Re: the statue of Liberty, I always thought that the World Trade Center should have been replaced with a statue of Athena, posed throwing a javelin toward Mecca. The tip of the spear would be a real F-15 Eagle.
I think all our Freds have a support group. We should send them a care package. Some Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, Bob Heinlein, John Ringo, and some good coffees. Bless their poor little hearts.
I’m sure it’s better coffee, but it’s not banned in Canada under the gun control act.
Maybe you could talk to them, get them to release an AR-15 themed edition. “Eugene Stoner’s Eeeevile Black Assault Rifle of Death Coffee!” or something, then they could be banned here too.
I’d love to believe that the one about someone joining a company just to fix a longstanding bug was true, but I find it hard to believe that any company would hire someone who used their product.
See, before the purchase, Twitter had added some shit that basically blocked me from looking at stuff in the browser with javascript turned off.
I quit checking people on twitter.
Anyway, some kid got an internship with Twitter with the explicit goal of undoing that, and Musk let it go forward.
I think they have since gone back to pretty much requiring javascript, but it is not implemented in exactly the same way.
The twitter codebase seems to have been generally pretty disasterous. It may still have stuff that is broken or unexplained, and not really that easy to fix.
Xitter on my installation of Pale Moon gets ugly. I have to enable Javascript to see the details (also true for xcancel), but something doesn’t get cleaned up when I turn scripting back off. Enough tweets, and scrolling bogs way down. Nope.
The workaround is to keep Firefox running (without ad or script blockers), mainly for Xeets on various sites. It’s a kluge, but it works well enough.
Bob welcome to the world of software development. two thoughts
If Software Engineers were framing carpenters the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization
ALL old software is like this because there are always time and cost pressures on maintenance AND nobody wants to maintain old software as the glory goes to the folks making new stuff. LLM AI is NOT going to fix this, it is like throwing a bunch of idiot savant types at the issue who don’t coordinate fixes.
Honestly other designer/engineer types do it to, I think back to my 2007 Accord where to replace the passenger side headlight bulb you had to remove the fricking battery. It’s just that it is so much easier to have software get extended as requirements change so you get little warts clipped everywhere to add features/requirements that were added as the software progressed. Modern development paradigms to some degree accentuate this problem.
Anyone who has done programming knows that happens.
Anyone who has done building contractor work also knows this happens with any project. No matter how much planning and sign off goes into it.
Difference is the building contractor can say “Too late. Can’t change.” And be believed. Sometimes might say “Yes, but it’ll cost.” Give a bid estimate that’ll (usually) shutdown the conversation and won’t have to do whatever.
Programmer contractor OTOH won’t be believed, after all it is “magic”. Everyone knows it is just a wave of the hand to do additional magic to make the change. At best give a change bid and timeline that is so huge that the request gets shutdown. If very lucky, that huge bid/timeline shutdown actually works. But honestly? It can work. Just do not be surprised if it doesn’t.
I rarely had to rely on someone else for specs other than the immediate user. There were a few clients at the last job that there was an, um gate keeper, who relayed “specs” back and forth. Irritating as heck.
In those cases, one in particular case, a gatekeeper who had no clue how anything was suppose to work, not the work flow or the software, I required pictures/drawings. Would get that done with the obvious stuff filled in, send out, with explicit instructions to markup “how is this wrong”. Any complaints? Where is the markup? Another complaint. Where is the markup? Nothing, and I mean, nothing went forward (had plenty to do, thank you) until I got that markup.
Come on. I had to explain to an end user that I had no clue what “Use Tax” was. Knew what sales tax was, not use tax. User was shocked when I told them Oregon does not have sales tax (technically, lovely governor is sneaking it in, illegally). (Not the only time ran into that. Recently have in fact.)
I know. Heard a lot of “Not what expected and said I wanted. But exactly what was needed.” I could accept that.
Never ask what they want. Not ever. Ask what they have to produce and sometimes why. How they produce it now. I’ll figure out if the “source” information needs to be added and how, or calculated, then what they want can be produced by the product whether the product is new or not. I never was off track. Hard part was getting feed back for fine tuning.
Yeah, pretty sure there’s actually no safe way to fire an RPG from a helo.
Though I am led to believe that there is actually no safe way to fire any Soviet-design RPG. Or carry one, unless you carry the empty tube and you get someone else to carry the rounds.
Moral of the story: Never pass up a good idea if you’re the DM.
I see the Welsh get screwed in that universe too.
My oldest son would love the dinosaur gingerbread house.
Romance novels? OMG! I couldn’t do all that even as a teenager!
The worst leg cramps are the ones that wake you out of a sound sleep, screaming.
That 7/11 D&D party sounds like Chicago.
The under-the-house bunker was spot on. But need to include a miniature nuclear reactor to power the damn thing!
Musk and Tolstoy were both right.
Drug boats vs fishing bots? Never knew sardines came in a white powder form.
Had to send the Franklin Defends the Public Library to a couple of friends of mine who ran for Library Trustees (and lost) because they wanted to make sure that minors didn’t have free access to “adult” content materials.
The Reader was told the plans indicate a gun range behind the staircase. In includes a miniature black hole behind the targets to disappear the bullets.
My millionaire uncle had a 50-foot gun range in his basement. It passed through his wine cellar. There was an interlock so when he opened the shutters in his gun room/reloading station it would seal the door to the cellar so no one could enter while the range was hot and open the doors to the bullet trap at the far end.
Damn, I miss that man!
I asked him if he’d remember me in his will. In the will was a short paragraph: “I remember my nephew Bob. He was a good kid, if a little lacking on follow-through.” Perfect Uncle Bill! 😁
Indeed, although in my case the pilfering beast is a cat (though of similar color). One day I was making a Bologna sandwich. Cat came up and rubbed my ankles to say “What you eating Daddy?” I promptly said “This is Bologna, cats don’t eat bologna” and proffered a small piece to illustrate. Cat sniffed it and I’d swear his eyes lit up. He stole it from my hand and was growling at me when I tried to recover it. I now have to pay the Bologna tax. Morale: Do NOT offer the cat anything… Stupid Tax and Nom Kitticrats.
If I was the parent of the kid with the Pinochet answer, I’d be arguing with the teacher about the F as a grade. The question was “What do you want to be when you grow up?” It’s an opinion and can’t be wrong. Depending on the age of the child, the drawing may not have been up to snuff, but given the handwriting and use of what may have been a crayon, I’d say the kid is in 2nd or 3rd grade. That’s a perfectly adequate drawing for that age group.
It probably would have really blown the teacher’s mind if the kid had chosen Vlad the Impaler…
Remembering that the M203 40mm grenade launcher can launch tear gas grenades, I find Franklin’s choose to defend the library to be well-chosen. I will assume that the RPG being launched from a helicopter was mere artistic license.
What to do when your ginger bread house falls down reminds me of why my B-17 models kept getting hit by flak.
Per this page: https://inetres.com/gp/military/infantry/grenade/40mm_ammo.html the old Vietnam era flechette “beehive” round is no longer around, but there is a buckshot 40mm round, the M576. It’s not clear if any have been procured, though, since there’s no price for that one.
There are two “non-lethal” rounds that would work for library duty, the M1006 which shoots one big plastic round (ouch), and the M1029 with 48 hard rubber balls (ouch ouch ouch ouch). I would not want either shot at me, but neither one of those should hurt the books too much.
Only way I can change the bed is make sure the cats are locked out. Yes, plural. I not only get the sudden appearance of a cat on the bed, which will not be removed, but as soon as said cat is a lump under the sheets (forget the blanket), another cat, or two, is attacking said lump. Then the dog joins in as cat referee. Which is as about as successful as her cat herding efforts.
afaik it’s set in the US, though she visits the other countries regularly.
I hate the little twerp’s guts, btw. I caught my kids watching an episode where the idiot gave people cookies so they wouldn’t take things from her. Yeah, that’s what I want taught my kids….
I did, however, like the fanfic drabble where Dora, all grown up, joined the US Army as a demolitions expert. She was an expert at scouting out the battlefield ahead of time and setting up hidden explosives around where enemy snipers were likely to set up. Then when she saw one of them settle into one of the perches she’d trapped, she’d get a little smirk on her face. As she picked up the appropriate remote detonator, she’d whisper a quiet little, “Sniper, no sniping” and push the button.
Within less than a week, her teammates were calling her Dora the Exploder.
Pretty sure you’re correct, and I was misremembering it being a fanfic drabble. Someday I’ll write it, but not right now (I’m too busy prepping for Christmas-season travels at the moment, we’re taking the kids to visit both pairs of grandparents so there are a lot of logistical details to work out).
Their memories of being invaded by those groups has faded. Which is why they don’t understand why they’re having so many problems with Muslim immigrants.
I have several problems with the house with bunker.
The house is bigger than I want to upkeep.
My taste is not actually good, but the house seems ugly to me.
And, why not a bigger garage, or more outbuildings for storage, dirty tasks, and stuff hard to transport?
I don’t feel the bunker has enough overhead cover. Sorta defeats the purpose of building underground.
And the outfitting of the underground levels is mostly not my tastes or interests.
My big priorities in a building are clean air ventilation, temperature control, no dust, and not wet.
I hate solar panels.
The windows are somewhat good for natural light, but I both feel strongly about privacy, and have concerns about strong wind and flying debris.
I used to be very in favor of underground buildings, but I found that I do like a little light, and also that it is kinda hard to design for inherently dry.
Also, from my perspective, this ‘it is a war crime’ talk is hilarious.
One, I was already not taking arbitrary attempts to redefine this stuff seriously in highschool.
Two, the drug traffickers, really?
Three, I’m kinda surprised that either this is /that/ important to the Democrats, or that they are so dedicated to having a play going.
Four, this again allows some questions about what on earth justified the lockdown, or the Georgie Floyd ritos. Junkie ODs and it is the fault of society implies that action be taken in someway, etc.
Five, it is a little surprising that there is a logic to why Trump is pushing on this now. I’m surprised to see that the intel case is so solid, and that this is so well rooted in traditional thinking.
I think Trump’s got a few reasons to go after the drug stuff.
1.) It’s poison, and is hurting the people who use (and get addicted to) it.
2.) The cartels are making inroads in the US, and harming the drug trade is the best way to hurt them.
3.) At least one international rival, China, is heavily involved in some of the trafficking in an attempt to pull off what they think the Europeans did to them with opium (while opium didn’t help the Chinese, I suspect the Chinese have exaggerated the effects it had in an attempt to explain the reverses suffered by the Qing Dynasty at Western hands).
4.) There’s been talk for a long time that certain federal organizations (the CIA in particular gets named a lot) acquire additional funding through the drug trade. Anyone in the federal government that’s getting money that way is almost certainly also actively working against Trump (and would be doing so even if Trump weren’t directly threatening their supplemental income).
All but the first of those are greatly helped by having intel tracing where each of the involved parties links up to the drug trade.
#3 is huge. Chinese domestic education makes a humoungous deal of the opium trade and its impact. You will get no excuses for the Brits from me, but it was not the case that the Middle Kingdom was a near-peer competitor with European foreign barbarians right up until the British East India Company started looking for a market for all their opium from the subcontinent.
One wonders if part of the antipathy from China towards India isn’t based on blaming the Indians for letting themselves get conquered and colonized and giving the British East India Company access to opium.
There was reason for the so-called “China Mystique”. China was huge. For the longest time, it had been the sole source of certain manufactured goods, such as porcelain and silk. Britain was effectively addicted to tea, which came from China. The Qing Dynasty managed to avoid looking fractured, as some other groups had done (such as India). The entire region looked up to China as a superpower. And China kept the foreigners outside of everywhere but Canton.
But Earl Macartney took the scenic route out of the country after finishing his ambassadorial trip to the Chinese capitol (which was quite literally the first time Chinese had experienced a Western-style ambassadorial visit). It was the first time that a European had really had a chance to see the interior. And his conclusion was that the entire country was a rotten edifice that could be knocked over with a good shove.
What he wrote was ignored.
And so both sides continued blissfully on until the Opium War. And China’s weakness was put on display for the whole world to see in a very painful fashion.
Fun fact – the Qing Emperor during the Opium War had been an opium user during his youth. But afaik there’s no evidence that he became an addict.
“One wonders if part of the antipathy from China towards India…”
It could be. Or it could be that they’re regional rivals with a shared border, and both have seen themselves at times as the “natural” leaders of an anti-colonial Third World. The other two nations that are potential regional rivals are Russia (and the relationship there is complicated), and Japan (where the hatred is “excused” due to World War 2 Japanese atrocities).
Part of the rivalry is due to a sparsely populated shared border!which happens to be all most uniquely inhospitable, but the only reason it is a shared border is because Mao took Tibet and Xinjiang (Eastern Turkistan). As recently as the 1930s those served as buffer states between Raj India and China:
Before you laugh at the meme with the jumping bulldozer…
The Royal Thai Army is the only military that uses the US-built Stingray light tank. The Thai tank crews were *explicitly* ordered not to perform jumps with the tanks…
Imaginos now that you say it that sounds right. If the dragons did flame at both ends I imagine sales of Preparation H to the dragons would be very high.
What happened was I was dealing with cats and trying to figure out where I’d put the warm clothes before church, so post didn’t get done before church. That’s all.
So the hearsay being spread amongst OU students was that the essay was poorly organized and without citations. IE, that you could probably give several citations for specific verses, and present the connections.
I fundamentally doubt that the understanding of the GAs, and of the students being graded is anywhere near that even handed.
Official position of OU right now is the Chicago statement on free speech. Which has a carve out for not protecting speech that is criminal. So, in theory incitement to murder, or to mass murder, are not protected statements on campus. If people act on those statements.
So in 2015, the university and Boren acted in disproportionate ways in response to speech that was technically inciting murder, a song that probably no one would have acted upon. (Though from a liability, and a marketing perspective, the university would have a lot of concerns.)
Four to five years later, Gallowgly got two students to leave over speech that was a marketing problem, but definitely not an incitement to murder. A little later, instructors were disciplined over speech that was a marketing problem, but also not an incitement to murder.
Then the Oklahoma legislature passed that law against critical theory, and Harroz distributed messages about how concerned he was by that, or how law faculty were concerned, and then tried to rebrand OU as a free speech university. The endorsement of the Chicago statemetn on free speech then followed.
Well, then we had twenty twenty three. October 7th, 2023.
Prior to that, Jew haters could defend the legality of their speech based on an argument that their execution is shit enough that it could not be understood as successful incitement. October seventh causes a re-evaluation of that probability, as well as being savagery.
Critical theory is an academic theory about what would be in common understanding a word magic conspiracy. The basic implication of its claims is that peace is not real, and has never existed during the times of the historical record.
The basic surrounding theory in archeology and anthropology denies any distinction between civilized, and savage. In particular, it does not see ‘civilized’ as being an expensive behavior policy involving self restraint, that nonetheless has benefits. What the common American calls civilized is to certain special academics instead a result of being witched.
The Jew hating ideology of modern American academia is based in the understanding that it was the Jews who are deeply tied to that witching.
The broader race war ideology is based in ‘anti-colonialism’, ‘anti-imperialism’, and indigenous. Fundamentally, they take race groupings as invariant, and identical both over a two hundred year time scale, and basically forever. This is from first principles insane nonsense.
OU distributed messages for student organizations pushing such ‘anti-colonialist’ messages, as late as 2024 /after/ the election. Student freedom of speech is not fully persuasive an explanation, because faculty were speaking at those events.
In America, especially in the context of targeted mass murder, anti-colonialism is a mass murderous message. Academics associated with US universities were also unwise enough to say the quiet part out loud wrt explicitly meaning to carry out mass murder within America.
Mass murder targeting Americans who are not ‘indigenous’ is purely a super set of mass murder targeting American blacks. IE, the expulsions of those OU students by the US government that Harroz was ‘raising concerns’ about spring of 2025 were basically equivalent to the students expelled in 2015, maybe a lot worse.
Anyway, the university ideologues and the Democratic Party ideologues are very stressed by the loss of public funding, and are afraid of losing their ‘drum circle for Tinkerbell’. They are somewhat in ghost dance mode. They incited the murder of Charlie Kirk, and celebrated said murder, because they feared the loss of what they perceived as their own power.
Routhe was an embarrassingly terrible shooter where American politics is concerned. If Routhe is excluded, we have basically young people, too recently at university for deprogramming to have naturally occurred. We have a series of psychos, more of less of the professional managerial class social grouping, who went insane during their schooling and stayed insane. (Okay, some of them were even younger, but that is merely getting the university indoctrination second hand.) Very few psychos, too few to pull everything off by naked force of arms alone. Enough to scare not very self confident students, or students on weapons free campuses like OU’s.
One, the university gives the GAs some not very subtle hints about what sorts of agendas it wishes to have pushed.
Two, the GAs may fear having either other students or the university officials turned against them.
Three, the students also know that one or more of the GAs, the fellow students, or the officials might hurt them.
Even if the GA in question could be verified as behaving ethically, the paranoia is so reasonable, that it would not be clear how a student should sort the problem.
And, girl and women students raised by feminists may have gotten As for very inferior work, and became accustomed to filing complaints over any hint of pushback.
As they neared the final landing zone near the restaurant where Robert and Nammu waited, spider 425 observed some hostility.
“Alice and Guruh, I see a human targeting your next landing zone with a rocket launcher,” said 425 conversationally. “He is in a window of a house. I marked it with a laser.”
“Shall we kill him?” asked Guruh. “He gives us challenge!”
“Down girl,” said Alice. “Hiding first, remember? 425, what type launcher?”
“I am providing a real-time picture,” the spider replied, relaying an image from an ant drone it had on the window ledge. “Looks like a Soviet era RPG-7, possibly a Bulgarian copy. He is going to die if he launches from there, he’s in a little bathroom. It’ll blow him right out the window.”
According To Hoyt 
Will clicking the box get me emails?
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The Musk quote reminds me of Goldwater (“Extremism in defense of Liberty is no vice”).
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Re: the statue of Liberty, I always thought that the World Trade Center should have been replaced with a statue of Athena, posed throwing a javelin toward Mecca. The tip of the spear would be a real F-15 Eagle.
And they should have made the Saudis pay for it.
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Athena in a very skimpy Roman legionnaire’s outfit and modeled after Gal Gadot. (Just to really blow their minds.)
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Could be skimpier, and to me she looks more like Lucy Lawless, but hey, free clanker image from Nano Banana.
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And I didn’t try for the F-15 – that would have totally confused the clanker.
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Considering there’re points on both ends of that spear, it’s confused enough.
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Yeah, don’t try and figure out her grip on that spear like not javelin.
I think her hand as drawn actually would work if the shaft was passing in front of her, but whatchagonnado, clankers.
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Not that there’s anything wrong with Lucy . . .
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Nice clanker!
You’ve got the idea. Except as tall as the World Trade Center was.
Going to be hard to get the clanker to do it, I’d expect.
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The Caryatids are the model. Hot Greek chicks so tough they can carry the roof of the Erecthion on their heads in a basket.
Gal Gadot could pull that off. Or Lucy Lawless, as somebody said below. ~:D
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Five similar towers, clustered around the tallest in the middle.
Replace Liberty’s torch with an M-16 w/bayonet at high port.
I should stop now. My Fed is gibbering under his desk.
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I agree with you completely. My fed can join yours.
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I think all our Freds have a support group. We should send them a care package. Some Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, Bob Heinlein, John Ringo, and some good coffees. Bless their poor little hearts.
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They work HARD the poor sots. Early morning, late night, Saturdays, Sundays.
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King Harvey Coffee?
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Black Rifle Coffee! Banned in Canada, y’know. ~:D
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Well, King Harv is better.
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I’m sure it’s better coffee, but it’s not banned in Canada under the gun control act.
Maybe you could talk to them, get them to release an AR-15 themed edition. “Eugene Stoner’s Eeeevile Black Assault Rifle of Death Coffee!” or something, then they could be banned here too.
Instant fame boost. ~:D
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For some reason I was expecting a play on “four armed.”
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That’s genetics for you: four horned is four armed.
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Does somebody have the lanyard for the carpapult? I’m not authorized…
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Fire mission! Punster in the open!
Request Imptoved Carp Munitions!
From my position, up two!
over!
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And why aren’t you authorized? Come here. let me teach you the code.
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Code Zero Zero Zero, Carp Zero.
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The aardvark doesn’t. A little aardvark doesn’t hurt anyone, but he thinks the carpapult gets enough attention as it is.
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Saturday is not complete without a meme post from SAH
Thanks👍
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I’d love to believe that the one about someone joining a company just to fix a longstanding bug was true, but I find it hard to believe that any company would hire someone who used their product.
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To be fair, I also thought that was really far fetched.
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Literally happened when Musk took over twitter.
See, before the purchase, Twitter had added some shit that basically blocked me from looking at stuff in the browser with javascript turned off.
I quit checking people on twitter.
Anyway, some kid got an internship with Twitter with the explicit goal of undoing that, and Musk let it go forward.
I think they have since gone back to pretty much requiring javascript, but it is not implemented in exactly the same way.
The twitter codebase seems to have been generally pretty disasterous. It may still have stuff that is broken or unexplained, and not really that easy to fix.
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Xitter on my installation of Pale Moon gets ugly. I have to enable Javascript to see the details (also true for xcancel), but something doesn’t get cleaned up when I turn scripting back off. Enough tweets, and scrolling bogs way down. Nope.
The workaround is to keep Firefox running (without ad or script blockers), mainly for Xeets on various sites. It’s a kluge, but it works well enough.
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Easy enough. If something won’t run with Firefox with Ad and Script blockers, it doesn’t run, period. Why? Because I’m lazy.
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Bob welcome to the world of software development. two thoughts
Honestly other designer/engineer types do it to, I think back to my 2007 Accord where to replace the passenger side headlight bulb you had to remove the fricking battery. It’s just that it is so much easier to have software get extended as requirements change so you get little warts clipped everywhere to add features/requirements that were added as the software progressed. Modern development paradigms to some degree accentuate this problem.
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If carpenters had to build houses to the sorts of specs that programmers are given, the woodpecker would be superfluous.
The only blessing is that occasionally the person giving them will start screaming that’s not what he wants before it’s all the way built.
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Anyone who has done programming knows that happens.
Anyone who has done building contractor work also knows this happens with any project. No matter how much planning and sign off goes into it.
Difference is the building contractor can say “Too late. Can’t change.” And be believed. Sometimes might say “Yes, but it’ll cost.” Give a bid estimate that’ll (usually) shutdown the conversation and won’t have to do whatever.
Programmer contractor OTOH won’t be believed, after all it is “magic”. Everyone knows it is just a wave of the hand to do additional magic to make the change. At best give a change bid and timeline that is so huge that the request gets shutdown. If very lucky, that huge bid/timeline shutdown actually works. But honestly? It can work. Just do not be surprised if it doesn’t.
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I have ONCE had a person admit that the specs he gave me were wrong.
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I rarely had to rely on someone else for specs other than the immediate user. There were a few clients at the last job that there was an, um gate keeper, who relayed “specs” back and forth. Irritating as heck.
In those cases, one in particular case, a gatekeeper who had no clue how anything was suppose to work, not the work flow or the software, I required pictures/drawings. Would get that done with the obvious stuff filled in, send out, with explicit instructions to markup “how is this wrong”. Any complaints? Where is the markup? Another complaint. Where is the markup? Nothing, and I mean, nothing went forward (had plenty to do, thank you) until I got that markup.
Come on. I had to explain to an end user that I had no clue what “Use Tax” was. Knew what sales tax was, not use tax. User was shocked when I told them Oregon does not have sales tax (technically, lovely governor is sneaking it in, illegally). (Not the only time ran into that. Recently have in fact.)
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End users can be as clueless as anyone else.
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I know. Heard a lot of “Not what expected and said I wanted. But exactly what was needed.” I could accept that.
Never ask what they want. Not ever. Ask what they have to produce and sometimes why. How they produce it now. I’ll figure out if the “source” information needs to be added and how, or calculated, then what they want can be produced by the product whether the product is new or not. I never was off track. Hard part was getting feed back for fine tuning.
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Um. (deletes incriminating post);.
Nevermind. Nothing to see here.
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Ok, I laughed hysterically at the electric chair with the whoopee cushion. As Mr. Rogers asked, “Would you like to be my friend?”
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I laughed quite long at the whoopee cushion, too.
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You are not alone in this.
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I will claim credit for the cats on the roof… as in Castellano, Maestro…
But the East Asian version had not occurred to me…
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Where this was meant to attach is left as an exercise for the reader.
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The folks at CNN have been puffin’ stuff all along.
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I’m feeling called out on the ‘Writing Process’ one. 🤪🤣
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Me too.
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Same. Except I deleted a bunch more than I should have. Not just “the.”
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I found this on MeWe, but I think angels are supposed to look far more terrifying than that.
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Don’t forget, “Be not afraid,” can also be translated as, “Please stop screaming.”
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The career one was nice. I really, really want the tank with the bulldozer blade and excavator setup.
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“Combat Engineer Vehicle”
…
Just so much … potential.
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Had two of those in the depot for demolition and EOD clearing. Ours had the howitzer barrels though. Useful for blowing walls down.
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I’m guessing that the one on the lower right is named Thomas.
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Franklin, while laudably targeting narcoterrorists from that Huey, needs to go back and read the part about “backblast” again.
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Also needs to remember to keep his booger hook off the bang switch.
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That was my first thought too. “The copilot is about to get his hair set on fire!”
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Yeah, pretty sure there’s actually no safe way to fire an RPG from a helo.
Though I am led to believe that there is actually no safe way to fire any Soviet-design RPG. Or carry one, unless you carry the empty tube and you get someone else to carry the rounds.
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Moral of the story: Never pass up a good idea if you’re the DM.
I see the Welsh get screwed in that universe too.
My oldest son would love the dinosaur gingerbread house.
Romance novels? OMG! I couldn’t do all that even as a teenager!
The worst leg cramps are the ones that wake you out of a sound sleep, screaming.
That 7/11 D&D party sounds like Chicago.
The under-the-house bunker was spot on. But need to include a miniature nuclear reactor to power the damn thing!
Musk and Tolstoy were both right.
Drug boats vs fishing bots? Never knew sardines came in a white powder form.
Had to send the Franklin Defends the Public Library to a couple of friends of mine who ran for Library Trustees (and lost) because they wanted to make sure that minors didn’t have free access to “adult” content materials.
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The bunker was also missing a decent gun range. Tsk.
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My exact thought when viewing the subterranean rooms – wait, there’s no indoor range? Who approved the plans for this?
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The Reader was told the plans indicate a gun range behind the staircase. In includes a miniature black hole behind the targets to disappear the bullets.
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Maybe that was in the front quarter removed for viewing?
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Re the bunker — the first thing I thought of was Fallout 4. I’m a little surprised somebody hasn’t built a Fallout 4 mod for that yet.
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Square Grouper off of Florida.
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Square Grouper off of Florida.
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Square Grouper off of Florida.
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SFBS!
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I was worried about the subterranean bunker complex until I found the gun room on the bottom floor.
Now I just worry about who will vacuum the floors.
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Roombas handle routine sweeping.
But they need a very strong magnet to grab up missing springs, pins, and screws. (Grin)
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Klingon Santa!
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“Wet socks”
…
yup
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My millionaire uncle had a 50-foot gun range in his basement. It passed through his wine cellar. There was an interlock so when he opened the shutters in his gun room/reloading station it would seal the door to the cellar so no one could enter while the range was hot and open the doors to the bullet trap at the far end.
Damn, I miss that man!
I asked him if he’d remember me in his will. In the will was a short paragraph: “I remember my nephew Bob. He was a good kid, if a little lacking on follow-through.” Perfect Uncle Bill! 😁
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Indeed, although in my case the pilfering beast is a cat (though of similar color). One day I was making a Bologna sandwich. Cat came up and rubbed my ankles to say “What you eating Daddy?” I promptly said “This is Bologna, cats don’t eat bologna” and proffered a small piece to illustrate. Cat sniffed it and I’d swear his eyes lit up. He stole it from my hand and was growling at me when I tried to recover it. I now have to pay the Bologna tax. Morale: Do NOT offer the cat anything… Stupid Tax and Nom Kitticrats.
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This was a good time to meme…
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Truth. We live in the miracle heyday of meme times. The golden age of the meme. It is upon us, and we appreciate it not enough.
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The underground bunker is missing the workshops
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I was also wondering where the shooting range was hidden. Maybe behind the vault door in the bottom left room?
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There’s a workbench with a vise in the sublevel 2 room with the inclined weight bench, which I thought weird.
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the removed slice.
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If I was the parent of the kid with the Pinochet answer, I’d be arguing with the teacher about the F as a grade. The question was “What do you want to be when you grow up?” It’s an opinion and can’t be wrong. Depending on the age of the child, the drawing may not have been up to snuff, but given the handwriting and use of what may have been a crayon, I’d say the kid is in 2nd or 3rd grade. That’s a perfectly adequate drawing for that age group.
It probably would have really blown the teacher’s mind if the kid had chosen Vlad the Impaler…
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If I owned a Chevy Impala, I’d get a vanity plate: “VLAD.”
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I do believe I’ve seen a photo of a Chevy Impala with the license plate “VLADTHE”. You’re not the only one to have that good idea.
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Impalas have long corkscrew horns with ridges. Vlad would approve.
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Remembering that the M203 40mm grenade launcher can launch tear gas grenades, I find Franklin’s choose to defend the library to be well-chosen. I will assume that the RPG being launched from a helicopter was mere artistic license.
What to do when your ginger bread house falls down reminds me of why my B-17 models kept getting hit by flak.
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Per this page: https://inetres.com/gp/military/infantry/grenade/40mm_ammo.html the old Vietnam era flechette “beehive” round is no longer around, but there is a buckshot 40mm round, the M576. It’s not clear if any have been procured, though, since there’s no price for that one.
There are two “non-lethal” rounds that would work for library duty, the M1006 which shoots one big plastic round (ouch), and the M1029 with 48 hard rubber balls (ouch ouch ouch ouch). I would not want either shot at me, but neither one of those should hurt the books too much.
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The Bunker house is too big above ground.
That last one, the guy is a Canuk from Vancouver, iirc but still holds true
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I gave my cat a dirty look when I reached the making the bed meme.
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Only way I can change the bed is make sure the cats are locked out. Yes, plural. I not only get the sudden appearance of a cat on the bed, which will not be removed, but as soon as said cat is a lump under the sheets (forget the blanket), another cat, or two, is attacking said lump. Then the dog joins in as cat referee. Which is as about as successful as her cat herding efforts.
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Mine do it too.
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I think they left out a lot of steps between 3 and 4. 😄
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I’d always assumed Dora the Explorer was set in a Latin American country, putting the ICE guys a little out of their swim lane.
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afaik it’s set in the US, though she visits the other countries regularly.
I hate the little twerp’s guts, btw. I caught my kids watching an episode where the idiot gave people cookies so they wouldn’t take things from her. Yeah, that’s what I want taught my kids….
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I did, however, like the fanfic drabble where Dora, all grown up, joined the US Army as a demolitions expert. She was an expert at scouting out the battlefield ahead of time and setting up hidden explosives around where enemy snipers were likely to set up. Then when she saw one of them settle into one of the perches she’d trapped, she’d get a little smirk on her face. As she picked up the appropriate remote detonator, she’d whisper a quiet little, “Sniper, no sniping” and push the button.
Within less than a week, her teammates were calling her Dora the Exploder.
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I believe the “sniper no sniping” thing came from The Great Cookie Monster Thread.
I’ve seen “Dora the Exploder” as a separate meme. Am not aware of anything that combines the two, but would be more than interested in seeing it.
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When I attended aircraft mechanic school, there was a fella in my dorm named Richard Skinner . . .
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Pretty sure you’re correct, and I was misremembering it being a fanfic drabble. Someday I’ll write it, but not right now (I’m too busy prepping for Christmas-season travels at the moment, we’re taking the kids to visit both pairs of grandparents so there are a lot of logistical details to work out).
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Segue to Kipling’s Danegeld…
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Dear England, no one can free you, you have to free yourself.
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Their memories of being invaded by those groups has faded. Which is why they don’t understand why they’re having so many problems with Muslim immigrants.
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Now I picture the controls on early automobile with the spark lever having the directions labelled ADVANCE and WALZ.
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That’s, that’s, that’s…
{FALLS OUT OF CHAIR.}
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You’ll be waiting a long, looooong time for those Epstein Christmas lights to hang themselves. 😛
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MAIDS not included.
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I have several problems with the house with bunker.
The house is bigger than I want to upkeep.
My taste is not actually good, but the house seems ugly to me.
And, why not a bigger garage, or more outbuildings for storage, dirty tasks, and stuff hard to transport?
I don’t feel the bunker has enough overhead cover. Sorta defeats the purpose of building underground.
And the outfitting of the underground levels is mostly not my tastes or interests.
My big priorities in a building are clean air ventilation, temperature control, no dust, and not wet.
I hate solar panels.
The windows are somewhat good for natural light, but I both feel strongly about privacy, and have concerns about strong wind and flying debris.
I used to be very in favor of underground buildings, but I found that I do like a little light, and also that it is kinda hard to design for inherently dry.
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Also, from my perspective, this ‘it is a war crime’ talk is hilarious.
One, I was already not taking arbitrary attempts to redefine this stuff seriously in highschool.
Two, the drug traffickers, really?
Three, I’m kinda surprised that either this is /that/ important to the Democrats, or that they are so dedicated to having a play going.
Four, this again allows some questions about what on earth justified the lockdown, or the Georgie Floyd ritos. Junkie ODs and it is the fault of society implies that action be taken in someway, etc.
Five, it is a little surprising that there is a logic to why Trump is pushing on this now. I’m surprised to see that the intel case is so solid, and that this is so well rooted in traditional thinking.
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I think Trump’s got a few reasons to go after the drug stuff.
1.) It’s poison, and is hurting the people who use (and get addicted to) it.
2.) The cartels are making inroads in the US, and harming the drug trade is the best way to hurt them.
3.) At least one international rival, China, is heavily involved in some of the trafficking in an attempt to pull off what they think the Europeans did to them with opium (while opium didn’t help the Chinese, I suspect the Chinese have exaggerated the effects it had in an attempt to explain the reverses suffered by the Qing Dynasty at Western hands).
4.) There’s been talk for a long time that certain federal organizations (the CIA in particular gets named a lot) acquire additional funding through the drug trade. Anyone in the federal government that’s getting money that way is almost certainly also actively working against Trump (and would be doing so even if Trump weren’t directly threatening their supplemental income).
All but the first of those are greatly helped by having intel tracing where each of the involved parties links up to the drug trade.
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#3 is huge. Chinese domestic education makes a humoungous deal of the opium trade and its impact. You will get no excuses for the Brits from me, but it was not the case that the Middle Kingdom was a near-peer competitor with European foreign barbarians right up until the British East India Company started looking for a market for all their opium from the subcontinent.
One wonders if part of the antipathy from China towards India isn’t based on blaming the Indians for letting themselves get conquered and colonized and giving the British East India Company access to opium.
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There was reason for the so-called “China Mystique”. China was huge. For the longest time, it had been the sole source of certain manufactured goods, such as porcelain and silk. Britain was effectively addicted to tea, which came from China. The Qing Dynasty managed to avoid looking fractured, as some other groups had done (such as India). The entire region looked up to China as a superpower. And China kept the foreigners outside of everywhere but Canton.
But Earl Macartney took the scenic route out of the country after finishing his ambassadorial trip to the Chinese capitol (which was quite literally the first time Chinese had experienced a Western-style ambassadorial visit). It was the first time that a European had really had a chance to see the interior. And his conclusion was that the entire country was a rotten edifice that could be knocked over with a good shove.
What he wrote was ignored.
And so both sides continued blissfully on until the Opium War. And China’s weakness was put on display for the whole world to see in a very painful fashion.
Fun fact – the Qing Emperor during the Opium War had been an opium user during his youth. But afaik there’s no evidence that he became an addict.
“One wonders if part of the antipathy from China towards India…”
It could be. Or it could be that they’re regional rivals with a shared border, and both have seen themselves at times as the “natural” leaders of an anti-colonial Third World. The other two nations that are potential regional rivals are Russia (and the relationship there is complicated), and Japan (where the hatred is “excused” due to World War 2 Japanese atrocities).
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Part of the rivalry is due to a sparsely populated shared border!which happens to be all most uniquely inhospitable, but the only reason it is a shared border is because Mao took Tibet and Xinjiang (Eastern Turkistan). As recently as the 1930s those served as buffer states between Raj India and China:
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It also didn’t help that the British figured out how to set up tea plantations in India.
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Before you laugh at the meme with the jumping bulldozer…
The Royal Thai Army is the only military that uses the US-built Stingray light tank. The Thai tank crews were *explicitly* ordered not to perform jumps with the tanks…
(it’s bad for the suspension)
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I have the Samurai cats on a shirt.
>
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The one thing I would change to the Statue of (un)Liberty would be to make the flame a wispy trail of smoke.
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With enough beans and chili peppers…maybe? 🤣
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I have a vague memory of Oscar from Heinlein’s Glory Road taking advantage of exactly that proclivity of the local dragon like creatures.
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My copy of Glory Road is in a box in the attic but here’s how I remember it:
Oscar: “Do they shoot fire from both ends, or only the front?”
Rufo: “The front, of course. How could it be both?”
Oscar: “See next year’s model.”
Oscar then proceeds to shoot arrows into several Nevian Dragons in one of the few places they don’t have armored scales. 😛
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Imaginos now that you say it that sounds right. If the dragons did flame at both ends I imagine sales of Preparation H to the dragons would be very high.
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I misread it as “CIA HQ” and not “CNN HQ” at first. Still made sense.
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Am I the only one who wonders where the Promos are?
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Well, I found them!!!! [Crazy Grin]
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What happened was I was dealing with cats and trying to figure out where I’d put the warm clothes before church, so post didn’t get done before church. That’s all.
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https://instapundit.com/760933/
So the hearsay being spread amongst OU students was that the essay was poorly organized and without citations. IE, that you could probably give several citations for specific verses, and present the connections.
I fundamentally doubt that the understanding of the GAs, and of the students being graded is anywhere near that even handed.
Official position of OU right now is the Chicago statement on free speech. Which has a carve out for not protecting speech that is criminal. So, in theory incitement to murder, or to mass murder, are not protected statements on campus. If people act on those statements.
So in 2015, the university and Boren acted in disproportionate ways in response to speech that was technically inciting murder, a song that probably no one would have acted upon. (Though from a liability, and a marketing perspective, the university would have a lot of concerns.)
Four to five years later, Gallowgly got two students to leave over speech that was a marketing problem, but definitely not an incitement to murder. A little later, instructors were disciplined over speech that was a marketing problem, but also not an incitement to murder.
Then the Oklahoma legislature passed that law against critical theory, and Harroz distributed messages about how concerned he was by that, or how law faculty were concerned, and then tried to rebrand OU as a free speech university. The endorsement of the Chicago statemetn on free speech then followed.
Well, then we had twenty twenty three. October 7th, 2023.
Prior to that, Jew haters could defend the legality of their speech based on an argument that their execution is shit enough that it could not be understood as successful incitement. October seventh causes a re-evaluation of that probability, as well as being savagery.
Critical theory is an academic theory about what would be in common understanding a word magic conspiracy. The basic implication of its claims is that peace is not real, and has never existed during the times of the historical record.
The basic surrounding theory in archeology and anthropology denies any distinction between civilized, and savage. In particular, it does not see ‘civilized’ as being an expensive behavior policy involving self restraint, that nonetheless has benefits. What the common American calls civilized is to certain special academics instead a result of being witched.
The Jew hating ideology of modern American academia is based in the understanding that it was the Jews who are deeply tied to that witching.
The broader race war ideology is based in ‘anti-colonialism’, ‘anti-imperialism’, and indigenous. Fundamentally, they take race groupings as invariant, and identical both over a two hundred year time scale, and basically forever. This is from first principles insane nonsense.
OU distributed messages for student organizations pushing such ‘anti-colonialist’ messages, as late as 2024 /after/ the election. Student freedom of speech is not fully persuasive an explanation, because faculty were speaking at those events.
In America, especially in the context of targeted mass murder, anti-colonialism is a mass murderous message. Academics associated with US universities were also unwise enough to say the quiet part out loud wrt explicitly meaning to carry out mass murder within America.
Mass murder targeting Americans who are not ‘indigenous’ is purely a super set of mass murder targeting American blacks. IE, the expulsions of those OU students by the US government that Harroz was ‘raising concerns’ about spring of 2025 were basically equivalent to the students expelled in 2015, maybe a lot worse.
Anyway, the university ideologues and the Democratic Party ideologues are very stressed by the loss of public funding, and are afraid of losing their ‘drum circle for Tinkerbell’. They are somewhat in ghost dance mode. They incited the murder of Charlie Kirk, and celebrated said murder, because they feared the loss of what they perceived as their own power.
Routhe was an embarrassingly terrible shooter where American politics is concerned. If Routhe is excluded, we have basically young people, too recently at university for deprogramming to have naturally occurred. We have a series of psychos, more of less of the professional managerial class social grouping, who went insane during their schooling and stayed insane. (Okay, some of them were even younger, but that is merely getting the university indoctrination second hand.) Very few psychos, too few to pull everything off by naked force of arms alone. Enough to scare not very self confident students, or students on weapons free campuses like OU’s.
One, the university gives the GAs some not very subtle hints about what sorts of agendas it wishes to have pushed.
Two, the GAs may fear having either other students or the university officials turned against them.
Three, the students also know that one or more of the GAs, the fellow students, or the officials might hurt them.
Even if the GA in question could be verified as behaving ethically, the paranoia is so reasonable, that it would not be clear how a student should sort the problem.
And, girl and women students raised by feminists may have gotten As for very inferior work, and became accustomed to filing complaints over any hint of pushback.
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Due to the backblast, please do not fire RPGs from an enclosed space like the cabin of a helicopter.
Thank you for the opportunity to express this concern
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Many such cases. (If you read the comments.)
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As they neared the final landing zone near the restaurant where Robert and Nammu waited, spider 425 observed some hostility.
“Alice and Guruh, I see a human targeting your next landing zone with a rocket launcher,” said 425 conversationally. “He is in a window of a house. I marked it with a laser.”
“Shall we kill him?” asked Guruh. “He gives us challenge!”
“Down girl,” said Alice. “Hiding first, remember? 425, what type launcher?”
“I am providing a real-time picture,” the spider replied, relaying an image from an ant drone it had on the window ledge. “Looks like a Soviet era RPG-7, possibly a Bulgarian copy. He is going to die if he launches from there, he’s in a little bathroom. It’ll blow him right out the window.”
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