June 12, 2019 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"How Effective is Pistol Ammo at 100 Yards?"--Lucky Gunner (10 min.)

Basic takeaway: heavier bullets designed to expand at lower velocities still do pretty well at 100 yards, but higher velocity bullets seem to have provided better accuracy.

• This weekend's Weekend Knowledge Dump from Active Response Training is up. One of the linked articles which I particularly want to bring to your attention is "SOME PERSPECTIVE ON SHOT COUNT & PLACEMENT, RELOADS, REENGAGEMENT" from Modern Service Weapons, which notes some of the tactical training that is currently taught may not look good to a jury--particularly pauses before reengaging a target. Link at Active Response Training.
• Two thumbs down: "The Magpul Zhukov Folding Stock Review"--The New Rifleman. This is a review of Magpul's folding, adjustable stock for AK variants. The reviewer found that there was too little drop to the comb, requiring you to really press your cheek down hard on the stock, which makes it punishing to shoot the firearm; and the lockup is too fragile.
• "How to Align Your Iron Sights"--NRA Family. Even if you are experienced, read this article. It never hurts to review the basics.
• Grant Cunningham's Hump Day Reading List from earlier this week. He has paired down his list to three articles per week, and this week's selection includes the following: (1) an article on the fact that there is more to self-defense than shooting the gun, and it would behoove you to spend some time and attention to those (the author has a handy list of 25 items to consider); (2) what to do if you find a machine gun in your grandpa's attic (what machine gun?); and (3) evaluating your earthquake risk. 

• Related: Cunningham has a post that asks "Is there value in competitive shooting?" He reluctantly concludes that the value is rather minimal, writing:

      What I’ve come to see, from researching thousands of incidents and talking with other deep thinkers in the field, is that the shooting skill needed to prevail in an armed encounter just isn’t all that high. The shooting part of a defensive shooting just isn’t as complex as everyone thinks it is.

      I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: in the incidents I’ve studied, the vast overwhelming majority of successes involved people with no “advanced” training or extensive competitive shooting experience. 

     When a negative outcome does occur, it’s rarely because of shooting ability or tactical expertise; it’s usually the result of poor judgement before or after the trigger is pulled. There is no competitive shooting venue, and darned few training venues, which can teach that kind of judgement. 

I beg to differ. Of course there is a lot more to self-defense than just using the gun. But one of the problems that I hear over and over as to police performance is the lack of training and practice with their handgun. (See also here). Practice in necessary, and competition can be a useful way to augment that practice. It is one of the few ways to practice dealing with stressful situation when shooting. And if you are willing to not chase the top score, and not "game" the scenarios, you can actually practice taking quick looks around a corner or pieing a corner. And, if your carry rig satisfies the requirements of the rules, you can actually test it and see how it works. For those stuck in a square range, a competition might be the only time that you have the freedom to move around while shooting. 

• So in my last "run around the web" post, I linked to a video from Active Self Protection showing how hard it can be to restrain someone. Greg Ellifritz provides some more commentary on the ASP video in his article, “I’ll Just Hold Him for the Police”. First, he confirms from his experience as a police officer and trainer that it can be very difficult to hold someone down who is resisting ... which is why cops have to sometimes dog pile on someone to get them in handcuffs. But, more to the point for the average citizen, he recommends:

      [Y]ou should not be single-handedly trying to restrain a criminal and hold him for police.  His motivation to escape is far greater than your motivation to see him in cuffs.  Wrestling with someone on the ground is a dangerous activity.  You don’t know his skill levels, whether he is armed, or what kind of drugs he’s been taking.  It could go really badly.

      It’s almost always safer for you to let the criminal go, get a good description of him, and let the cops catch him instead.

• "EMP (Extended Magazine Plate) For Glock By Strike Industries"--The Firearm Blog. It will be offered for both 9 mm and .40 S&W double-stack magazines, giving an extra 6 or 5 rounds, respectively. MSRP will be $20.
• A couple from Marcus Wynne:

• "REPOST FROM 2012-ish: Mindset Rambles Pt 6; The Other Guys Assimilating mental training…" Discussing a video embedded at the link:

Matt Graham in this open-source video allows two civilian commentators into a mixed enrollment class near a .gov training facility in VA.  He took over a portion of the job that my friend and mentor Ed Lovette had back in the day.  Matt has a lot of overlap with me (pre-9/11 Federal Air Marshal among other things) and through correspondence, phone calls, and this blog has incorporated a LOT of my material into his presentations — and does an excellent job of it.  Much of the lecture material, and the emphasis on guided and collaborative learning, comes from work I’ve been doing in this area since the 80s.  Good example of a first-rate firearms and tactics instructor incorporating “out of the box” thinking and research and putting it into the service of prepping our finest operators in covert and overt capacities.

• "REPOST FROM 2015: Random Thoughts on The Gunfight That Never Was or 'The Old Man Gotta Be The Old Man'." Interesting account of a friend who was able to use his skills to avoid a gun fight and violent convenience store robbery, with additional commentary by Wynne. He explains the specifics of what his friend did, and then moves to the general lessons to be derived:

     Because of, for lack of a better term, what’s called “soft skills.” The skills that don’t involve hitting or shooting or cutting.

     What kind of soft skills did he use?

     Superior vision processing. He maintains a relaxed visual scan of his environment at all times. Fully utilizes his peripheral vision and knows the limit of his focus/discrimination visual zone and his peripheral vision.

      Superior pattern recognition. Experience and training leads to recognize certain nexuses of behavior; the little pieces add up. He uses his superior vision processing to run faster pattern recognition thorugh the nexus of experience and training (remember the OODA loop?)

      Superior body language acuity:  Experience, training, genetics. Adding up things like posture, body movement marking, skin flushing or blanching from studying with people like Paul Ekman, Joe Navarro, or some oddball Welsh-Filipino in Minneapolis. What comes before what is normally taught as pre-violence indicators.

      Time distortion/cognitive acceleration: How he utilizes his subjective perception of time and physiologically induced changes to his experience of time.

      So how do you cram 40 years of somebody else’s experience into your head?

      Train your soft skills like you train your draw stroke or other motor skills. Break it down into the component parts, train them, reintegrate them. Measure how much more efficient your brain is at processing that kind of data.

      Rinse and repeat.

Read the whole thing.

• Some light reading: "Wilderness Survival: How to make a Pine Knot Torch for emergency light"--Rocky Mountain Bushcraft. Basically, you find branch attached to fatwood-laden pine knot and saw it off at the base, remove the bark from both ends, split the knot end with the fatwood and stuff it with fatwood shavings to assist in starting it and keeping it burning until the pitch starts to come out of the torch and acts as fuel. The article has photographs and more detailed instructions, so be sure to read it if this interests you. Also, because it can drip pitch, it can pose a fire hazard. On the other hand, the author explains:

It will burn so intensely that neither rain nor wind will put it out. In fact, during one of my torch tests, a fast moving storm came through and dumped moderate amounts of rain on the torch for about 10 minutes. Incredibly, it managed to keep burning. NOTE: If you need to put out a pine knot torch, jam it into the dirt or snow until it is completely out. 

• Related: "Wilderness Survival: An easy way to find Fatwood in the Rockies and Beyond...."--Rocky Mountain Bushcraft. 

• "MCRP 3-35.1A -- Small Unit Leader's Guide to Mountain Warfare Operations" (or 16 Mb PDF).
• "Here’s What to Do With Those Bad or Damaged Magazines You’ve Accumulated"--The Truth About Guns. The author recommends keeping your bad magazines, and intermix with your good magazines, to practice failure drills. Some of the people commenting on the article are critical of this because of the danger of mixing the bad magazines in with your carry magazines. But here is the thing: you shouldn't be using your carry magazines (those used in your defensive firearm while it is being carried for defensive purposes) to run drills! The magazines that you use for your defensive pistol, in its defensive role, should not be the ones being dropped on a floor or in the dirt. Use different magazines for drills and keep your EDC magazines separate from those. I'm not saying to never practice with your EDC magazines--you need to at least test them to make sure they work--but to not abuse them.
• "Fed Up NRA Members Withholding Millions in Support"--Ammo Land. From the article:

      What Dell’Aquila offered as evidence of the growing frustration and concern about the organization by members and donors was a list of donations and gifts being withheld or revoked.

      It totaled nearly 148-million dollars in annual gifts, estates, advertising, and other support, but it is a lot of money for an organization that regularly sends out urgent requests for funds. And, as a phone call, while we were talking proved, the list is growing. Between texts, emails, and calls from other members, reporters, and donors, keeping a conversation on track was, at times, impossible.

Dell'Aquila and his group is seeking greater transparency and accountability on how the NRA spends its money.

• Related: "The Shit Storm that is the NRA Today & How We Got Here"--Ammo Land.

• "How to Choose the Right Shooting Sticks"--American Hunter. Probably more useful than a bipod in most cases.
• Some comments on PTSD from Mosby:

      ... Most of the guys I know, who deal with PTSD—myself included—don’t have issues with the fact that they hurt or killed people. It is almost exclusively a result of survivor’s guilt, and/or simple panic about having been in a situation where we felt like we had zero control over the outcome for some time, and the fear of being back in a similar situation. The very few I personally know who have had “I hurt someone” guilt, were almost exclusively a product of middle-class, mainstream church-attending families, who believed the “people are inherently good” myth.

      Those of us that grew up getting the shit kicked out of us, on the playground, and at home—sometimes to the inarguable extent of it being abusive—seldom hold any illusions about the nature of people, and often times actually relish the authorization of lashing out and hurting assholes.

• "Psychopathy and Victim Selection: The Use of Gait as a Cue to Vulnerability"--Journal of Interpersonal Violence 28(11) (Feb. 2013). You can download a PDF of the paper at the link (upper right corner). From the article:

       One specific type of body language that reliably distinguishes victims from nonvictims is gait. In an early study by Grayson and Stein (1981), inmates who had been convicted of sexual assault identified individuals as vulnerable when they displayed certain motions within their walk. These motion cues to vulnerability included long or short strides, nonlateral weight shifts, gestured versus postural movements, and feet lifting. Overall, targets who were judged to be vulnerable to victimization (mugging/assault)exhibited less synchronous movement in their walk (Grayson & Stein, 1981). The relation between perceived vulnerability and gait was further corroborated by findings that targets with less fluid gaits were perceived to be more weak/vulnerable regardless of their sex or age (Montepare & Zebrowitz-McArthur, 1998).

      Other research indicates that gait characteristics are indicative of vulnerability to sexual assault in particular. For example, Murzynski and Degelman (1996) found that women who had less-synchronous walks were perceived to be less confident and more vulnerable to sexual assault. In another study, Gunns and colleagues (2002) had participants view video clips of targets displaying either a vulnerable or nonvulnerable gait after which they rated the target’s vulnerability to rape (and mugging). Overall, gait characteristics accounted for a large proportion of the variance in the perceived vulnerability ratings, with slow walking speed and foot movement uniquely predicting both. In keeping with Gunns et al. (2002), Sakaguchi and Hasegawa (2006) found that women exhibiting slower walking speed as well as shorter strides were judged by men to be more vulnerable to sexual exploitation.

Also:

In the present study, the most commonly listed criteria for selecting victims were the target’s sex, build, and ability to retaliate (i.e., fitness), with gait listed less often. However, inmates scoring higher on Factor 1 of the PCL-R were much more likely to consciously attend to a target’s gait when making their vulnerability judgments. This finding is in contrast to Wheeler et al. (2009) who found that psychopathic traits were unrelated to the tendency to mention gait in judging reasoning. The lack of relationship is likely due to the student participants who had lower psychopathy scores and little experience in victim selection, while the present sample is made up of violent offenders who arguably have loads of experience in victim selection.

• "Marked for Mayhem"--Psychology Today (2009). A lot in the article, but this is the part about body language:

       In a classic study, researchers Betty Grayson and Morris I. Stein asked convicted criminals to view a video of pedestrians walking down a busy New York City sidewalk, unaware they were being taped. The convicts had been to prison for violent offenses such as armed robbery, rape, and murder.

      Within a few seconds, the convicts identified which pedestrians they would have been likely to target. What startled the researchers was that there was a clear consensus among the criminals about whom they would have picked as victims—and their choices were not based on gender, race, or age. Some petite, physically slight women were not selected as potential victims, while some large men were.

      The researchers realized the criminals were assessing the ease with which they could overpower the targets based on several nonverbal signals—posture, body language, pace of walking, length of stride, and awareness of environment. Neither criminals nor victims were consciously aware of these cues. They are what psychologists call "precipitators," personal attributes that increase a person's likelihood of being criminally victimized.

       The researchers analyzed the body language of the people on the tape, and identified several aspects of demeanor that marked potential victims as good targets. One of the main precipitators is a walking style that lacks "interactional synchrony" and "wholeness." Perpetrators notice a person whose walk lacks organized movement and flowing motion. Criminals view such people as less self-confident—perhaps because their walk suggests they are less athletic and fit—and are much more likely to exploit them.

      Just like predators in the wild, armed robbers often attack the slowest in the herd. People who drag their feet, shuffle along, or exhibit other unusual gaits are targeted more often than people who walk fast and fluidly.

     That criminals are attuned to cues of vulnerability makes sense given that most criminals, especially murderers, are looking for people who will be easy to control. Even rape is motivated less by sex and more by the desire for control and power.

      Sexual predators in particular look for people they can easily overpower. "The rapist is going to go after somebody who's not paying attention, who looks like they're not going to put up a fight, who's in a location that's going to make this more convenient," says Tod Burke, a criminologist at Radford University in Virginia.

       "If I had the slightest inkling that a woman wasn't someone I could easily handle, then I would pass right on by. Or if I thought I couldn't control the situation, then I wouldn't even mess with the house, much less attempt a rape there," says Brad Morrison, a convicted sex offender who raped 75 women in 11 states and who's quoted in Predators: Who They Are and How to Stop Them, by Gregory M. Cooper, Michael R. King, and Thomas McHoes.

     "Like, if they had a dog, then forget it. Even a small one makes too much noise. If I saw a pair of construction boots, for example, out on the porch or on the landing, I walked right on by. In fact, I think if women who live alone would put a pair of old construction boots—or something that makes it look like a physically fit manly-type of guy lives with them—out in front of their door, most rapists or even burglars wouldn't even think about trying to get into their home."

     Distraction is another cue criminals look for. Some people think talking on a cell phone enhances their safety because the other person can always summon help if there's trouble—but experts disagree. Talking on a phone or listening to an iPod is a distraction, and armed robbers are casting about for distracted victims. "Not paying attention, looking like a tourist—having the map out, looking confused—absolutely makes people more vulnerable," Burke says.

      Being aware of your surroundings, however, may not help much if you don't know what to pay attention to. James Giannini of Ohio State University discovered something shocking: Women who are the victims of rape tend to be less able than average to interpret nonverbal facial cues—which may render them oblivious to the warning signs of hostile intent and more likely to enter or stay in dangerous situations.

      The same team also found that rapists tend to be more able than average to interpret facial cues, such as a downward gaze or a fearful expression. It's possible this skill makes rapists especially able to spot passive, submissive women. One study even showed that rapists are more empathetic toward women than other criminals—although they have a distinct empathy gap when it comes to their own victims. A highly attuned rapist and a woman who's oblivious to hostile body language make a dangerous combination.

     Even personality plays a role. Conventional wisdom holds that women who dress provocatively draw attention and put themselves at risk of sexual assault. But studies show that it is women with passive, submissive personalities who are most likely to be raped—and that they tend to wear body-concealing clothing, such as high necklines, long pants and sleeves, and multiple layers. Predatory men can accurately identify submissive women just by their style of dress and other aspects of appearance. The hallmarks of submissive body language, such as downward gaze and slumped posture, may even be misinterpreted by rapists as flirtation.

     Drinking and drug use, not surprisingly, also mark a person as a potential victim. "It's a robber's dream to knock a drunk down and take what they've got," says former Ohio detective Stacy Dittrich.

     That goes double for sexual assault. Drunken people not only appear more vulnerable, they're also especially likely to place themselves in dangerous situations. Alcohol decreases people's ability to evaluate the consequences of their actions and distorts their ability to predict how others perceive them. And women who are intoxicated, studies show, tend to be animated, giving off signals sexual offenders may misinterpret as sexual interest.

A fair question: "Why Is Saudi Arabia a US Ally!?"--America Uncovered (13 min.)

• An argument for Caesarism: "The Republic Is Collapsing: The Time to Act Is Now"--by David Solway at PJ Media. The author argues that political speech and even voting is no longer sufficient to ward off the Left:

      I have argued that Trump must bring anti-trust legislation to bear on the major internet platforms and search engines now practicing overt censorship on users they oppose and to redefine them as public utilities. He must go further. His initiative on the census citizenship question is laudable but insufficient. He must use the means at his disposal, as did Lincoln, to confront the domestic enemies of the republic with uncompromising force: to declare Antifa an enemy of the state and arrest its financial backers on grounds either of sedition or treason, to be determined by a military tribunal; to bring Democrat politicians who have betrayed the nation (selling 20% of Uranium One to the Russian firm Rosatom, promoting the Benghazi scandal that cost four Americans their lives, weaponizing official agencies like the IRS and FBI, spying on its political opponents, streaming illegals and Third World immigrants to camber the demographics in their favor, subsidizing Iran with pallets of cash, accepting donations and colluding with foreign nationals) before the courts; and to de-license journalists and their media organizations that are in clear violation of the SPJ Code of Ethics.

      To put it bluntly, the time for “fooling around” is now over. Before the Union begins to materially crumble, as Charles Murray warns in Falling Apart, and before certain states consider the option of secession, the president must act with all the legitimate force that he commands.

• Related: A counter-argument: "An Examination Of The Leftist Cult And Their Religion"--Brandon Smith at Alt-Market. From the article:

     There is a common misconception among newer activists in the liberty movement that the idea of the “false left/right paradigm” means that there is no political spectrum; that the entire notion of left vs right is a fabrication. This is not exactly the case. When we talk about false paradigms in regards to politics (or geopolitics), what we are actually referring to is the elitist class, otherwise known as globalists, and the fact that they have no left or right political orientation. They do not care about Democrats or Republicans, they have no loyalty to either party. Their loyalty is to their own agenda, and they will exploit BOTH sides to get what they want whenever possible.

      Beyond the globalists, average people do indeed fall on a political spectrum that could be broken down and simplified to a set of basic ideals or ideologies. ...

* * *

      The end goal of the globalist cabal is to eventually reach a point where EVERYONE in the world is a supporter of totalitarian centralization – a world where everyone is a leftist, whether they realize it or not.

       How they plan to achieve this goal is rather indirect but potentially very effective. By pushing one side (the political left) to extremes, they hope to drive the other side (conservatives) to respond with extreme measures that they would otherwise consider contrary to their principles. To avoid this outcome, conservatives must understand the root motivations and contradictions of what has become the leftist cult. To avoid falling into madness, we must examine the behaviors of the insane.

Read the whole thing.

• "The Liberal War On You"--Kurt Schlichter at Town Hall. He writes:

      We are witnessing the death of the liberal political machine that the elite has operated since the end of World War II, and everything that it is doing to conservatives right now – the censorship, the threats, the intimidation, the violence – is proof that it is dying. These are not the acts of an ideology in ascendance but rather of a scurrilous political paradigm in precipitous decline. And it’s only going to get worse as those losing their grip on political and cultural power desperately try to hold onto it in the face of our populist revolt.

      Be prepared. It’s going to get uglier. Our would-be masters see the stakes – their power, prestige and position – and that’s why there is nothing they won’t do, no alleged principle they won’t upend, no bogus value they won’t abandon, to put off the reckoning that their greed and incompetence have brought upon them.

      It’s not just happening here in America. It’s happening all over the world – in places like Australia, Hungary, the UK, Brazil, and Italy, uppity citizens have proclaimed that enough is enough, that they want to have a say in their own future. That they have had enough of multiculturalism, globalism and scorn. They want their countries back.

• Related: "The Roots of Political Correctness"--The Imaginative Conservative. We conservatives are late to the fight:

      Over the last thirty years, political correctness has metastasized. Today, so many politically-correct assumptions have become mainstream that, as Tocqueville once predicted, they have narrowed our questions and our ability to question rather than actually tell us the exact answers to things.

      Is there a solution? Of course, but it will take immense time and work. The best thing the non-politically-correct have on their side is complexity and density of argument. What is politically correct has become so by lackluster thinking. It can be demolished, easily, but it will take time to undo all that has been done. As Ray Bradbury argued in the early 1990s, political correctness must be defeated the moment it is expressed. Not two days or even two minutes later. It is a form of conformist bullying, and, like all bullying, it collapses when confronted and challenged.

Unfortunately, the author still believes in the fairyland of "diversity" for the sake of "diversity."

•  Cloward–Piven in action: "The world's elderly are heading for the US: study"--American Thinker. The average age of immigrants is getting older. For instance:

Older age groups have seen the largest increases. The share of newly arrived immigrants who are 50 or over nearly doubled, from 8 percent to 15 percent; the share 55 and over more than doubled, from 5 percent to 12 percent; and the share 65 and older roughly tripled, from 2 percent to 6 percent.

The author deduces from this, and some other data set out in the article, that:

Central America has lost too many people.  If older people are now coming, it means that the young are gone.  The countries in the region, except for Guatemala, are in a population downward spiral.  Mexico and El Salvador are particularly hard hit.  Encouraging illegal immigration from those countries, as the Democrats like to do based on their voting habits, actually drains those countries.  So much for Bernie Sanders's supposed concern for their welfare.  Draining their working-age population doesn't support their future.

• Meanwhile, the wall is being built: "CBP Completes 50 Miles of New Border, 50 More Underway"--Epoch Times. 
• The bell tolls for the Boomers: "The Boomers Ruined Everything--The mistakes of the past are fast creating a crisis for younger Americans"--The Atlantic.

• Related: "By Any Means Necessary: Left-Wing Violence Won't Stop with Andy Ngo"--Richard Fernandez at PJ Media.

      Perhaps the magnitude of Hillary's 2016 loss is only now becoming apparent. Clinton didn't just lose the White House, she also lost the Democratic center to the radical ornaments.  The diminution of Brooks, Stevens, Kristof, and even Biden are the consequence of that defeat. The radicals who once served the useful purpose of putting fear into the other side are taking center stage.  It's not surprising that the French Terror began with the purge of the moderates and the urgency of virtue. As Robespierre put it, virtuous men have no choice but to employ any means necessary:

If the basis of popular government in peacetime is virtue, the basis of popular government during a revolution is both virtue and terror; virtue, without which terror is baneful; terror, without which virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing more than speedy, severe and inflexible justice; it is thus an emanation of virtue; it is less a principle in itself, than a consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing needs of the patrie.

The Thing is older than one would think. And more voracious.  The intellectual Old Bolsheviks thought their illustrious records would protect them from the ruffian Stalin. Bukharin, who was eventually executed by Stalin, once said: "Koba, you used to be grateful for the support of your Bolshevik comrades." "Gratitude is a dog's disease," Stalin shot back. (Underline added).

• I've grown cynical in my old age, wondering now if his religious beliefs are guiding his decisions: "Mark Zuckerberg Brags: We Didn't Allow Pro-Life Groups to Advertise Before Ireland's Abortion Vote"--PJ Media. From the article:

     During this year's Aspen Ideas Festival, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained that Facebook is increasingly trying to work with governments to determine what political speech it does and does not allow. Oh sorry, I mean: what kind of political ads it is willing to approve.

      In the particular example Zuckerberg cited, in 2018, American pro-life groups wanted to run advertisements for Facebook users in Ireland. This is because the Irish were about to vote in a referendum on whether abortion should be legalized.

     When Facebook saw the ad requests, the company contacted the Irish government asking whether this should or should not be allowed. "Their response at the time was, 'we don't currently have a law, so you need to make whatever decision you want to make.'"

     In other words, Facebook could do as it pleased. There was no legal reason to disallow the ads. But what did Facebook do? You guessed it: "We ended up not allowing the ads."

• Related: "Mark Zuckerberg’s 10 Most Jewish Moments"--Forward. Although Zuckerberg questioned whether to be religious when he was younger, the article makes clear that he now considers his Jewish faith to be important.

• Related: "Israel and Anti-Gentile Traditions"--My Jewish Learning. The author explores some of the darker corners of Jewish theology:

       Shahak further suggests that the Jewish tradition values Jewish life more than Gentile life. He cites Maimonides’ assertion that whereas one who murders a Jew is subject to the death penalty, one who murders a non-Jew is not (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Murder 2:11). According to another leading commentator, indirectly causing the death of a non-Jew is no sin at all (Rabbi Yoel Sirkis, Bayit Hadash, commentary on Bet Yosef, Yoreh Deah 158).

       Shahak reiterates the well-known Jewish teaching that the duty to save a life supersedes all other obligations and notes that the rabbis interpreted this to apply to Jews only. According to the Talmud, "Gentiles are neither to be lifted [out of a well] nor hauled down [into it]" (Tractate Avodah Zarah, 26b). Maimonides writes: "As for Gentiles with whom we are not at war…their death must not be caused, but it is forbidden to save them if they are at the point of death; if, for example, one of them is seen falling into the sea, he should not be rescued, for it is written: ‘neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy fellow’–but [a Gentile] is not thy fellow" (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Murder 4:11).

• More on radical Judaism: "'Goyim Were Born Only To Serve Us': The Moral Wisdom Of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef"--New Republic. An excerpt:

     “Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel,” he said in his weekly Saturday night sermon on the laws regarding the actions non-Jews are permitted to perform on Shabbat.

     According to Yosef, the lives of non-Jews in Israel are safeguarded by divinity, to prevent losses to Jews.

     “In Israel, death has no dominion over them... With gentiles, it will be like any person – they need to die, but [God] will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money.

     This is his servant... That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew,” Yosef said.

• Penny wise and pound foolish: "Boeing to slip from top global plane manufacturer after deliveries plunge 37% in the first half of 2019 - as Saudi airline deepens crisis by cancelling $5.9B order for troubled 737 Max"--Daily Mail. But they saved so much money by outsourcing the programming to the cheapest Indian firm available!
• One of the widely reported news stories from last week was that of an unidentified women seen licking a container of ice cream and returning it to a freezer in a Lufkin, Texas Walmart.  The women has been identified and apprehended, but because she is a juvenile, police are not releasing her identity. Many commentators seemed shocked that the woman, if caught, would face up to 20 years imprisonment, as if tampering with food is something negligible. (Would they think the same if it was believed she had AIDS?). Sarah Hoyt notes that this phenomena--and it is a spreading craze--is anti-Western Civilization. She writes:

      I first came across this in a report of prize idiot alleged entertainer Ariana Grande who filmed herself licking doughnuts on a display and returning them to the case, while talking about how much she hated America.

      Since then, in the manner of all destructive pastimes of monkey-see monkey-do peculiar to our species, it has gone generalized.

     In a way the alleged entertainer was correct. It is a way to hate America. More fundamentally, it is a way to hate and destroy civilization. And humans. And really, everything humans care for.

     Civilization could be considered the way that humans changed — tamed — themselves so we can live in vast quantities, close together.  The city requires a different discipline from the ape band, which had maybe fifteen individuals, whose lives were brutish, nasty, short and infinitely dirty. To improve that, it started with behavior that allowed us to live in larger groups: software in the head that allowed to consider ever more extended family and eventually strangers part of the ‘band’, and ways to keep food clean, and ways to control our tempers so that we didn’t all spend all of our time killing each other.  Ways to share, and ways to behave that increased trust between total strangers.  This included trusting those who handled and sold your food.

    We can argue forever on the matters of population, ecology, or even whether too much cleanliness is a good thing.

    The thing we can’t argue aoubt [sic] is that civilization is what allows us to live in the numbers we do, the long lives we do, the relatively healthy/productive lives we do.

     And we can’t argue that sharing your body fluids with strangers is a good way to transmit illness.  Nor that doing it when the strangers are unaware is a violation of others’ rights and frankly biological terrorism.

     If you hate all that, if you hate humans that much, if you hate civilization that much, if you’re one of those who talks about culling the Earth and reducing the population of humans to sustainable levels? My answer is always “you first.”

     If you think you’re so special that you’ll take this kind of action to bring it about? My answer is again “you first.” (Possibly very first, if I catch you at it. At the very least, if male, you’ll sing soprano the rest of your miserable life.)

     Look, we shouldn’t NEED tamper proof packaging. Yes, I know we do. But we shouldn’t. Part of the tenets of civilization is that something like this should be unthinkable. You don’t taint water and food. Even cats don’t shit where they eat.

     But if we’re going to need ALL tamper proof everything? You’re adding to the cost of it. And also this type of prize-idiot will find a way to get around it.

     You need to civilize humans. Because you can’t barbarian-proof civilization, unless you take out the barbarians.

Of course, that is one of the purposes of prison--to remove the barbarians from civilization. But so is kicking out people that should never have been allowed here in the first place.

      The author of the Neo blog has some thoughts on Hoyt's article, writing:

       When I read that [Hoyle's article], the phrase that immediately came to my mind was “poisoning the well.” That was far worse than what Hoyt is describing, and it’s an ancient and horrific transgression, something that invading armies sometimes did to the conquered populace, or something that disfavored groups (the Jews, for example) were falsely accused of doing in order to fan the flames of hatred against them.

       Now people are performing some modern-day equivalent of well-poisoning or at least the perception of well-poisoning, and then photographing themselves and celebrating it, and doing this to food that will be feeding people in their own communities whom they don’t know and with whom they have no special beef. How destructive and nihilistic is that?

     No matter if it doesn’t actually spread a disease (which in most cases it certainly won’t) or do any actual physical harm to anyone. It is nevertheless a sort of psychological terrorism, a seemingly sociopathic desire to shout out a big F-U to the entirety of the society in which the perpetraror lives.

     Disturbing, to say the least.

• Related: "Florida Woman Arrested After Ruining $2,000 Worth of Ice Cream by Spitting, Picking Her Nose, and Urinating Into Containers"--News Breaking. The perp's name in this case is Jung Soon Wypcha.

• Related: "'I was just being silly with my kid': Florida mom sparks outrage for filming her daughter, 10, licking a tongue depressor at a doctor's office and putting it back into a jar of unused ones"--Daily Mail. Mother and daughter unidentified in story.

• Related: "Copycat prankster, 36, is arrested over video of him licking a tub of ice-cream and putting it back on the shelf - just days after teenager did the same in notorious footage"--Daily Mail. Lenise Martin III, dindu nuttin. Claims he actually bought the ice cream and removed it from the store.

• Related: "Stop Licking and Spitting in My Food—or You'll Regret It"--PJ Media. A hipster films himself in a grocery store spitting into a container of Arizona Tea and putting it back on the shelf.

• Related: "Bizarre footage of Walmart shopper gargling mouthwash and spitting back into bottle causes outrage online"--News.com.au. The person who did this calls itself Bameron Nicole Smith.

• The City of Brotherly Love has a problem with black mobs:

• "WATCH: Surveillance Video Shows Group Of About 60 Teens Vandalizing, Looting Walgreens On South Street"--CBS Philly. 

• "Police Searching For Group Of Men Caught On Camera Assaulting Driver During Attempted Robbery In Center City"--CBS Philly. 

• "‘They’re So Disrespectful’: Philadelphia Police Investigating After Several Teens Steal Items, Throw Ice At Wawa Customers"--CBS Philly. Second time within a week. By several, they mean about two dozen. 

• "Several Police Cars Damaged After Hundreds Of Teens Gather In North Philadelphia"--CBS Philly. This one is a little older--from July 1.

• And the birth-dearth begins to hit Africa: "President urges Tanzania's women to 'set ovaries free', have more babies to boost economy"--Reuters. The article indicates that the birth rate is 5 children per woman, and that 1/3 of women in the country use contraceptives. 
• "Experiments show dramatic increase in solar cell output"--Watts Up With That. With current solar technology, a single photon will only release a single electron, even if the photon is energetic enough that, in theory, it could release a second electron. Researchers believe that they have overcome this hurdle. This could boost solar panel efficiency to as much as 35%. The current highest possible efficiency is less than 30%.
• I thought the science was settled?

• "A Drier Future Sets the Stage for More Wildfires"--NASA (June 9, 2019).

• "Prepare for more downpours: Heavy rain has increased across most of the United States, and is likely to increase further"--NOAA (June 10, 2019).

• I've seen this article making the rounds: "The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time -- Part XXIII"--Manhattan Contrarian. This is the continuation of a series explaining how climate scientists alter and manipulate temperature data to support their theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming. This article looks at the last few years:

Despite what you might think from reading the mainstream press, the past few years in world temperatures have not been particularly good for the continuation of climate alarm.  No matter how you measure them (the main methods being ground thermometers, weather balloons, and satellites), world atmospheric temperatures have gone down for more than three years since a peak reached in early 2016.  The data set that I consider to be the most reliable — the satellite-based measurements from the University of Alabama at Huntsville — gives the global temperature “anomaly” for the most recent month (June 2019) as +0.47 deg C.  That is well down from the peak of +0.88 deg C in early 2016, and represents a decrease of about a third of what had been the entire increase since the satellite record began in 1979.

• "How to REALLY Be Alpha Like the Wolf"--The Art of Manliness. 

       Instead of forming packs of unrelated individuals, in which alphas compete to rise to the top, researchers discovered that wild wolf packs actually consist of little nuclear wolf families. Wolves are in fact a generally monogamous species, in which males and females pair off and mate for life. Together they form a pack that typically consists of 5-11 members — the mate pair plus their children, who stay with the pack until they’re about a year old, and then go off to secure their own mates and form their own packs.

      The mate pair shares in the responsibility of leading their family and tending to their pups. In 21st century human terminology, they “co-parent.” And by virtue of being parents, and leading their “subordinate” children, the mates represent a pair of “alphas.” The alpha male, or papa wolf, sits at the top of the male hierarchy in the family and the alpha female, or mamma wolf, sits atop the female hierarchy in the family.

     In other words, male alpha wolves don’t gain their status through aggression and the dominance of other males, but because the other wolves in the pack are his mate and kiddos. He’s the pack patriarch. The Pater Familias. Dear Old Dad.

     And like any good family man, a male alpha wolf protects his family and treats them with kindness, generosity, and love.

      After observing gray wolves in Yellowstone for more than twenty years, wolf researcher Richard McIntyre has rarely seen an alpha male wolf act aggressively towards his own pack. Instead, an alpha dad sticks around until his pups are fully matured. He hunts alone or with his mate and children to provide food for the family (and sometimes waits for them to get their fill before he digs in himself), roughhouses with his pups (and gets a kick out of letting them win), and even goes out of his way to tend to the runts of his pack.

     This isn’t to say male alpha wolves are all cuddles and kisses. They’re of course fierce predators, and can take down large prey like moose and bison. And when his family is threatened by outside enemies and competitors, the alpha male will fiercely defend it — sometimes sacrificing his own life to save his mate and pups.

     This also isn’t to say male wolves don’t sometimes engage in displays of social dominance. Mature male wolves do have dominance encounters with other male wolves – fathers will stand up to a stranger alpha, or sometimes show their own kids who’s boss, and an older wolf brother will demonstrate his superiority to his little wolf bro.

    So an alpha wolf can indeed be violent and assertive when the situation calls for it. Yet for the most part, he leads not with noisy brashness and teeth-bared aggression, but steady strength, mettle, and heart....