Quote of the day—Elon Musk (@elonmusk)

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I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means

Elon Musk (@elonmusk)
Tweeted on April 25, 2022
[There are other things closely related that I thought I should point out at the same time.

Elon Musk’s buying Twitter is good for free speech. And a ‘nightmare’ for progressives:

despite warnings that censorship is necessary “for democracy to survive,” neither the Tesla CEO and billionaire nor ordinary citizens appear to be sufficiently terrified of free speech. Twitter confirmed Monday that Musk will acquire the company in a deal worth $44 billion. Once the deal is complete, Twitter will become a privately held company.

Progressives, in the meantime, have adopted a dangerous shift in their strategy of calling for corporations to censor speech.

…

Obama favors free speech only if it does not include disinformation, including what he considers to be “lies, conspiracy theories, junk science, quackery, racist tracts and misogynist screeds.”

…

He is talking about imposing “standards” on companies to force them to censor “lies” and “disinformation.”

…

As is often the case, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stripped away any niceties or nuance. Clinton called for the European Union to pass the Digital Services Act (DSA), a measure widely denounced by free speech advocates as a massive censorship measure. Clinton warned that governments need to act now because “for too long, tech platforms have amplified disinformation and extremism with no accountability. The EU is poised to do something about it.”

Clinton’s call for censoring disinformation was breathtakingly hypocritical. President Obama was briefed by his CIA Director John Brennan on “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.” The intelligence suggested it was “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.”

I have to wonder how Obama, Clinton, and/or Biden would respond to being censored for trying to spread disinformation by talking about “the gun show loophole”, “gun manufactures cannot be sued”, or “private citizens could not own cannons during the revolutionary war era”.

Larry Correia (@monsterhunter45) tweeted on Mon, Apr 25, 2022:

Twitter, Disney, Netflix, CNN+ and more stuff every day.
I told you guys a few months ago that we’d hit Peak Woke. They pushed too hard. Regular people are sick of this shit.
The tides are changing in the culture war.

On Sunday I had this very conversation with Brother Doug. My perception is that many people have been thinking this crap was near the breaking point for years and finally some people started openly talking about it and the dam has now burst. And people who were afraid to say something are now openly saying they aren’t going to take it anymore and are going to do something about it.

Brother Doug said that he has noticed that friends and relatives on Facebook on the political left have been keeping quiet about political stuff for several months.

Andy Ngô ️‍ (@MrAndyNgo) tweeted on Mon, Apr 25, 2022:

From my sources: Vocal Twitter employees on internal chats indicate their biggest fear is Donald Trump being unbanned. Many express strong hatred toward @elonmusk & say they’re sick of hearing about “free speech.” They’re concerned about their mental health. #ElonMuskBuyTwitter

Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) tweeted on Mon, Apr 25, 2022:

I fear Elon Musk could undermine the ideological diversity, equity and inclusion at Twitter which currently maintains a careful balance of 98.7% for one side.

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Just Asking (@WasJustAsking) tweeted on Mon, Apr 25, 2022:

Just seems odd…haven’t they spent years saying they don’t limit speech based on a partisan bent? If that is the key thing he states that will change, and they claim they haven’t been doing it, what is the freak out about? 😉

And my favorite, David Burge (@iowahawkblog) tweeted on Mon, Apr 25, 2022:

If you think you’re having a bad day, spare a thought for the Twitter person who decided it was a good idea to ban the Babylon Bee

In case you don’t know, I think I have this correct, let me know if I misstated something and am spreading disinformation, The Babylon Bee had their Twitter account blocked pending their deletion of a tweet linking to their article The Babylon Bee’s Man Of The Year Is Rachel Levine. The Babylon Bee refused to delete the tweet. Elon Musk took the side of The Babylon Bee and used $44 Billion of his pocket change to buy Twitter. He then informed them, “This is now a free speech platform. Enable The Babylon Bee account and, while your at it, there are a bunch of other accounts you need to enable before you go home for your free range tofu, gluten free, certified organic dinner and curl up with your copy of The Communist Manifesto. And tomorrow you are going to make your ‘unbiased’ algorithms open source. Sleep well.”

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey got the hint and not only his nose but his entire head down to his shoulders came out brown just before he said:

Elon’s goal of creating a platform that is “maximally trusted and broadly inclusive” is the right one. This is also [current Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal’s] goal, and why I chose him. Thank you both for getting the company out of an impossible situation. This is the right path…I believe it with all my heart

I hope Correia is right. But always remember, the political left believes violence is a legitimate tool for them to use. And they believed they were on the edge of extinguishing Republican influence at all levels of government. If they think they were that close and see it slipping away their response may be… impolite. Prepare appropriately.—Joe]

Boomershoot week is in progress

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I’ve been on site doing Boomershoot stuff on and off since last Friday. We had a private event on Saturday and tonight the first participants and volunteer staff showed up. Aaron (a regular in position 65) drove by my encampment about 7:00 PM. I did a few things before going over to visit with him.

Then as Aaron and were talking Barron, Janelle, their kids, and Bradley up.

Tomorrow daughter Kim and I will prepare Boomershoot Mecca for target production, do some inventory verification, pick up some last minute supplies, get the U-Haul trailer, and prepare for site preparation by the volunteers on Thursday.

The rented portable toilets were supposed to arrive last Thursday but the day before I got a call from the rental place. She sounded almost scared when she told me, “We no longer serve your area and we won’t be delivering the toilets tomorrow like we agreed.”

I told her I would have liked to have had more than one day notice. Did she have a suggestion for who might service our area? She did suggestion a competitor. I called them and they declined. I called a place in nearby Orofino I tried to contact months ago and they failed to return my call. I got voice mail again.

I was feeling the panic creeping up on me. Over 100 people here for a long weekend, 30 minutes from their hotel rooms and no toilets…

Then the phone rang. It was the Orofino rental place. “Sure! We can get three portable toilets to you next Wednesday.” That will be tomorrow. I’m still a little apprehensive because I have never done business with them before and I got burned with the other company last week after having the agreement in place for months. I’ll believe it when I see three clean and serviceable toilets sitting in Boomershoot Field sometime before midnight tomorrow.

Quote of the day—Dr. Diljeet Gill

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Our results represent a big step forward in our understanding of cell reprogramming. We have proved that cells can be rejuvenated without losing their function and that rejuvenation looks to restore some function to old cells. The fact that we also saw a reverse of aging indicators in genes associated with diseases is particularly promising for the future of this work.

Dr. Diljeet Gill
April 7, 2022
“Time Jump” by 30 Years: Old Skins Cells Reprogrammed To Regain Youthful Function
[I like living in the future.—Joe]

Quote of the day—KB undercover BYEdon! @kaliope_bower

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Thx for announcing you have a tiny wee bit to the world.

KB undercover BYEdon! @kaliope_bower
Tweeted on March 23, 2022
[It’s not only another Markley’s Law Monday, it is another science denier!

Thanks to @kaliope_bower for announcing when opposing the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms the best they have are childish insults. We have SCOTUS decisions.

Via a tweet from In Chains @InChainsInJail.—Joe]

Quote of the day—DanaLay @DanaLay68737614

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It’s not a natural right
If it was it won’t have to do anything with any well regulated militias
Founding fathers did pass some laws regulating guns
Many gun laws existed during their lifetime
None was struck down as unconstitutional
And they never complained about these laws

DanaLay @DanaLay68737614
Tweeted on April 16, 2022
[Someone needs to be fisked.

  • SCOTUS disagrees. See U S v Cruikshank.
  • Wrong. See above, United States v. Miller, and D.C. v. Heller.
  • Citation needed. And it doesn’t count in DanaLay’s favor if they cite the laws requiring people to own guns and/or ammunition.
  • Citation needed.
  • There have been many gun laws struck down as unconstitutional although I’m not certain they were within the lifetime of the founders. This is particularly true if DanaLay is unable to cite laws restricting firearms during founders’ lifetime. See Supreme Court Gun Cases: Two Centuries of Gun Rights Revealed for details.
  • Citation needed. This is particularly true if DanaLay is unable to cite laws restricting firearms during the founders’ lifetime.

One has to assume such a large quantity of deliberate ignorance to arrive at such a statement that Occam’s Razor pushes us to conclude it is an evil lie rather than ignorance.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Melissa Mackenzie @MelissaTweets

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After COVID, I no longer wonder how Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot happened.

Inside too many of our neighbors is a little tyrant who desires to tell you how to live your life, use violence to achiever their ends, and clothe themselves in righteousness while doing it.

Melissa Mackenzie @MelissaTweets
Tweeted on April 18, 2022
[At first I thought it rather sad it took this long for Mackenzie to realize how such things happen. Then, a chilling wave of fright swept over me as I realized that it is extremely likely that most people still don’t understand or deny the example she just gave.—Joe]

Quote of the day—David Burge @iowahawkblog

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I swear to god some people’s brains are wired with only two settings, mandatory and forbidden

David Burge (@iowahawkblog)
Tweeted on April 19, 2022
[This is not news. This has been known for quite some time.

While being wired this way does relieve the stress of decision making it also means they can, and probably should, be replaced by a simple robot.-Joe]

Quote of the day—Richard Curtin

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Adam Smith’s legendary invisible hand describes how individuals acting in their own self-interest can create unintended benefits for the entire society. Unfortunately, the country now faces the potential for an inflationary hand that can transform self-interested decisions into losses for the entire economy.

Richard Curtin
April 7, 2022
Inflationary Psychology Has Set In. Dislodging It Won’t Be Easy
[We live in interesting times. Prepare appropriately.—Joe]

Too much

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I can cook well enough to keep myself from going hungry. So it should come as no surprise I was only able to recognize the last item:

image

Via a tweet from Tanya Tay Posobiec @realTanyaTay. This has more impact when you discover Tanya was born in the USSR.

Quote of the day—Old Jarhead

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New laws won’t prevent anything, but that doesn’t matter one bit. Logic, statistics, history, or critical thinking have nothing to do with the positions of the anti- gun zealots. You might as well debate religious doctrine with the Westboro Baptist Church or Saudi Religious Police. Lying, manufacturing evidence, and malicious prosecution are all justified as part of the catechism. Responsibility for bad and/or unintended consequences? Fat chance.

Old Jarhead
April 12, 2022
Comment to Sacramento mass killing
[We have evidence of the correctness of the assertion that the lying, manufacturing evidence, and malicious prosecution is true.—Joe]

Solid state heat “engine”

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This is interesting:

A new heat engine with no moving parts is as efficient as a steam turbine

Engineers at MIT and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have designed a heat engine with no moving parts. Their new demonstrations show that it converts heat to electricity with over 40 percent efficiency — a performance better than that of traditional steam turbines.

The heat engine is a thermophotovoltaic (TPV) cell, similar to a solar panel’s photovoltaic cells, that passively captures high-energy photons from a white-hot heat source and converts them into electricity. The team’s design can generate electricity from a heat source of between 1,900 to 2,400 degrees Celsius, or up to about 4,300 degrees Fahrenheit.

I’m annoyed they call this an “engine”. An engine outputs mechanical energy. This produces electrical energy. In reality it is “just” a photovoltaic cell that converts low energy photons into electricity at a remarkably good efficiency.

Still, it could be utilized to convert stored heat into electricity far cheaper than batteries:

The researchers plan to incorporate the TPV cell into a grid-scale thermal battery. The system would absorb excess energy from renewable sources such as the sun and store that energy in heavily insulated banks of hot graphite. When the energy is needed, such as on overcast days, TPV cells would convert the heat into electricity, and dispatch the energy to a power grid.

There are multiple interesting energy sources coming up that have the potential to reduce costs and pollution.

I like living in the future.

Quote of the day—Brandon Smith

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I want to give a warning – It’s very easy in this situation to assume that Pelosi and even Biden are making these arguments because they are too stupid to grasp the fundamentals of debt creation, money velocity and fiat. That said, never mistake evil for mere ignorance.

Brandon Smith
March 17, 2022
The Stagflation Trap Will Lead To Universal Basic Income And Food Rationing
[Emphasis added.—Joe]

Why You Aren’t A Better Shooter

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I was going through my list of unprocessed suggestions for blog posts and found this one from almost six years ago. The outline is:

  1. You don’t believe you are capable of being skilled
  2. You don’t know what skill looks like
  3. You don’t have a goal
  4. You don’t have adequate training
  5. You aren’t surrounded with people who are better than you
  6. You have poor physical conditioning
  7. You aren’t willing to fail
  8. You aren’t using the proper equipment
  9. Your shooting range is inadequate

Read the whole thing for some good insights.

She didn’t say this in the article but my guess is the order is by priority of things to work on for the average person.

My excuse isn’t listed. I haven’t been going to the range or matches enough. I have my own range well suited to the type of shooting I want to get better at but it’s 300+ miles from where I currently live.

Quote of the day—weaponizedkeyboard @weaponizedkeys

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Because these types have small dicks and have to let the whole world know by carrying a gun.

weaponizedkeyboard @weaponizedkeys
Tweeted on March 13, 2022
[It’s not only another Markley’s Law Monday, it is another science denier!

We have SCOTUS decisions. They have childish insults.—Joe]

Rejuvenation

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I like living in the future:

Researchers have rejuvenated a 53-year-old woman’s skin cells so they are the equivalent of a 23-year-old’s.

The scientists in Cambridge believe that they can do the same thing with other tissues in the body.

The eventual aim is to develop treatments for age-related diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and neurological disorders.

Scheduled maintenance

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I received the following email (in part) from my hosting provider:

We’re making important updates to your website and hosting services during the following time period:
Date: April 19, 2022
Start time: April 19, 2022 4:00 AM GMT
Finish time: April 21, 2022 4:00 PM GMT
Estimated completion: 60:00h

During this time these services may be affected:
Service: website / server
Status: unavailable

If joehuffman.org or blog.joehuffman.org is down during this time please try again later. The Boomershoot site is not affected.

Quote of the day—David Hardy

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That the one gun found at the scene was both stolen and converted to full auto, and the event is more like a demonstration of why California’s gun laws, indeed their entire approach to crime, is completely moronic.

David Hardy
April 10, 2022
Sacramento mass killing
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Savi @SavionWinter

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Oh and for the record, every gun worshipper who shows up in my notifications will be banned. Take note, gun worshippers are too stupid to even try to talk to. They don’t even realize how unhinged and uneducated they are. BORING.

Savi @SavionWinter
Tweeted on April 9, 2022
[Oh, and for the record, this person doesn’t have an account anymore.

BORING.

I wonder if this tweet from March 29th had something to do with it:

My daughter just said we should sacrifice the richest person and redistribute their wealth.  Every year, whoever has the most money will die.  That would see a lot of rich people giving money away wouldn’t it?  LOL

Just remember, this is what they think of you. They want you dead and they will laugh about it.—Joe]

When demand exceeds supply…

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If there is excess demand for something the market will supply shoddy goods. Apparently the FBI was in the market for domestic terrorists and couldn’t find enough to meet their needs so they made some of their own. They did such a poor job of it they couldn’t get convictions.

One has to wonder, how many times that happens and (mostly) innocent people are convicted. In particular, it casts a huge shadow over the arrests and prosecution of people on January 6th, 2020. Doubly so with this news:

At least 20 FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives “assets” were embedded around the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a defense attorney wrote in a court filing on April 12.

The disclosure was made in a motion seeking to dismiss seditious conspiracy and obstruction charges against 10 Oath Keepers defendants in one of the most prominent Jan. 6 criminal cases.

Who watches, and when appropriate, arrests and prosecutes the watchers? I am of the opinion there are probably many thousands of government employees and elected officials who should be prosecuted.

Quote of the day—Henrik Impola

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We have a saying in my office. Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Henrik Impola
FBI Special Agent
As told to a confidential informant after the kidnapping suspects were arrested in 2020
FBI’s tactics doomed case against men charged in kidnapping plot of Michigan governor
[It looks to me as if the facts should be used at Henrik’s, and others in that office, trials  It would make a good story. And with convictions it would even have a happy ending.—Joe]