Firearms & Self-Defense:
- "The Social Shotgun: Setting Up Your Scattergun for Personal- and Home-Defense" by Jeremy Stafford, Guns & Ammo. A brief discussion of why the shotgun (including pump actions) are still the bees' knees for home defense followed by suggestions as to setting one up for home defense including a stock upgrade (the Magpul SGA stock), using a two-point sling, mounting a white light (he recommends either the Surefire or Streamlight fore-ends), some method of carrying extra rounds on the weapon (the Esstac shotgun cards), and mounting a red-dot sight.
- "Why You Need A 911"--Mason Dixon Tactical. The author's review of the 911 pistol. The 911 is Springfield's take on a 1911 style pocket .380 pistol similar to the Colt Mustang and the Sig P238. Although the article acknowledges the deficiencies of the .380 round (while pointing out that modern bullet designs have made it better than in the past), this is offset by "a small .380 ACP [being] the epitome of 'convenience' in a carry gun. My .380 in the cargo pocket of a pair of shorts is a comfort, without having to dress to suit my normal defensive carry options." He likes the 911 over its competitors because he is left handed and the 911 comes with an ambidextrous safety from the factory. My experience with the P238 has been positive and it increasingly finds its way into my pocket (with a pocket holster, of course) because it is so easy to grab and go.
- "Review: Smith & Wesson M & P Shield EZ"--Bookworm Room. The author was looking for a pistol suitable for a woman with small hands and a bit of arthritis. After dismissing some .380 offerings, the clerk showed her a Shield EZ. Her impressions:
Today, I got the chance to fire my new gun, and I was delighted. It’s a breeze to handle, putting minimal stress on the joints in my hand. The sight and I melded as one, and I was instantly able to land the bullets where I intended them to go.In addition, because the grip is really well-engineered, I wasn’t at risk of getting a bloody thumb joint, something that I managed to do three times with my Ruger, when my thumb joint got in the way of the slide. My companion, who has bigger hands and less arthritis, also thought it was a great weapon to handle.
- "Do You Need an All-in-One Fighting Kit?"--Everyday Marksman. The author describes what he calls his "Minuteman Kit": a belt and Y-harness type system. An excerpt:
To date, my advice for the aspiring everyday marksman is to first put together a light to mid-weight battle belt, and then later supplement it with a minimalist chest rig. This combination provides you a with a huge amount of flexibility to tailor your gear to the task at hand.
I still think this is the way to go most of the time, especially if there are vehicles involved. Something that’s always stood out to me, though, is that the battle belt/chest rig combo represents two distinct pieces of gear. An assault pack, which you would need since it contains a lot of other important stuff like water, is a third piece of equipment to handle.
Some people just might prefer to go with an old school set of belt kit, and I wanted to explore the possibilities. Since #tinkeringislife, I started a thought experiment.
The thought exercise got me thinking about Scenario-X. If I only had time to grab one piece of gear with everything already on it- what would that look like?
Yes, I know you might be thinking, “I definitely want my plate carrierfor that.” That’s great, and probably not wrong, but since I’m also thinking of everyday folks who haven’t spent $1k+ on a plate carrier and quality plates, bear with me here.
This question forced me to start asking questions about the right number of magazines to carry, water, medical, communications, or other miscellaneous items like maps, land navigation tools, pens, notebooks, and more. Since it all had to be in one piece of gear, that means there needed to be compromises.
The end result is this idea of the Minuteman Harness. The all-in-one piece of fighting gear to keep at the ready for bad times. Importantly, it’s a template I can start to share with new shooters who want more than a battle belt, but less than multiple pieces of gear.
The rest of the article describes the Minuteman Harness and component pieces (with specific makes and models for said components) and the why of each. Finally he concludes with comments on where you would want to use this and possible changes/upgrades. A couple notes: first, as the author notes, this is a system that he plans on using for carbine classes or competition, but is not set up for use with a pistol; and, second, he sees this as being an inspiration--but not the answer--for civilians.
- Related: "The Rifleman Harness: Old School is New Again"--Everyday Marksman. The Rifleman Harness is what the author describes as the "bigger brother" to the Minuteman Harness. He explains:
To be clear, the Minuteman Harness is the more appropriate solution for the average neighborhood defender or prepared citizen. It’s lightweight, contains the essentials, and provides just about all of the capability you might need in a grab-and-go kit for patrolling the neighborhood.
Aside from that, a combination of battle belt, chest rig (or plate carrier), and an assault pack is another great option with a ton of flexibility- so don’t think I’m discounting those at all.
Let’s say that now you have a need to go a bit further down the LBE [load bearing equipment] rabbit hole. Rather than a primary task to maintain a security presence, you’re actively patrolling further away from your community and have a stronger need for sustainment.
The Rifleman Harness is an evolution on ALICE mixed with classic British military PLCE belt kit. My intention for it is fighting and surviving for alongside other similarly-equipped team members for 24 hours without any additional equipment or resupply. In practice, that means more ammunition and more utility space to store essentials. The harness should still work in conjunction with a ruck to go beyond that 24-hour time frame as well.
I also wanted the harness to be flexible regarding the weapon platform. While I would plan to use a 5.56 rifle, I didn’t want to rule out the possibility of carrying a 7.62 DMR-type rifle, either.
- "Weaponlight upgrade"--Notes From The Bunker. Just because something was the best choice (or, at least, an acceptable choice) twenty years ago doesn't mean that it is still that way. Case in point, the author has had a Streamlight M3 on a Gen 3 Glock pistol for at least 15 years. The pistol is still a solid choice (although he acknowledges that he needs to replace the old night sights) but he realized he could do a lot better for the light. He opted for an Olight Valkyrie PL-Pro that he picked up at the gun show. As he demonstrates in the article, the Valkyrie vastly outperforms his old Streamlight while also being rechargeable. The main disadvantage I've found to the Valkyrie is that it is harder to find compatible holsters for it versus Surefire or Streamlight models, or even other models offered by Olight. But if you need something for poking around your curtilage, it makes a great choice at a much lower price point than its main competitors.
- "Defensive Handgunning Myths" by Jeremy Stafford, Guns & Ammo. Stafford goes over some "myths" including the oldie but goody, “I carry a .45 because they don’t make a .46!” and more recent ones like "The .40 S&W is the best of both worlds. It offers capacity and performance!” I will note as to the former, however, that the same advances in bullet technology that have led to the 9mm being an acceptable defensive round have also made the .45 ACP even better. And he says this about the .40 S&W:
No, it’s not [the best of both worlds]. Statistically it doesn’t perform any better (or any worse) than the 9mm or the .45 ACP. It does produce more felt recoil than a round of 9mm, and it has a nasty habit of beating its host gun harder than a .45! I keep one on hand simply because I have to test different ammunition for my job, and it affords me another option should 9mm and .45 ammunition become scarce.
- "Long Term Review: Black Arch Holsters EDC Belt – The Best Belt Yet?"--The Firearm Blog. This is a synthetic belt that uses a metal hook that locks into notches in the belt to hold it secure. Because there are no moving parts in the buckle, the author likes it for archery hunting. He also likes that it is rather low-key, being able to pass for a standard casual wear belt. MSRP is $59.95. Although the belt looks nice, I don't like the fact that the logo is pressed into the material of the belt at the end of the tongue; in my mind, that cuts against it being "low key."
- "The myth of 90 percent of fights end up on the ground"--Wim DeMeer's Blog. This is a fairly long article and it also cites to an article from Marc MacYoung on the topic which DeMeer suggests reading. But the origin of this particular myth appears to be from Rorion Gracie who, according to DeMeer, misinterpreted an LAPD study to push his own martial arts form, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. However, as the author continues, that isn't to say that more fights are going to the ground than was the case decades ago:
From two decades of meeting those kids, teaching them both in my class and privately, seeing ad nauseam what’s written on the internet and what’s “taught” on Youtube and in other videos. But also from looking at as much CCTV or other footage of actual fights as possible: in the last decade, I’ve seen a huge rise in MMA techniques in street fights.
Some fighters were clearly trained, a lot of others seemed to have had either a little bit of training or they tried to mimic what they saw in the Octagon. Some were successful, others were not. But what was the most apparent was a tendency to consciously use ground grappling: fighters intentionally went for dominant positions.
Before the UFC got big, I hardly ever saw that. Now I see it more and more.
Another factor I think is important is that there have never been more MMA gyms and schools. More and more (mostly) young guys take up the sport as their first introduction to martial arts and fighting. Just like several decades ago, they used to take up boxing if they wanted to learn to fight. So more and more men grow up with MMA as their primary source of instruction for all their fighting.
Like I said, this is in no way a scientific theory. This is me sharing my experiences with you, giving you my opinion based on what I saw, read and heard in the last ten years. ...
The author, therefore, believes that you should have at least a working knowledge of BJJ just so you can understand how those using BJJ will think and act.
- "A Homeowner’s Guide to Enhancing Safety and Security on a Budget"--Modern Survivalists. This article is a good overview of ideas for making your house more safe and secure against criminals. In that regard, it is a starting point: it provides ideas and some links, but you will have to research each point in more detail.
- "Jugging" by John Farnam. A short article on the topic of follow-home robberies, aka, "jugging". An excerpt:
I disagree with advice rendered by “officials” in media interviews when they suggest that there is safety in traveling in groups. It’s pretty clear that violent criminals (who often operate in packs themselves) are not dissuaded by CCTV, the presence of witnesses, etc.
Violent criminals are completely confident that woke politicians are solidly on their side, and they are oh-so right!
What does dissuade violent criminals, without fail, is the likelihood of defensive gunfire. When confronted with the unexpected presence of guns in the hands of “victims,” violent criminals abruptly stop their aggression and flee like mice!
Critically understaffed, de-funded police departments, combined with pro-criminal, woke prosecutors (again, courtesy of leftist politicians), by comparison, represent only a minor deterrent!
More than ever, we’re on our own!
Prepping & Survival:
- "First Aid Kits for Preppers"--Freedom Preppers. The author suggests starting out with a commercial kit of some sort as a base--whether that kit is a standard first aid kit, a tactical trauma backpack, or an IFAK--and building on that base by adding other supplies and equipment which he lists or sets out in the article to handle other emergencies, both large and small. The author also recommends The Survival Medicine Handbook to learn to use what you have, but also links to PDF's of a couple other alternatives. While I have ebook copies of various books, including The Survival Medicine Handbook, I've always believed that important reference books, at a minimum, should be in hard copy.
- "The Guerrilla’s Guide To The Baofeng Radio Is Out!!"--Brushbeater. The author comments:
Its been a long time in the making, but the book is finally out. With chapters on communications planning, improvised antennas, operational considerations for sustainment, tactical and clandestine purposes, digital operations and yes, encryption, this book is an easy to follow how-to manual taking you from whatever your knowledge base may be and takes it to the next level.
- "Bike Foraging" by Setanta O’Ceillaigh, Self-Reliance.com. An excerpt:
When times are hard it pays to ride a bike. Bikes can travel at a reasonable speed, carry a reasonable cargo, and there is very little that can break. They are light enough to carry over rough terrain, and they are very good on gas — they don’t use any. But a bike is more than a means of hauling cargo or getting from place to place; it is also a very valuable foraging tool if you know how to use it.
To forage with a bike, it should be outfitted with a basic kit for the task. A good mountain bike should have a basket in front, and two side baskets in the rear or a cargo bin on the back. A bike trailer is also very useful, but not a necessity. Any basket can be attached to the front of a bike, however my personal preference is a plastic battery box. To attach it, I bore out a few holes in the lip and use zip ties to fasten it between the handle bars. To keep rain water from collecting, I also drill out a few small holes in the bottom. For rear side baskets, I have used a heavy saddle bag basket I picked up in a yard sale and have also used square buckets that I attached to the sides. A milk crate can be added as a rear cargo bin directly over the rear wheel.
The author discusses some other tools and equipment as well as tips on places to find foragables and collecting and processing the same.
- "Lithium Solar Generator Battery Upgrade"--Modern Survivalists. The author notes that one of his most popular videos was on building a DIY solar generator system. But he has since had a lot of requests on how to upgrade its battery bank to Lithium (LifePO4). The included video goes over the upgrade while the remainder of the article answers questions as to the advantages, use of battery management systems, and so on.
- "Tertiary Prepper Skills – Reconnaissance"--The Prepper Journal. The begins by noting that drones increasingly play a role in reconnaissance. But:
For the sake of this article, this tertiary prepper skill is going to be focused on utilizing old-school reconnaissance teachings to get back to the basics and not have to rely on technology, other than a comms system. If comms is not available, you could use a two-person team where one is a runner and communicates back to the team the findings of the reconnoiterer. Lastly, there is nothing wrong with utilizing drones for surveillance or reconnaissance, however learning the manual way of collecting intelligence will ultimately help you and your group in the long run, if need be, given an EMP event. Once learned, meshing both drones and reconnoitering skills during TEOTWAWKI will only broaden your offensive and defensive security plan.
There are a lot of sub-skills or related skills for reconnaissance which the author lists along with the admonition that these are not skills that can be mastered with just a weekend or two of training and practice. I would note that this article is not aimed at just someone reconnoitering their neighborhood or the next subdivision over, but appears to be intended for a small community or survival group in a rural location.
- "Gear Rx: Can You Waterproof Cotton?"--Field & Stream. Yes, but it will no longer be flexible. All joking aside, however, the author discusses products for making cotton more water resistant. The author explains:
Since cotton is not naturally waterproof or water-resistant, the only way to add water resistance to your clothing is to add a treatment or coating. There are several options for cotton waterproofing, and each one will have specific instructions on how to apply it. Follow the provided instructions to achieve the best results.
For this instructional guide, we will follow Nikwax’s instructions when using their Cotton Proof Waterproofing solution. Cotton Proof can be used on cotton and polycotton apparel, canvas materials, workwear, and denim. Other options include Otter Wax or Granger’s Wash and Repel solution.
- "Vehicle EDC And Recovery Gear: The Top Five Tools For Travel"--Skillset Magazine. The author begins:
Every car should have a spare tire, jack, and tire iron to change it. Make sure the tire is properly inflated. A tire repair kit can save the day, allowing you to plug a leak. This is especially useful if you face more than one flat tire. If we have to repair a tire, we’ll need to reinflate it, and that’s where an air compressor comes in. Some rigs have onboard air, which is excellent, but there are suitable air compressors that hook to your battery that can get the job done. These are important if you need to air down for traction purposes, like driving on the beach, and will need to air up again once you hit the pavement.
Batteries are another common point of failure. Invest in a high-quality set of jumper cables. Get a sturdy set with a good length that won’t break when you need them. They’ll be bouncing around in your trunk for a long time. Include a wire brush in your tool kit. Battery terminals can corrode, and sometimes just brushing them off can reestablish the connection and start the car. Jumper boxes will allow you to jumpstart a car without a donor vehicle present. These can be a lifesaver in the backcountry.
The author then goes on to discuss carrying extra fuel, recovery kits and tools for off-road travel, first aid kits, navigation and communications, and keeping light sources in the vehicle.
- "Review: Nitecore NU33"--Jerking the Trigger. A rechargeable headlamp with some impressive features that retails for $49.95 at Amazon.
News & Analysis:
- And things ratchet up a notch: "But…But…What About The Drag Show?" I had seen an article about a relatively wide-spread power outage in Moore County, North Carolina, after unknown persons had shot up a power sub-station, but it was not until I saw this post from Western Rifle Shooters that the event was put into context. The incident occurred just before the beginning of a drag show that was deeply unpopular with locals (but supported by the command officers at Fort Bragg, of course). Legal methods to stop the show didn't work, but it was cancelled after the power went out. Mission accomplished.
- More: "FBI joins probe into gun attack on North Carolina electric substations that left 40,000 homes without power until Thursday as temperatures drop below zero: Cops refuse to rule out link to drag show protest." The article reports that "[t]he federal bureau will work with state and local law enforcement to probe whether people protesting a drag show in Moore County intentionally set off power to every home and business throughout the county, the Raleigh News & Observer reports."
- Related: "Report: NJ High School Hosts Secret Student Drag Show For Adult Staff During School Hours."
- Related: "Planned Parenthood director claims kids are 'sexual beings' from birth while promoting 'useful' porn literacy." (Video starts automatically). He wants sex education for children starting at kindergarten.
- "WE ARE TRAPPED IN A TRUMAN SHOW DIRECTED BY PSYCHOPATHS"--The Burning Platform.
Since March 2020 we have been trapped in a dystopian reality show based on lies, deception, and fake narratives about a weaponized virus created in a lab funded by Anthony Fauci and utilized to further the totalitarian Great Reset agenda of Schwab, Gates and their ilk, while maximizing the profits of Pfizer, TV networks and filling the pockets of politicians, shills, and apparatchiks willing to sellout the people of our country for thirty pieces of silver.
- Related: "Whistleblower US scientist who worked with Wuhan lab claims COVID WAS genetically engineered and leaked from the site - and says 'the US government is to blame' because it funded the research."
- Related: "“We’ve Caught Him Red-Handed and He Won’t Get Away” – Senator Rand Paul Accuses Fauci of Funding Research that Caused 7 Million People To Die (VIDEO)."
- Related: "Excess Deaths Among the Educated"--Vox Popoli. Notwithstanding media stories portraying vax reluctance to be limited to what the media described as the stupid and ignorant, actual surveys showed that those resistant to the Covid vaccines described a U-shaped curve with the least educated (high school or less education) and most educated (Ph.D. or equivalent) being the most resistant and the most accepting being those with a masters degree. As Vox Day notes here, this relationship shows up in a large drop in educated degree holders in the work force which can be attributed, as Day explains, by greater excess deaths among those most willing to accept the jab.
- Related: "the receipts on vaccine efficacy--a brief history of mice-information" by el gato malo, Bad Cattitude. A video montage of actual headlines about the efficacy of the Pfizer Covid vaccine tracing it from 100% to when it finally crashes into the sub-30s.
- "The Banality of Good" by Paul Du Quenoy, Tablet Magazine. A review and commentary on Mattias Desmet's 2022 book The Psychology of Totalitarianism. An excerpt:
- "The Manhattan Contrarian Energy Storage Paper Has Arrived!" by Francis Menton, Watts Up With That. The author's article on energy storage systems for renewables has finally been published on the website of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. The author further writes:
Desmet seeks to improve upon Arendt’s thesis with the argument that the “soft” totalitarianism she predicted would evolve after the horrors of Nazism and Stalinism is now a nightmare come true. Our current tyranny is not the menacing dictatorships of old, which were built on fear and operated by compliant functionaries practicing banalized evil, but by a subtler regime enforced by “dull bureaucrats and technocrats” convinced that they are advancing a greater good for humanity. The new agents of persecution are not jackbooted secret police thugs instilling fear, but almond milk latte-swigging university officials imposing unpleasant consensus. George Orwell’s vicious O’Brien has yielded to Ken Kesey’s passive-aggressive Nurse Ratched.
Much of the book dwells on how we got here. Desmet traces the evolution of human societies from the scientific revolution, when free inquiry battled with religious dogma to understand the natural world per se. Confirmed by the Enlightenment’s triumphant claims to have found the correct path forward, not merely for science but for society, we entered a modern era defined by what he calls a “mechanistic ideology” that held out “the utopian vision of an artificial paradise” as a perfect, and inevitable, future. The universe and everything in it, to the purely scientific mind, thus follows impersonal patterns and motions that science alone can reveal. Potentially, this offered humans immense power and insight, but it also reduced them to existence without meaning or purpose. As a result, industrial economies instrumentalized people, separating them from community, traditions, imagination, nature, emotions, the fruits of their labor, and other factors that had once made life worth living. As a result, atomized individuals developed a generalized and unmoored anxiety that could be resolved when focused on an object or scapegoat that was assigned responsibility for their plight. Collectively blaming a common object of loathing primed these populations for rule by “masters,” leaders who played to their atavism to build a new society united by little more than submission to their generalized authority.This process of “mass formation” allowed early totalitarians to appeal to science or, more likely pseudoscience, to justify the new status quo and carry out outrages and absurdities. Those regimes, however, were isolated, short-lived, and prone to internal collapse. The new totalitarianism of which Desmet warns is far more pervasive. As science and technology exploded in recent decades, popular faith in them “tipped from open-mindedness to belief.” The values of free inquiry and spirited debate, of regarding hypotheses merely as assertions that had yet to be disproved, were overwhelmed by a new dogma determined not by priests, but by practitioners. For those who followed, “science became ideology.”Desmet’s notion that mass formation, and consequently totalitarianism, “are in fact symptoms of the mechanistic ideology” struck him strongly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Globalized information technology not only helped spread the virus, but also united the world in what he calls a “Great Leap Forward” toward “totalitarian technocracy.” Confined to near house arrest, with strict limitation on mobility and human contact, a new and purer form of atomization seized the minds of anxious publics looking for enemies to blame and dissenters to punish. “Never before were the societal conditions so prone to totalitarianism,” Desmet argues, as they have been in the last few years. To add empirical insult to psychological injury, many establishment precepts initially advanced as irrefutably sound turned out to be exaggerated, contingent, harmful, and, in some cases, simply wrong, with little or no accountability for individuals and institutions that had erred but still clung to authority.Despite these deficiencies, a confused and traumatized bulk of society still indulged in “a kind of intoxication” in their new sense of belonging. As we saw all too often in our own country, those who shamed the unmasked or unvaxed, who snitched on their neighbors for noncompliance, who kept schools and places of worship closed, were formed into a new mass “convinced of their superior ethical and moral intentions and of the reprehensibility of everything and everyone who resists them.”
Most of the points made in the paper have been made previously on this blog in one form or another. However, there is a good amount of additional detail in the paper that has never appeared here. I’ll provide one example of that today, and more of same in coming days.
The main point of the paper is that an electrical grid powered mostly by intermittent generators like wind and sun requires full backup from some source; and if that source is to be stored energy, the amounts of storage required are truly staggering. When you do the simple arithmetic to calculate the storage requirements and the likely costs, it becomes obvious that the entire project is completely impractical and unaffordable. The activists and politicians pushing us toward this new energy system of wind/solar/storage are either being intentionally deceptive or totally incompetent.
Current plans for such systems in Germany, for instance, will only store between 1% and 4% of the energy needs. Main takeaway:
Here’s what tells you all you need to know: not only is there no working demonstration project anywhere in the world of the wind/solar/storage energy system, but there is none under construction and none even proposed. Instead, the proponents’ idea is that your entire state or country is to be the guinea pig for their dreams.
- Saying the quiet part out loud: "Biden’s Labor Chief: Immigration Is About Importing Workers for Business." Key part:
Business groups want more migration because it cuts wages, raises rents, and boosts retail sales. For example, Biden should cut roughly $100 billion from Americans’ wages in one year by importing 2.5 extra million foreign workers, Wall Street’s leading investment firm, Goldman Sachs, said in May.
- Refugees Welcome! "French Woman Who Opened Home to Refugee Raped: Prosecutor." The article reports that "[t]he trial of Libyan refugee Samir L., said to be in his late thirties, began this week on Thursday at the Paris Assizes court, where he is accused of raping 33-year-old Sabrina C. in her own home." The article notes that Samir had lived in the woman's home for several weeks prior to the incident. He supposedly used a knife when he attacked her. This may sound callous, but I have to ask: what did she expect was going to happen?
- Diversity is a Strength! "Drug Traffickers in Paris No-Go Zones Paying Illegals to Attack Police." The article notes that police are increasingly fearful of entering such areas. France also suffers from the same woke infection in high-crime areas in the United States:
On Monday night in Saint-Ouen a police unit was attacked by a migrant claiming to be just 16 years old, who was arrested — but released within 24 hours.The teen was later arrested again for attacking another police unit.
- Meanwhile, back in the United States: "The Death of Retail." Vox Day observes that "Online shopping was only the first blow to retail. Mass immigration resulting in the disappearance of high trust society will be the killing blow." And on the latter note, he cites from an article discussing the shocking explosion ORC--organized retail crime--where organized gangs pillage businesses knowing that they will likely never be caught and, even if they should, they will quickly be released back onto the streets. An excerpt from the article Day cites and quotes:
For example, in Portland some stores are often victimized “more than once a day”…Some of the hot items are perfumes and expensive handbags. Often, stores are victimized daily and sometimes more than once a day. A local pastor whose window looks out on the local Nike store says he sees thieves running out of the store with their arms full of stolen stuff all the time. And the excellent KGW-TV story makes the point that this stolen stuff is not to feed hungry children. It is organized theft. The stuff gets sold online and in flea markets.Needless to say, it is almost impossible to run a profitable business in such an environment, and many store owners are throwing in the towel.
Day then concludes:
But at least no one will be able to call those living in urban third world hell holes racist. And really, that’s what’s important, after all.
If you don’t keep the invaders out, they will destroy your way of life. Thus has it always been, thus will it always be. Sink the ships or suicide your society. Those are the only options.
- What we're importing: "El Salvador: Thousands of troops surround city in gang crackdown."
Around 10,000 troops have surrounded the city of Soyapango in El Salvador as part of a massive crackdown on gangs, President Nayib Bukele has announced.All roads leading to the city have been blocked, and special forces have been searching houses for gang members.Officers have also been stopping everyone attempting to leave the city and checking identity papers.The operation is part of a massive crackdown on gangs after a surge in violence earlier this year.
- "Haiti in chaos: Capital is taken over by gangs who murder and kidnap at will - with families forced to listen to hostages being gang-raped until they pay ransoms of up to $1million." Haiti declared independence from French rule in 1804. From the Library of Congress website:
... Since Haiti declared independence, Black people in the United States have seen this Black nation as a beacon of genuine self-determination, freedom, and equality, all of which were unavailable to them in the United States.Prominent Black American intellectuals W.E.B Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, and others used Haiti to represent a proposed future image for liberated Black people. ...
- Polar bear hunting: "Shocking moment man pulls baseball bat from his sweatpants and viciously strikes 47-year-old man around the head on NYC street in broad daylight - leaving him seriously wounded."
Horrific footage captured the moment when a man attacked a pedestrian with a baseball bat while walking in New York City.The victim, 47, was seen on the ground after his attacker stalked and banged him on the head on Tuesday around 8am in Hamilton Heights, police said.It is unclear why the attack occurred, but the unknown assailant was seen walking behind of the victim before he pulled the bat out of his pants. The attack occurred as crime is up 40 percent this year in comparison to 2021.Footage of the recent attack showed the assailant slightly hesitating to confront the victim before he struck. The attacker was then seen walking away before re-approaching the victim while he laid on the floor.The victim suffered bruising and was taken to a local hospital. The attack appeared to be targeted, however, it is unclear if the two knew each other prior to the incident.No arrests have been made.
- Speaking of black-on-white crime: "Home Depot worker, 83, dies from his injuries six weeks after being shoved to the floor by a 'serial shoplifter' he tried to stop stealing $800 worth of pressure washers." Maybe, now that it is a murder rather than a simple assault, the police will put some effort into tracking down the criminal.
- "Philadelphia approves 'permanent' 10 pm curfew." From the article:
The curfew was put in place because more crime is committed under the cover of darkness. The curfew itself should be seen as a tacit admission that Philadelphia is simply too dangerous and the government is unable to keep its residents safe. Moving to make the curfew permanent is essentially another admission that they can’t (or won’t) do anything about it and things won’t be getting better any time soon.
And black people think their kids were being unfairly stopped by police before.
- "Ex-Intelligence Officials Who Said Hunter Biden Laptop Story Was a Russian Operation Silent After Twitter Files Released." An excerpt:
Leon Panetta, a former CIA director and defense secretary, John Brennan a former CIA director, Mike Hayden, a former CIA director, and Jim Clapper, a former director of national intelligence — who all once said The [New York] Post’s reporting had ‘all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,’ — declined or did not respond to request for comment about whether the latest disclosures had changed their opinion.
Of course they aren't going to discuss it. They lied to achieve a particular objective. That objective was achieved. And they know that they will suffer no consequences concerning it ... as long as they keep their mouths shut.
- Related: "17% of Biden Voters Would Not Have Voted for Him Had They Known Scandals Liberal Media Censored."
- They wouldn't have done this to Jews or Muslims: "Stanford band mocks Christians during halftime show." Not just any Christians, either: "At Saturday’s Brigham Young University (BYU) and Stanford University's (Stanford) football game in California, Stanford’s band mocked BYU students’ Christain [sic] faith during its halftime show performance."
- "Air Force Unveils the B-21 Stealth Raider"--SOFREP. Some photos at the link. From the outside, it is slightly smaller than the B-2 with changes to the trailing edge of the wings, but otherwise remarkably similar. It supposedly offers upgraded stealth capabilities, but the real upgrades appear to be in the avionics: like the F-35, it will have the capability of controlling unmanned aircraft.
- "Dramatic moment father saves his two-year-old daughter after she was ambushed by a coyote outside their LA home."
- The transistor is 75 years old and IEEE's Spectrum magazine has a bunch of articles about the transistor, one of which is this: "HOW THE FIRST TRANSISTOR WORKED". The article begins:
The vacuum-tube triode wasn’t quite 20 years old when physicists began trying to create its successor, and the stakes were huge. Not only had the triode made long-distance telephony and movie sound possible, it was driving the entire enterprise of commercial radio, an industry worth more than a billion dollars in 1929. But vacuum tubes were power-hungry and fragile. If a more rugged, reliable, and efficient alternative to the triode could be found, the rewards would be immense.
The goal was a three-terminal device made out of semiconductors that would accept a low-current signal into an input terminal and use it to control the flow of a larger current flowing between two other terminals, thereby amplifying the original signal. The underlying principle of such a device would be something called the field effect—the ability of electric fields to modulate the electrical conductivity of semiconductor materials. The field effect was already well known in those days, thanks to diodes and related research on semiconductors.
But building such a device had proved an insurmountable challenge to some of the world’s top physicists for more than two decades. Patents for transistor-like devices had been filed starting in 1925, but the first recorded instance of a working transistor was the legendary point-contact device built at AT&T Bell Telephone Laboratories in the fall of 1947.
Though the point-contact transistor was the most important invention of the 20th century, there exists, surprisingly, no clear, complete, and authoritative account of how the thing actually worked. Modern, more robust junction and planar transistors rely on the physics in the bulk of a semiconductor, rather than the surface effects exploited in the first transistor. And relatively little attention has been paid to this gap in scholarship.
The article continues:
... In November 1947, Bardeen and Brattain were stymied by a simple problem. In the germanium semiconductor they were using, a surface layer of electrons seemed to be blocking an applied electric field, preventing it from penetrating the semiconductor and modulating the flow of current. No modulation, no signal amplification.
Sometime late in 1947 they hit on a solution. It featured two pieces of barely separated gold foil gently pushed by that squiggly spring into the surface of a small slab of germanium.
Textbooks and popular accounts alike tend to ignore the mechanism of the point-contact transistor in favor of explaining how its more recent descendants operate. Indeed, the current edition of that bible of undergraduate EEs, The Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill, makes no mention of the point-contact transistor at all, glossing over its existence by erroneously stating that the junction transistor was a “Nobel Prize-winning invention in 1947.” But the transistor that was invented in 1947 was the point-contact; the junction transistor was invented by Shockley in 1948.
The rest of the article mixes both history and theory about how the devices work. Be sure to check it out.
- "The New Unpardonable Sin" by Arthur Sido.
What is odd is that in 2022, and really for the last decade or so (longer in “mainline” denominations), there appears to be a new list of deadly sins that have no relationship to the sins that the church has understood for two millennia. Chief among these sins is “racism” and all associated specific forms, like “White supremacy” and “kinism“.
Except, of course, when practiced by POC and other "oppressed" groups.
- Speaking of unpardonable sins: "This is an actual article that Wired just published 🤣🤡". The Wired article discussed in the linked post apparently goes over the racial implications of white people choosing colors for emojis. White is right out, according to Wired, because it is an assertion of white pride. Of course, it would be outright racist to use emojis with darker skin tones, the Wired spiritual advisor tells us. The Wired writer continues: "That leaves yellow, the Esperanto of emoji skin tones, which seems to offer an all-purpose or neutral form of pictographic expression, one that does not require an acknowledgment of race — or, for that matter, embodiment. (Unicode calls it a 'nonhuman' skin tone.)". But that doesn't work either:
The existence of a default skin tone unavoidably calls to mind the thorny notion of race neutrality that crops up in so many objections to affirmative action or, to cite a more relevant example, in the long-standing use of "flesh-colored" and "nude" as synonyms for pinkish skin tones. The yellow emoji feels almost like claiming, "I don't see race," that dubious shibboleth of post-racial politics, in which the ostensible desire to transcend racism often conceals a more insidious desire to avoid having to contend with its burdens. Complicating all this is the fact that the default yellow is indelibly linked to The Simpsons, which used that tone solely for Caucasian characters..
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