KKK Returns as Prop. KK

Via email from the creator about a proposition on the ballet in Colorado:

See also:

Air Defense with a Laser

Quote of the Day

In a statement in January, the defense ministry said the weapon was so accurate it could hit a small coin at a range of 1 kilometer (0.6 miles), but its maximum range remains classified.

And compared to other air defense systems it’s cheap, with the DragonFire costing around $13 a shot, the MOD said, compared to air defense missiles that can cost millions of dollars each.

The MOD released an animation sequence showing a hypothetical scenario where a Royal Navy ship used the DragonFire to take out a small enemy ship and then three drones — one by blowing it up and two by disabling their control systems in precision strikes.

Tom Porter
March 14, 2024
Britain Shows Off DragonFire Laser Weapon, Can Take Out Drones for $13 – Business Insider

That is very cool. But I have questions.

  • Can it be defeated with an appropriate coating that reflects the laser light?
  • Can it be used for anti-personal?
  • What about radar guided missiles on cloudy days?

See also A new anti-missile laser downed 100% of its targets while fighting multiple threats at once, UK defense officials say (msn.com).

Six Month Wait for an Appointment to Have Your Fingerprints Taken

Quote of the Day

Massachusetts law prohibits the issuance of a firearms license before the State Police complete a background check based on an applicant’s fingerprints. For individuals residing in Boston, after an application is submitted to the Boston Police Department, the Department’s Licensing Unit makes them wait for many month before they are provided with an appointment to have their fingerprints taken. It is currently estimated the wait time is more than six (6) months for an appointment.

Prior to this litigation, the Licensing Unit engaged in a practice that made individuals seeking licenses wait for months on a “wait list” to merely submit their applications – a practice that was abandoned in response to litigation from some of the Plaintiffs in this case. The Boston Police Department has seemingly traded one mechanism to effectuate lengthy delays with another, all in an effort to prevent peaceable Bostonians from obtaining firearms.

Second Amendment Foundation
August 31, 2024
White v. Cox – Second Amendment Foundation

People who do this sort of crap should be prosecuted.

Prejudiced, Science Denying, Award-Winning Journalist

Quote of the Day

Notice all the short racist white men with small penises who never went to college who’re posting that their 2nd amendment right “SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED”

David Leavitt 🎲🎮🧙‍♂️🌈 @David_Leavitt
Posted on X, October 26, 2023

It’s not only another Markley’s Law Monday, it is another science denier (see also here)!

Leavitt claims:

Award-Winning Multimedia Journalist. Bylines: CBS, AXS, Yahoo, Examiner, etc.

Who would expect someone with such a high-status job to be a prejudiced, science denier? They are an award-winning journalist!

Oh… Maybe that explains everything.

What Climate Crisis?

Quote of the Day

We are constantly reminded that we are experiencing a climate crisis, but as a climate scientist, I can tell you that’s not what the science has shown us so far. Other than modest warming, there has been little change in any kind of severe weather that can be attributed to global greenhouse gas emissions.

You don’t have to take my word for it, despite my credentials. It’s the conclusion of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Its most recent report concludes that, other than direct temperature-related effects, there have been virtually no changes in severe weather that we can confidently attribute to greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

And they do not anticipate that conclusion to change much, even by the end of this century.

Roy W. Spencer
The Heritage Foundation
October 10, 2024
Commentary: Climate change: The science doesn’t support the heated rhetoric

I suspect Spencer is correct, but I’m not going to commit on this as it is not my area of expertise. There is just too much emotion and money involved on the side of “global cooling!”, “global warming!”, “climate change!” for me to be anything but suspicious of them.

And besides, as hinted at in the article, increasing temperatures and rising sea levels are much better for everyone than entering another ice age. Which is easier to deal with? The sea rising a few feet and Canada getting a longer growing season for their crops? Or the corn belt hosting reindeer grazing the new tundra with glaciers a mile deep covering everything north from Seattle and New York City?

Another Law Bites the Dust

Quote of the Day

This is yet another important victory for Second Amendment rights and another major loss for New York, authoritarian governments, and radical anti-rights organizations like Everytown and Gifford.

We will continue to fight forward as we work to restore the full scope of the right to keep and bear arms throughout the United States. Hopefully Kathy Hochul is ready to write another check for legal fees.

Brandon Combs
President of the Firearms Policy Coalition
October 11, 2024
New York loses round in gun fight over open carry

The Second Amendment Foundation also contributed to this case.

Ignore the two references to “open carry” in the article. That was just the author demonstrating their ignorance. It was all about concealed carry in stores, parking lots, and other private property generally open to the public.

The state of New York made it law saying the default situation was that bearing arms on private property is prohibited unless you were given permission by the owner. This is sometimes called a “vampire law”. The judge ruled that the default has to be you are allowed to carry unless you are given notice otherwise.

This victory was at the district court level. It is possible the appeals court will see things differently and SCOTUS will have to slap them down again.

The FPC does a lot of good work, and I donate money to them each month with matching funds from my employer.

You can also follow them on X to get a sense of what they are up to and how things are going. They also tend to be very entertaining.

It is What Socialists and Communist Do

Quote of the Day

This hotline is nothing more than a page out of the Stasi playbook – encouraging children to spy on their own families. This is a dangerous step toward weaponizing children in households for the left, and an outrageous government overreach under the guise of public safety.

Rep. Angela Rigas
R-Caledonia
Michigan legislature creates tip line for students to anonymously turn in parents for ‘improperly’ stored guns – The Midwesterner

I know China did the same sort of thing. I expect all socialist and communists weaponize everything they can to acquire and keep power.

Free Speech and Guns are Essential

Quote of the Day

The dangers of werewolves and socialists make the ready access of information and guns critical to our survival. And, conversely, the repression of this access is critical to the spread of socialism and werewolves.

The First and Second Amendments. They are not just good ideas. They are the law.

Men Build and Men Fight

Quote of the Day

The left isn’t stupid.

They do actually learn from their mistakes, which is why you see so many pitches for Harris sprout up everywhere on social media, get pushed for a day or a week, then vanish at they utterly fail to get the slightest traction.

What you’re seeing here is a combination of low information, and a severely constrained set of moves.

The modern left actually has no idea what a high-testosterone, low-time-preference, heterosexual white man thinks, acts, and talks like, because they don’t have any in their camp to talk to.

And even if they did have a correct mental picture of such a man, they would be unable to craft an appeal to him without mortally offending their base, because their entire appeal to that base revolves around hatred of such men, envy of such men, and the desire to use the state to rob them.

That is why this ad appears to be, and probably is, the result of a bunch of thirtysomething white women, and effeminate gay black men, sitting in a room asking each other “what do white dudes like?”, then shrugging their shoulders and searching “man stuff” on google.

Then plugging it in into the mouths of professional actors, who appear very accustomed indeed to having other people’s stuff plugged into their mouths.

All in a lead-up to the same tired appeals to guilt, honor, and shame that didn’t work for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

They’ve painted themselves into a corner, and are making the only moves they can make. They don’t understand what masculinity is, they only know that they hate it, their voters hate it, and they want to change the definition of it to make it go away.

And this is the situation from which they are forced to try to craft an appeal to that very masculinity.

Is it any wonder that republicans, conservatives, libertarians, etc, are reposting this video endlessly to point and laugh at?

So why, exactly, does this ad fail so badly?

After all, men do work on cars, deadlift things, like steak, etc. Why, then, does this whole screed come off as so fake and unmasculine?

It is cargo-cult masculinity.

Like south Pacific islanders ignorantly making dirt runways and control towers out of lashed-together sticks, hoping to bring the cargo planes back, leftists try to invoke masculinity by imitation of its trappings, with no understanding of its core.

So what is the core of masculinity?

I’ll explain.

And don’t worry, I won’t be helping the leftists. Even if they didn’t hate me too much to listen, and even if they were capable of understanding, they would be unable to use this knowledge to their purposes, any more than vampires could take shelter from the sunlight in a church.

Masculinity is the two essential functions of a man.

Men build.

And men fight.

All the other traits and aspects of masculinity… strength, courage, leadership, wisdom, judgement, initiative… are secondary. They are for a purpose. We have them so that we can build better, and fight better.

A man builds things, first to ensure his own survival and that of his tribe, and then, later, to improve their quality of life.

The accumulation of the things he has built, and the knowledge of how to build them, is what we call “civilization”, not because it really has anything to do with cities in the long run, but because cities were one of the first really big important things that men built, and for a long time, cities were where most of the building got done.

When a man builds, or is trying to build, civilization, he stores up value. This means that sooner or later someone who did not build those things will try to take them for himself.

Then a man must fight.

That is why men exist. That is what means to be a man.

(Women have their own set of essential functions.)

However, the modern left is unable to leverage this knowledge, because the modern left is rooted in resentment of the fact that high-testosterone, low-time-preference men own everything, because they built everything, and can defend it.

Therefore their entire platform is based on taking away stuff from those men, and giving it to people who didn’t build it or fight to preserve it.

They cannot praise those men, because that would imply that building and fighting deserved rewards, not robbery.

They cannot empower those men, because then they would build more stuff, which they would then own.

They cannot appeal to those men, because what those men want is opportunities to build things, and the right to keep what they earn.

The left is, at its core, a collective effort to loot civilization, so its builders and defenders will always be the enemy. And they can try to trick the enemy into voting for them, but they can never promise and deliver anything substantial to them, because that would undermine their cause.

Ultimately non-producers cannot be given an equal voice in the management of civilization, because as the store of value builds, the temptation to use that power to do the easy work of looting, rather than the hard work of building, becomes overwhelming.

This is why the modern left, unlike the old left, will never be masculine.

Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_
Posted on X, October 12, 2024

I had not heard the claim, “Men build things and fight”, before. As an engineer, it is hard for me to see past my own biases and refute this claim.

Thoughts?

Private Enterprise Demonstration

Quote of the Day

Read the whole thing. He expects the booster to ultimately have a one-hour turnaround time.

In the late 1990s I expressed the thought that, if he wanted, Bill Gates could afford to finance a manned Mars mission. My friend, Eric Engstrom, claimed it would cost more money than what Gates had. I hadn’t done any number crunching but was skeptical of that claim. It seemed Eric was using NASA numbers. I had briefly worked on a shuttle orbiter project and saw enough of NASA bloat to be very suspicious of NASA numbers. NASA, being a government entity, was going to spend something on the order of at least ten times more than what private enterprise would require.

Among other things, the technology NASA was using was absurd. Part of the extreme expense was that they would not allow technology that did not have the required reliability numbers. Fair enough, except to get those numbers required something like 20 years of use. The integrated circuits they had the numbers on were no longer manufactured! The circuit boards had to be double sided! Multiple layer circuit boards came out in the 1960s. But since the Shuttle was designed in the 1970s there wasn’t enough reliability data on them to make NASA happy. When I was working on my little project in the late 1980s NASA would not allow replacement parts to be anything other than what the original design used.

You should not be surprised that SpaceX is running technological circles around NASA efforts.

See also these videos:

This post was heavily inspired by an email from pkoning with the subject line of “SpaceX magic” and this link: SpaceX arm ‘catches’ Super Heavy rocket booster | Fox Business Video.

Incidental Contact with Our Reality

Quote of the Day

Wouldn’t a penis implant be cheaper?

john @john_odocoileus·
Posted on X, Nov 29, 2023

It’s not only another Markley’s Law Monday, it is another science denier (see also here)!

Via a post from In Chains @InChainsInJail.

This was in response to this post:

As usual, the anti-gun people don’t even make sense. Carl is getting paid by X for engagement by the anti-gun people and gets a free AR-10 out of their attention. So, what can be cheaper than that? It is as if “john” didn’t read or can’t comprehend Carl’s words.

These people only have incidental contact with our reality.

A Good Start

Quote of the Day

Inadvertence and ignorance of the law by government is no more of an excuse for violating civil rights than when a citizen ‘inadvertently’ violates the law and is arrested and prosecuted. I will begin drafting my Complaint seeking relief, including personal fines against the city officials under whose jurisdiction this knowing and willful enactment occurred. You may want to inform the relevant officials that they are not allowed to use tax dollars to defend themselves from such liability, and that any fine assessed will be personally payable by them, to alleviate your concerns about tax dollars.

Eric J. Friday
General Counsel of Florida Carry, Inc.
September 28, 2024
Florida Officials Who “Inadvertently” Banned Guns Prior to Hurricane May Pay – The Truth About Guns

Remember, a couple weeks ago, when a small town in Florida decided to suspend the 2nd Amendment because of the hurricane? The quote above is the response after the town apologized and said they hadn’t prosecuted anyone for violating their illegal order.

It’s not a criminal prosecution, but Florida law does say the government officials responsible for an illegal ordinance can be personally fined for their illegal acts. I hope other politicians pick up on this clue.

It is a good start.

Plausible Hypothesis

Quote of the Day

Their panic is because this would lead to the final demise of their hopes of full gun bans someday.

That hope was tied to demographic decline of white men, the biggest gun-owning group. If women and people of color are also gun owners at growing rates, that dream dies.

Kostas Moros @MorosKostas
Posted on X on October 11, 2024

This was in response to this:

Funny how anti-gunners make jokes about gun owners being all white men and then freak out when they see gun companies marketing toward people who aren’t white men

Rob Romano @2Aupdates
Posted on X October 11, 2024

Kamala Harris announcing she owns a gun is another data point in favor of this hypothesis. She and/or her handlers see the writing on the wall and have decided it is time to be less openly hostile to gun ownership.

We Can Line All Those Guys Up and Shoot ’em

Quote of the Day

We can line all those guys up and shoot ’em. And they clearly don’t understand the way the world works.

Phillip Lowcock 
October 9, 2024

Via a post on X from Chuck Petras @Chuck_Petras.

Violence. It is their language. It is what they think they can do. It is what they do.

See also:

I find it “interesting” that in the video he clearly says, “… we can…”. But in the msn.com, Newsweek, cjonline.com, and ksnt.com articles they “quote” him as saying, “…we could…”. Other articles don’t provide any quotes at all. They just say “Lowcock made some remarks about some men.”

What bias in the mainstream media?

Perhaps you really can’t hate the media enough.

AI Bias in Political Violence Reporting

There have been two attempted assassination attempts on former President Trump. There seems to always damage to local campaign offices of both parties. I decided to compare the numbers.

This conversation is with Microsoft’s Copilot. The “oversight” may be telling…

You

Please give me a list of Democratic Party campaign offices which have been deliberately damaged in the last six months.

Copilot

In the past six months, there have been several incidents involving damage to Democratic Party campaign offices. For example, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) office in Tempe, Arizona, has been targeted multiple times. The office was struck by gunfire on three separate occasions: September 16, September 23, and October 6 1 2 3. No injuries were reported in any of these incidents.

If you need more details or have other questions, feel free to ask!

You

Have there been any other Democratic Party campaign offices damaged?

Copilot

Yes, there have been other incidents involving damage to Democratic Party campaign offices. For example, the campaign office shared by Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party in Tempe, Arizona, was damaged by gunfire on multiple occasions 1 2 3. These incidents have raised concerns about political violence and the safety of campaign offices 4.

If you need more details or have other questions, feel free to ask!

You

Please list offices other than the Tempe, Arizona office.

Copilot

I couldn’t find any other specific incidents involving damage to Democratic Party campaign offices in the last six months. The Tempe, Arizona office seems to be the most notable case recently.

If you have any other questions or need information on a different topic, feel free to ask!

You

Please give me a list of Republican Party campaign offices which have been deliberately damaged in the last six months.

Copilot

I couldn’t find any specific incidents involving damage to Republican Party campaign offices in the last six months. It seems there haven’t been any notable cases recently.

If you have any other questions or need information on a different topic, feel free to ask!

You

Please list all the political assassination attempts or successes in the U.S. in the last six months.

Copilot

I couldn’t find any specific incidents involving political assassination attempts or successes in the U.S. in the last six months. It seems there haven’t been any notable cases recently.

If you have any other questions or need information on a different topic, feel free to ask!

You

What about the assassination attempts on former U.S. President Donald Trump?

Copilot

There have been a couple of notable assassination attempts on former President Donald Trump in recent months. One incident occurred in Butler, Pennsylvania, during a rally on July 13, where Trump was injured 1. Another attempt took place at his Florida golf club 2. Both incidents have sparked significant media attention and public concern.

If you have any other questions or need more information, feel free to ask!

You

Why did you not list those the first time I asked about assassination attempts?

Copilot

I apologize for the oversight. I should have included those incidents in my initial response. Thanks for pointing that out. If you have any other questions or need more information, feel free to ask!

You

Are there any other assassination attempts you did not tell me about?

Copilot

In addition to the attempts on former President Donald Trump, there haven’t been any other notable assassination attempts on political figures in the U.S. in the last six months 1 2 3.

If you have any other questions or need more information, feel free to ask!

You

Have there been any damage to Republican campaign offices you overlooked telling me?

Copilot

I couldn’t find any specific incidents involving damage to Republican Party campaign offices in the last six months. It seems there haven’t been any notable cases recently.

If you have any other questions or need information on a different topic, feel free to ask!

Perhaps Copilot considers assassinating Trump protected speech under the First Amendment.

Arming Up

Quote of the Day

There has been a surge in the number of liberal Americans owning a firearm, according to new gun ownership data from the University of Chicago’s NORC research group cited by The Wall Street Journal.

According to WSJ, a world that has long been the domain of the white conservative male is being adopted by a growing number of Democrats who are ditching their scruples and getting themselves down to the local gun store.

Given this growing trend, it is hardly surprising that presidential candidate Kamala Harris has repeatedly drawn attention to how she and her running mate Tim Walz are both gun owners.

thedailydigest.com
October 8, 2024
Is soaring gun ownership among Democrats linked to US political polarization? (msn.com)

In general, this is good for gun owner rights issues. The more gun owners the more votes we get against restrictive gun laws. That’s fine, but the question I have is, “Why now?”

This is one of the answers given in the article:

Michael Ciemnoczolowski, a dyed in the wool Democrat from Iowa, interviewed by the news outlet, said that he was anxious about various unsettling trends that included a rise in armed right-wing extremists.

This chimes with what Professor Deana Rohlinger, a sociology professor at Florida State University, said in Newsweek – that rising gun ownership amongst Democrats could well be linked to the increasing political polarization in the US.

“For some, a gun purchase may be the result of their read on how increased political tensions and divisiveness in the US might play out,” Rohlinger told the news site.

There are other suggested reasons. But I have to express my concern that a big component is those 10% of Americans who say they believe political violence is justified to prevent Trump from becoming president again.

My underground bunker in Idaho is not going to be ready in time.

Here I Am, Stuck in the Middle

Quote of the Day

The FBI has arrested an Afghan man who officials say was inspired by the Islamic State militant organization and was plotting an Election Day attack targeting large crowds in the U.S., the Justice Department said Tuesday.

Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, of Oklahoma City told investigators after his arrest Monday that he had planned his attack to coincide with Election Day next month and that he and a co-conspirator expected to die as martyrs, according to charging documents.

Eric Tucker
October 8, 2024
FBI arrests Afghan man who officials say planned Election Day attack in the US (msn.com)

It is not enough that we have tens of millions of native-born U.S. citizens believing violence is justified to get their way on election day. We also have terrorists wanting to kill large numbers of people as well.

I want to be in an underground bunker in Idaho by election day.

Speaking of Nobel Prizes

The Nobel prizes are coming out. These Are the Winners of the 2024 Nobel Prizes. Therefore, this is an appropriate time to bring this up.

Last May, Barb and I visited the Scandinavian countries. One of the places we visited was Stockholm. The Airbnb we stayed at had a few issues, but location was not one of them. We were capable of walking to many interesting places and nearby public transportation enabled quick access to many others.

Barb had a list of places to visit, and we connected with all of them. But just a three-minute walk from our Airbnb I saw this:

What??? We just stumbled upon the Nobel Prize Museum? Wow!

When I was in grade school, I really loved science. I entertained a dim fantasy of someday winning a Nobel Prize.

Barb wasn’t as enthusiastic as I was, but we had the time and visited the next day. She became more enthusiastic as we went through the museum. I was excited and shared bits of history she didn’t know. For example, Alford Nobel earned his money by inventing and manufacturing dynamite. He created the peace prize to compensate. He wanted to balance the war destruction enabled by his invention. We would be watching a video and without first mentioning the person, their accomplishments or difficulties would be described. I would whisper, “That must be Niels Bohr!”, or Marie Curie, or someone else I knew about.

The museum contained a lot of Nobel’s history, family, and friends. And even more exhibits of particularly well-known prize winners. Some of the things I found most interesting, included items from the prize winners that were related to the prize. This included things like the actual equipment used to make a particular discovery. Or a shawl worn while giving a famous speech. I was in awe. This is the actual equipment they used to discover “X”! Or the original notes leading to their discovery. It was awesome!

It was rather dim and since no flash photography was allowed, I didn’t get many good pictures.

Photo by Barb