Category Archives: Quote of the Day

Their Front Has Moved Too

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Quote of the Day

Our research shows firearm owners are more likely to adopt safe and secure storage practices when they can choose from a range of devices that meet their needs, such as biometric safes for quick access or cable locks for hunting rifles.

Remember, safe storage saves lives. Every gun, every time.

Katherine Hoops
MD, MPH ’10, JD
Director of clinical programs and practice at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.
Johns Hopkins University Partners with Baltimore Libraries for Safe Gun Storage Distribution | Center for Gun Violence Solutions

Yesterday I told you that our front line has moved forward.

It used to be John Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions was fighting for more gun bans, carry restrictions, and more oppressive red-flag laws. It makes me smile to see their front line has been pushed back to wistful thinking of mandatory safe storage.

One of the Next RKBA Fronts

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Quote of the Day

Because the right to carry is a federally recognized right, a state government cannot force someone to give up their right to keep and bear arms just because they crossed a state line. The Constitution doesn’t know state lines, and neither do our rights. Permits available on paper, but nearly impossible to maintain in practice, do not meet the clearly articulated demands of the Second Amendment. We are optimistic the Court will agree and fully restore the Second Amendment rights of non-residents who wish to travel and spend time in Massachusetts.

Alan M. Gottlieb
SAF founder and executive vice president
August 31, 2026
Federal judge allows challenge to Massachusetts non-resident gun permit law to move forward

From the same article:

With the state’s motion to dismiss rejected, the case will now proceed through the federal court system for further arguments on the merits of the licensing requirements.

SAF is initiating the next skirmish against the forces of evil. I donate to them monthly and wish them well.

Move with the Window

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Quote of the Day

This is a not-insignificant reason we have generationally lost the war on guns on America. In the anti-police peak-woke era, many criminal justice reformers turned against gun control. That hasn’t really reversed in these circles.

Gun culture has fully won.

The argument of the NRA is gun control-libs are fools, because they don’t understand there’re many legitimate reasons why Americans have a right to own guns, without restrictions.

Once you have public defenders in progressive cities making the exact same argument, we’ve lost.

Jeremy Wilcox @jwilcox79
Posted on X August 29 here and here.

I would not say we have fully won. I would say that we are on the offense on all fronts and a win is ours for the taking. There are still lots of ways to lose if we get some really bad luck or we make a major error.

My biggest concern is pushing the Overton Window too fast and the pearl-clutchers are able to gain some traction with people who have not been moving forward with our progress.

We really need to get mainstream culture to move with our Overton Window. Take a newbie to the range. Bring up your recent gun competition experiences when someone at work asks about your weekend. Maybe consider wearing NRA, SAF, CCRKBA, JPFO (bumper sticker with “All in favor of gun control raise your right hand” with an image of Hitler), GOA (includes socks!), and/or FPC (some particularly bold and entertaining stuff), branded clothing, use a branded mug, or put their bumper stickers on your vehicle.

Fidel Castro was a Murderous Communist Dictator

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Quote of the Day

Fidel Castro was a murderous communist dictator. His legacy is not heroic. It is a legacy of firing squads, political prisoners, censorship, religious persecution, stolen property, poverty, rationing, and the forced exile of millions of Cubans.

No one can lecture me about socialism or communism. Many of us, including me, fled Fidel Castro’s murderous, narco-trafficking, socialist and communist dictatorship. We did not learn about that ideology from books or political speeches. We lived it, suffered under it, and know exactly where it leads.

Dariel Fernandez
Miami-Dade County Tax Collector
August 21, 2026
DSA faces heat over praise for Fidel Castro | National | keysnews.com

From the same article, “Fernandez was born in Cuba and emigrated to the U.S.”

Contrast Fernandez’s lived experience of living under the Castro regime compared to what the DSA has to say about him:

DSA Commemorates 100 Years of Fidel and Denounces Rubio’s Genocide Against the Cuban People – Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)

Today is the centenary of Fidel Castro, and the Democratic Socialists of America recognize the historic significance of both this day and the man. Fidel was an organizer, a fighter, and endures as a stalwart symbol of anti-imperialist struggle and self-determination for the Global South. DSA has a long history of solidarity with the Cuban people, their revolution, and their self-determination. We choose this historic day to recommit ourselves to acting in solidarity with the Cuban people and to starkly opposing Marco Rubio’s genocidal war against the Cuban people and US imperialism writ large.

A case can be made that the DSA knows their policies are a glossy sales brochure for a product they know is, at best, a lemon. But they aspire to be in control of the stolen property, rationing, censorship, and firing squads.

Prepare appropriately.

Political Activist Word Salad

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Quote of the Day

I would definitely advocate for that from ground, up, like abolishing [the Constitution], rewriting it, including people’s voices that haven’t been included on there as well. I would probably also rewrite all the oppressive amendments that are in there targeting marginalized individuals.

Sravya
August 29, 2026
One question about the Constitution puts liberals’ appetite for sweeping change to the test

Abolishing the constitution, then rewriting the amendments? “Oppressive amendments” which are “targeting marginalized individuals?” Impressive! That is more of a word salad than even Kamala Harris serves up.

Background:

Fox News Digital spoke with attendees and activists at Friday’s March on Washington who voiced support for systemic political change, from sweeping reforms to bringing socialist policies to their hometowns as DSA-backed candidates notch primary victories ahead of the midterms.

…

“March on Washington 2026: Defend the Vote” was held Friday at the Lincoln Memorial held on the 63rd anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington, organized by Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network.

Fox News Digital spoke with a handful of attendees, asking whether they would support abolishing and rewriting the Constitution and whether DSA policies are good for the direction of America — questions that drew support from some of those interviewed.

I have to believe Fox News chose the most “interesting” sound bites. If that were representative of the median political awareness of the “activists” I would be impressed if they are able to able to use public transportation without assistance. Still, it is disturbing that people who are politically active are so out of touch with reality.

I’ve mentioned this before, but it is worth repeating, I’m reminded of something my counselor told me (paraphrasing), “People with personality disorders have a strong drive to control other people. They have so much chaos in their own minds that it feels good to control others.”

A Natural Right and Schrödinger’s Gun

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Quote of the Day

I always understood why the Second Amendment was constitutionally protected.

What I never really understood was why people called it a natural right.

Then I moved from New York to Florida.

I didn’t own a gun yet.

One afternoon I was loading things into the trunk of my car outside a HomeGoods when a man approached me.

“Excuse me.”

He must have thought he’d startled me, because he immediately added, “Don’t worry. I’m not going to get close.”

I laughed.

“I’m a New Yorker. I’m used to close. How can I help you?”

He started telling me that he needed money for gas.

At some point while he was talking, I got into my car.

And sitting there, with the conversation still unfolding, I suddenly realized something:

He didn’t know whether I had a gun.

Not somewhere at home.

Not hypothetically.

For all he knew, I could have had one right there in the car, tucked under the steering wheel or within reach.

I didn’t.

But he couldn’t know that.

Schrödinger’s gun.

And in that instant, before I even knew whether his story was true, something changed in the space between us.

I thought about New York.

I thought about my friend who had been murdered in his own apartment during a burglary gone wrong.

Would those men have gone into his apartment if they had believed he might be armed?

I don’t know.

I thought about the time I was mugged at gunpoint, with a gun pressed against my temple.

Would that man have approached me with the same confidence if he had believed there was even a possibility that I could defend myself?

I don’t know that either.

But sitting there in that Florida parking lot, listening to this stranger talk, I suddenly understood deterrence in a way I never had before.

Not as military theory.

Not as constitutional law.

As something intimate.

My body. My life. The few feet between one person and another.

For years I had thought about guns primarily as objects: who had one, who shouldn’t have one, what laws should govern them.

Suddenly I understood the question from the other direction.

What changes when another person cannot simply assume that I am defenseless?

I felt taller.

Not because I had a gun.

I didn’t.

But because, for the first time, I understood that someone approaching me could not automatically assume that being physically stronger meant having power over me.

There was uncertainty.

There was a boundary around my body that had to be taken seriously.

Then his story began to fall apart.

I told him I didn’t have cash, but offered to help another way. I could put some gas in his car.

He took off.

So apparently, yes, it was a scam.

But by then I had already understood something much larger than the scam.

The phrase natural right finally made sense to me.

The Constitution had not given me ownership of my body.

It had not given me my life.

It had not invented my right to protect either one.

Those things came first.

What I understood that afternoon was the thing underneath them.

I had once been completely helpless while another human being held a gun against my temple.

Years later, without a gun in my possession at all, I understood what it meant for the person approaching me not to know whether I was helpless.

That uncertainty changed the space between us.

And that was the moment I finally understood the natural right behind the Second Amendment:

My life is mine, and the right to defend it has to exist before anyone gives me permission to do so.

Ooana Trien ~ Eric Arthur Blaire’s Mistress @ooana
Posted on X August 26, 2026

That is a powerful story.

Claude

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In 1948, a 32-year-old at Bell Labs published a paper nobody fully understood.

Engineers found it too mathematical. Mathematicians found it too engineering-focused. One prominent mathematician reviewed it negatively.

That paper – “A Mathematical Theory of Communication”, became the founding document of the digital age.

The man was Claude Shannon. Father of Information Theory.

At 21, he wrote the most important master’s thesis of the 20th century.

Working at MIT on an early mechanical computer, Shannon noticed its relay switches had exactly two states – open or closed. He had just taken a philosophy course introducing Boolean algebra, which also operated on two values: true and false.

Nobody had ever connected these two things.

His 1937 thesis proved that Boolean algebra and electrical circuits are mathematically identical, and that any logical operation could be built from simple switches.

Howard Gardner called it “possibly the most important, and also the most famous, master’s thesis of the century.”

Every digital computer ever built traces back to this insight.

At 29, he proved that perfect encryption exists.

…

Claude, the AI model, is named after Claude Shannon, the mathematician who laid the foundation for the digital world we rely on today.

Tech with Mak @techNmak
Posted on X August 20, 2026

And now you know the rest of the story.

Shannon’s work was a significant component of both my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering.

Waiting Periods Ruled Unconstitutional

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Cooling-off periods infringe on the Second Amendment by preventing the lawful acquisition of firearms. Cooling off periods do not fit into any historically grounded exceptions to the right to keep and bear arms, and burden conduct within the Second Amendment’s scope. In this preliminary posture, we conclude that New Mexico’s Waiting Period Act is likely an unconstitutional burden on the Second Amendment rights of its citizens. We also conclude the other preliminary injunction factors are met and that Plaintiffs are entitled to an injunction.

Timothy Michael Tymkovich
Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
August 19, 2026
SAMUEL ORTEGA; REBECCA SCOTT,
Plaintiffs – Appellants,
v.
MICHELLE LUJAN GRISHAM, in her
official capacity as Governor of the State of
New Mexico; RAUL TORREZ, in his
official capacity as Attorney General of the
State of New Mexico,

See also:

I don’t think I will ever get tired of winning. Prove me wrong.

Skynet Smiles

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Genome language models operate in a broadly similar way to large language models (LLMs) except that they predict genetic code instead of written text, having been trained on the genomes of other viruses and bacteria, as well as more complex organisms such as plants and animals.

The two models in question were told to generate complete genomes for a viable bacteriophage — a type of virus able to infect and replicate itself inside bacteria, destroying them from the inside.

…

The researchers then synthesised new DNA molecules using those designs and inserted them into E. coli bacteria, before waiting to see if viable bacteriophages would emerge.

Shortly afterwards, 16 of the Petri dishes in which the bacteria were growing began to show clear spots, as the viruses began to attack and replicate themselves inside the E. coli, demonstrating their viability.

Andrew Thorpe
August 6, 2026
Stanford researchers create viruses not found in nature using genomes designed by artificial intelligence

See also AI-designed viral genomes | Science and AI Is Learning to Write Genetic Code – Schneier on Security. In part, Schneier says:

That’s a positive use of a synthetic virus. We can all imagine the negative uses.

Wow! That is such an understatement. The negative uses could be extinction level. Skynet could win without any need to develop time travel, terminators, or even firing a shot.

Even without a threat of something like Skynet just imagine the “right” set of people reading Rainbow Six as a How To book instead of entertainment or a warning. An underground bunker in Idaho would, at best, only delay the inevitable.

Medicine is Becoming Programmable

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I have never seen a single week in medicine like the one we just lived through.
In the span of a few days, four separate scientific breakthroughs landed. The stock market treated them as four unrelated stories and sent a handful of biotech companies soaring. But that’s the shallow read. Look closer and they are not four stories at all. They are four faces of the same story — the biggest shift in medicine since the discovery of antibiotics.

Medicine is becoming programmable. Individualized. Written for one human being instead of the average of millions.

Afshine Emrani MD FACC @afshineemrani
Posted on X August 22, 2026

Here are some of the details:

Start with the old world, so you can feel what’s ending.

For the entire history of medicine, we have treated the average patient. The average dose on the label. The average risk from the population study. The average tumor, the average cholesterol, the average heart. We took what worked for the middle of the bell curve and applied it to you, and then adjusted by trial and error when you didn’t respond like the average.

But you are not average. Your cancer, if you get one, will carry a set of mutations no other cancer on Earth has ever had. Your heart disease is driven by your specific genes, your specific biology. The one-size-fits-all model was never a choice we made — it was a limitation we couldn’t escape, because we lacked the tools to read and write biology at the level of the individual.

…

Here’s the old reality for high-risk melanoma. Surgeons remove the tumor, and then we tell the patient: “We got what we could see. Now take Keytruda, and we hope the microscopic cells left behind don’t come roaring back.” And too often, they came back — in the lungs, the liver, the brain.

Now here’s what just changed. Scientists take that removed tumor, sequence its DNA, and compare it letter by letter to the patient’s healthy DNA. The differences — the mutations unique to that cancer — produce abnormal proteins called neoantigens that exist essentially nowhere else in the body. An algorithm picks up to 34 of the best targets. Those get encoded into a custom mRNA vaccine, manufactured for that one person, that teaches their immune system to hunt any cell wearing those markers. In the 1,137-patient Phase 3 trial, the vaccine plus Keytruda beat Keytruda alone — less recurrence, less spread to distant organs. It’s the first time in the history of medicine an mRNA cancer therapy has won a Phase 3, and trials in lung, bladder, and kidney cancer are already running.

…

A company called Scribe just went public with an experimental one-time treatment aimed at the single biggest killer of human beings on the planet: heart disease. Not a new pill to add to your seven others. A one-and-done.

Here’s the elegance of it. You may have heard of CRISPR as “gene editing” — molecular scissors that cut DNA. That’s powerful but scary, because cutting DNA is permanent and mistakes can’t be undone. Scribe’s approach does not cut your DNA. Instead it uses a disabled version of CRISPR to place a chemical “off switch” — an epigenetic mark — on a single gene called PCSK9. PCSK9 is one of the master controllers of bad cholesterol. Silence it, and LDL plummets. And because the DNA sequence itself is never altered, the effect is designed to be reversible if it ever needed to be.

There is more. But you get the idea.

I like living in the future.

I Can See the Appeal

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@Emma_S_Brown @GabbyGiffords you need a new comms guy. We’ve broke this one and need a new plaything.

BadGunControlTakes @guncontroltakes
Posted on X August 20, 2026

It is entertaining to see them squirm and indirectly admit they don’t just want “common sense gun laws”, but total bans. All the while seeing their legal framework, their life’s work in some cases, collapsing like a house of cards.

I am thinking there are probably more productive things to do. Sure, entertainment and a high moral are important. But don’t get stuck on it. Certainly, a case can be made to take people to the range and to get friendly legislators and executive branch politicians into office.

Other areas of potential value include getting good media coverage of the shooting sports. Kid’s programs, Boy/Girl Scout shooting events, local shooter participating in regional, national and international events, etc.

Relationship Tragedies Created by Social Expectations

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Quote of the Day

Why does monogamy work for some people but not for others? Research suggests that it might have something to do with the way our brains are ‘wired.’

Consider a study in which 20 heterosexual men underwent brain scans while looking at different types of images. Some of the images were sexual, depicting couples engaged in penile-vaginal intercourse. Others were romantic, showing clothed men and women engaged in non-sexual intimacy. Yet others were neutral, depicting nature scenes or imagery of people engaged in non-romantic and non-sexual activities.

Half of the men were “highly monogamous.” They’d never had a sexually open relationship, nor had they committed infidelity. They also reported having a lower than average number of lifetime sexual partners and said they rarely fantasized about anyone other than their relationship partner.

The other half were “highly non-monogamous.” These men reported having had experience with both sexually open relationships and infidelity. They reported a greater than average number of sex partners in their lifetime and said they had a preference for having multiple partners at the same time.

The results showed that, regardless of relationship orientation, men showed substantial activation of the brain’s reward pathways when exposed to sexual images. Put another way, and not surprisingly, pretty much everyone found the sexual images to be rewarding.

By contrast, monogamous men (relative to non-monogamous men) showed substantially greater activation of the brain’s reward system in response to romantic images. The areas of the brain that were active while monogamous men were viewing romantic images were largely the same as the ones activated when they viewed sexual images.

Put another way, monogamous men processed romantic and sexual images in a similar way—and found both types to be very rewarding.

For non-monogamous men, however, they seemed to be processing romantic images in a somewhat different way. Unlike the monogamous men who just showed a general reward response to the romantic images, non-monogamous men had brain regions active that were involved in higher-order cognitive processing, suggesting that they were studying and thinking about those images.

These findings suggest the possibility that different people might be predisposed to different styles of mating based on the way their brains are ‘wired.’ In other words, perhaps tendencies toward monogamy vs. non-monogamy are rooted in brain structure.

Justin Lehmiller
August 11, 2026
Are Our Brains ‘Wired’ For Monogamy Or Non-Monogamy? – Sex and Psychology

Later in the article Lehmiller ponders whether similar findings will be discovered in women.

I don’t know about the brain activity, but I have talked to enough women to know that some have absolutely no interest in nonmonogamy and others have absolutely no interest in monogamy. One woman told me that after being married for about two years she could not stand being monogamous and divorced “a really nice guy”. She discovered sex clubs and felt “at home” for the first time. After a few years she married and tried to be monogamous again. Again, she divorced after a couple years and was back at the sex clubs. The last I heard from her, when she was in her late 50’s, she was trying monogamy again. I had to roll my eyes. How many times did she need to learn that lesson?

One woman I knew from work many years ago, wanted me to take some nude pictures of her (I knew her from working on the company newsletter together when I did most of the photography). My wife was fine with it and I took the pictures. I asked what the pictures were for. One of her boyfriends wanted them. She wanted me to keep it quiet though. Here husband didn’t know. She volunteered that she had enough boyfriends on the side for her on basketball them. She tried to get her husband into swinging (this was in the early 1980’s). She was his one and only sex partner and had zero interest in anyone else.

Both of these are very sad cases. I blame social expectations creating these tragedies. Had non-monogamous marriage options been socially acceptable, people could have figured out how they were wired before getting into a mismatched relationship.

Another Brick in the Wall

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A federal appeals court threw out on Friday a lawsuit by California and the Giffords gun control advocacy group claiming that a Biden administration-era rule to curtail the production of illegal, largely untraceable “ghost guns” was not strict enough.

Reversing a lower court ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco voted 3-0 that California and Giffords did not show the rule’s treatment of partially completed receivers, or frames, for AR-15 type semi-automatic rifles caused them harm.

Jonathan Stempel
August 21, 2026
US appeals court throws out California, Giffords ‘ghost guns’ challenge

Interestingly, the decision was 3-0. Two of those judges were Biden appointees.

How many decisions went in our favor this week?

I don’t think I will ever get tired of winning. Prove me wrong.

The Way It Should Be

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Quote of the Day

Purchasing a firearm should be exactly the same as purchasing a set of kitchen cutlery. You should be able to order a full auto Ma Deuce through Amazon and have it same day shipped to your house.

Robb Allen @ItsRobbAllen
Posted on X August 6, 2026

Agreed.

And machine gun competitions in high schools by 2032.

Never Forget

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Their uninterrupted, continual, and severe, abject failures absolutely must be a cloak of greatest weight from which they, and their fellow travelers, cannot escape the burden thereof; mere “casting out” from successful society must never be the sanctuary of relief they crave, the many examples of their failures must be the constant, painful reminders of placing any amount of trust in their beliefs, to them and especially and foremost, to us.

“Remember the Alamo” is still heard in Texas; “Never forget what Liberals did to us” must persist at least as long.

Francisco
August 17, 2026
Comment to Insightfully Horrifying and Hilarious

Q: Who says you should not carry a grudge?

A: Those who intend to injure you again.

Another Brick in the Wall

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Quote of the Day

A federal court in Texas has ruled that the Biden-era Frame and Receiver Rule is unconstitutional for two separate reasons: it violates the Second Amendment, and it is too vague to satisfy the Fifth Amendment’s due process protections.

The court declared the rule unconstitutional as applied to all SAF members, and issued a permanent injunction protecting Defense Distributed and current and future Second Amendment Foundation members as it relates to the specific gun kits involved in the case.

In plain English: SAF members are now expressly protected from enforcement of this rule specifically involving these specific products under the court’s order.

The government may still appeal the decision or ask the court to put the injunction on hold while an appeal moves forward. We are also seeking additional guidance from the government about exactly how the injunction will work in practice.

For now, this is another significant legal victory for SAF and its members and another example of why SAF membership matters.

Read the full court opinion here: https://saf.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Defense-Distributed-opinion-8.19.26.pdf

SAF @2AFDN
Posted on X August 18, 2026

From the same post:

Notice the rate of legal victories we are having? These are indicative of Nearing Structure Collapse.

I don’t think I will ever get tired of winning. Prove me wrong. Give your favorite gun owner rights group money to broaden the front in this war.

Five-Gallon Pails of Zoloft, Prozac and Xanax

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It’s hard not to smile or even giggle a little bit when you see how badly President Donald Trump is scaring the country’s paid anti-gun community, especially when you combine the President’s efforts with those of the United States Supreme Court.

No one is feeling this pro-gun heat more than the youngsters working at the Trace, the propaganda arm of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s gun control empire, who want the public to believe it’s an actual newsroom comprised of actual journalists—a fiction they’ll go to great lengths to maintain.

The Trace kids are extremely busy trying to stop this Second Amendment tidal wave that’s washing across the entire country. They realize that they’re losing, so they’re rabidly coming up with new ideas to counter our coming freedom—and some of their ideas are absolutely crazy.

Two Tracers just released this tome: “New Jersey Just Lost Its Assault Weapons Ban. Here’s Why That Matters for the Rest of the Country.”

The story’s last line is bedeviling. It’s not a quote or taken from any report. It’s completely attributable to the story’s two anti-gun authors:

“If the Supreme Court strikes down assault weapons bans nationwide next year, states could try other strategies, including putting semiautomatic rifles behind a permitting process,” they actually wrote.

Can you actually imagine that?

The highest court in the country says you can legally possess ARs in every state and U.S. Territory, but then some blue state suddenly requires you to obtain a state permit—regardless of the Supreme Court decision?

Do they think that might actually work?

It’s a Second Amendment right, right?

It would be like requiring state permits before allowing someone to read a book or scour the internet, which are rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.

The Trace is redefining desperation.

I’m picturing five-gallon pails of Zoloft, Prozac and Xanax scattered throughout their newsroom, each with a “help yourself” label.

Lee Williams
July 24, 2026
‘And Do You Have a Permit for your AR, Sir?’

To be fair, yes, I do believe there will be states who try to use a permitting process for firearms. Some states are and have been for many years, requiring permits to purchase handguns and many require permits to purchase any firearm. Some examples which already have permit requirements for AR-15s: Minnesota, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and D.C. (yes, I know, not a state).

Although it is far from a sure thing it could be that SCOTUS will address the permitting issue in the “assault weapon” ban cases next year, they might. However, I suspect it will be 2028 before we get rid of the permit to purchase requirements.

Insightfully Horrifying and Hilarious

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Normally, we have thought outward based on the rules of reason: the law of noncontradiction, modus ponens, Occam’s razor, etc. Not so for the socialist. Based on Bloch, the socialist thinks from utopia backward. Reality is made to conform to the utopian ideal, not the ideal to reality. As the root of all things, all man needs to do is make the necessary changes to bring utopia about. 

Thus, the facts of failure do not matter because, as Kolakowski explains, “‘facts’ have no ontological meaning [to the Marxists] and may be ignored without hesitation: what matters are the premonitions of the anticipating fancy.” Simply put, the socialist puts feelings over facts. If there is sufficient belief, it can be so.

Connor Appelboom
August 6, 2026
Why are socialists unfazed by their abysmal historical record?

This QOTD was specifically to trigger Kathy Jackson (of Cornered Cat fame) “favorite feature” of my blog. She said, “My favorite feature is when you quote the anti-gun folks. Equal parts hilarious and horrifying.”

While this is broader that an anti-gun quote, it is certainly congruent with what appears to be their line of thinking. And while I think it is mostly horrifying, I can see more than a little humor in it.

There is more from the article that particularly resonated with me but needs some more background:

If man is the master of both reality and his own nature, then everything is subject to the collective conscience. If enough people believe and try hard enough, the socialist paradise can be achieved. Past failures merely indicate a lack of one or both.

Back in the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s I subscribed to a magazine called, Skeptical Inquirer. For a few years I even purchased a subscription for the local King County Library in Kirkland Washington a few hundred feet from where I lived.

The magazine still exists. but I expect most people just read it online. Probably the article which stuck with me the most was The Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon from the Summer 1985 issue. This phenomenon is also called the Hundredth monkey effect – Wikipedia. The gist of it (from Wikipedia):

The hundredth monkey effect is an esoteric idea claiming that a new behavior or idea is spread rapidly by unexplained means from one group to all related groups once a critical number of members of one group exhibit the new behavior or acknowledge the new idea. The behavior was said to propagate even to groups that are physically separated and have no apparent means of communicating with each other.

That describes the socialist (and to a certain extent the anti-gun people) mindset as explained by Appelboom above.

Grok elaborates:

Both involve the notion that sufficient collective belief or adoption can override ordinary constraints of evidence, transmission, or human limitation:

  • In the monkey story, once critical mass is reached, the idea/behavior “jumps” independently of normal learning or contact.
  • In the article’s diagnosis of socialist thinking, once enough people share the utopian conviction (and the will to remake human nature), reality itself is expected to conform; historical counter-evidence becomes secondary or dismissible.

In both cases the mechanism is quasi-mystical or consciousness-based rather than strictly empirical or institutional: belief/numbers generate a transformative threshold that ordinary causal processes cannot explain or resist. The article’s emphasis on “if there is sufficient belief, it can be so” and “if enough people believe and try hard enough, the socialist paradise can be achieved” maps closely onto the critical-mass logic of the hundredth-monkey claim.

Of course the domains differ (political ideology vs. a primatology anecdote turned meme), and the article is making a critical philosophical point while the monkey story was more New Age folklore. But the underlying intuition—that a tipping point of shared conviction can magically dissolve stubborn facts or barriers—is recognizably the same.

I find this both horrifying and hilarious.

Prepare appropriately.

A Thin Veneer Over the Emotional Kaleidoscope

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As a liberal it’s galling that those on my side remain obsessed with disarming during the most dangerous powder keg of a political environment we’ve seen perhaps since the civil war. Masked government goons are kidnapping people, killing citizens in broad day with no consequences and running concentration camps. The military is on our streets but these idiots want us even more vulnerable and defenseless. 

stonkyvolatile_9010
August 15, 2026
Comment to The Guns Affected by the New Texas Firearm Ruling – Newsweek

I will let pass the collection of assertions I disagree with.

I agree there are a great number of people on his side who irrationally claim we have a Fascist government with Nazi’s everywhere and simultaneously demand private citizens owning guns should be at least register and be severely limited in their selection of arms if not completely disarmed by that same government.

There is no way I can make sense of this other than they are doing the prep work for when they regain power and want to implement their own version of the Final Solution. That is also consistent with the dehumanization of the political right. While one might be able to find kernels of half-truths in their claims, it totally blown out of proportion and almost unrecognizable in reality.

But, as I frequently say, it is irrational to expect people to be rational. Rationality is just a thin veneer over the emotional kaleidoscope of the human brain.

Prepare appropriately.

Mental Issues

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Quote of the Day

You shouldn’t need a private briefing to notice what millions of Americans could see with their own eyes.

…

Pelosi says she wasn’t told about Biden’s decline. Apparently watching him in public wasn’t enough.

The Atlas Society
August 13, 2026

This says more about Pelosi than it does about Biden or anyone else. People, including me, were saying Biden had dementia during his 2020 campaign. Either she is lying and/or she has her own mental health problems.