- First up is Greg Ellifritz's Weekend Knowledge Dump. This is his 750th Knowledge Dump and Greg has some thoughts on having blogged for so long:
It’s been quite a ride. Back when people actually read blogs like this, at least 20,000 of you would consume the knowledge dump on a weekly basis. It’s how many of you first learned about me and my training. Now it seems almost pointless to keep it up. Fewer than 3,000 people read it each week and page views have been steadily dropping by 10-20% a year since 2017. My website operates at a significant net loss. No sane person would spend 40+ hours a week researching and compiling articles in this format for the $200 a month I get in advertising income.
He promises to keep doing it though for as long as he is able. Which is good, because it is a valuable source of valuable self-defense information. Of course, we have a bevy of links as well, including the following:
- A link to a video from Gun Sam Revolver Ballistics entitled ".22 Magnum Spanks .380 ACP! Winchester FMJ Flat Point Ballistic Gel Test." While you are over at that channel, you should also check out his recent video comparing .327 Magnum to 9 mm. Greg also links to other videos showcasing the ballistic capability of .22 Magnum.
- An article on preparing for and surviving a nuclear or radiological attack. An excerpt:
A serious setup includes a few instruments worth their cost. A radiation survey meter reads the level around you in the moment; a personal dosimeter tracks the total dose you have absorbed over time. Round those out with an emergency radio for official updates, a water filtration system for when your stored supply runs thin, and a properly fitted respirator for any situation that forces you through contamination.
The training matters more than the hardware, and most people have the ratio backward. Learn basic emergency communications, including how to work a radio when the cell network is gone. Take a first aid course, and look into disaster medicine if you want to push further. Run your shelter plan with your family until everyone can reach the right room without a word of direction.
In the end, skill beats equipment every time. A person with real knowledge and a simple kit outperforms someone with a closet of expensive gear and no idea how to use it. Spend accordingly: Put your first dollars and first hours into understanding the material, then build out the equipment from there.
- An article covering common problems and solutions with AR-15 barrels, including what to check when purchasing or evaluating a barrel. Interestingly, the author notes that whereas it was once common for the gas ports to be oversized, it is now more common for the gas ports to be undersized.
- Like many of us, Greg has taken note of the sudden debate on the usefulness of the vertical foregrip and links to an article discussing the issue (the debate, that is). Greg cuts to the chase, though, writing: "How about trying a vertical foregrip and seeing if it makes you shoot better? If it does, keep it. If it doesn’t, take it off. It really isn’t that difficult."
- An article on ground fighting, particularly if you, as the defender, get knocked to the ground. I particularly like this useful tidbit:
Unfortunately, traditional ukemi (break-falls) that involve slapping the mat to disperse the force of your fall don’t translate well to concrete and asphalt. The basic concepts of rounding your body (like the rockers on a rocking chair), tucking your chin to protect your head, and using your feet and butt to absorb the shock of a fall are more adaptable to hard surfaces than slap-style falls. The safest method I’ve found is to first learn the traditional falls on a mat, and then deemphasize the slappy part to focus on the other mechanics. Once you can fall on a mat without slapping, gradually progress to thinner mats and harder surfaces.
- Notice that the DOJ has concluded that lawful gun owners can carry when visiting a Post Office.
- Some tips on running an AK.
- A video testing 8 different types of speed loaders. Sometimes you don't have a choice in speed loaders because most brands only produce loaders for a very limited number of firearms. In other words, you might be forced to use HKS for no other reason than that company produces the widest selection.
- Finally, you might check out the differences between the firearms market in 1986 versus 2026.
- "A Call to Power: Islamic Leaders See Ballot Box as Path to Paradise"--Real Clear Investigations. An excerpt:
Some former FBI counterterrorism investigators point out that because mosques act as the hubs of Islamic enclaves – which include neighborhoods, religious schools (or “madrassas”), medical clinics, halal butchers, grocery stores, restaurants, and Sharia-compliant banks – the roots of 3,500 semiautonomous “exclusionary zones” have already potentially formed inside America. They say Muslim communities expand in a hub-and-spoke pattern out from the anchor mosque, grabbing more and more land and territory for Allah as they grow in numbers.
[snip]
As much as they may want to take over parts of the country and implement Sharia law, however, Muslims living in the U.S. have to operate within the confines of the Constitution, which guarantees no foreign or religious legal system can override American laws and freedoms. And Muslims don’t have the numbers to change federal law.
But the threat is more nuanced, Sharia watchdogs insist. They worry that as more Muslims are elected to public office, they will increasingly change local ordinances to adhere to Sharia mandates, as they have in the suburbs of Detroit; and even protect Muslims from prosecution for crimes, which has happened in Minneapolis.
In a recent speech, former National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard said that American Muslims are working to impose “Sharia law” and “Islamic principles” across the country by exploiting the democratic process, specifically citing the cities of Paterson, Dearborn, Minneapolis, and Houston.
“CAIR issued a call to action to use American legal and political systems to implement Sharia law. This is already under way in places,” she said. “Paterson, N.J., is proud to call themselves the ‘first Muslim city.’ They [Muslim activists] are working to implement, in their own governments, these Islamic principles that are forced on people through the use of laws or violence.”
Former FBI agent John Guandolo, who has investigated the radical influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in America, which he says controls the majority of Islamic organizations and mosques in the country, warns that Islamist leaders tied to the Brotherhood are increasingly emboldened and implementing a formula for Islamist political power from coast to coast. He contends American cities are following a pattern seen in the U.K., where Muslim immigrants essentially have taken over at least five whole cities, including Britain’s two largest — London and Birmingham, where Sharia law is encroaching on Western law.
“England is gone. Conquered. Done,” Guandolo said. “And we are next if we don’t stop their advance.”
Importing Muslims will lead to sectarian violence. Count on it.
- "American literature, charted in one monumental map"--The Big Think. An explanation from the article:
“A Literary Map of the United States,” a poster created by Ben Gibson, a design director at Big Think, charts that fascinating relationship between the word and the land on a nationwide level. Stephen King is still there — not just up in Maine (with It, Carrie, and ‘Salem’s Lot), but also in Colorado (The Shining, Misery) and Florida (Duma Key). But so are hundreds of other writers, their works anchored in various ways to other parts of the country.
There are many ways to read this map: as a peculiar road map of the United States, a potted history of the same, a metatext of American literature, a guide to American literary genres and their centers of gravity, and more. I will get to at least some of them later, but for now, I want to examine the effect that scholars call broadly “imaginative geography,” more precisely “toponymic capture,” and more elegantly “authorial inscription.” It is the process by which a writer’s vision of a place becomes so dominant that it effectively overwrites that place’s prior identity in the public imagination.
We could say other parts of America have been “colonized” by other texts the same way King’s horror stories have influenced our perception of Maine. A gentler metaphor, from Rebecca Solnit’s Infinite City, is of cultural and literary memory as an “overlay.” It resides above physical geography like a transparency on an overhead projector, a slightly shifting but persistent presence.
In Landmarks, the English nature writer Robert Macfarlane develops the idea that a sufficiently powerful text doesn’t just describe a landscape, but alters the mind that subsequently encounters it. He uses the verb phrase “to see through” to define it: you see the Suffolk coast through W.G. Sebald, the Mississippi through Mark Twain, the South (as a particularly “Gothic” place) through Faulkner.
Several such places — literary locations, real and imagined, that have lodged themselves firmly in the mind — stand out on Gibson’s map. The places below have been toponymically captured (or authorially inscribed) to such a degree that it has become all but impossible to think of them in any way except through the works of fiction that brought them to our attention.
- "Companies Hate You"--Wilder Wealthy & Wise. A look at libertarianism and trying to suck that last bit of blood from the average American: John begins:
In 2018, a Goldman-Sachs© researcher asked the question: “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” This was in relation to what should be considered great news, a company coming up with a one-shot cure for hepatitis C that was over 90% effective.
Where is the profit in making people better? As someone who depends on my precious liver to take abuse like a housewife in Egypt every Friday and Saturday night, I’m all in favor of things that keep them healthy. But it doesn’t make sense to Goldman™, because they’d much rather have me be an income stream forever than solve my problem.
This is an example of a world where the Libertarian ideals fall apart, precisely because they presume the lowest common denominator when it comes to morality in society. There are many flaws with Libertarianism, and this, along with optional personal bodily hygiene intervention are two big ones. I mean, it isn’t a violation of the non-aggression principle to request they replace the mustard-coated shirt, is it?
