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Sunday, January 20, 2019

January 20, 2019 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"Earth Catastrophe Cycle | The Wind Attacks"--Suspicious Observers (7 min.)

  • First up, the latest Weekend Knowledge Dump from Active Response Training. Self-defense and prepping articles this week, including a couple on tactical/weapon lights, self-defense against a dog, an article about a group of pharmaceutical hackers (Four Thieves Vinegar), and a good article on what makes a holster good, bad or ugly. I liked this comment from the latter article: "Truth is, if it doesn't work for other people who tested it under harder circumstances than you have, it doesn't work for you. You just don't know that yet."
  • "TIMING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN SPEED!!"--Gabe Suarez. He notes that he learned about the concept of time from taking Karate, not shooting. Key point: "So forget all the speed silliness the sportsmen are so fond of. It is not about that. It is about your understanding of the flow and cycle of the dynamics of the fight, and your ability to exploit them and interject yourself at the right point in time." Read the whole thing.
  • "The AR-15 Forward Assist For Total Beginners"--The Truth About Guns. The primary issue with the forward assist is knowing when to use it ... and if you don't know that, you should probably never use it. If a cartridge is not going into battery, jamming it into the chamber even harder will probably only make things worse. One of the comments suggested using the forward assist to quietly chamber a round, and is probably one of the few legitimate times to do so. The only time I found the forward assist useful was when shooting some cheap steel cased ammo, and for some reason, it was barely cycling the action, and without enough power to fully pick up a new cartridge and feed it into the chamber. (I haven't that issue with any other ammunition, and, in fact, I've had the opposite, where the action was cycling too fast until I put in a heavier buffer). I suppose that there may be times that your BCG may have enough carbon fouling that it will be sluggish on feeding, and warrant the use of the forward assist.
  • "How NOT to Bring New Shooters into the Fold: Learning to shoot should never have a foundation of being a joke"--Shooting Range Blog. We've probably seen videos or heard stories of someone having a new shooter (often a girlfriend or wife) fire the most powerful gun in their collection, intermixing a .357 when shooting a .38 Special, or telling them that the recoil is less if they hold the stock away from their shoulder--all "jokes" that rely on simply being cruel to someone that doesn't know better. Scott Wagner discusses how these "jokes" aren't funny and do nothing to foster support for our right to possess and use weapons.
  • "About Sore Testicles and Pain from Cycling"--Sky Above Us. The author discusses what can cause testicular pain or numbness when cycling, and suggests some things to try to reduce or eliminate the problem:
(1)  Stand out of the saddle and pedal regularly to allow blood flow to resume to the testes and genitalia. 

(2)  Choose a pair of padded bicycle shorts which will provide protection to your undercarriage while cycling. 

(3)  If you have had problems with your testicles from cycling you could consider one of the specialist cycling saddles from companies featured right that remove the nose section of the saddle and remove the testes from the seating area of a cyclist. 

(4)  Set up your saddle height correctly to alleviate any excess pressure on your testes.
  • Something I've written about before: "Gun Owners Defy New Gun Control Laws in the US and Abroad"--The Truth About Guns. As the author relates, most state laws banning firearms or magazines are doing well if they can garner a 4% compliance rate, although Connecticut is believed to have achieved a 15% compliance rate with its requirement that "assault weapon" owners register their weapons. The author notes that Australia is estimated to have only achieved a 20% compliance rate with their confiscation/buy back program, and Canada' long gun registration program was such a failure that the Canadian government eventually scrapped it.
             About 9.45am on Sunday 31 December 2017, detectives from Darling River Local Area Command attended the property for the purposes of a firearms audit and spoke with a resident.
             During a subsequent search of the property, officers located and seized 118 firearms, including revolvers, rifles, shotguns and shortened rifles.
               It is alleged 109 of those firearms were unregistered and not stored safely.
        • Speaking of defiance, Franklin Armory has teased a new carbine that shoots for each pull of the trigger, but is not semi-automatic (see here and here). The second article has a video showing the weapon being shot, and it appears that when you pull the trigger, it simultaneously pulls the bolt back, which then releases and fires a round. What I can't tell is if it uses a fixed firing pin, similar to an open bolt design, that simply fires when the bolt closes, or if the bolt closes and then a hammer drops. I suspect the latter because the bolt likely needs to lock in the closed position before firing.
        • "Guerrilla Gardener: Some Thoughts and Observations on Vegetable Food Production (Or, Gardening for Knuckle-Draggers)"--Mountain Guerrilla. The author describes what he and his wife did to make a productive garden, but also notes that what worked for him may not work for you. The primary point he makes is that even considering the time and effort, he was able to save a significant amount of money by raising vegetables in a garden.
        • "Real World Secrets of Stalking and Tracking Wild Animals"--Survival Sherpa. A review of Mark Warren's Secrets of the Forest Volume 3: Eye to Eye with the Animals in the Wild and At Play in the Wild on tracking and stalking animals.
        • "Surviving a Gunfight: Tips for Preparation & Problem-Solving"--Shooting Illustrated. Sheriff Jim Wilson points out that:
        A gunfight is going to be what it’s going to be. It will probably come as a complete surprise. The attack will most likely come much faster than a person expects. And it will undoubtedly involve elements that the person has not thought about. In short, it creates a life-threatening problem that the armed citizen has to solve and solve quickly.
        Also: "Our society does not allow the honest citizen to initiate the action. If we are to survive, we have to respond to the threat and overcome it. It’s like running a foot race with a guy who has been given a 10-yard lead."
          Here are eight stubborn facts to keep in mind about gun violence in America:
          1. Violent crime is down and has been on the decline for decades.
          2. The principal public safety concerns with respect to guns are suicides and illegally owned handguns, not mass shootings.
          3. A small number of factors significantly increase the likelihood that a person will be a victim of a gun-related homicide.
          4. Gun-related murders are carried out by a predictable pool of people.
          5. Higher rates of gun ownership are not associated with higher rates of violent crime.
          6. There is no clear relationship between strict gun control legislation and homicide or violent crime rates.
          7. Legally owned firearms are used for lawful purposes much more often than they are used to commit crimes or suicide.
          8. Concealed carry permit holders are not the problem, but they may be part of the solution.

          "Face of Pre-Crime: China's Shockingly Accurate A.I."--Black Pigeon Speaks (7 min.)
          Chinese researchers are using physiognomy to tell criminals from non-criminals.
          It is no doubt true that the United Kingdom and the United States are democracies, with the people allowed some say. But to be more precise, they are curated democracies, with members of an unelected elite policing the boundaries of acceptable opinion and excluding heretics. Members of this elite are, by their own estimation, guardians of truth and good sense. They know what is best.
          • "European Defense"--Hoover Institute. Angelo M. Codevilla writes about the myth of NATO and Europeans providing for their own defense, but that NATO and Europe have used the relationship to constrain the United States rather than to advance the purposes of the alliance. He also notes that the alliance is increasingly irrelevant:
                    The underlying reality is that the Europe with which America has dealt is waning demographically, ceasing to exist culturally, and is dead politically, never to return. Today, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc. are disappearing biologically: In Germany, for example, 42% of all births in 2017 were to migrants from the Middle East or Africa. That percentage is already set to rise. Natives’ birth rates are far below replacement levels (Italy’s is 1.34 births per woman), together with the migration of young Middle Eastern/African people, well-nigh guarantees the end of Europe’s biological character, fast. Its cultural character is changing even faster. We can only guess the extent to which Europe may be able to maintain a European identity in the face of migration.
                    Current European elites’ inability to control their countries’ invasion by people from the Middle East and Africa, the migrants’ offenses against public safety, and the strictures imposed on native populations on the migrants’ behalf, are not least of the reasons why political Europe as we used to know it has ceased to exist. Other reasons, including the elites’ contempt for ordinary people’s way of life and manifold incompetence, are legion. Hence, the traditional parties are discredited, and the ruling classes are under siege by disaffected populations, especially the young. Without constituencies outside the establishment, they fear elections. Their very capacity to marshal people for any common purpose whatever is already gone. Their disappearance is only a matter of time.
              These comments were picked up by Media Matters and The Daily Beast, and I have since received a number of messages and emails from angry people — readers of those sites, I assume — who are upset and demand that I apologize. The bit about having learned nothing from Me Too seems to be the biggest sticking point. And it is for all of my comments on this issue, but that one comment in particular, that, after careful reflection, I have decided to officially and formally not apologize. I'm not sorry at all, even slightly.
              "A University of Georgia (UGA) teaching assistant [Irami Osei-Frimpong] wrote Wednesday on Facebook that “some white people may have to die for black communities to be made whole in this struggle to advance to freedom." He added that to suggest otherwise is “ahistorical and dangerously naive.” 
                      The deaths began in 1997 and all bear striking similarities but have never been looked at as related in the past. 
                        Most of the men were young, athletic and academically high achievers. 
                          According to retired NYPD Detective Kevin Gannon and his team of investigators, they have evidence that 100 of the men may have been murdered by a gang. 
                            A key piece of evidence is that the team found smiley face graffiti symbols at all of the sites where the bodies were recovered. 
                               From about 1400 to 1532, the Quijos Valley marked the eastern frontier of the Incan Empire. Although they were subjects of the empire, the people of the Quijos Valley maintained a distinct cultural identity from the Incas, and historical and archaeological records show that the valley was a conduit for trade between Incan territory and the peoples of the Amazon Basin.
                                The first Europeans to set foot in the Quijos Valley were Spanish expeditions in 1538 and 1541, who arrived in search of gold and cinnamon. They estimated that about 35,000 indigenous people lived in the region. By 1577, about 11,400 people had clustered around the Spanish town of Baeza, which the colonizers built in 1559 alongside the indigenous community of Hatunquijos. But by 1600, three out of four of these people were dead.
                                 Many died of European diseases, which ravaged unexposed New World populations. Others perished under the Spanish encomienda system of forced labor, and many more died fighting in a series of uprisings against the Europeans between 1560 and 1578. Just three small huts remained in Baeza by the mid-1800s.
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                            Weekend Reading -- A New Weekend Knowledge Dump

                            Greg Ellifritz has posted a new Weekend Knowledge Dump at his Active Response Training blog . Before I discuss some of his links, I want to ...