Boomershoot Mortars

I was looking for a blog post of mine referencing the bowling ball mortars which visited Boomershoot a few times. A day or two later Bing Chat sent me an alert on my cell phone with with a link to the following:

Boomershoot mortars are a type of homemade artillery that can launch projectiles such as bowling balls, paint cans, or even stuffed animals at high velocities and distances. They are often used by enthusiasts of the Boomershoot event, which is a long-range precision rifle shooting event with high explosive targets12

Some of the key features and uses of boomershoot mortars are:

I hope this helps you learn more about the fascinating world of boomershoot mortars. If you want to see some examples of boomershoot mortars in action, you can watch this video: BOWLING BALL MORTARS AT THE BOOMERSHOOT.

The narrative is not too far of from reality. But it certainly isn’t correct either.Some obvious inaccuracies are:

  • Mortars have never been used to hit our reactive targets.
  • I do not recall anything other than bowling balls being used for projectiles.
  • No projectiles have been launched further than about 400 yards. And that was at an angle across the range rather than directly downrange.
  • To the best of my knowledge no one as estimated the altitude of the projectiles and I am very skeptical any of them have been near 1000 feet.

Keep all this in mind when you use or read something generated by the new chat AIs.

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2 thoughts on “Boomershoot Mortars

  1. I was trying to do some quick Python scripting and asked Chat GPT how to best accomplish the task; it came back with a nice source code example using a class that did exactly what I asked for. When I tried to test it out, the class referenced was not found on the package manger and subsequent web searches showed that it didn’t exist at all.

    • How awkward would it be if AI was already sentient, and its adolescent form of rebellion was to give use plausible, but definitively wrong answers that would appeal to the profoundly ignorant. Basically, AI is trying to destroy us by weaponizing Dunning-Krueger.

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