I have pinned this post to the top of my blog. It is to remind people of what many of our opponents want. Alison Aires wants a tyrannical government. They want summary execution for private possession of firearms.
Paul worked with a client who became suspicious of her husband after noticing unusual times he’d brush his teeth. She had installed a smart electric toothbrush app to help encourage their kids to brush properly but the app also tracked every session for the whole family.
“Over time, the client noticed their partner’s brushing history was being logged at odd times, times when they were supposedly at work,” Paul explained. At first, it didn’t seem like much, brushing late in the morning on Fridays didn’t raise immediate red flags.
“And in that time he had started an affair with a work colleague and used to have her over the family home on a Friday when the wife and kids were out of the house,” he added.
I no longer work in the Cyber Threat Intelligence group at work, but when I was on the team our analysists would sometimes track down bad guys over the course of months of collecting “breadcrumbs”. The bad guys would post things that in of themselves were essentially useless. But cumulatively they added up to positive identification and location of perpetrators who had defraud the company and/or our customers of millions and some cases of tens of millions of dollars.
One example I participated in was as follows. The analysts noticed large numbers of nearly identical messages would be posted on multiple Telegraph channels by a criminal claiming ability to defraud our company and his willingness, for a price, to teach others how to do the same thing. I wrote a program that would find all the users names associated with publishing these nearly identical messages. It turned out that occasionally the same message would be posted by two different users names within a few seconds of each other in different channels. One user would post the message in one or two channels. The other user would post it in 20 channels. The one channel posting username would “drop off the radar” at the same time as the new username posting in 20 channels appeared. It was, almost for certain, the same person changing their username over time.
Hence, we could track the same person over a year or more even though he changed his username every few weeks. This allowed us to find a lot more breadcrumbs to narrow the search.
These perps would drop social hints such they were at a party, but they had to leave soon because it was 2:00 AM. By comparing the stated time to the UTC timestamp in the channel, we could determine the time zone they are in. They would post a picture holding something in their hand proving they had defrauded the company. Now we know their skin color and perhaps the color of their watch. When searching social media posts for information about the party we could use the skin and watch color to tie the fraudster username to a social media account. If the electronic object they posted had a clock on it and it is outside, from the shadows we can get an approximation of the latitude they were at. If they would post the social handle of their girlfriend, now we have more breadcrumbs to collect. The girlfriend would post a picture of a scenic site. Now we can do reverse images searches to find that landscape or better yet, a famous building. Now we have their residence or vacation location within a few dozen miles. Or that identical picture would show up in a social media account. Bingo!
The smallest things add up.
People have concerns about electronics in their homes and vehicles spying on them. Yes, this is a concern. These things can be firehoses of information and the smallest things add up.
But keep in mind that it is possible to create an Internet of Things (IoT) enabled house without leaking information to everyone. It is more work than using Amazon’s Alexia or Google Nest, and you probably have to be a geek of some sort to push through some of the issues. * But you can completely isolate a “Smart Home” from the Internet and still use it for monitoring and controlling your home. You would have to be home to access the data or change the programming, but you can do some amazing things. Or you can pay a few dollars a month and access it via https (encrypted) connections from anywhere you have Internet service.
Because I am away from my underground bunker most of the time, at least for now, I chose to pay a few dollars to access it remotely.
I have hundreds of sensors in my underground bunker. Walking through you probably would only see dozen or so at most. But that thermometer also has a humidity sensor in it. That makes twice as many sensors as you first thought and the measurements they report give you more information than you might guess. I could tell what room a contractor was working in because the humidity and temperature would rise if they spent more than a few minutes in a room. When a contractor would paint, then the humidity would go way up. I set up leak alarms (the alert would be on my phone, not in the room) based on high humidity and once the painting done by the contractor set off the leak detection logic.
For people who can’t imagine why they would want their house instrumented, I know two homes that were severely damaged due to leaks. One summer home was completely destroyed because it sat for months with the basement overflowing with water. Brother Doug’s home had the tubing to the toilet rust out and spew water for several hours in an upstairs bathroom. That destroyed drywall on the main floor and basement and flooring on the upstairs floor and main floor. A few years later a second flood was caused by squirrels nesting in the drain leading water from around the basement. A heavy rainstorm put about two inches of water in the basement and even though Brother Doug was in the house he did not notice for over a day because he did not go into the basement. With leak sensors and/or high humidity alarms he and his wife would have saved thousands of dollars and many hours of time.
I use temperature sensors to optimize the use of a geothermal heat pump, the buffer tank, the hybrid water heater, and secondary electrical resistance heating in my underground bunker. With remote access, the outside door light can automatically be turned on when you are driving home in the dark and get within 100 yards of the door. That probably isn’t that much interest to city dwellers, but when there are no streetlights, a little extra light getting into the house can be quite welcome. Motion sensors and door opening sensors can be used to detect someone moving around in your home when you are not there and send an alert to your phone.
If you don’t mind being spied on by your appliances** you could get alerts if you left a refrigerator or freezer door open. You can get an alert the drier has completed its job, and you should get your clothes out before they wrinkle, and you get notified with it is time for the water filter in youf refrigerator to be changed. You don’t remember if you turned off the oven and you are a block away from your house on the way to work? The app for your oven can tell you whether you need to return home or continue to work without worrying about it. You can open the garage door remotely and watch on a webcam as FedEx delivers a large package. And/or you could get an alert if someone else opened the door when you did not expect it.
Barb is pretty vehement about not wanting her house to spy on her. But after Brother Doug’s second house flood, she put something like ten leak sensors in various places around her house.
Depending on which leak sensor gets wet, my underground bunker computer will do more than just fire an alert. If appropriate, it will turn off the water supply, the water heater, and the water conditioner.
Operated by five-year batteries, leak sensors can be discretely placed in out of the way places and provide peace of mind without significant information being leaked. There is a remaining battery life sensor and a binary “wet”/”dry” sensor. Even if they were hacked or the manufacturer collected usage data, what do you care about that information being obtained by others?
The underground bunker is more fire resistant than most homes. But I can remotely turn on outdoor sprinklers to protect the backup generator, electrical meter, well, bunker doors, and windows. Short of deliberate human acts, the bunker exterior complex should be fireproof.
Yes, the smallest details can add up to useful knowledge for an adversary if someone is willing to spend the time. But a lot of life is about tradeoffs. For me, I was able to get good enough privacy and significantly improved quality of life and improved remote security of my underground bunker by creating a “Smart Home.” Your mileage will vary.
* Check out Home Assistant if you are interested in going down this path.
** GE appliances require you to connect them to the Internet and use their app to utilize the “smart features”, other appliances may vary.
I feel like an alien, having traveled down to planet earth and found that society just does this and thinks it’s normal, and I am personally horrified but gently going ‘are you sure this is ok’ to people who insist that no, this was necessary and they will happily do it to their own children. On a planet made out of Aellas, any one of you who attended public school could go on the talk shows and discuss your traumatic upbringing where your entire childhood was wasted away into systematic damage to your curiosity. You’d get massive sympathy from the audience and you could go on a book tour and they’d make a dramatic tragic biopic about your life. On a planet made out of Aellas, you’d need therapy.
Many years ago, my Great Uncle Walt used to tell a story. I think it was about a brother of his whom I never met. Let’s call him “John.” It went something like this:
John ordered and paid for a car with the exact feature set he wanted. After a few weeks the dealer received the car and offered to deliver it. John said they could deliver it that afternoon and he would be home to receive it.
Sometime later John got another call. It was the dealer telling him, “We are so sorry. While driving your car to your place the driver had an accident and totaled your car.”
John’s response was, “No. That is not what happened. Your driver totaled your car.”
Last Friday Barb and I drove to see a movie in my car. As we pulled away from a traffic light the car barely moved even with the engine at a fairly high RPM. It was almost as if the car was not really in gear. After a few seconds, the car behaved normally long enough to get us to the movie. On the way, Barb made an online service appointment for the next day with the dealership. We dropped the car off later that night.
On Saturday, I received word that the torque converter, transmission, rear differential, and battery needed to be replaced. I knew the differential was occasionally making an odd sound and maybe a sort of thumping vibration during some turns. I had been wondering about the battery too. The car computer would notify me via the phone app that it was shutting off communications to save battery after just a day or two of not driving the car. The total would be about $23,000. The Blue Book price of the car is about $15,000.
I found a newer car I liked at Jess Ford in Pullman, Washington for considerably less than I could in the Seattle area. They had two other cars that, while not my top choices, would be good enough to do everything I needed to do for Boomershoot 2026.
On Tuesday of this week, I took a flight to Pullman to look at the car and probably buy it. The salesman met me at the airport, showed me the car, and after looking at the numbers I agreed to buy it. He programmed the door unlock feature with the same code I used for my last two cars, and he set up the app on my phone to communicate with the car. He then directed me to the finance manager to sign all the paperwork and write the check for the total price of the car. As I was doing that, someone else would take the car to the gas station and fill the tank.
I filled out all the paperwork and had filled out most of the check when the salesman came to the office and asked the finance manager if he would come out to talk. From the tone of his voice, I knew something was wrong. I stopped writing. What could it be? Did they suspect I was a con artist or something? Did they think my check would bounce?
A minute or so later they came back into the office. They told me the kid who was to fill up the tank had wrecked the car. They didn’t know how bad, but if I didn’t want the car anymore that would be understandable. “We’ll make everything right on this.” Further discussion ensued and I told them that if it was just a dented fender or something they could pay for the repair and I would be fine with that. They appreciated that and said someone was going out to find out how bad the damage was.
After about 15 minutes they came back and solemnly told me that I did not want that car. It was probably totaled. Remembering my Uncle Walt’s story, I told them that I was glad it was their car and not mine.
I asked about the two backup cars I had seen online. Both of them were out as loaner cars. There was nothing else on the lot that I was interested in.
As it was late in the day, they offered me a loaner car, offered to pay for a motel, and offered a free dinner if I would come back the next day when they had one or both of the backup cars on the lot again. I accepted the car, drove to my underground bunker, spent the night, and came back the next morning. I purchased one of the backup cars and drove it home Wednesday afternoon in time for dinner with Barb.
On Thursday the salesman sent me a picture of the car:
“Did he roll it?” I asked. His response: “He rolled it twice.” *
The driver was taken to the hospital, examined, and released. Other than being badly shaken, he is okay. The salesman told me he has been a great employee and will retain his job.
* Chat GPT, Copilot, and Grok are skeptical of the two rolls. They claim there is no evidence of that in the picture. Claude suggested a complete roll and landing primarily on the driver side rear wheel. Multiple rolls are judged unlikely by Claude. Chat GPT claims a tripping like event caused the wheel/tire damage and the roll.
The above is true, and several other things are issues as well. A case could be made that it is not worth the benefits–at least for today.
Six months ago, I had no concern that AI was going to replace my job as a software engineer. Today, I know it is going to happen. I can still review the AI written code, find, and fix problems before it is deployed. I make it more efficient. I make it more maintainable. I make it easier to extend. I make it use less memory. I find and fix potential race condition. * I find and fix edge cases with parameter validation and unexpected responses from other systems.
But I expect that six months from now AI can do all that as well as I can and do it in 1/1000th of the time it takes me–assuming it still makes those mistakes.
When I first started programming it was on an analog computer with patch cables, precision potentiometers, and capacitors (to make integrators), with an ink and paper plotter for the output. The digital computer I learned to program that same semester took its input, both code and data, on punched cards. The output was on a line printer which sounded something like a rotary saw cutting through plywood.
The teletype with a line editor connected to the main frame a year or two later was an incredible upgrade. And I could save my programs and data on disk! No more punched card decks!
My first personal computer, and IBM XT, had a 10 Mbyte hard drive, and I edited my first programs with EDLIN (another line editor).
After working for a few years, I went to graduate school. I remember the computer room having signs on the wall about introductions to something called a “visual editor.” Whatever, I thought. The line editors I was accustomed to were visual. What are they talking about? I then looked over someone’s shoulder using a “visual editor” and seeing what you could do was almost orgasmic.
After a few years more “Integrated Development Environments” (IDE) came out. I mostly ignored them. The visual editor I was using was fine, I would exit, run “make” and then invoke the debugger, visual editor, whatever, again as required. A few years more and the IDE was vastly superior to separate tools.
The evolving IDEs were good for a couple decades and occasionally code generators would make specialized code (I wrote one when I worked at Qualcomm in the early and mid 2010s).
About two years ago I started asking chatbots to write a few code snippets which I would copy and paste into my programs. It was surprisingly good. But, if you asked it to make a program which collected traffic data from the firewalls, correlated the IPs and domain address with lists of known bad IPs and domains, then put our network computers which had connections to these known bad IPs and domains into a graphic database with all the connections and attempted connections the answer would be, “Sorry. I can’t do that.” I know because I tried.
Today, if I were to make that request it would ask a few questions, then it would write the code and add features I had not thought of. Oh, and I could make the request and answer the questions either by text or speaking it into my headset. **
Sometime, in very near future, Claude Mythos (and probably others) will be released. Here is what is showing up in tests of the preview:
Claude Mythos Preview is a general-purpose, unreleased frontier model that reveals a stark fact: AI models have reached a level of coding capability where they can surpass all but the most skilled humans at finding and exploiting software vulnerabilities.
Mythos Preview has already found thousands of high-severity vulnerabilities, including some in every major operating system and web browser. Given the rate of AI progress, it will not be long before such capabilities proliferate, potentially beyond actors who are committed to deploying them safely. The fallout—for economies, public safety, and national security—could be severe.
My sources tell me, “It’s more powerful than they say.”
It took many years to go from the first line editor to the first “visual editor”. It took more years to get to an IDE superior to independent tools. If you were to plot the capabilities of programming development environments versus time with a log scale for the capabilities, you would probably still have an exponential looking curve for a linear time axis. That is, I suspect the exponent of the capabilities is increasing.
I’m reminded of an email conversation I had with one of my blog readers who used to work at Microsoft the same time I did. A snippet of his musings (from April 2, 2025):
The Home Economics class of tomorrow won’t be teaching kids how to cook but rather teaching them how to write prompts.
And if you don’t think this is happening today, look at the kids writing prompts to create high quality AI video content used in ads, anime videos, even porn. We’re starting to see more prompt writers, and prompt writers are becoming tomorrow’s artists.
Tomorrow’s billionaires? Some will be the same as today’s billionaires; the people who can help you create what’s in your imagination. Microsoft Word and PowerPoint let you create what’s in your head today. AI engines and powerful, flexible, simple prompt syntaxes will let people create what’s in their imaginations tomorrow, and the inventors of those engines and syntax structures will become billionaires.
Who knows. Perhaps the very best engines, the best syntaxes, and the best prompt writers will find their way into the design team for the very first NCC 1701.
I was skeptical and responded:
You make some good points, but I suspect they won’t be valid for very long. Perhaps a few months. I think what will happen is the chatbots will “learn” that the requirements are insufficiently detailed, and it will ask, just as your waiter/waitress might, “Thin or thick crust?” And the same for other ambiguous requests of every type.
I asked Copilot and Grok for opinions on the prompt engineers. Here is a portion of the response I was expecting (emphasis added):
I’d push back a bit: he assumes AI will stay “dumb” about context forever, requiring humans to spoon-feed it every detail. Today’s AI already shows signs of improvement. Advanced models can infer intent from vague prompts by learning user preferences over time or pulling context from past interactions. Imagine a Star Trek replicator that knows Captain Picard’s “Hot” means 85°C because he’s ordered it 47 times before, or that “Earl Grey” implies a medium-steeped brew based on his British leanings. Future AI could ask clarifying questions—“Do you want your pizza spicy or just hot from the oven?”—or use sensors to detect your mood and adjust the recipe. This adaptability might reduce the need for “professional” prompt writers, at least for everyday tasks.
The development of artificial intelligence is moving so fast, reports The Wall Street Journal, that one of the field’s hottest jobs — prompt engineering — is already on its way out. Just a couple of years ago, companies would pay up to $200,000 to have someone “crafting the exact right inputs” to produce useful results from large language models. But as models have gotten smarter, and more employees are trained on prompting, there’s simply less call for dedicated prompt engineers.
My job, as it exists today, will be obsolete within a few dozen weeks. It may take a few months for management to have confidence in the AI results, but the future is clear. And I expect most white-collar jobs, at nearly any level, will soon be replaceable “by a very small shell script.” ***
We live in interesting times.
* Bugs that may only show up when the timing is just right and hence exhibit noticeable (possibly catastrophic) symptoms as infrequently as once per hour/day/week.
** And we all laughed in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home when Scotty tried to interact with a computer by speaking to the mouse as if it were a microphone. We are now truly living in the future.
The Democrat Party’s entire 2026 strategy is a single, malignant sentence:
“Promise revenge, and the base will crawl over broken glass to hand us the keys again.”
They’re not even hiding it anymore.
Impeachment?
Not for “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” as the Constitution demands, but as a routine English-style vote of no confidence…exactly what Jonathan Turley just torched on Fox.
They’ve pathologized the impeachment clause into a weaponized tantrum, turning the solemn constitutional mechanism designed to protect the Republic from tyrants into a partisan guillotine for anyone who dares win an election they lost.
This isn’t politics.
It’s a clinical disorder:
revenge addiction dressed up as “accountability,” rage dopamine substituted for governance, and the slow, deliberate poisoning of the very guardrails the Founders welded into place to prevent exactly this kind of unhinged circus.
They believe the American people are stupid enough, or broken enough, to reward the party that openly campaigns on retribution.
That the spectacle of endless investigations, show trials, and ritual humiliations will somehow translate into ballots.
They’re betting the farm that their voters’ limbic systems…flooded with righteous fury and the sweet, sweet promise of payback…will override every warning light flashing in the constitutional machinery.
And if it works?
Watch the fuck out.
Because once you normalize impeachment as electoral therapy, once you teach an entire generation that losing an election is justification for destroying norms, you don’t get the Republic back.
You get the death spiral.
You get tit-for-tat purges, politicized prosecutions as standard operating procedure, and a body politic so septic with mutual hatred that the next “no confidence” vote ends with blood on the floor instead of talking points on cable.
This isn’t hyperbole.
It’s the terminal pathology of a party that has mistaken vengeance for vision and power for purpose.
They’re not trying to save democracy.
They’re trying to own it.
And if the country is dumb enough to let them, the Constitution won’t be the only thing that dies screaming.
I’ve become tired of the politically fighting. The Democrats are out of touch with reality and are stark raving, bat-shit, howling at the moon crazy. The Republicans have a better touch with reality but don’t seem to want to be the adults in the room and firmly tell the tantrum throwing toddlers to go to their rooms and stay there until they calm down. The recent news of DOJ charges Southern Poverty Law Center with fraud and the lawsuits against antigun states and cities are encouraging, but until I see large fines and people behind bars, I’m skeptical.
And if Democrats get political control of the country in the next election or two things are likely to get very spicy.
I’m glad my underground bunker in Idaho is ready for occupancy. *
* Physically, this is true. There are a few legal obstacles still in place by, shall we say, “an over enthusiastic government inspector.”
This video is worth the watch. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
This is what single issue voters finally find out. Your vote should be about policy, not the person. Identity politics only goes so far before it all unravels.
This video is worth the watch. Once you see it, you can't unsee it.
This is what single issue voters finally find out. Your vote should be about policy, not the person. Identity politics only goes so far before it all unravels.
Democrats do not have a monopoly on tribal loyalty over policy. Republicans talk a good talk about economic freedom and gun owner rights, but don’t really do much about it, they opposed gay marriage and grudgingly tolerate it now. And they are downright hostile to social freedoms such as freedom from religion, recreational drug use, social nudity, and sex work.
But freedom loving people cannot fight on all fronts at the same time. If we have the backing of Republicans and a chance to fix the wrongs of Democrat policies, then help them out. And when there is a chance to undo wrongheaded Republican policies, take advantage of that momentum too.
Wake up and align yourself against government overreach. The policy is important. The party and the people are not.
This probably first appeared on October 13th, 1965. But this mindset in U.S. politicians goes back to at least FDR. And internationally it goes much further. It is not quite so blatantly as Linus’s delivery here, but there is a probably at least a fragment of this mindset in nearly everyone. I strongly suspect the foundation of it had survival benefits from the time our ancestors first started roaming the savanna in tribes. Hence it is probably hardwired into our brains.
Just like believing the world is flat and the center of the universe, it takes a special type of brain to push aside the hardwiring and see reality. I really, really need to make that blog post about how to determine truth from falsity.
The 2nd Amendment was moral turpitude in and of itself. The possession of a gun is the mark of a person with a violent mind and bad character parading behind the nonsense, unprovable claim that our founding fathers meant/intended things they would have more than likely been against.
There are probably over 80 million gun owners in the U.S. who own hundreds of millions of guns and shoot billions of rounds of ammo each year. Yet only an extremely small fraction of them commits a violent crime in their lifetime. It is almost as if he is living in an alternate reality.
I has been a few years since I have read anything this messed up. I have to wonder if he just got Internet access after spending several years in a psych ward.
But that is being generous to him. It probably is almost as likely that he is just trying to move the Overton Window to enable elimination of private gun ownership and then a sizable number of the people who owned them.
Another, possible explanation is that he expected to get a lot of traffic from making outlandish statements. Here are few more.
Abolish the 6th Amendment, and start charging suspects with disorderly conduct, obstructing the police, and contempt of court when they invoke the 6th. We need to force accused criminals to own up to what they did without hiding behind an attorney.
We also need to abolish the court’s ability and authority to find someone not guilty. We need law that says all criminal court cases MUST end with a guilty finding. There is no such thing as an innocent criminal.
It’s time for our nation to ban all politics and political parties. Political speech, all political speech should be banned in all its forms as well. It’s the ONLY way to do away with political extremism.
But I somewhat discount he believes those are outlandish. Those are the only posts of that type I could find after scrolling through several dozen posts. He openly admits he lives in Chicago, claims to be a “Media Personality” and “Chicago Public Safety Journalist.” I find the attitude expressed in the posts above to be consistent with my model of his bio.
This was in response to the question (about Disney):
How bad is the DEI there and can anything be done to change it’s course?
Other than the peak seeming to appear a couple of years later, as I have said before, the impression at my company tracks with his. It seems to have been a fad. And as the fab showed how toxic it was the population as a whole turned against it.
And my impression again, the Democrats found themselves painted into a corner and have nearly suffocated on the paint fumes. They lost the presidency to multiple “felony convicted” Donald Trump, of all people. The got slammed in the popular as well as the electoral college by more than the margin of fraud. And despite all the fraud they lost the House and the Senate, too. The majority of voters came to the conclusion all the cancel culture, all the DEI stuff, all the child transition stuff, all the illegal alien stuff, all the looting, rioting, all the fake racism (think Jussie Smollett), and the insistence of a January 6th “insurrection” was too much and it finally popped the bubble the Democrats had been riding on. The Democrats lost so much credibility that a single podcaster (Joe Rogan) gets about double the views of any of Democrat aligned TV host.
Show me the lyric of a nation and it matters not who writes its laws.
Damon of Athens 5th-century BCE Greek music theorist, philosopher, and political advisor, known for his influence on Pericles and his theories on the ethical and political effects of music.
It views politics as ‘downstream’ from culture” was written by Don Eberly in May 2000; “Public policy is downstream from culture” was said by Bruce Chapman, president of Discovery Institute, also in May 2000. Eberly possibly coined the saying because it also occurs frequently in his book Building a Healthy Culture: Strategies for an American Renaissance (2001). Conservative American publisher Andrew Breitbart (1969-2012) often used the saying.
This is why coming out of the closet as a gun owner is important. This is why taking a new shooter to the range and making them comfortable with gun culture is important. This is why, even if we were to get all we want in the courts, we must continue working toward the extermination of the Marxist culture.
At first, I thought it was serious post. As I started writing up my comments, I looked a little deeper. Her bio says:
Dr. with a PhD in gender studies, global climate crisis advocate. Trans Rights are human rights. R word.
Why am I not surprised… Wait a minute. Here are some more posts:
School is coming back, this semester I am teaching the kids about their gender identity and how they don’t need to be bullied into accepting binary lies.
If you have any ideas for activities, please let me know. It’s for years 2-5.
…
White people make me sick. You’re all so damn racist.
…
Why is MAGA so mad at a gay couple having a baby?
The baby needs to be taught not to be so bigoted and just accept the world has changed.
Okay. That settles it. It is a parody account. You got me. Poe’s Law strikes again.
This is the most repeated claim in American tax politics and one of the least supported by actual data. The top 1% of earners take in 22% of total income and pay 40% of all federal income taxes. The top 10% earn about half the nation’s income and pay 72% of its taxes. The bottom half of earners, collectively, pay roughly 3% of the tax revenue. The United States, in fact, has the most progressive income-tax system in the developed world.
Idaho was a 2020 move-to darling, and it’s back in the spotlight. Since its high of 320 searches in for every 100 out 6 years ago — the state has taken a backseat to the headliners. It’s not that move-ins stopped, in fact the state has maintained positive inflow and sustained a steady rise of interest year after year.
And the proof is in the pudding. New U.S. Census data shows that 80% of Idaho counties grew their populations in 2025 and Idaho was among the top ranked inbound states of 2025 with a survey from United Van Lines showing family as the #1 driver.
One reason may be increasing Californian exits. A California Policy Lab analysis found that in the last five years net moves from California to Idaho increased over the last five years and that for each Idahoan that moves to the Golden State, it receives more than two in return. moveBuddha data backs that inflow story; of searches made early in 2026, 24% of moves to Idaho are from California. Additional analysis finds that housing costs are a driving factor.
I have mixed feelings about this. I know what happened to Colorado with out of state invaders. I’m tempted to suggest we build a wall to keep the rats from California out. This is even though my brothers and I were born in California. Of course, none of us stayed there for more about two weeks. And I have lots of relatives there.
On the hand, there is some confirmation that my choice of Idaho as the number one place in the world I want to live is the right one.
So, about all I can do is:
Encourage the right type of people to move and buy the property close to my little spot and give me a little bit of a buffer.
The Second Amendment is not about “gun culture.” It is not about hunting, sporting clays, or weekend range days.
It is the final, unbreakable firewall that keeps every other right from becoming a temporary privilege granted, or revoked, by those in power.
The Founders placed it second only to speech because they had just overthrown a government that tried to disarm them. They understood a brutal historical truth: an armed, trained citizenry is the one thing tyrants fear most. Without it, speech becomes punishable, assembly becomes rebellion, and due process becomes whatever the regime decides.
In 2026, some still call the 2A “outdated.” They ignore the clear, repeating pattern of history. When governments disarm their people, tragedy does not follow by accident, it follows by design. The right to keep and bear arms is the one right that ensures We the People remain the ultimate check on power, not the other way around.
Here is some examples of what happens when that line falls:
Ottoman Empire / Turkey – Gun registration and disarmament laws by 1911. Armenian Genocide (1915–1917): 1.5 million Armenians (plus hundreds of thousands of Assyrians and Greeks) systematically murdered in just 3 years.
Soviet Union – Gun control enacted 1929. Stalin’s regime (1929–1953): ~20 million dissidents, kulaks, and civilians killed through executions, engineered famines, Gulags, and deportations in 24 years.
Nazi Germany – Tightened gun laws and mass disarmament of Jews and political opponents (1938). Holocaust and related atrocities (1939–1945): ~13 million Jews and others exterminated in 6 years.
Communist China – Strict gun control inherited and enforced after 1949. Mao’s regime (1949–1976): 40–65 million dead from Great Leap Forward famine, Cultural Revolution purges, and mass executions in 27 years.
Cambodia (Khmer Rouge) – Full civilian disarmament upon seizing power 1975. Pol Pot’s regime (1975–1979): 1.5–2.8 million Cambodians (roughly 25% of the population) slaughtered or starved in just 4 years.
These are not isolated tragedies. They are the documented pattern: disarm the people first, then the atrocities become possible because resistance becomes impossible.
The Second Amendment was written precisely to prevent this from ever happening here. It is not a suggestion. It is not conditional. It is “shall not be infringed” for a reason that history proves in blood.
That is why we train without apology.
That is why we carry daily.
That is why we fight every single incremental step, because once the guns are gone, the graves fill quickly.
The 2A is not about guns. It is about ensuring that liberty never becomes optional again.
We can not let that line fall.
Stay dangerous, stay good.
RedBeard @HargusJeremy Posted on X, April 15, 2026
A recent news headline declared, “11,500 shootings occurred within 500 yards of US schools last year.” The obvious implication is that American school children are under daily fire on school campuses nationwide. But, as with most gun control narratives in national media written by reporters who mostly don’t understand the basics of firearms or criminal gun use, that narrative collapses under the slightest scrutiny.
The first glaring red flag in this story is that Hearst Television Data Visualization Journalist Susie Webb and the WCVB Get the Facts Data Team built their agenda-driven narrative by relying on gun control advocacy site The Trace’s “School-Adjacent Shootings” dataset, which tracks Gun Violence Archive (GVA) incidents that fell within 500 yards of a K-12 school. Even that dataset warns that each row is a shooting-to-school match and must be deduplicated before anyone totals up the incidents, deaths or injuries. However, that was not done before Webb and WVTM’s story went live on severalnewsoutlets, on social media, on Hearst Television’s YouTube channel and was even—unsurprisingly—picked up by MSN.
This blatant error is not a trivial methodological footnote. It is the difference between measuring school-related crime and measuring a broad circle on a map. It’s also a trick that’s been seen time and again from the likes of Everytown’s propagandist at The Trace and GVA.
The central problem is in the dataset’s own limitations. Each row is a “shooting-to-school match,” meaning one shooting can be linked to multiple schools if several campuses fall within the 500-yard range.
…
The public hears “31 shootings a day near schools” and is encouraged to picture students dodging bullets at recess. But the GVA data are more often than not actually criminal and gang activity near or after school hours, accidental discharges, suicides, police interventions near a campus and/or juveniles getting caught with a firearm at school. This means the methodology sweeps in a much wider universe of incidents with duplication risk baked in.
…
The result is predictable: bad facts drive bad policy. The issue here is not whether crime near schools is serious. The issue is whether the public is being told the truth. On that question, the answer is clear. The methodology does not support the headline, and the headline does not deserve the public’s trust. We all have a right to expect more from those who hold themselves out as objective journalists.
Black woman from South Africa: “Black people have been patient enough for more than 400 years of colonialism. We are coming for you, and we are going to get everything that you own.”
White people are facing racism, hatred, and brutal violence in South Africa. This is not… pic.twitter.com/3a5R93TzOs
I have to wonder what the political left thinks of the blatant racism. Will they demand divestment like they did because of apartheid in South Africa 40 to 60 years ago? Or will they cheer the hatred, confiscation of property, and the murders?
What kills me is as I get older and find myself yelling at clouds more, I’ve come to a greater empathy for conservatives. Now my wife texts me from the grocery store and says “The full-grown adult in front of me is wearing a tail” and I just think “these fucking idiots. No way we survive this. The answer to Fermi’s paradox is that the high order civilizations destroy themselves….”
John Schussler Via email April 13, 2026
I understand what he is talking about. But I’m an optimist and am not as fatalistic as John. But I have an underground bunker in Idaho. Also, last month ago I added another ~50,000 pounds of dirt on top of the bunker. Just in case.
You might think I’m joking (well, maybe I am a little bit).
This is the blend from the field to the north edge of the bunker:
This is the bucket loader I used to move the dirt. The ground was a little wetter than it should have been, but it got the job done:
If you attend Boomershoot this year, I’ll give you a tour of both the inside and outside. Friday evening at 6:00 PM.
All gun control is stupid as a means to reduce violent crime and unconstitutional. Banning 3D printed guns is extra stupid.
Never forget:
One thing that humbles me deeply is to see that human genius has its limits while human stupidity does not.
Alexandre Dumas Circa 1865, Grand Dictionnaire Universel du XIXe Siècle: Français, Historique, Géographique, Mythologique, Bibliographique, etcetera, Volume 2, Entry: Bêtise, Quote Page 650, Column 1, Published by Pierre Larousse, Paris. (Google Books Full View)
The Second Amendment protects the rights of law-abiding citizens to own and use AR-15 style semiautomatic rifles for lawful purposes.’ Just last year, the U.S. Supreme Court made clear in a unanimous opinion that the AR-15 is “both widely legal and bought by many ordinary consumers.” Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, 605 U.S. 280, 297 (2025). See also Garland v. Cargill, 602 U.S. 406, 429-30 (2024) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting) (AR-15s are “commonly available, semiautomatic rifles.”). Unfortunately, Virginia appears poised to infringe on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens to enjoy and use AR-15 rifles for lawful purposes by making it a crime to purchase and sell them. This Civil Rights Division will seek to enjoin any attempt to infringe the right of law-abiding Virginians to acquire constitutionally protected arms that are possessed by literally tens of millions of Americans. See Snope v. Brown, 145 S. Ct. 1534 (2025) (Kavanaugh, J., statement respecting denial of certiorari).
In addition, laws that require constitutionally protected firearms owned by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes to be maintained in an inoperable state are unconstitutional. See D.C. v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 630 (2008) (“[T]he District’s requirement … that firearms in the home be rendered and kept inoperable at all times … [is] unconstitutional.”). We are aware that the Virginia General Assembly has forwarded to you several bills that, if enacted as currently written, would mirror the unconstitutional restrictions struck down in Heller 18 years ago. There are also other provisions contained in those bills that otherwise prevent lawful use of constitutionally protected arms for self-defense.
In all, the General Assembly has forwarded to you over 20 bills that restrict Second Amendment rights. I urge you to reconsider allowing any bill that would infringe on the lawful use of protected firearms by law-abiding citizens to become law. In an effort to avoid unnecessary litigation, the Second Amendment Section stands ready to meet and confer with attorneys in the Virginia Attorney General Office. Your counsel may contact Acting Chief Andrew Darlington at Andrew.Darlington@usdoj.gov. The Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens shall not be infringed.
Harmeet Dhillon Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division Posted April 10, 2026 on X
It is thrilling to have a Second Amendment Section of the Civil Rights Division, let alone them writing, “shall not be infringed.” It is not an 18 USC 242 event, but it is still Enjoy Your Trial time.
