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Wednesday, January 20, 2021

A Quick Run Around The Web (Jan. 20, 2021)

VIDEO: "Your biggest mistake when walking through woods... Explained"--David Dudley Outdoors (10 min.)


VIDEO: "How hard it is to explode a hole in concrete wall?"--Beyond the Press (12 min.)
Note that they have to cap the charge with something relatively dense (water) in order to really direct the blast into the concrete; similar to mud-cap blasting of rock.

Firearms/Self-Defense/Prepping:
    A few weeks after the collapse came, all aspects of our normal life changed based on the new reality around us.

    One aspect was “sleep cycle“- the time when we sleep and when we were awake and active.

    One of the most basic rules that jumped in was that most of the activities got done during the night.

    Some reasons for that were obvious, like danger from snipers. But also the other reason (maybe even more important) was that over time it becomes very important to hide your activities connected to gathering resources.

    To explain it more, when you have a lot of people in a small area (city) and you have less resources that are needed for that number of people, the fact that you HAVE something (food, water medicines…) needs to be hidden from people who do not have that.

    The system (law, police, etc.) was out, and it was important not to give reasons for people to attack you because you have something interesting.

    So, anything connected with gathering resources (wood, food, trade…) was finished mostly during the night.

    Of course, violence mostly happened during the night too (violence that included “close fighting.“)

    Activities in your home and yard were possible to be done in the daytime. For example, we would spend the day fixing our water gutter that goes from the roof so it can go in a big barrel, but if we needed to climb on the roof and fix holes with tarps or to “funnel“ it to the gutter, that needed to be done in the night time.

    There was no “usual“ time to get up, at least not in hardest period. Even if we did not have anything particular to do we would be alert during the night time, simply because night time was full of different activities in the city, and you needed to be ready.

    In our case (because we had more than 10 people most of the time in the house) we could do a schedule that meant not all of us needed to be alert all the night.

    During 24 hour periods of time, someone was always sleeping, others were doing some job, but as a general rule nights were much more active then days.

    Messing up with normal sleep cycle was a problem alone, and it contributed to the stress, feeling tired and stressed because you did not have enough sleep or enough quality sleep was a normal thing.

    Sometimes close detonation of shells would wake me up, sometimes my relatives woke me up because it was my guard shift, sometimes we would all be awake the whole night because of close shootings, and possible danger.

    Sometimes I would wake up by myself because that day I did not have any particular duty to do, so I would stay home, checking things in the house, maybe trying to fix some things.
  • A drill for the ammo-drought: "Rangemaster Baseline Assessment Drill"--Active Response Training. Ellifritz summarizes the drill and links to a PDF of a target appropriate for the drill. Key takeaway:
The Baseline Assessment exercise covers a lot of handgun skill core competencies in just 20 rounds of live fire.   In fact, I don’t think I could honestly come up with a 20 round drill that covers so much ground.
"Cruiser ready" is how I typically recommend a defensive long gun, rifle or shotgun, be stored. This term is commonly used to refer to action unlocked, safety disengaged, with an empty chamber. To keep the action unlocked, the hammer must be down, which requires the trigger to be pressed. 

Or...

Cruiser Safe is very similar to Cruiser Ready, with a few distinct changes. With Cruiser Safe, the action is locked, safety is on, and chamber is empty. To get the gun ready, disengage the action lock, cycle the action, then disengage the safety to fire.
There are some things to take into consideration with the Magpul Glock 17 drum magazine. The mag catch in your Glock may need to be replaced or upgraded. Jon Canipe of Magpul told us it is a simple fact that you are trying to hang 50 rds off a plastic mag catch and the weight of the drum does not help either. So if you have a Gen 3 Glock 17 with a high round count then you should get a new replacement mag catch. If you have a Gen 4/5 Glock 17 you should upgrade to a metal mag catch.
    As its model name suggests, the Winchester 1886 began production in 1886 as an updated and improved version of the old Model 1876. It was designed by John Browning and manufactured by Winchester Repeating Arms Company (of course).

    The 1886 was a more durable and reliable model thanks to changes such as a better locking-block and a nickel-steel barrel, the latter of which was used for smokeless powder cartridges. It was chambered in bigger calibers, too, starting with the 45-70 Gov’t and moving on to 45-90 and 50-110 Express. Nearly two decades after its creation, it was chambered in .33 WCF, and then two decades after that it was offered in .348 Winchester. Eventually, 32-gauge shotshell was available by special order.

    This model lever was used in the Spanish-American War and also early in World War I chambered in 45-90 Sharps. Apparently, it was needed in World War I so it could be loaded with incendiary ammunition to target airships. That order was placed by Great Britain and the guns were issued to gunners who used the levers to shoot hydrogen gas-filled German zeppelins.

    Nothing says badass like using a 45-90 lever-action to set zeppelins on fire.

The '86 was discontinued in 1935, but was resurrected in .45-70. Now, according to this article, it is also being offered in .45-90. The primary difference between this model and the original is the addition of a tang safety. The author adds:

Ballistically the 45-90 Win is the perfect round for hunting large game. Depending on the load you can exceed 4,000 foot-pounds of muzzle energy. It’s a great cartridge for deer hunting but it’s worth remembering you’re not just going to shoot the deer, you’re going to blow a substantial wound cavity in its vitals.

At a price of $1,400, it is probably not anything that I would get; but if it was available in .50-110, which I've wanted since I was just a little kid, it would be tempting. 

    If you read any of the many lists of “must have” firearms for preppers, you are likely to see a recurring theme: you need a .22 long rifle, a pistol, a shotgun, a battle rifle, and a precision rifle.  Well, in my experience, most people never do enough firearms training to really get proficient with a single platform, let alone five, so I don’t tow this line.  Certainly, all of these options are useful, but perhaps not all necessary, depending on your environment or situation.

    I would suggest that the two most important firearms to have for preparedness is a primary defensive handgun and a fighting rifle.  The others are optional depending on your living situation and needs. ...

His reasoning is that a fighting rifle--particularly with a LPVO--will be able to handle almost all of your needs out to 300 yards. 

  • "The Taurus 856: The Appeal Of The Wheel" by David Higginbotham, The Mag Life. While the article is ostensibly about this Taurus short-barrel 6-shooter, the author discusses when he believes a revolver is a better defensive pistol, and his thinking is similar to what Greg Ellifritz has said about the matter:
    I’ve talked to more people than I can count about finding the perfect handgun for their needs. Some have no business carrying a gun at all, and I’m not shy about saying so. Others I find are eager to actually jump in and learn how to solve problems with a semiautomatic. And I mean that in two ways—they are willing to defend themselves and others and they’re also willing to understand what causes malfunctions and how to solve them. 
 
    In the middle of these two types of people are those for whom a good revolver is the perfect choice. With a hefty trigger pull, the added nuance of a single-action pull, and the ease of maintenance, a revolver can be easy to learn.

    When my mother, in her late 60s, wanted to get her concealed carry permit, we worked through several guns and settled on a revolver. She didn’t have to rack a slide and she didn’t have to worry about accidentally dropping a magazine. As she aged, she couldn’t pull the double-action trigger–but she could still double up on the hammer and cock the gun. It was a solution that worked for her almost to the end.

I've often thought that if Smith and Wesson put modern sights on it (so you could have night sights, for instance), the Model 10 in .38 Special would be ideal for the middle-of-the-road person--it's slim as revolvers go, not too heavy notwithstanding the steel frame, and in a 4-inch barrel would be serviceable as a home defense weapon but could still be pressed into use as a concealed carry weapon.  

    Finally, your location is actually one of the most important aspects of signaling for rescue. You can’t just sit down where you are and hope somebody finds you. You must put yourself in a position to be found. If you are with a vehicle, you want to try to stay with the vehicle. It is a large bright metallic object and easy to spot from a distance. If you decide to leave your current location, find some way to mark the direction you travel. You can blaze your trail by cutting through the bark of trees and leaving a bright chop mark. You can also create an arrow on the ground showing where you are headed. Remember that rescuers are most likely to look for you in the last area in which you were seen or were supposed to be. Try to stay on high ground as much as possible. It is easier for you to see rescue workers and easier for them to see you. Sound carries better as well. Try to stay in open areas if it is an option. Often times, helicopters cannot see survivors because the trees are too thick. If you are on the move, try to head towards large bodies of water. This is where you are more likely to find people. Roads, rivers, and game trails are paths that you should try to follow if you run across one. Before you can be rescued, you have to put yourself in an area where that is likely to happen.

    Should I stay or should I go? That is the question you have to ask yourself. Only you can answer that. There are situations where it is best to hunker down and wait for rescue. There are also times that doing so will kill you. It all comes down to the odds. You have to ask yourself, what are the odds that somebody will find me if I stay here? Is anybody looking for me? How far is civilization? Do I have the resources needed to survive in this location? How long can I last? Am I physically able to travel whatever distance is needed? What does the weather look like? Do I have anybody else with me? These are all things to consider before making your decision. Hopefully, when you hear that helicopter or come over a rise and see that truck you will be ready to signal and head home.

Reading this, I am reminded of an incident discussed on a television documentary of a woman hiking the Appalachian Trail that got off the trail to relieve herself and apparently became disoriented. She hunkered down and stayed where she was waiting to rescued until she died of starvation and exposure ... only a few hundred yards from the trail. 

  • Expensive but good quality: "G Code Chest rig Review: Gearing Up"--The New Rifleman. Per the review, this is a minimalist chest rig. The author was particularly impressed by the mag pouches:
The mag pouches are phenomenal. There is a rubber insert on the inside of the pouch to help hold the magazine in place and it also reduces the noise of mags rattling while moving, a very nice touch.
  • "Overland camping trailers for bug outs? Review of the Turtleback Expedition" by John Ramey, The Prepared. Summary:
    • We’re happy with the Expedition and have been recommending it to the many people who stop us to ask what it’s about.
    • The core build quality is great. There’s some fit-and-finish stuff we’re unhappy with, such as the swing door and latch for the picnic table area, but overall it’s fine.
    • In an emergency where we’d leave our home in a vehicle, this is what we’re hooking up and taking with us (even over other available RV options like a fifth-wheel) because it’s robust enough to keep us comfortable on the road but small and agile enough to go places other RVs can’t — and we personally value flexibility over luxury in an emergency.
The author has some caveats, including that you should only buy this trailer if "[y]ou spend time outdoors as part of normal, non-emergency life and will get constant use from the trailer. Don’t buy this just for prepping — you could do so much more with $20-40k instead."
  • "Build a Vehicle Defense Kit for Riots and Civil Unrest"--USA Carry. The author is not discussing firearms, but other tools and equipment to supplement a firearm, to-wit: (i) a large container of OC or bear spray (saying that you want a fog or spray pattern rather than a stream); (ii) a small fire extinguisher; (iii) a trauma kit; (iv) a glass breaker/rescue tool; (v) masks and safety glasses; and (vi) decon wipes and eye wash to deal with tear gas.
  • If you have a Ring camera, use it before answering the door: "Ring camera captures terrifying moment killers armed with a rifle and handgun shoot dead entrepreneur, 23, as he opened the door to his Staten Island rap studio"--Daily Mail. Looks like the suspects and victim were all Afro-American.
  • "Shootout Between California Home Owner and Attacker Caught on Video"--The Truth About Guns. The suspect, Erick Contreras, who came armed with a handgun, showed up at the victim's house at 3:30 am and proceeded to try and kick the door open. That woke up the victim who came to the door armed. The victim accidently fired a round when loading his gun (finger off the trigger!). Contreras attempted to fire his weapon multiple times but it misfired or jammed as he can be seen repeatedly ejecting cases until he was able to get one shot fired. He fled in a truck, shooting at a different house, but was apprehended in the same neighborhood.  
  • A couple from Chicago this past week:
    • "4 carjackings reported in about 2 hours on Saturday evening"--CWB Chicago. In one of the incidents, one of the suspects was armed with a rifle. According to the article, the incidents were similar to carjackings that CPD had been warning about over the prior 4 weeks.
    • "Armed carjackings reported in Gold Coast, Lincoln Park, Edgewater, West Town"--CWB Chicago. This appears to be completely different events from those reported in the prior article. Per the article, "Armed carjackers stole five cars in four separate crimes stretching from the Gold Coast to West Town and Lincoln Park to Edgewater on Tuesday evening. Three of the five hijacked vehicles are Dodge Chargers, most are rental cars, and at least three have out-of-state license plates." Another of the vehicles was a new Range Rover. It is interesting to note that in two of the incidents, the suspects used an "assault style" rifle, with one of the victims reported that one of the carjackers in his case carried an AR style rifle (which report we have to take with a grain of salt since most people can't tell the difference between an AR and an umbrella). In another of the cases, the victim reported that one of the handguns was outfitted with a green laser sight.
  • Blast from the past: "Crime Rate of Women Up Sharply Over Men's" by Steven V. Roberts, New York Times (June 13, 1971). Apparently feminism bore early fruits. From the article:
    Women are gaining rapidly in at least one traditional area of male supremacy—crime.

    Statistics across the country disclose that the female crime rate for most offenses is rising faster than the male rate. In Los Angeles County, for in stance, male arrests went up 10 per cent in 1970 while female arrests rose 23 per cent in the year, an increase that Sheriff Peter Pitchess called “startling.”

    It is always difficult to com pare criminal statistics, and not every city reports the same findings, but the general trend is clear. Federal Bureau of In vestigation figures show that from 1960 to 1969, male arrests for major crimes rose 61.3 per cent. For females, the increase was 156.2 per cent.

    Thus, women accounted for 16 per cent of the arrests for major crimes in 1969, com pared with 10 per cent in 1960. Among juveniles, the increases in arrest were 78.2 per cent for males and 211.8 per cent for females.

    The heaviest increases in crimes by women are those against property, such as larceny and embezzlement, and in narcotics violations. But women are also committing more robberies, assaults and crimes involving alcohol.

The article mentions several causes, including changing social perceptions regarding women and women rejecting passive roles, but also blames at least part of the rise on the spreading use of drugs. 

One of the most consistent and robust findings in criminology is that, for nearly every category of crime, females commit much less crime and delinquency than males. The gender gap in offending is particularly notable for more serious and violent offenses. In recent years, however, the extent and character of this gender difference in crime is increasingly being called into question by statistics and media reports suggesting a greater involvement of women-and particularly girls-in the criminal justice system. During the past couple of decades, girls' delinquency as reported in official sources of data has undergone substantial changes relative to boys' delinquency. Uniform Crime Report (UCR) statistics showing marked increases in girls' arrests for aggravated and, especially, simple assault have encouraged the growing perception in the media and among some criminologists that girls' violence is on the rise and that the gender gap in violent offending is closing. For example, between 1980 and 2003 in the United States, girls' arrests nationwide increased 42.7 percent, while arrests of boys actually decreased by 10.2 percent (Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI] 2004). Within this same time period, arrests of girls for index violent offenses-homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault-increased by 75.2 percent and arrests of girls for "simple assaults" increased by 318.5 percent, whereas boys' arrests declined 11.3 percent for index violent offenses but increased 130.5 percent for simple assault. These arrest trends, along with high-profile cases of female delinquency, are the main source for media headlines such as "Girls getting increasingly violent," "Girls catching up with boys in delinquency and crime," and "Girls not all sugar and spice."
    • Related: "Female Offenders in the Juvenile Justice System" (PDF). A statistical summary published by the Department of Justice in June 1996 also noting the continued sharp rise of arrests for crimes, including assaults. You might also want to take a look at this book excerpt (PDF) showing that in the early 2000s, while crime rates were decreasing, female crime rates were not declining as fast as those for men in most categories including violent crime. 
  • "Democrat House Already Planning Gun Control Bills"--Bearing Arms. They want to ban or require the registration of certain types of firearms and ammunition, require "safe storage" and mandatory investigation of reports of unsafe storage, prohibit private sales of firearms, and more.
  • They chose poorly: "Revealed: walkie-talkie app Zello hosted far-right groups who stormed Capitol"--The Guardian. The article begins (underline added):
    Audio and chat logs reveal that at least two insurrectionists who broke into the Capitol on 6 January used Zello, a social media walkie-talkie app that critics say has largely ignored a growing far-right user base.

    “We are in the main dome right now,” said a female militia member, speaking on Zello, her voice competing with the cacophony of a clash with Capitol police. “We are rocking it. They’re throwing grenades, they’re frickin’ shooting people with paintballs, but we’re in here.”

    “God bless and godspeed. Keep going,” said a male voice from a quiet environment.

    “Jess, do your shit,” said another. “This is what we fucking lived up for. Everything we fucking trained for.”

    The frenzied exchange took place at 2.44pm in a public Zello channel called “STOP THE STEAL J6”, where Trump supporters at home and in Washington DC discussed the riot as it unfolded. Dynamic group conversations like this exemplify why Zello, a smartphone and PC app, has become popular among militias, which have long fetishized military-like communication on analog radio.

    While it is sad to consider that this is the way it is today, it’s probably best to keep these things to yourself. Always ask yourself “What good will it do if others know (this) or (that)? You will discover that in many or most cases the answer will be that there’s no benefit at all.

    “Sharing” information with others focuses attention on YOU and WHAT YOU ARE DOING. Remember the old saying “Loose lips sink ships”?

    Above, I used the example of food storage with regards to OPSEC. But it should also apply to anything else that may be considered to be outside the ‘normal’ in today’s mainstream.

    What about your political ideals? Oh my goodness! Just look at what’s going on out there right now as of this post!!! If you are a conservative, you are being CRUSHED by the mainstream and Big Tech!!! And God forbid if anyone finds out you’re a Trump supporter, Cancel Culture could get you fired on the spot!

    We’re in a civil war about this right now! It’s going to get much worse. There is NO DOUBT. So just in this example alone, OPSEC is very important.

    While solvent traps are non-functioning as suppressors, the ATF argues that some features may show “constructive intent” to manufacture unregistered suppressors, which is a crime. Specifically, the ATF says that dimples in some designs mark places to drill, cut, or machine the traps, critical for remanufacturing them into suppressors.

    If these dimples or marks are a part of the kits from the manufacturer, constructive intent is built into the design, according to the ATF. Other solvent traps and kits without these dimples or marks do not show constructive intent as the ATF has ruled before, and are legal to buy and keep, and even convert, with the right paperwork in hand.

    The ATF and U.S. Customs are also working to stem the import of “fuel filters,” which are often complete and functional suppressors all but in name, many of which are made and shipped from overseas.

    The Watu features a 3.26” CPM 20CV triangle blade with a 0.098” blade thickness and a full flat grind. This shape of this blade is sort of like a Wharncliffe with a bit of an upswept tip. It opens with Spyderco’s Trademark Round Hole and has a phosphorus bronze washer pivot.

    Mounted on skeletonized stainless-steel liners, this compression lock has carbon-fiber and G-10 laminate handle scales. They’re textured for a great grip. The handle shape has an interesting feel in hand. This knife is fully ambidextrous and has a tip-up pocket clip. It’s 4.17” closed, 7.35” overall, and weighs about 3 ounces.

I recently purchased one of these. It is an excellent knife. In fact, this is the first knife I've ever bought that was literally shaving sharp out of the box. It is a little shorter than what I've been carrying, but that makes it easier to pull my keys out of my pocket. It is light weight and the placement of clip means that it fits deep into your pocket without the end sticking out slightly like many other knives. I wish it had a finger groove or cut to prevent the finger for slipping over the blade, but if you nestle the back of the handle into the palm of the hand, it probably won't be an issue. The biggest downside to this knife is the price: $182. I normally would not have paid that much for this size and type of folder, but after handling it, it somehow spoke to me--if you know what I mean--unlike any other folder has in quite some time. The balance, feel, handling, blade style, all seemed to just be right.

  • "How Ergonomics Affect Knife Handle Comfort And Safety"--Survival Common Sense. The author begins by noting: "What is the most common complaint of knife users? In a haphazard, unscientific, random survey I did of first responders, butchers, outdoorspeople, bushcrafters, and knife users in general, I found that the biggest complaint is that knife handles are too short." He then discusses the proportions for the hands of an average male and female, and how to properly measure your hands and determine your grip size. 
  • "Manual Antenna Tuner Shows How Homebrewing Is Done"--Hackaday (h/t KA9OFF). From the article:

    If there’s anything about amateur radio that has more witchcraft in it than the design and implementation of antennas, we don’t know what it would be. On the face of it, hanging out a chunk of wire doesn’t seem like it should be complicated, but when you dive into the details, building effective antennas and matching them to the job at hand can be pretty complex.

    That doesn’t mean antenna topics have to remain a total mystery, of course, especially once someone takes the time to explain things properly. [Charlie Morris (ZL2CTM)] recently did this with a simple antenna tuner, a device used to match impedances between a transmitter and an antenna. As he explains in the first video below, his tuner design is really just a Wheatstone bridge where the antenna forms half of one leg. A toroidal transformer with multiple taps and a variable capacitor forms an LC circuit that matches the high impedance antenna, in this case a multi-band end-fed halfwave, with the nominal 50-ohm load expected by the transceiver. A small meter and a diode detector indicate when the bridge is balanced, which means the transceiver is seeing the proper load.


VIDEO: "THE GRAY MAN HELMET | Bump Cap Insert"--The Urban Prepper (5 min.)


VIDEO: "My 2021 Bikepacking Gear List"--Darwin on the trail (17 min.)

Miscellany:
    We all know why those troops are there. They aren’t protecting Biden from the Proud Boys. They aren’t protecting him from anyone. They’re there because the people who control Joe Biden — Joe Biden controls nothing, after all — want to send a message to America.

    That message is: We’re in control, and we don’t care if you like it or not. Shut up and sit down if you know what’s good for you.

    Those troops serve a political purpose. They show that the people who control Joe Biden have no qualms about using the military to practice violence upon a truculent population.
  • Michael Yon tweets: "90% chance that before 2021 closes out, United States will be in obvious civil war."
    • Related: Paul Craig Roberts warns: "Unlike in the past, it is impossible for a citizens’ militia to stand against the weapons and body armor that the military has. So, unless the military splits, the reds are outgunned. Never believe that the Establishment would not release chemical and biological agents against red forces. Or for that matter nuclear weapons." Roberts make the same mistake that many people do: thinking that such a conflict would be a stand-up battle between opposing forces. 
    • Related: The Daily Caller reports that "[a] USA Today/Suffolk University poll released Sunday found that 65% of respondents said the country is headed in the wrong direction, a roughly 16% increase since last month, when a Dec. 28 poll found that 49% of respondents thought the country was on the wrong track."
  • And the Security State closes its iron fist: "How Facial Recognition Technology Is Helping Identify the U.S. Capitol Attackers: Huge databases and powerful AI algorithms enable a law enforcement panopticon" by Mark Harris, IEEE Spectrum. A short excerpt:
    “We have over three billion photos that we indexed from the public internet, like Google for faces,” Hoan Ton-That, CEO of facial recognition start-up Clearview AI told Spectrum.

    Ton-That said that Clearview’s customers, including the FBI, were using it to help identify the perpetrators: “Use our system, and in about a second it might point to someone’s Instagram page.” 

    Clearview has attracted criticism because it relies on images scraped from social media sites without their—or their users’—permission. 
    • Related: "Security Culture Is Changing After Civil Unrest" by Rosemary Feitelberg, Yahoo Finance (h/t KA9OFF). Kevin Davis, director of GardaWorld Security’s consulting services division, predicts that the protests of 2020 and the event of Jan. 6, 2021, will cause a shift in viewpoint toward security including state capitols becoming more secure and less open to the public, as well as businesses investing more in security and seeing as a cost of business. I agree on the first point. The second point is going to be highly variable: businesses located in neighborhoods and cities with lots of diversity will be very different than those located in lily white areas. They already have been in California. What may very well change is widespread adoption of pull down screening or doors for businesses, much like you see in other parts of the world, to protect windows and keep out looters.
  • "How to interpret the news in a totalitarian society"--Bayou Renaissance Man. Peter Grant first reviews some steps suggested by Sarah Hoyt on interpreting the news under a socialist regime, but also adds:

A classic example [of ludicrous restrictions] is the adamant denial by the "ruling class" in the United States, and its allies in the mainstream media, that no electoral fraud took place during the November 2020 Presidential elections.  It's as plain as the nose on your face that such fraud not only took place, but determined the outcome of the election.  It's impossible to deny that on the basis of the facts - therefore, they deny or ignore the facts.  "They've never been proved in a court of law!"  So what?  The powers that be have made very sure that every time they came into a court of law, they were ruled out before they could be judged, on the basis of this or that extraneous factor.  The media parrot the "party line" daily - "There's no evidence!  The allegations are baseless!"  Meanwhile, we all know better.

Incumbent Donald Trump lost Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin by such extremely narrow margins that a swing of less than 22,000 votes in those crucial states would have gotten him reelected. With a record 158 million votes cast, this amounted to a victory margin of around 0.01%. So if just one American voter in 7,000 had changed his mind, Trump might have received another four years in office. One American voter in 7,000.

He continues:

    Even leaving aside some of these plausible claims [of election fraud], the case for a stolen election seems almost airtight. I don’t know or care anything about Dominion voting machines, whether they are controlled by Venezuelan Marxists, Chinese Communists, or Martians. But the most blatant election-theft was accomplished in absolutely plain sight.

    Not long before the election, the hard drive of an abandoned laptop owned by Joe Biden’s son Hunter revealed a gigantic international corruption scheme, quite possibility involving the candidate himself. But the facts of this enormous political scandal were entirely ignored and boycotted by virtually every mainstream media outlet. And once they story was finally published in the pages of the New York Post, America’s oldest newspaper, all links to the Post article and its website were suddenly banned by Twitter, Facebook, and other social media outlets to ensure that the voters remained ignorant until after they had cast their ballots.

    Renowned international journalist Glenn Greenwald was hardly a Trump partisan, but he became outraged that the editors of the Intercept, the $100 million publication he himself had co-founded, refused to allow him to cover that massive media scandal, and he angrily resigned in protest. In effect, America’s media and tech giants formed a united front to steal the election and somehow drag the crippled Biden/Harris ticket across the finish line.

    The Hunter Biden corruption scandal seemed about as serious as any in modern presidential election history and Biden’s official victory margin was just 0.01%. So if the American voters had been allowed to learn the truth, Trump almost certainly would have won the election, quite possibly in an Electoral College landslide. Given these facts, anyone who continues to deny that the election was stolen from Trump is simply being ridiculous.

Since whites and their legacy are everywhere, and their toxicity resembles inescapable background radiation, blacks must energetically stamp out this evil wherever they find it. Nothing is too small in this crusade. The picture on Uncle Ben’s box of rice is tantamount to a physical assault. Why else would removing Robert E. Lee’s name from a largely black school become so urgent? What’s the concrete benefit? Did black students fail because they daily observed General Lee’s name cut in stone and this damaged their self-esteem? Logic doesn’t matter—Lee’s name just somehow radiates whiteness, even if students don’t know who he is, and like gravity, his very whiteness invisibly pulls blacks down.
    Hours after he is inaugurated, President-elect Joe Biden will take aim at more than 100 Trump-era actions weakening climate and environmental regulations in his first step toward implementing his aggressive climate agenda.

    Biden will sign an executive order later Wednesday that his transition team said “takes critical first steps to address the climate crisis,” while revoking the Trump administration’s “harmful policies.”

    As expected, the order will jump-start the process to put the United States back in the Paris climate agreement and cancel permits for the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline. Also in the order, Biden will temporarily pause new oil and gas leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, for which the Trump administration just issued leases on its last full day in office.

    Biden will also direct the Interior Department to review the boundaries of several national monuments that President Trump shrunk in what environmentalists said opened the door to energy development in those previously protected areas.

    In addition, Biden will immediately order his federal agencies to begin review of more than 100 Trump-era actions weakening environmental regulations and promoting fossil fuel development. The list includes nearly 50 actions at the Environmental Protection Agency and more than 30 at the Interior Department.

    Among the regulations Biden is targeting are Trump’s relaxation of fuel economy standards, the elimination of controls on methane from oil and gas production, and the weakening of several energy efficiency standards for appliances, including clothes washers, dishwashers, and light bulbs.
    The Chamber of Commerce said Tuesday that it is open to a carbon tax, a significant shift in the business group's strategy as it moves to get ahead of aggressive action favored by the incoming Biden administration.

    Martin Durbin, the president of the Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute, wrote in an email Tuesday that the group now "supports a market-based approach to accelerate greenhouse gas emissions reductions across the U.S. economy."

    While the Chamber is still not ready to endorse carbon pricing outright, it appears the group sees it as more favorable than mandates and regulations, which have become the preferred carbon reduction policy of Democrats and are expected to be the path pursued by President-elect Joe Biden.
    The South African coronavirus variant may slip past parts of the immune system in as many as half of people infected with different versions in the past, scientists fear.

    Researchers say that a mutation on a specific part of the virus's outer spike protein appears to make it able to 'escape' antibodies. Antibodies are substances made by the immune system that are key to destroying viruses or marking them for destruction by white blood cells. 

    South African academics found that 48 per cent of blood samples from people who had been infected in the past did not show an immune response to the new variant. One researcher said it was 'clear that we have a problem'.

    Professor Penny Moore, the researcher behind the project, claimed people who were sicker with coronavirus the first time and had a stronger immune response appeared less likely to get reinfected.

    Antibodies are a major part of the immunity that is created by vaccines – although not the only part – so if the virus continues evolving to escape from them it could mean that vaccines have to be redesigned and given out again. 

    But experts so far say they have no reason to believe vaccines won't work, which may be because they produce a stronger immune response than a very mild infection, and because they produce various different types of immune cells. 
    Professor Ravi Gupta, a Cambridge University microbiologist, fears there is a risk that mutations will 'chip away' at the efficacy of the current crop of vaccines as they build up.  

    The vaccines we have now should work against the current virus, he said, but they should be kept updated with new variants in case it mutates so much that they stop working. 

    If the effectiveness of a vaccine is too low there is a higher risk that people will get infected despite having had a jab.

    Major variations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus — which causes Covid — have emerged in England, South Africa and Brazil over the past month. All of them contain changes on the spike protein, which is targeted by the immune system.

    Scientists found in a small study already that when blood samples from coronavirus survivors were exposed to the South African variant, almost half showed no immune reaction at all because their immune systems didn't recognise it.

    And Professor Gupta's own work has found mutations on the variant that emerged in Kent in England appear to lead to a 'reduction in efficacy' of the Pfizer vaccine. 

    Although the vaccines already approved for use in Britain are still expected to work against the viruses already in circulation, Professor Gupta warned they won't work forever if the coronavirus keeps mutating. Most are based on versions of the virus from almost a year ago.

    Professor Gupta told MailOnline: 'The time has come – we need new vaccines now. We know what mutations are cropping up and it's going to take months, whatever we do.'

    In the same month the satellite images were taken, an Indian MP from the region, Tapir Gao, warned parliament of Chinese incursions in his state. 

    'Construction is still going on. China has entered more than 60-70 kms (37-43 miles) inside the upper Subansiri district if you follow the path along the river. They are constructing a road along the river known locally as the Lensi as it flows in the direction of the Subansiri river,' he said. 

    Today, Gao said Beijing has also begun the construction of a new double-lane road, according to NDTV. 

Why isn’t there one? In 1975, the Church Committee in the US Senate found that the FBI had spied on American citizens in groups such as the Black Panthers and the Ku Klux Klan. These are not criminal organizations. You can’t be prosecuted or have your phone tapped just for being a member or making a donation. The FBI has to find probable cause for a specific crime to investigate a Klansman.

But in their mad rush to seek revenge against those Americans that made them feel afraid, the Washington politicians are screaming about "domestic terrorism" and linking it to white males--Trump's largest group of supporters. Thus we can probably expect a new round of laws concerning domestic terrorism.

    Fear.  My what a powerful motivator fear is.  Now emotions in general are the most effective motivators in existence,  (sorry, but logic runs a very distant second) but fear is the most effective one of them, if you want to make people or animals act.  It’s the most primitive, and easiest to instill. 

    Fear is how sheep dogs manage to herd sheep, it’s how primitive man managed to kill entire herds of buffalo that could have easily stompled (totally a word, piss off, Webster) them to death, it’s how wolves hunt, it’s how hawks make their prey freeze for easier pickings. (That shriek a hawk makes just before it starts the dive? It makes a rabbit freeze in its tracks.  End result, rabbit burgers for Mr. hawk.)

    But fear has problems as a motivator too.  For one thing, it will make the target of the fear react, but it may not make it react the way you want.  ...  A herd of cattle can be made to stampede, but which way they go is not always controllable.  A moose may run away in fear, or it may charge and try to trample your ass.

    This is true for all living things, most assuredly including people.  How people react to fear is not only different from person to person but from situation to situation.  Some folks default setting is “run away” but if you threaten something dear to them it flips a switch.  Other folks default setting is that of a predator: “it scares me, KILL IT!” and yet, when faced with something entirely outside their cognitive ability they freeze.  

    This is why I generally don’t advocate using fear as a motivator. You just don’t know for sure how the individual much less the group of the whole will react to that fear.

    So why am I babbling on about this?  Well, everyone and their brother seems to be using the fear button right now.  

He continues:

    Our representatives not only don’t generally fear for their lives, they don’t even fear for their jobs, because the political machinations on both sides have made so many of the seats in both houses a sure thing… (go ahead, look at how long a party or a single person has held the same seat, I’ll wait.) 49 of them have been sitting in the same seat for over 23 freaking years!  A few of them were elected for the first time before I could VOTE, and about ¾ plus of the seats haven’t changed parties in longer than I have been ALIVE. There are 180 democratic seats and 140 republican seats that haven’t changed parties since WWII for fucks sake.

    So, I’m told that there were congressmen that were afraid for their lives? GOOD.  Maybe, just maybe, they might listen to the dissenting voices, and take their concerns to heart.  Right now, all they seem to be afraid of is Trump, and they’re doing their best to shut him out and down forever.  This should illustrate how much value they put on their power, and what they are willing to do to keep it. 

    They aren’t interested in giving you a better choice, they aren’t interested in showing you why someone else could do a better job, they want to make it illegal for him to ever run or have power again, and keep you from being allowed to make a choice they don’t like.  By the way, that includes Mitch the turtle boy, who is one of those 49 that have been serving for over 23 years, in his case, since before I could vote.

    Back in the early days of our nation, we dealt with people like this by coating them in pine tar, spreading feathers on them, and giving them a ride out of town tied to a 4×8.  It just might be time to revisit that method. 

"Unless intentionally interrupted, systemic racism will continue to be a major obstacle to creating a healthy planet," Martinez said in a 2019 press release touting her "Equitable & Just" climate platform. "The only path forward is to design national climate policies that are centered on justice."

 If you are at all familiar with the aims of Black Liberation, "justice" is a code-phrase for punishing whites and relieving them of political or economic power.

    A popular South Korean 'artificially-intelligent' chatbot with the persona of a 20-year-old female student was taken down this week after it was accused of bigotry towards sexual minorities, the #MeToo movement and the disabled.

    Lee Luda, developed by Seoul-based start-up Scatter Lab to operate within Facebook Messenger, became an instant sensation for its spontaneous and natural reactions, attracting more than 750,000 users after launching late last month.

    Luda's AI algorithms learned from data collected from 10 billion conversations on Kakao Talk, the country's top messenger app.

    But the chatbot was rapidly embroiled in controversy after a spate of allegations that it had used hate speech towards minorities, eventually forcing the developer to take it offline.

    Around 10,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age, the sea level in northern Europe was still about 60 meters (197 feet) below what it is today. The British Isles and the European mainland formed a continuous landmass.

    Relatively large rivers crossed this landmass, but in a different way than we know today. The Elbe, for example, flowed into a large inland lake. The Rhine flowed from east to west over long distances. Before it reached the sea at the latitude of Brittany, the Thames flowed into it.

    Where the North Sea is today, there were fertile meadows and forests through which hunter-gatherers roamed. The coast ran about 300 kilometers (186 miles) further north along an area of about 30,000 square kilometers (11,580 square miles) that received the name of "Doggerland" in the 1990s, called after a sandbank now located in the region.

* * *

    An apocalyptic catastrophe far off the Norwegian coast put an end to the shrinking island. About 8,200 years ago, huge parts of the continental slope broke off in the sea far below the surface in several phases during the so-called "Storegga Slides". Over a stretch of about 290 kilometers, an estimated 3,500 cubic kilometers of rock and debris plunged into the water's depths.

    The resulting tsunami, at least 10 to 12 meters high, raced across the sea. On the Shetland Islands north of Scotland, sediment data have indicated a tidal wave that was more than 20 meters high. Even in England, the effects of this wave can still be traced 40 kilometers from the present-day coast.

* * *

    For a long time, scientists assumed that a tsunami of this kind also caused the Dogger Bank, which was still protruding from the sea, to sink completely. According to a study by researchers at the University of Bradford, however, there was no single, all-destroying tsunami.

    Rather, by examining sediments, the researchers were able to prove  that only the northern part of Doggerland was submerged after the tsunami and that the destructive force of its floods was probably slowed down by hills or forests on the island.

* * *

    It was not until 700 years after the Storegga landslides — around 5500 BC — that the sea level rose so much that the North Sea engulfed the rest of the Dogger Bank. At that point, the island was completely submerged, and all traces of it vanished into the waves of the rough North Sea.

Recently, a rapid increase in radiocarbon (14C) was observed in Japanese tree rings at AD 774/775. Various explanations for the anomaly have been offered, such as a supernova, a γ-ray burst, a cometary impact, or an exceptionally large Solar Particle Event (SPE). However, evidence of the origin and exact timing of the event remains incomplete. In particular, a key issue of latitudinal dependence of the 14C intensity has not been addressed yet. Here, we show that the event was most likely caused by the Sun and occurred during the spring of AD 774. Particularly, the event intensities from various locations show a strong correlation with the latitude, demonstrating a particle-induced 14C poleward increase, in accord with the solar origin of the event. Furthermore, both annual 14C data and carbon cycle modelling, and separate earlywood and latewood 14C measurements, confine the photosynthetic carbon fixation to around the midsummer.

By at

2 comments:

  1. JohnJanuary 21, 2021 at 8:34 PM

    Great selection! You've outdone yourself this time!

    Paul Craig Roberts has never heard of Vietnam or Afghanistan??

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. DocentJanuary 21, 2021 at 10:26 PM

      Apparently not. Nor is he considering logistics.

      Delete

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