third world countries."
• "50 simulations of the ‘Really Big One’ show how a 9.0 Cascadia earthquake could play out"--University of Washington. From the news release: 

        Off the Oregon and Washington coast, the Juan de Fuca oceanic plate is slowly moving under the North American plate. Geological clues show that it last jolted and unleashed a major earthquake in 1700, and that it does so roughly once every 500 years. It could happen any day.

         Wirth’s project ran simulations using different combinations for three key factors: the epicenter of the earthquake; how far inland the earthquake will rupture; and which sections of the fault will generate the strongest shaking.

         Results show that the intensity of shaking can be less for Seattle if the epicenter is fairly close to beneath the city. From that starting point, seismic waves will radiate away from Seattle, sending the biggest shakes in the direction of travel of the rupture.

         “Surprisingly, Seattle experiences less severe shaking if the epicenter is located just beneath the tip of northwest Washington,” Wirth said. “The reason is because the rupture is propagating away from Seattle, so it’s most affecting sites offshore. But when the epicenter is located pretty far offshore, the rupture travels inland and all of that strong ground shaking piles up on its way to Seattle, to make the shaking in Seattle much stronger.”

* * *

        Overall, the results confirm that coastal areas would be hardest hit, and locations in sediment-filled basins like downtown Seattle would shake more than hard, rocky mountaintops. But within that general framework, the picture can vary a lot; depending on the scenario, the intensity of shaking can vary by a factor of 10. But none of the pictures is rosy.

Read the whole thing.

Other Stuff:

• "Warhammer News. Trump signs executive order allowing recall of retired pilots...war prep going into last stage..."--SNAFU. Solomon warns: "... don't be fooled.  This isn't about Afghanistan its about N. Korea.  This is the final stage of the military prep for the war.  They want these guys back in case things go south."
• More developments related to the Las Vegas shooting:

• "Laptop found in Las Vegas shooter's hotel room was missing its hard drive and investigators have not been able to locate the crucial piece of evidence"--Daily Mail. 

• "Paddock brother arrested"--Vox Popoli. He is citing an article from The Independent reporting that Paddock's brother has been arrested for possession of material related to child sex abuse.

• Yet another timeline of the shooting: "New timeline for Las Vegas massacre shows security guard Jesus Campos was shot a minute AFTER gunman began firing on crowd, contradicting previous police reports"--Daily Mail. 

• Hmmm. "FBI: Newtown Police Knew Adam Lanza Planned to Shoot and Kill Mother and Students"--The Truth About Guns. Lots of people knew that Lanza wanted to commit a mass murder, but no one did anything.
• "Russia to test its Satan 2 ballistic missile that could 'beat any defences' and obliterate 'an area the size of France'"--Daily Mail. Also known as the RS-28 Sarmat, the missile is capable of delivering 40 megaton warheads, although the article does not indicate whether this would be a single warhead, or multiples of such warheads.  
• I've been seeing a lot of articles like this recently: "Former NPR CEO opens up about liberal media bias"--New York Post. To sum up the article, Ken Stern went on a "safari" into middle-America and found that Republicans/conservatives were not stupid and ignorant, and had valid complaints of media bias. Although Stern didn't do this in this particular article, though, others making similar "safaris" especially make a point of trying to understand the working class white voters that supported Trump, as though that was Trump's base. But even that is a mischaracterization. The reality--one which Democrats can't admit--is that most white voters of both sexes and almost all ages and education levels backed Trump. Moreover, according The Guardian, "Of the one in three Americans who earn less than $50,000 a year, a majority voted for Clinton. A majority of those who earn more backed Trump." As far as education goes, The Guardian stated: "54% of male college graduates voted for Trump, as did 45% of female college graduates."  The Washington Post has also reported that most Trump voters were not working class. The latter article noted:

         Moreover, according to what is arguably the next-best measure of class, household income, Trump supporters didn’t look overwhelmingly “working class” during the primaries. To the contrary, many polls showed that Trump supporters were mostly affluent Republicans. For example, a March 2016 NBC survey that we analyzed showed that only a third of Trump supporters had household incomes at or below the national median of about $50,000. Another third made $50,000 to $100,000, and another third made $100,000 or more and that was true even when we limited the analysis to only non-Hispanic whites. If being working class means being in the bottom half of the income distribution, the vast majority of Trump supporters during the primaries were not working class.

         But what about education? Many pundits noticed early on that Trump’s supporters were mostly people without college degrees. There were two problems with this line of reasoning, however. First, not having a college degree isn’t a guarantee that someone belongs in the working class (think Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg). And, second, although more than 70 percent of Trump supporters didn’t have college degrees, when we looked at the NBC polling data, we noticed something the pundits left out: during the primaries, about 70 percent of all Republicans didn’t have college degrees, close to the national average (71 percent according to the 2013 Census). Far from being a magnet for the less educated, Trump seemed to have about as many people without college degrees in his camp as we would expect any successful Republican candidate to have.

In short, Trump won because of overwhelming support from white, middle-class men: businessmen, tradesmen, and professionals. 

• You may have seen articles discussing Sen. Jeff Flake's announcement that he won't run for re-election. In his address to the Senate, he pandered to the never-Trumpers and the Democrats. However, as The Atlantic makes clear, Flake's problem is that he had become a dedicated globalist. From the article: 

Flake’s decision not to run for reelection was, in fact, largely an acknowledgment of reality: He was unlikely to defeat a primary challenge ahead of the 2018 Senate election. He said that he doubted he could win while remaining committed to core beliefs like support for free markets and immigration.

Stephen Kruiser's explanation is more succinct: "Flake was a strong conservative when he was in the House. When he got to the Senate, he decided to be John McCain's 'Mini-Me' and has borne little, if any, resemblance to his former self."

• "Census Bureau: 44.6% in California Don’t Speak English at Home; 35.6% in Texas; 34.5% in NM; 31.7% in NJ; 31.0% in NY"--CNS News. 
• "A Wayback Machine for Early 20th Century Tunes"--Atlas Obscura. The Internet Archive has been collecting copies of old 78-rpm records and cylinder recordings to preserve the contents. The archives can be found here.