RPG Saturday: Barbarians of Lemuria

  

Barbarians of Lemuria ("BoL") is a sword and sorcery role-playing game by Simon Washbourne based on Lin Carter's Thongor of Lemuria series of adventures. The basic game mechanic is loosely based on the 2d6 system from Traveller, but also has significant differences. It is not exactly clear when the game came out: the best information I have is that it originally showed up in the early 2000s. (You can find a free to download PDF of what apparently was a very early version here). 

    But, over time, it was expanded, new artwork added, and more details of the setting added. For instance, DriveThru RPG lists a "Legendary Edition" which apparently dates back to 2009. When I first purchased a copy two years ago through DriveThru RPG, they were selling the Mythic Edition (which is no longer available through that site) that apparently dated back to sometime in the 2010s.  Unfortunately, the game did not see much success at the time in the United States. 

 

The Mythic edition of BoL

In the meantime, in 2016, fans of the game in France asked Washbourne for the rights to publish the game in French, forming a small publishing company called Ludospherik to translate and publish the game. It apparently enjoyed enough success in France that it continued to be published and expanded. So in 2024, Ludospherik decided to try the English-speaking market again and launched a Kickstarter campaign which was overwhelmingly successful. Thus, in 2025, they released a new printing of the Mythic Edition with new art, better formatting, and better quality printing.

 And while the text appears to be the same as the earlier version I had purchased, it is a much better print copy of the game: better print quality, much better formatting of the text (making it much easier to read and find materials), and high quality art. 

 

An example of the interior art from the 2025 edition. Although this is a full page bit of artwork, all of the illustrations in the book is of similar quality. It truly makes it a pleasure to browse through the book.

     In any event, the Kickstarter of the game was good enough that the additional materials (a poster sized map of the setting and a game master screen) and a supplement translated from the French (further detailing a portion of the game world with an adventure and other information) have since been published. A second supplement is in the works. 

    While many games are "setting neutral"--meaning you could use the game for different settings within that particular genre--this game is tightly interwoven around its setting. While Washbourne lists many different authors and their works as inspiration--including the John Carter of Mars stories by Edger Rice Burroughs and the Conan the Barbarian stories by Robert E. Howard--it is obvious to anyone that has read the books or short stories that the setting for Barbarians of Lemuria is based on the Thongor of Lemuria stories by Lin Carter.

 

The two maps above are of Carter's Lemuria (the lower of the two was actually drawn by Carter; I'm unsure of the origin of the upper map). The map, below, is of the game world for Barbarians of Lemuria.

You can see that what Washbourne largely did was flip Carter's Lemuria from West to East, make it part of a larger continent, change the time (Carter's setting is far in the past before recorded history while Washbourne's setting is in the far future after some cataclysmic event) and adds a few more tweaks to the geography. Many of the intelligent species,  creatures, cities, and factions are also the same between the two with just changes to the names. The dominant city in both settings (Patanga for Carter, and Parsool in BoL) even have airships. 

    I'm not complaining, though. I enjoyed the Thongor stories both as a kid and when I recently re-read them a few years ago. So I was excited when I discovered that not only had someone created a game using a similar setting, but that the game was still available for purchase. I also liked that it was a true sword & sorcery setting. I like Tolkien and D&D, but elves and dwarves and halflings in a pseudo-European High Middle Ages setting gets tiring after a time. This offers an exotic setting while maintaining a strong fantasy element. Washbourne has also done an excellent job of filling out and expanding the setting from the Thongor books, and it appears that the supplements will be building on that.  

     The setting is quite expansive, moving from tropical regions in the south to sub-arctic in the north. The primary civilizations are centered in the sub-tropical and tropical regions around the great bay that you see (the Gulf of Sataria), with governments mostly resting in greater and lessor city states rather than expansive empires. Technology is that strange mix common to many sword & sorcery settings, mixing technology and weapons from classical to medieval or early renaissance (but without firearms) with the odd bits of super-technology thrown in. Some of this technology are bits and pieces left over from civilizations that preceded humanity; others are the works of alchemists and sorcerers. 

     This is understandable given the background. BoL is set many millennia after what is termed in the game as the Age of the Sorcerer-Kings. This was an era of high technology and unbelievable power but, reminiscent of the fall of Atlantis, the inhabitants became too proud and, in their pride, loosed a terrible devil or demon, the Dark Lord Hadron, who wreaked destruction across the globe. What followed was an Age of Darkness where monsters were born and Hadron and surviving Sorcerer-Kings rules over the ruins and barbarism. But eventually the Gods of Lemuria hatched a plan--the creation of a great sword that would be used by a mighty hero to destroy the monsters and minions of the Sorcerer-Kings and drive Hadron back into void, while also founding the first post-apocalypse city. 

    But some Sorcerer-Kings survived, becoming almost reptilian in appearance, and ever seeking to resume control of the world. This eventually led to another great battle, where the Sorcerer Kings were defeated but the great Orb-Sword was lost. The survivors migrated south to found the cities that would become the great metropolises of the BoL setting. 

    As noted above, the game mechanic is fairly simple: the players roll two six-sided dice (2d6) and add or subtract modifiers. If the resulting sum is 9 or better they succeed at what they are attempting. There are more specific rules for combat, but it follows the same general mechanic. 

    The characters are defined by four general attributes: strength, mind, agility, and appeal. Values for these range between -1 and 5 (although characters can only begin with values of 0 to 4). These act as a modifier in certain cases. Rather than rolling for these attributes, the character is given 4 points to spread between them as he or she wishes. Characters also have four combat abilities--initiative, melee, ranged, and defense--and similarly has 4 points to divide among these. 

    Further development of the character follows a life path model, although much simpler than in the Traveller game.  It begins with the player selecting a background for the character (basically where the character grew up) that gives some options; then the character picks 4 careers, splitting up 4 points between them giving a score between 0 and 4. Thus, this acts similar to meta skill. Thus, if you were a sailor, you would have that skill level in everything a sailor might be expected to know or be skilled in. 

    Characters also have "Hero points" which can be used to influence the game--to do something heroic or lucky. And, finally, characters can have boons which are specialized skills or advantages (e.g., particularly alert, fearless, or "battle harness" which allows your character to wear a loincloth, chainmail bikini, or something similarly scanty and treat like medium armor) or flaws (a disadvantage or ineptitude such as being absent minded, a country bumpkin, gullible, etc.).  

    Consistent with the sword & sorcery setting, magic users are rare and players are discouraged from playing wizards and the like. Conan and Thongor spent much of their careers killing evil wizards, and this game seems to encourage the same. But there is plenty of room for other types of adventurers other than barbarians from the icy north lands. Thieves, pirates, merchants, sailors and seaman, alchemists and scholars, soldiers and gladiators, and many more are open to the characters. And the setting allows for the full gambit of adventuring from seeking hidden treasures, exploring abandoned cities or ruins, guarding caravans or merchant vessels, exploring, leading raiding raiding on neighboring cities or tribes, court intrigue, and more. 

     In addition to the rules on character creation and combat, the rules cover larger battles between units of men and ships, as well as the impact of magic or sky-boats on battles. There is also a detailed gazetteer covering most of the major locations in the game world, a brief history, a description of the gods and religions of the setting, the different non-human races (i.e., other intelligent species), and a decently sized selection of beasts and monsters. The gazetteer has many adventure seeds. 

    The chapter about the mysteries of Lemuria covers the magic of the setting, including alchemy, how priests and druids exercise their powers, and magician and their powers. The chapter also covers cults.

    The next chapter, The Sagas of Lemuria, is for the game master. It has tips on running adventures, a discussion of rewarding characters, and different types of non-player characters (NPCs), example villains,  sample adventurers, a handful of simple adventures to get you started, and even some random tables to help with coming up with ideas for other adventures. 

     I haven't played this game much just because of time and getting together people for games. But I was able to run an adventure over 3 or 4 session involving the characters stealing a treasure map, traveling to the location marked on the map, fighting off a rival group searching for the same treasure, and then dealing with a building come to life to kill the adventurers (yes, this was based off a Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser story) as well as a subsequent adventure where the characters come across a seemingly deserted ship. 

    In short, though, it is a fun game with a detailed world and plenty of material here to create your own adventures with just the basic books; and the supplements are adding even more. I will definitely be playing more of this one. 

Concealed Carriers: What To Say & Do During A Traffic Stop

Another video on interacting with law enforcement. This video goes over what to say and do (and what not to do) should you be stopped in your vehicle and (a) you are either required to notify the officer that you have a weapon, or (b) are asked if you have a weapon. Since the consequences of screwing up could be a cop shooting you, this is important stuff.  

 VIDEO: " Cop: 'Any Weapons?' — Say THIS, Not Yes Or No"
Daniel Cross & Co. (10 min.)

Advice On What To Say (And Not Say) When You've Shot An Intruder

If you take nothing else from this video, it should be that you cannot just say nothing to invoke your 5th Amendment rights, but you have to specifically state that you are invoking your right to stay silent.   

 VIDEO: "If You Shot an Intruder...Say THIS. Stay Out of Prison. (Simple Script)"
Daniel Cross & Co. (14 min.)

Summer Carry For Women

Stavroula ("Stav") MacQuarrie of the She Equips Herself YouTube channel, discusses some different methods and holsters she uses for carrying in summer with different outfits: a fairly tight but long skirt, and a few shorts and tops outfits. The methods include inside the thigh, using a Sticky Holster inside a waistband, and a couple methods of off-body carry (but about as "off-body" as a belt holster). 

    As a side note, I had noted earlier this month that women have more freedom than men in what type of clothing they can wear given them more options when it comes to concealed carry, and this video seems to confirm my point. 

 VIDEO: "This season is the most challenging for concealed carry ☀️🍉🌴 | Summer outfit and holster combos 😎" -- She Equips Herself (17 min.)

Signs You Are In A Collapsing Society

The New York Post reports that copper theft has become so prevalent in Los Angeles that the City's Department of Water and Power wants its own police force to deal with the problem. 

    The LA Department of Water and Power made the request in a letter sent to the City Council, pointing out that the Port of Los Angeles and Los Angeles airports have their own police authorities.

    The agency already employs security guards, but “they lack the authority to detain or arrest suspects, intervene in crimes in progress, conduct searches, or carry firearms for enforcement purposes,” the letter said. 

    The department currently depends on local law enforcement to respond speedily, but that’s unreliable in remote locations where there is critical infrastructure, it added.

    If such an armed force was granted, the department expects to add 20 to 50 officers, who would have the authority to carry a firearm, make arrests and investigate thefts, in addition to handling jobs like dispatch and crime analysis. 

The article indicates that wire theft alone costs the city $20 million per year, while setting up such a police force would cost $9 million with an additional $6 million per year operating budget.  

     Of course the problem is not limited to just Los Angeles as this 2024 article from Wired makes clear: "The Green Economy Is Hungry for Copper—and People Are Stealing, Fighting, and Dying to Feed It." The article begins by recounting an attack on South African utility employees by a gang armed with automatic weapons, adding:

    In most places, power companies are a pretty dull business. But in South Africa they are under a literal assault, targeted by heavily armed gangs that have crippled the nation’s energy infrastructure and claimed an ever-growing number of lives. Practically every day, homes across the country are plunged into darkness, train lines shut down, water supplies cut off, and hospitals forced to close, all because thieves are targeting the material that carries electricity: copper.

    The battle cry of energy transition advocates is “Electrify everything.” Meaning: Let’s power cars, heating systems, industrial plants, and every other type of machine with electricity rather than fossil fuels. To do that, we need copper—and lots of it. Second to silver, a rarer and far more expensive metal, copper is the best natural electrical conductor on Earth. We need it for solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles. (A typical EV contains as much as 175 pounds of copper.) We need it for the giant batteries that will provide power when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. We need it to massively expand and upgrade the countless miles of power cables that undergird the energy grid in practically every country. In the United States, the capacity of the electric grid will have to grow as much as threefold to meet the expected demand.

    A recent report from S&P Global predicts that the amount of copper we’ll need over the next 25 years will add up to more than the human race has consumed in its entire history. “The world has never produced anywhere close to this much copper in such a short time frame,” the report notes. The world might not be up to the challenge. Analysts predict supplies will fall short by millions of tons in the coming years. No wonder Goldman Sachs has declared “no decarbonization without copper” and called copper “the new oil.”

    As the energy transition gathers speed, the value of copper has also soared. In the past four years, the price of a ton of copper has shot from about $6,400 to more than $9,000. That, in turn, has made electrical wiring, equipment, and even raw metal fresh from the mines into juicy targets for thieves. All around the world, hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of the metal has been stolen—and countless lives have been lost. With the possible exception of gold, no other metal has caused so much death and destruction.

 After describing expanding copper production in Africa and environmental impacts of a huge open pit copper mine in Chile, the article returns to copper theft:

    The treasures these mines produce are magnets for some astonishingly brazen criminals. By the light of the full moon, bandits in Toyota Tundra pickups roll up alongside trains that are hauling copper slabs from the mines high in the Atacama down to the coast. With perhaps a whispered prayer to the spirits of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the bandits leap aboard the copper cars, slice through the ropes securing the 180-pound slabs, toss them into the beds of the speeding trucks, and disappear into the night.

    The problem is so acute that the Chilean national police have set up a special copper task force. But trains were still being robbed regularly when I visited Chile in 2022. And not just trains, for that matter. In January of 2023, a team of thieves hit the country’s main seaport, overpowered a handful of workers, and made off with a dozen containers full of Codelco’s copper—more than $4 million worth.

    No one knows exactly how much copper is stolen every year across the world. Thieves typically sell their wares to no-questions-asked scrapyards and recyclers, who strip off cable coatings and other nonmetallic materials and then shred or melt down the copper. Anyone can do it: The metal can be melted with blowtorches or small furnaces you can buy on Amazon. There are plenty of online videos that can walk you through the process. Once rendered into generic form, stolen copper can be mixed with legally obtained metal. At that point it’s easy to sell into the regular market, its origin essentially impossible to trace.

    It’s safe to say, however, that the amount stolen each year is many, many millions of dollars’ worth—possibly billions. In one particularly audacious theft in 2023, nearly $200 million worth of copper and other metals was lifted from Aurubis, Europe’s largest producer. The biggest heists, at least in the US, are often inside jobs. In 2013, police shut down a ring that had ripped off as much as $80 million worth of copper ingots from an Arizona mine. Prosecutors said that workers in on the scheme would open the gates for trucks driven by their confederates, who loaded them up with raw copper and drove right back out. The metal was sold to recyclers in California, who blackened it to make it look like scrap and then shipped it to China. Unraveling the plot took nerve. At one point, a company rep from the mine found a severed goat’s head nailed to his door.

    Most American copper thieves, however, are small-time opportunists drawn to a laughably easy score. So much copper is just left out in the open. It doesn’t take much skill or daring to tear out wiring in an abandoned building, break open an air conditioner sitting behind an apartment block, or snatch a manhole cover on a quiet suburban street. Thousands of copper thefts are reported each year. The booty includes fire hydrants, a 3,000-ton bell, a bust of Orville Wright, and at least one urn containing human ashes.

    The cost of fixing the damage often far exceeds the value of the stolen metal. Ripped-out cables have shut down drinking water supplies in Hawaii, streetlights in Missouri, airport runway lights in Washington, and whole subway lines in New York City. The US Department of Energy has estimated that copper theft causes $1 billion worth of damage every year to facilities and businesses considered critical infrastructure.

    Then there’s the shocking number of lives lost. Again, no one knows the exact numbers, but just from scanning through 10 years or so of local news articles I found dozens of reports of Americans who were fatally electrocuted while trying to steal live copper wire. And at least one security guard who was murdered trying to stop one of those thefts.

    In South Africa, though, widespread poverty, ineffective police, and soaring metal prices have turned copper theft into a major industry. Mines are rich targets, even those that don’t extract copper. Their subterranean networks of shafts and tunnels need power to run lights and digging equipment. That power, of course, is carried by miles of electric cable, conveniently left unguarded and out of sight. On any given day, hundreds of desperate people are risking their lives to get that metal.

    They’re known as zama zamas—roughly meaning “take a chance” in Zulu. These illegal miners clamber down mine shafts on ropes or handmade ladders, then make their way into the tunnels. There, they set up underground camps. Hundreds of zama zamas may be living underground at any given time, some spending weeks or even months down in the tunnels.

    It’s an astonishingly common and deeply disruptive crime. A single mining company, Implats, reported around 800 incidents of cable theft in 2021. Stolen cables have forced companies to shut down mines for weeks at a time.

    It’s also a phenomenally dangerous way to earn a living. Illegal miners have died by the dozens in gas explosions, floods caused by heavy rains, and other accidents. In 2021, a mining company sealed off a ventilation shaft that a group of zama zamas was using to supply their compatriots underground. Desperate, the miners blew open the hole with explosives. Police and private security guards wound up in a pitched battle with the escaping zama zamas. At least eight people were killed.

    Above ground, gangs have hijacked dozens of trucks carrying copper to South Africa’s ports, making off with millions of dollars’ worth of metal. Meanwhile, the electric grid is being plundered so often and so thoroughly that the whole country is affected. In 2021, the railway company Transnet reported that more than 1,000 kilometers of overhead power cables had been stolen. A recent report from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime notes that “while two security guards may have proved a deterrent in the past,” gangs “now come in groups of 20 or 30 and are often heavily armed, with ‘spotters’ shooting at patrol vehicles.” Cell phone towers, water pipelines, and electric power stations are similarly under assault. Thieves disguise themselves as workers dispatched to tear up underground cables, or bribe actual power company employees, or just show up brandishing guns and use four-wheel-drive trucks to rip cables out of the ground.

    Ordinary South Africans pay a heavy price. Children have died falling into manholes after their covers were stolen. In addition to disrupted train lines and power, water, and phone service outages, a Johannesburg hospital was kept closed after someone stole its copper pipes, cables, and electrical equipment. Police believe rivalry between gangs involved in stealing cables spurred two mass shootings that left 21 people dead in the Johannesburg area in 2022. And a number of security guards trying to protect some company’s copper have also been wounded or killed—like Moqadi Mokoena, the Johannesburg guard shot to death in his truck.

    The wave of copper theft has sparked a backlash of vigilante violence in some impoverished townships. Suspected thieves have been assaulted, beaten and occasionally lynched. “This is the only language that criminals understand,” a resident of a town where an alleged cable thief was beaten to death told local media. In March of 2023, four electric company workers were killed in a Johannesburg suburb by a mob that mistook them for cable thieves.

The solution to all of this suggested by the writer is to focus on copper demand. And this means that rather than shifting from gas powered vehicles to electric vehicles, which will consume even more copper, that we build out "public transit, subsidized ebikes, and developed more walkable cities[.]"

    The Wired article indicates, however, that we have exploited the largest, easiest to mine, deposits. But that may not be the case. In March of this year, the discovery of one of the world's largest deposits was discovered in Argentina. Popular Mechanics reports: "Geologists May Have Found One of the World’s Greatest Treasures. Some Say It’s Too Dangerous to Dig Up." 

    Located along the border of Chile and Argentina, the Filo del Sol copper deposit has been under investigation for years for potentially being one of the largest copper deposits in the world. And that makes sense, considering this treasure is nestled along the Atacama Desert—long known for its immense copper reserves due to its location in the Andes and its placement within the eastern portion of the Ring of Fire.

    However, an initial mineral resource estimate completed in 2025 suggests that the companies in charge of mining this area—the U.S.-based Lundin Mining and BHP—may have stumbled upon five times more metal than they bargained for.

    According to a statement from Lundin Mining, the assessment estimates the presence of up to 13 million tonnes of copper, 907,000 kilograms (32 million ounces) of gold, and 18.6 million kilograms (659 million ounces) of silver. This update, gathered from data collected from 400 additional exploration holes, came from the discovery that deeper mineralization of copper far exceeded the estimates that were closer to the surface. According to AFP, Filo del Sol could prove to be richer still, as experts dig deeper and explore the resource’s northern and southern boundaries. 

It is the altitude at which the deposits sit that make it potentially dangerous to mine.

    And last year, Newser reported on a new copper mine in Arizona expected to come online in late 2028.  

    So not all is doom and gloom.   

Related:

• "Cable theft: A growing problem around the world"--Enlit. 
• "South Africa rail, power revamp hinges on ending cable theft"--Engineering News.  
• "The ‘perfect storm’ that could cost South Africa billions – and threaten power supply"--Business Tech. 

The Political Spectrum In A Nut Shell

 

Source: Barnhardt Memes

What Does He Know That We Don't?

From the New York Times (archived): "Why Peter Thiel Is Decamping to the End of the World." Wikipedia notes that Thiel was a "co-founder of PayPal (1998), Palantir Technologies (2003), and Founders Fund (2005), he was also the first outside investor in Facebook (2004). According to The New York Times, as of December 2025, Thiel's estimated net worth stood at US$27.5 billion, placing him among the 100 richest individuals in the world." In other words, he heads up companies that know more about you than you do. 

    So it is with interest that the Times reports:

    Mr. Thiel, who has a history of collecting backup countries as he hedges his bets against the United States, is considering making Argentina another Plan B, according to two people familiar with his thinking. Born in Germany and raised in the United States, he received citizenship in New Zealand in 2011, and applied for a passport in Malta in 2022.

    His new roots in Argentina are partly motivated by his concerns about the direction of the United States, the people familiar with his thinking say, particularly California, where an initiative on November’s ballot could lead to a significant tax on billionaires.

    Argentina, a nation relatively insulated from potential conflicts in the Northern Hemisphere, also fits as a potential escape hatch from other risks that Mr. Thiel has publicly warned about — nuclear war and runaway artificial intelligence.

    But Mr. Thiel has also been energized by what he’s discovered in Argentina, finding harmony with Mr. Milei’s libertarian slash-and-burn governance and becoming enamored with Buenos Aires’ vibrancy, the people said. They, and others familiar with the billionaire’s activities and discussions about the country, spoke on condition of anonymity to share private conversations. 

And its not just business that drew him there. He has relocated his family there, including enrolling his children in school there. 

    Perhaps Thiel is there to buy up the country. Perhaps he is there because he fears World War III. Perhaps he fears civil war in the U.S. It would be interesting to know what his AIs have predicted. 

Weekend Reading #58

Some longer and more involved reading for the weekend:

• First up is a new Weekend Knowledge Dump from Active Response Training.  Lots of good stuff, but here are some of the links that caught my attention for one reason or another:
• An article from Pew Pew Tactical on the history of the fighting tomahawk. Not very much on the origin of the tomahawk but what happened after it was introduced to America and its use since. The author also has some recommendations on current manufactured models. 
• "The Myth of 'Stupid Places and Stupid People'." Notwithstanding the title, this article actually examines the myth that compliance with a criminal will keep you safe. As for Farnam's rules of self defense, I disagree with the author's assertion it is a "myth". Of course it doesn't guarantee that you won't be a victim of violent crime. But if you don't go to bars or other places rowdy, drunk people congregate (especially if you accompany people who like to pick fights); walk through alleyways in the crime infested areas of town after dark; hang around gangbangers; or visit drug dealers, your life will be a hell of lot safer than those who do those things. 
• "Casing a Joint: Why You Should Sit Facing the Door." More than just an explanation of why you should sit facing the door (or the cash register, as Greg adds), it offers some advice on situational awareness and evaluating the security of buildings that you may visit.
• "Nine Generations of American Firearms Culture." A brief overview of the technology, laws, and public attitudes concerning firearms for 9 periods of time in America. Of course, you can't really understand the changes if you don't include migration and urbanization, because people coming from countries without a history of firearm ownership and people living in congested urban centers have different attitudes toward firearms from those living in small towns or the countryside. And video games. Imagine how different things would be if you didn't have a few generations of young men playing first person shooters who wanted to own copies or clones of the weapons they used in those games. 
• "27 Statistics on Gunshot Wounds: How Much Does It Cost to Get Shot?" This article is from 2021, but appears to be referencing studies looking at hospitalizations for gunshot wounds between 2004 and 2013.  But with that data set, it has some interesting statistics, including the following:

They found that there was an annual rate of 10.1 admissions per 100,000 people in the US. While this might fluctuate in a given year, they noted that it remained fairly stable across the reporting period. More than 80% of hospitalizations were for people between the ages of 15-44. They also noted that males were 9 times more likely to be admitted for this, and African American populations were 10 times more likely than white populations to suffer from gunshot wounds when admitted.  

 As has been noted by others, we don't have a gun problem, we have a problem with certain sub-set of our population: ethnic street gangs.

• "Inside the Mind of a Home Defense Shooting," which can be best summed up: "A home-invasion gunfight is not only a physical event — it is a neurobiological upheaval."
• "Up Close & Too Personal" which has some tips on shooting at contact or near contact distances (e.g., less than 3 feet). 
• "Which Is Better in 2026: 9mm Luger or 45 ACP?" The debate rages on, but at least this article gives you lots of information on kinetic energy, penetration in ballistic gel, and kinetic energy transfer. But I have to agree with Greg that most of this is b.s. when applied to handgun bullets. Unless you are talking about high velocity rifle bullets, energy transfer is of little relevance. What you want is something that makes a big hole and penetrates far enough to damage vital organs. And penetration is, itself, hard to predict because it depends on many factors: velocity, density, momentum, the shape of the bullet, the medium that is struck, etc. Bullet expansion, when discussing modern hollowpoints, largely depends on velocity and the starting diameter of the projectile. In that regard, the 9mm has the advantage over the .45 ACP when it comes to velocity, but the .45 ACP has an obvious advantage over the 9mm when it comes to starting diameter. Greg lists the factors he looks for in a defensive cartridge and it seems a pretty good list of criteria.

• Next up is John Wilder's latest piece, "Your Chatbot Is Cute. Theirs Is a Chained God. Here’s Why That Changes Everything," in which he extrapolates from prior technological breakthroughs what will be the end result of the AI revolution: a feudal like society where the ultra-wealth and powerful elites have god-like AIs at their command to further grow and protect their power and wealth while the 99.9999% of humanity is reduced to serfdom. (Assuming, I would add, that the elites even allow most of humanity to continue to live: "Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature" was one of the tenets on the Georgia Guidestones). John explains:

      For the ultra-wealthy and national governments (which are basically the same thing at that scale), the A.I. of the future won’t be the public chatbot.  It will be a custom, proprietary, always-on system with access to individual datasets, massive private compute clusters, and real-time integration into their empires.  Imagine an A.I. that doesn’t just answer questions:  it anticipates needs across global supply chains, optimizes investments with keen foresight, runs entire divisions of virtual employees, and even simulates political and market outcomes with terrifying accuracy.

  [snip]

      The rest of us?  We’ll get the consumer version.  The good enough.  Best Value® A.I.:  the one that’s rate-limited, censored in annoying ways, and always trying to sell me something or nudge me toward approved opinions.  It’ll be helpful for writing emails or generating images of cats on porches, but it won’t be the strategic weapon the elites wield.
  
      This isn’t conspiracy, it’s simply the outcome of every technological advancement, ever, scaled to the size required by A.I.  ...  

  But the consequence will be a permanent divide between the elites and those destined to be the Morlocks. As John goes on to explain, the only thing preventing such a split previously has been the dispersion of talent among humanity--talent needed by the elites and society--allowing a path out of poverty. But "[w]hen the rich have A.I. that can do most of that thinking better, faster, and without needing health insurance or vacation days, the demand for actual human talent craters."  And, with it, "[t]he path to becoming rich effectively dies for 99.999% of humanity." 

      Don't dismiss this lightly. It is already beginning to happen (see "Vast desert city [ed: Phoenix] known for offering 'ladder to the middle class' with its back office jobs is at risk of being hollowed out by AI and offshoring"--Daily Mail). 

      John lists some steps to protect yourself from becoming wholly irrelevant, so be sure to read his whole article.  

• "Determinants of Success: Merit, Connections, Luck (As illustrated by my personal quest to enter Moscow University)" by Peter Turchin. He begins by explaining:

    In their book The Highest Exam, Jia and Li, following standard sociological literature, identify three such factors: merit, connections, and luck. The importance of luck is often underestimated. It’s natural for successful people to claim (and even believe) that their achievements are entirely due to their brilliance and hard work. (On this topic, I recommend reading Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy by Robert H. Frank.) But it’s hard to quantify the effect of luck, and in statistical analyses we often have to assign the unexplained, residual variance to this factor.

    Merit, on the other hand is, in principle, measurable. Different professions use a variety of metrics to rank people by merit. In academia, which I know well, the department head usually has a point system of assigning merit to each faculty, based on their publications (and how many citations they get), getting research proposals funded, serving on committees, and such. In my department this system was known to the faculty and generally agreed to be fair.

    This leaves us connections, which is an important, but not the only component of, more generally, social power. After all, there are four sources of social power. One can advance up the hierarchy by means of coercion, economic power, and persuasion (threatening or intimidating people, paying them off, or talking them over to one’s side). Still, the political or relational form of power — being embedded in a power network — is, of course, most important. ...

Turchin goes on to explain that the mix of three (at least for admission to an elite university) varies in different countries, but all three play a role. He then dissects his experience getting into an elite university in the Soviet Union. An interesting point he touches on (although it didn't seem to impact his advancement) is the role of bad connections. Turchin's father had become a Soviet dissident by the time Turchin was trying to get into college, which he recognizes could have cut against him in his quest to get into Moscow University (although it apparently didn't since he was eventually admitted). But I remember reading several years ago that the U.S. elite universities actually discriminated in their admissions against young people who had been in Future Farmers of America, the Boy Scouts, and certain other organizations that were markers of a rural and/or conservative upbringing.

The Continued Collapse Of The British Empire

It is somewhat amazing to realize that even just 100 years ago, the sun still did not set on the British Empire. But the costs of two world wars was enough to kill the Empire. But Empires generally do not just disappear overnight. The Roman Empire wound down over the course of a centuries with the eastern half (the Byzantine Empire) holding out for many centuries longer. Even the sudden collapse of civilizations in the Bronze Age Collapse played out over 100 years or more. So it is interesting to see the U.K. continue to shuffle toward dissolution with this latest bit of news: "Scottish parliament backs call for new independence referendum."  The article reports:

    The Scottish parliament has voted in favour of a motion calling on the UK Government in London to approve a fresh referendum on independence.

    Lawmakers in the devolved legislature in Edinburgh backed the proposal by 72 votes to 55 on Tuesday. The body holds powers over policy areas including health, education, justice, transport and the environment.

    The motion was introduced by First Minister John Swinney, who leads the pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP). 

    "With the mandate of parliament, I will now take that forward to dialogue with the UK government to make sure that parliament’s wishes, which, of course, are the wishes of the people, are properly put into effect,” he said.  

An unsuccessful referendum had been held in 2014, and a 2022  ruling from the UK Supreme Court held that any new independence referendum could only take place with the consent of the UK Government. Interestingly, though, this referendum isn't driven for a desire for more freedom, but less:

After Tuesday’s vote, Swinney said Scotland needed to gain independence before the next UK general election, expected in 2029, citing the threat that Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration, anti-EU Reform UK party could win power.   

The College Fix: More Legal Scholars Now Agree With Trump On Birth-Right Citizenship

 Here's the article: "Growing numbers of legal scholars support Trump’s order on birthright citizenship." The key takeaway is that Trump was able to shift the Overton Window as to who is entitled to birthright citizenship. Trump's order "prohibits federal agencies from recognizing citizenship for children born in the United States after Feb. 20, 2025, if their mother is unlawfully present and the father is neither a citizen nor a lawful permanent resident, or if the mother’s presence is temporary and the father lacks that status."