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Wednesday, November 18, 2020

A Quick Run Around The Web (11/18/2020)

VIDEO: "How to carry a LARGE handgun"--H.R. Funk (14 min.)
This video is about carrying a full-size, duty handgun concealed and looks at several difference options such as strong side OWB and IWB, cross-draw, and shoulder-holsters, as well as some other considerations. Funk shows off a couple shoulder-holster systems, which he likes, but notes that shoulder-holster systems can be expensive. The particular leather rig that he has would cost about $250. Thanks to Craft Holsters, I've been able to try a couple leather shoulder holster systems (a vertical and a horizontal model) made by Falco and Vega, respectively, which they sell for $165 and $135. My son purchased a Falco horizontal holster which is currently priced at $145. While even those prices may seem daunting compared to a standard leather holster, it really isn't if you add in the price of a quality gun belt. 

Firearms/Self-Defense/Prepping:

Key findings for public release showed:

  • In 2018, 11.4 million total firearms were produced or imported in the United States (less exported firearms).
  • Approximately one-half (48%) of all rifles produced and imported (less exports) in 2018 were Modern Sporting Rifles.
  • Since 1990, there are an estimated 19.8 million Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs) in circulation today.
  • An interim 2019 estimate showed a total of 6 million total firearms were produced in the United States. Of those, 3.6 million were pistols and revolvers, 2 million were rifles and 480,000 were shotguns. Those are interim figures that will be updated when complete reports become available from the ATF.
  • In 2019, there were approximately 3.3 million firearms imported into the United States which included 2.3 million pistols and revolvers, 301,000 rifles and 678,000 shotguns.
  • From 1991 to 2019, nearly 214 million firearms have been made available to the U.S. market.
  • According to reports such as: ATF Firearms Commerce in the United States, ATF AFMER and Congressional Research Service data, there are an estimated 434 million firearms in civilian possession in the United States.
  • There are approximately 71.2 million pistol magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds, and 79.2 million rifle magazines capable of holding 30 or more rounds in circulation.
  • Firearm and ammunition manufacturing accounted for nearly 12,000 employees producing over $3.9 billion in goods shipped in 2018. An estimated 8.7 billion rounds of all calibers and gauges were produced in 2018 for the U.S. market.

  • "Questioning the Effectiveness of the .380 Auto Cartridge"--Active Response Training. So Greg Ellifritz had put together a study of different handgun rounds and their effectiveness based on data he was able to find from shootings involving those cartridges such as the percentage of attackers stopped by first shot, the average number of shots to stop an attacker, etc. The key takeaway that most self-defense professionals and students of the topic had is that shot placement was far more important than caliber, which makes sense given the wounding mechanism of handgun rounds. But there are some anomalies that show up in the data, such as the .380 appearing, based on the numbers, to be more effective than service rounds such as 9 mm, .40 S&W, and .45 ACP. In this article Ellifritz addresses why he thinks the .380, on paper, appeared to do better when what we know about this cartridge's effectiveness should suggest the opposite. The primary factor, he believes, is the difference between incidents where police have to shoot a perp versus citizen shootings; and the fact that the 9 mm, .40 S&W and .45 ACP shootings were mostly derived from police shootings, whereas the .380 was primarily from citizen shootings. What differences? He proposes that the civilian shootings will involve fewer shots taken because of (i) a slower rate of fire and (ii) that criminals more readily break off an attack against a civilian as opposed to when they are going toe-to-toe with police.
  • "Preview: Clear Ballistics Starter Kit"--American Rifleman. While not the standard ballistic gel used for testing bullets, the Clear Ballistics clear gel is easier to work with and can be reused. Because of the increasing popularity of testing, the company is apparently offering a starter kit, which is described in this article. The cost of the kit is $210 for 10-percent gelatin (the standard for law enforcement testing), and $230 for 20-percent gelatin (used for military testing). The kits include two blocks, a mold, and a roasting oven needed for melting down the gel to reuse. If you can talk your wife into letting you use her roasting oven, I presume you could get started at a much reduced cost.
  • "Protection Against Laser Blindness"--Blue Collar Prepping. High power laser pointers have become a stock weapon among the BLM and Antifa, and so we should expect these to show up even more during whatever spicy times lie ahead. You might be the best long range shooter there is, but it's all for naught if you get blinded by a 1+ Watt laser. The author explains:

    Fortunately, it is possible to defend against laser dazzle and eye damage through the use of protective lenses. These lenses will not provide 100% protection against lasers, because lasers are amplified and collimated visible light; any lens which protects 100% against visible light would necessarily be 100% opaque and therefore render you blind by different means. 

    Furthermore, effective protection will not come cheaply; if you are not buying certified protective lenses with a known optical density and visible light transmission, you may end up buying colored sunglasses. 

She goes on to discuss the various factors for assessing what you need and selecting a level of protection.

  • "Practicing Unconventional Shooting Positions"--Sheriff Jim Wilson, Shooting Illustrated. The specific points he raises is learning to shoot with one-hand, shooting from a seated position, and drawing with your support hand (can you do so with your current carry method?). The shooting one handed is not just in case you get injured in one hand--a lot of retention drills require your off-hand to protect against a gun grab, moving an innocent out of the way, etc.
  • "Frankengun Rising: A Gucci Polymer 80 Built by Clay" by Clay Martin, Guns America. The author relates his experience with manufacturing his own firearm. From the lede:

    I am eating a little bit of crow this week, which I know you all enjoy. You see, I was never on board the Polymer 80 train. Not that I was opposed to such a thing. I think you should be able to buy RPG’s and belt-fed weapons at your local gas station, personally. I was opposed to them due to cost, as well as I didn’t really believe they would work.

    But the situation has changed. First of all, given our current political climate, I believe it benefits all of us to have a little homemade, off the books magic stashed away. Red Flag horror stories are becoming a daily occurrence, across the nation. And our rights are under assault by an unrelenting swamp. Given all that, as well as the reduction in the price of some parts of an 80% build, I felt like it was time to take the plunge.

    A cost analysis shows that building an 80% isn’t much if any, cheaper than buying a factory gun. But, there is a difference. If you build a Polymer 80, you get exactly the gun you want. And a detailed cost break down at the end will show how that works out.

    This article is painful to write because let’s be honest, fanny packs were terrible when they were popular back in the day and are even worse now. They basically tell everyone you’ve given up on life and have more pocket options than dignity left in life. It shows a sense of weakness and sends the message you’ve totally given up in life. By now, it should be fairly apparent I despise everything about fanny packs. When it comes to carrying a concealed handgun though, everything about looking weak and ridiculous can actually be a plus when it comes to blending in.

    It makes you look harmless and people tend to let your guard down. When I first saw my buddy carrying in a fanny pack, I laughed at him and immediately dismissed him because I didn’t expect him to pull a handgun out of such a ridiculous fanny pack. Having something like a fanny pack gives certain people the ability to carry appendix without having the gun stab you in the stomach every time you sit down. This especially works for big guys that can’t always carry appendix because they have a little bit of a gut.
The SKS, much like the uber-cheap Hi-Point family of firearms, is often mocked as being for the poor. It is the subject of derisive memes, enough to make it a running joke in the tactical market. But conventional wisdom is not always correct. I reference it repeatedly in my latest book Prairie Fire: Guidebook for Surviving Civil War 2, as an acceptable solution. And I would bet a lot of you old hands would agree with me. So we set out this week to re-examine the SKS with a critical lens. In a world of modern whiz-bang rifles, is the SKS good enough?

He concludes that, while not the best choice, it is, indeed, good enough for SHTF. I've written about the SKS before: see my article, "Survival Weapons: The SKS".
  • "Saturday Snippet: Surviving when the devil dances"--Bayou Renaissance Man. Peter Grant discusses some of the books written by Selco describing the Yugoslavian civil war and applying lessons to what could happen in the United States, including an excerpt from Selco's second book on the topic, SHTF Survival Stories: Memories from the Balkan War. Here are a few points from the excerpt:

No matter how much food, ammo, training and skills you have, when SHTF you are gonna be surprised. Most of us have been in the mode of preparing for something that is not happening for years, and when it finally happens there is going to be a period of a shock for the folks, and in that period a LOT of people are going to die.

And:

    Living in a society where you have certain rights and freedoms for years is a good thing.

    The bad thing is when the SHTF and you lose all those rights in a single day, you may find yourself so shocked that you simply do not know what next to do because you had those rights for many years, it became totally natural for you to own them.

    Having lots of conversations with friends from the US, I concluded that the majority of common folks simply do not understand that all your rights can be lost in one day.

    And not by the evil invaders from space, or Russians or whoever. Your government can take them. In one day.

And:

It is going to be very ugly, much uglier than my SHTF experience here, simply because the ‘fall’ when the SHTF is going to be bigger. The distance between modern everyday life and life in SHTF for the USA is WAY bigger than in my time. The majority of folks are soft and too dependent on the system.

  • "The Helicopters of Chile Return"--Normal American. A look at how the ultimately failed communist revolution in Chile went down. One of the key points raised in the article:

    When Chile’s street commies ran wild, law enforcement sat it out. This should be a lesson to anyone who expects police in Marxist-dominated enclaves to risk their pensions by doing their jobs. This aligns with the intimidation tactics of our domestic commie-terrorists, as ably summarized by Andy Ngo: “Make public participation in the political process so consequential for their opponents that they stay home & stay silent.”

    Deplorables should not expect to summon help by waving “Back the Blue” flags. Cops understand they’ll be safer elsewhere when American patriots on the list are up against the wall for being overly white or conservative or pro-Second Amendment or Christian, not that such a thing would be proposed here, of course.

    Policing already is politicized. D.C.’s finest failed to stop rioters from burning St. John’s Church, but brought out the cuffs to halt the dread menace of pro-life students chalking “Black Pre-Born Lives Matter” on a sidewalk. Police are arresting churchgoers while ignoring massive maskless protests.

    Any Trump supporter who bashed in heads of “anti-racist” marchers in Berkeley, Calif. should expect to be convicted of hate crime charges and sentenced to hard labor on the solar plantations. But a Berkeley college professor who decided his bike lock needed a closer acquaintance with the skulls of pro-Trump demonstrators got probation. The rule of law is a slogan to fool the rubes. Michelle Malkin calls it “anarcho-tyranny.”


VIDEO: "What do I conceal carry? Basics of Conceal Carry"--Garand Thumb (24 min.)
This video looks at belts, holsters, and firearms that the author has or does use for concealed carry. One of the belts that he mentions are the Kore belts. Both my son and I have used the Kore belts with great success. Kore offers leather belts (both black and brown) with a plastic core to provide stiffness, and a ratcheting buckle/belt system to give you a great deal of flexibility on fit. The leather belts are nice because they can be used for a dressier belt for office wear or business casual. Kore also makes a belt that is more rugged, being made, I believe, from the same material as conveyor belts with the added core and ratcheting system as on the leather belts. The Kore belts retail for around $50, including the buckle, but you can buy just the belt (sans buckle) for $10 or $15 less if you want more than one belt, and just switch the buckles between the belts. 

The Current Unrest:

    The innermost circles of the American mafia are abuzz.  The Boss of the Philly mob — ‘Skinny Joey’ Merlino — is taking a victory strut, hobnobbing around the highest echelons of old-time mafia folk, mostly in Florida, describing what may have been the heist of the century: the 2020 presidential election.

    The feat is drawing praise from far-flung corners of the Italian American business community, which sees the thanks of a grateful administration as key to the revival of the community’s political influence.

    But an associate says that Merlino might just be willing to flip on Joe Biden and the Pennsylvania political operatives who ordered up some 300,000 election ballots marked for Biden.  The source alleges that Merlino and a lean team of associates manufactured those ballots at a rate of $10 per ballot — a whopping $3 million for three days of work.  They were then packaged into non-descript cardboard boxes and dropped off outside the Philadelphia Convention Center.

    Sources who spoke to The Chronicle on the condition of anonymity say that Merlino picked up those ballots from two private households where a trusted handful of associates were busily marking ballots with Sharpie markers.  They were paid more than $1,000 per hour, often producing thousands of ballots every hour for more than 60 nearly-consecutive hours.

    The ballots were purchased in cash.
    A funny thing just happened to "Voter Inquiry Menu," the internal city of Philadelphia database that showed  dead people voted.

    This morning [Nov. 14], without any prior warning, the city abruptly shut it down. City employees who tried to log on to the database found a note across the bottom of their computer screen that said it had been "disabled and cannot be used."
    Here’s what I don’t understand. I thought that all the smart people agreed with Judis and Teixeira about The Emerging Democratic Majority of women, minorities, young people, and professionals. So who needs to game the vote, Democrats?

    So why do they need bushels of Dominion votes in four Democrat cities -- Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Atlanta -- to win Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia? Why the thirty-year effort of the Dems to relax the rules on voting, from Motor Voter to the present vote-by-mail?

    Why is it necessary to game the vote -- even steal an election?  Why is it necessary to hound a duly-elected president with a Special Prosecutor and goose up an impeachment over a phone call, and blast him throughout the COVID-19 epidemic? Why is it necessary to call your opponent’s systemic racists 50 years after the civil rights acts? Why is it necessary to censor social media, bearded @jack? Why is it necessary to hide Hunter Biden’s influence peddling? I thought you guys already owned the future.

    The answer is obvious. People don’t cheat unless they are about to lose everything, wife, house, job, children. So, whatever brave front the Dems are putting on they know in their heart of hearts that the game is nearly up.

The explanation proffered for this jump was that it was absentee ballots from Milwaukee county that supposedly were released by the county all at once. Maybe, but see the next entry below:

We’ve gone back and traced the spikes. We’ve seen where they were cast, primarily in four counties. We looked at how long it took to cast those votes. And we looked at the equipment that exists at all of those locations by serial number. And the fact of the matter is we can’t see any physical way possible for some of those votes to have been in those kind of numbers because they just don’t have the equipment that can produce it in that timing.

    When dealing with compulsively dishonest people, it doesn't pay to spend too much parsing their words. It's more helpful to study their deeds.

    The media keeps claiming that President Trump can't win, that his legal challenges are futile, hollow, and have absolutely no chance of winning in court. And, it's also launching a full-scale Jihad against those law firms and lawyers participating in legal challenges against the election results.

    This harassment, which includes threats to the licenses of lawyers who represent Republican clients, is an unprecedented violation of political norms. But it's also a tell.
    Hong Kongers are the most sophisticated insurgents I have seen. If America goes to full civil war, I suspect even Hong Kongers will be surpassed. Americans surely will surpass Hong Kongers on extreme violence. Every elected official and their families, tech-masters, journalists, prosecutors, judges at all levels, police, military, and more, will ‘live’ in extreme danger.

    If we go into full civil war, no place – even overseas – will be safe for Americans, especially the richest and most influential, if they live openly. They cannot hire enough security. Even so, the more security they hire, the bigger chance they take on hiring the wrong man. In a war, every big office contains a leaker or a sleeper.

    In this age, we are beyond mere doxing. Social media, banks, and endless others, including average people, can now be ultra-doxers. Everyone who is not actively hiding can be found. Those with most to lose are often easiest to target. This still does not seem to have dawned on many people. As if this is a game and they can play from the sidelines. There are no sidelines in a civil war.
  • "What The Progressive Socialist Liberals Have In Store For Conservatives: A Master Course In Government-Sponsored Genocide"--Matt Bracken, American Partisan. Bracken has come across a series of articles by Metallicman laying out what a socialist/Marxist revolution would really mean for conservatives here in America. You may remember these articles from last year, because I mentioned them in my post, "Edging Toward Civil War II: Democrats Want Your Guns." If not, here are the direct links to the series: (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4) (Part 5) (Part 6). But Bracken also has some key reminders and takeaways, including:
    • “White Privilege” means “Scheduled for Genocide”.
    • “Diversity Officers” collect names, put them on lists.
    • Never permit yourself to be disarmed.
    • You need to be lethal, and not afraid to use a weapon.
    • “Door to door gun collection” means SHTF is about to happen.
    • All genocide originates from the wealthy leadership.
    • Stay away from crowds.
    • When ordered to report to mass collection points – run for the woods.
    • Your neighbors WILL turn you in.

In my opinion, gun collection--especially if it is door to door--means that you are already waist deep in CWII and/or SHTF. But before the door-to-door starts, the authorities will have already started moving against anyone that has ever filled out a 4473.

 

VIDEO: "What Would A World War Look Like Today?"--Covert Cabal (13 min.)
This video explains why a world war today would be nothing like WWII. The primary reason has to do with technology. The weapons in use today make it possible to precisely strike valuable targets pretty much anywhere in the world. Key targets will be taken out very early in the conflict. Second, that same technology means that weapons and munitions are expensive and difficult to manufacture (i.e., highly specialized). Unlike WWII where an auto manufacturer could quickly switch to building tanks or planes, that won't happen. That means that the high tech weapons will not be replaced very easily or at all (remember those precision guided munitions will probably destroy the factories necessary to manufacture the weapons systems), so a prolonged war will probably go more and more low tech as it progresses. And then there is the issue of nuclear weapons, which is the main reason that large conflicts have been impossible over the last 70 years. Although the video doesn't go into this, nuclear weapons are insurance that a world war would never lead to a decisive victory because once the war becomes an existential threat, the nuclear weapons will be used. The winner of the next world war will be the one that can nullify its enemy's nuclear weapons.

Miscellany:

    If Donald Trump doesn’t take the Oath of Office on January 20, 2021, one principal but little-noted reason for this may be that he crossed one of the most powerful and least accountable forces in the nation: the military-industrial complex. ...

    We learned just recently that we never really left Syria in the first place. As Victoria Taft noted at PJ Media Friday, President Trump’s former special envoy for Syria, Never-Trumper Jim Jeffrey, has boasted that he circumvented Trump’s orders to withdraw American troops from Syria by lying to the president. Jeffrey explained: “We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there,” and “the actual number of troops in northeast Syria is ‘a lot more than’ the roughly two hundred troops Trump initially agreed to leave there in 2019.”

    What the Masters of War have in mind, however, is a far greater commitment of American troops than even Jeffrey’s shell game allows for. After all, how else are they going to keep happy “all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes”? There’s money to be made even in the devastated hellscape that is Syria after nearly a decade of civil war, and so our moral superiors are starting to beat the drums of war in Syria once again in order to ensure that President Biden, if such a nightmare comes true, commits enough American troops to keep that money flowing into the right pockets.

    And so the Associated Press reminded us Sunday (in an article that was reprinted in the Huffington Post, which indicates an effort to make sure the far-Left will be on board) that “a half century after Hafez Assad launched a bloodless coup in Syria, his family still rules the country.” AP quoted English swamp creature Neil Quilliam of Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa program: “There can be no doubt that 50 years of Assad family rule, which has been ruthless, cruel and self-defeating, has left the country what can only be described as broken, failed and almost forgotten.”

    The obvious subtext here is that we must remember Assad’s oppression, and not just remember, but act. ...

* * * 

    Assad is, without any doubt, a scoundrel. But as his undeniable evils begin to preoccupy the media anew, it is useful to ask cui bono. Who benefits? There are oppressive rulers all over the world; why is Assad once again the focus of all this negative attention? The answer is clear enough: toppling Assad is a bit of unfinished business left over from the Obama administration. Now that it looks as if the messianic internationalists are going to be back in the saddle again, they’re ready to resume working to “make the world safe for democracy,” as their messianic internationalist forbear Woodrow Wilson put it, and to remake the globe in accordance with their smug and miseducated sense of the way things ought to be.

Along with the observation about the obvious proliferation and acceptance of homosexuality in the hierarchy, I have a few more:
  1. For years they knew that McCarrick had shared his bed with seminarians and priests.  Since this was “adult” behavior, and they believed McCarrick who claimed it was never sexual, they never acted on it.  Once again this tells me that the hierarchy devalues priests and seminarians.  They continued to promote him because, well, “it was just priests and seminarians.”  One thing has become abundantly clear to me over the last couple of decades.  No matter what they say, they really don’t care about their priests.  Their actions certainly rarely match their sentiments and words.  We are here to exploit and command and serve as cheap labor.  This allows them to have power over us to continue to perpetuate their immorality and keep us from speaking out.
  2. It was clear to me when they got to the section regarding Francis that the fix was in.  As you have noted from others, this was a total CYA of Francis and his favored bishops.
  3. It was also very clear that the document was a hit job on Vigano.  I am not actually a fan of his, but the document goes out of its way to disprove his claims.  It does so in an overtly polemical way which is really unnecessary in this kind of document.
  4. I don’t think JP2 comes off as badly as some might suggest.  McCarrick was passed over for promotion a few times.  There was one particular prelate who very much sought McCarrick’s promotion.  Then JP2 asked for testimony from numerous bishops who either lied or obscured the truth.
  5. That being said, what is it with these guys thinking it’s merely a lapse of judgment for a bishop to sleep with seminarians and priests?   Maybe more is known now about grooming behavior?  I think there used to be a clear presumption of taking a bishop’s word as gospel truth.  “A bishop would never lie.”
  6. McCarrick was a master manipulator.  This was a major takeaway.  He knew how to play the hierarchy off of each other and get what he wanted.  Look at the letters and how he dealt with him being asked to lead a quiet life by B16.  He basically continued to do whatever he wanted and the Church had difficulty corralling him.  Mostly because they simply didn’t have hard data and accusations yet.
  7. I also wonder if Francis wanted to do a hit job on JP2 and B16 because by discrediting them he also discredits their teaching authority.  “Why should someone take seriously what JP2 taught regarding marriage and family if he promoted a serial abuser, etc.”  This will help Francis continue his obfuscation of the moral doctrine of the church.  He hasn’t definitively changed that doctrine, but he continues to undermine it which renders it effectively impotent.
    I realize that some have criticized priests for not being more publicly vocal about the corruption.  The problems are numerous.  First, just like McCarrick they cover for each other.  Chanceries tend to be very insular with few changes of clerics in leadership, so they protect each other.  Any public criticism is immediately met with threats from the chancery.  Rarely is something so obviously wrong and provable that a priest could take the chance to say something.  Anything we report (and to whom?) will be shared with our own bishop by one of his friends.  What you end up seeing is “smoke” and behaviors that you know point to greater issues, but nothing you can definitively call out.
 
    Second, they have complete control over your livelihood and future.  If they suspend you, then they cut your pay and benefits to a merely sustainable level.  There’s no possibility of retaining counsel.  Then if you leave the priesthood the Church says you can never work in the Church again.  All of the skills and education you have accumulated can no longer be used in the Church.  You know then, that if you leave, or are forced out, that you will have to start all over again with a new career and that you have lost any ability to effect change.  Third (and this is my position), we are now the resistance.  I have parishioners who need to hear the truth and receive the sacraments.  I know am making a huge difference in people’s lives despite the hierarchy.  I am happy as a priest and as long as the bishop largely leaves me alone, I can do good work.

  • Thank goodness: "Department of Energy Rolls Back Obama's Dishwasher Restrictions"--Reason.com. In what was a prime example of a green fail, the Obama Administration had promulgated a rule limiting standard dishwashers to use no more than 3.1 gallons of water per cycle. Did it save water or energy? No, because dishwashers were no longer effective at what they were intended to do:
The tighter rules didn't lead to energy savings for customers. The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers estimated that they actually increased water consumption by 63 billion gallons, as households would have to run their dishwashers multiple cycles, or pre-rinse their dishes by hand, in order to get dishes actually clean.

The new rules "establish[ ] a new product class for residential dishwashers that will have a normal cycle time of up to one hour and that can use five gallons of water per cycle."

    Notorious Bronx-based bootlegger, Arthur 'Dutch Schutlz' Flegenheimer, is believed to have stashed away money, World War I Liberty Bonds and jewels that were valued at $7million in 1935. It is now valued at around $150million. 

    On October 23, 1935, Schultz was gunned down at the Palace Chop House in Newark, New Jersey, by hitmen Charles 'The Bug' Workman and Emmanuel 'Mendy' Weiss. 

    According to the new documentary, Secrets of the Dead: Gangster's Gold, Schultz died a day later, on October 24, 1935, without revealing the exact location of his treasure. 

    A friend of mine pioneered DVD training series in DVD and streaming format for law enforcement, fire and other public safety professionals. While visiting him in MA, I asked him how he developed the software to stream securely online what was then video restricted to law enforcement.

    “Licensed it from the world’s largest porn site for $1,” he said.

    He explained in some detail how the online porn industry had driven a significant portion, maybe most, of the innovation in online streaming video, pay per view, secure payment and secure access to their websites. The needs of a law enforcement restricted online site closely paralleled that of a hardcore website. And the IT team at the porn site was happy to license their proprietary software for $1 to “help law enforcement.”

The remainder of the article goes on to discuss the philosophical and practical implications of AI and robots (androids) indistinguishable from humans. Read the whole thing. 

    An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) was shot down in space from a warship for the first time during a successful demonstration on Tuesday, according to the Missile Defense Agency (MDA).

    The ICBM target missile launched from a test range in the Marshall Islands, located in the Pacific Ocean, between Hawaii and the Philippines around 12:50 a.m., and was shot down in space by a missile launched from the guided-missile destroyer USS John Finn at sea, the MDA announced.

    It was destroyed by an advanced SM-3 Block IIA ballistic missile defense interceptor made by Raytheon Missiles & Defense and co-developed with Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, a statement said.

    NASA is planning to build a base and a nuclear power plant on the Moon by 2026 and is inviting proposals from companies ready to take on the challenge.

    According to a statement issued by the Department of Energy, the plan will involve the construction of a 10-kW class fission surface power system to be used for demonstrative purposes. The plant is to be manufactured and assembled on Earth and then shipped to the Moon on a launch vehicle. This vehicle will take the plant to Moon orbit, from where a lander will take it to the surface of the satellite.

    The demonstration will continue for one year, and if successful, it could open the door to other missions on both the Moon and Mars.

There is a company using the Idaho National Laboratory that is going to be constructing small nuclear reactors for generating power. This sounds right up their alley.

  • Parting shot: "There's a guy in town who walks around talking to himself using only figurative language. We call him the Village Idiom." —Albert Sloan (contributed to Reader's Digest).

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1 comment:

  1. John WilderNovember 19, 2020 at 8:44 PM

    I love treasure stories. The idea that you can find something hidden for years . . . so cool.

    ReplyDelete

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