Category: Guest Contributors

Guest Contributor – TomD – 28FEB2024 – Gun Hobby Stuff (Updated 29/FEB)

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Tom | Flickr

TomD

 

A picture of pistol extremes. Guess which is more often concealed carried.

The large pistol allows barrels of various calibers to be easily swapped. I’ve got five barrels for this from .357 Mag pistol to 30-30 Winchester. There are 45-70 barrels available but not for me. Those recoil so hard that I’ve seen them rip out of the hands of the shooter and almost literally brain him.

DSC00063.jpg
DSC00063.jpg

Or here is a target rifle chambered in 6.5 Grendel. This rifle is optimized at up to 600 yards. I’ve got other bolt action rifles that work up past 1000 yards. I used to compete regularly.

DSC00067.jpg
DSC00067.jpg

Or, for someone looking for a little more Omph, here’s a twin 40MM WWII era Borfors. By acclaim, the most effective anti-aircraft weapon of the entire war, all sides. The Germans, Brits and probably Italians also used it extensively. Examples are still in active duty in AC 130 gunships. Not bad for a 1930 design.

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DSC00509.jpg

On the other end of the spectrum, here my all-time favorite .22 pistol, and I’ve own or owned an number. This is the target version, has an adjustable trigger and NEVER fails to feed. I’ve had this one for at least 25 years. That’s a red dot sight.

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DSC00614.jpg

It is nice living in states that allow such hobbies as this.

WAR PIG

As an older sniper I preferred the 300 WinMag. I am also prejudiced in favor of the good, old, 45ACP, M1911A1. The .50 sniper rifles are ok but too darned heavy. As for a backup I preferred the Walther PPK in 380 ACP with an external thread suppressor. For up close, the KA BAR or Applegate-Fairbairn.

I know a guy who has a D20 Soviet 152mm howitzer. Still works but pricey to shoot.

 

TOM D (in reply to War Pig)

There are some newer rounds common today that are more accurate and much better ballistic coefficients than the old Win Mag, but a lot of them lack the punch. I like the 338 Lapua.

I was Marine, but with the Air Wing, not in the muck with you guys.

Here’s one of my .45’s, from S&W Custom. There are differences, principally the extractor.

SW 1911.jpg
SW 1911.jpg

 

 

 

Guest Contributor – War Pig – 28FEB2024 – AI Thoughts

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war pig

AI will be used mostly for crime, pornography and politics.

In the hands of criminals and unfriendly or thug governments it will be used to steal to fund them. Such activities will become far more efficient with AI. N Korea is already making millions with counterfeiting other nations currencies. Counterfeiting currencies will be like robbing vending machines compared to what AI theft can do.

As for pornography, it may actually have a perverted good side. AI images will be so good that there will be no reason to use real children. Also no women need be trafficked for such films. However it can then become so over the top that people become desensitized and even more addicted. It begs the question; if it is an artificial image can it be considered child pornography? Right now Hentai is covered by the 1st Amendment, no matter how heinous. Just as the crucifix in a jar of urine was protected. Now, an author who writes the most perverted, degrading, violent and vomit-inducing stories of child abuse, rape, torture, etc. Is covered by the 1st Amendment. It is the written word. It is not real. It is fiction, amorphous. I am glad i am not a judge who has to decide those cases.

As for politics, we already have fraud. It can be used to fake voices and even make it look like Trump ripped the blouse off a woman and called her a shut. Or Biden with his hand up some little girl’s skirt. Then it has to be proven to be false. Let alone the violation of voting systems. Electronic voting should be abandoned. AI can make Big Brother look simplistic. Computer and internet companies know too much about us already.

AI has the potential to make us distrust virtually everything, and that is quite dangerous.

Guest Contributor – ArthurinCali – 28FEB2024 – AI: Promise versus Reality

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Many of us recall the excitement and possibilities that surrounded new technologies growing up, especially tech that involved artificial intelligence. Old Sci-Fi and even more current ideas as we approached the 21st century envisioned a world where AI not only enhanced daily life, but would be the paradigm shift that would lead to solving a lot of humanity’s vexing issues. For example, a childhood trip to Disney World in the early 90’s showcased what the future of AI could bring about. Epcot Center had entire attractions centered around how AI would one day catapult humanity into Space colonization, while others touted the medical advances that would be achieved. Science programs on TV and magazine publications were always highlighting how computer speeds continued to double every year or so, thus bringing us closer to being able to operate advanced AI systems. Obviously, this did not occur, and does not look likely for the near future if Google Gemini and others are our examples. Instead we get warped and distorted historical images, as well as AI chatbots who cannot tell the truth due to being crammed with so much progressive-leftist ideological bias.

Guest Contributor – TomD – 27FEB2024 – The Best Camera is the One You Carry

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Tom | Flickr

TomD

That looks to be a fossilized “rolly polly” insect. The ones that roll up into small armored balls. I ate one one, thinking it to be a chocolate chip fallen from my cookie. I won’t repeat that mistake, ever.

BTW: Below is a side by side photo of my new “carry around” Sony A6600 next to my “main camera” Sony A7IV.

A7IV Vs A6600.jpg
A7IV Vs A6600.jpg

Down here in Florida where self defense is considered to be a right, there is a maxim among the people who commonly carry weapons. That the best weapon for self defense is the weapon which you are most likely to have with you.

The same principle applies to cameras. If I’m going somewhere on a photo shoot, I’ll very probably have the larger camera with me. It is the more capable but not to the degree you may suspect. But the other 99.999% of the time, the bulk and cost precludes it as a constant companion as I travel about. But the smaller camera fits in my console or even a pocket with a smaller lens. And I constantly find photo subjects for which I wish I had a more capable camera than a cell, even my capable (for a phone) Pixel.

I used to get really good early dawn shots while going to work, when I worked.

At one point, I had an earlier version of the A6600 but I gave it to my wife when she dropped and destroyed her camera. I asked for it back but was cursed at.

Guest Contributor – TomD – 26FEB2024 – Cosmological Cannibalism

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Tom | Flickr

TomD

Just stumbled on this, from Popular Mechanics:

A Theory Says Our Universe Keeps Expanding Because It’s Eating Baby UniversesDarren Orf
Mon, February 26, 2024 at 7:00 AM CST

Theory Says Our Universe Is Eating Baby Universes Javier Zaya

The cosmological constant, which explains how and why the universe is expanding, has been previously described by astrophysicists as “the worst prediction in the history of physics” due to its deviation from observations.

  • This has led astrophysicists to explore other avenues for explaining why the universe’s expansion is accelerating.
  • A new paper published in December of 2023 suggests a novel idea that our universe is absorbing baby universes—and was even absorbed itself in its early years.

The biggest mystery in the Standard Cosmological Model is dark energy—the stuff that is “presumably” the engine behind the acceleration of the universe and which makes up 65 to 70 percent of the entire universe. Dark energy forms the backbone of the idea of the “cosmological constant”—first conceived by Albert Einstein in his General Theory of Relativity to refute the conception that the universe was actually static and not expanding or contracting.
When researchers in the 1990s discovered that the universe was not only expanding, but accelerating in its expansion, Einstein’s “universal constant” (which he labeled lambda, or Λ) became surprisingly relevant again. When plugged into equations used to understand the growth of the universe after the Big Bang (known as the Friedmann equations), scientists arrived at the modern “cosmological constant.” However, there’s a couple problems—scientists have never actually observed dark energy (hence the “dark” moniker) and the cosmological constant is pretty lousy at explaining observed phenomena.
Because science abhors a epistemological vacuum, astrophysicists have instead explored other theories that could explain what’s happening in the universe. In one of those theories, published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics in December of 2023, University of Copenhagen astrophysicist Jan Ambjørn and Yoshiyuki Watabiki at the Tokyo Institute of Technology explore a novel idea that doesn’t require the yet-undiscovered dark energy to explain the acceleration of the universe, and negates the need for a cosmological constant as well.

Instead, this new paper argues, our universe is actually swallowing up ‘baby universes’ as it expands.
“The main finding of our work is that the accelerated expansion of our universe, caused by the mysterious dark energy, might have a simple intuitive explanation,” Ambjørn tells LiveScience, “the merging with so-called baby universes, and that a model for this might fit the data better than the standard cosmological model.”
The idea is deceptively simple—as our universe grows, it absorbs other universes in its path, thereby “accelerating” its boundaries. Perceived by our telescopes, this would look like an increased acceleration of universal expansion. When Ambjørn and Watabiki ran the calculations for this ‘baby universe’ theory, the calculations fit more closely with real-life observations than those using the Standard Cosmological Model, the researchers claim.
The paper also attempts to answer another mystery of the early universe called “cosmological inflation,” wherein the early universe rapidly expanded for some unknown reason. A current theory suggests that a hypothetical field, called the “inflation field,” drove this expansion, but this new paper suggests another mechanism could have been at work.
“The fact that the universe has expanded…in a very short time, invites the suggestion that this expansion was caused by a collision with a larger universe, i.e. that it was really our Universe which was absorbed in another ‘parent’ universe,” the paper reads. “It is difficult to judge if such a scenario could take place in a way that would actually solve the problems inflation was designed to solve, but one interesting aspect of such a scenario is that there is no need for an inflation field.”
This isn’t the only theory that boldly eschews the need for a cosmological constant. In July of 2023, another paper argued that the expansion of the universe could simply be a mirage caused by the evolution of electrons and protons over immensely long time scales.
For now, no alternative theory has dethroned dark energy and the cosmological constant as the best explanation of the universal acceleration. But it’s always important to keep a cautiously open mind—especially in science as cutting-edge as universal expansion. Sometimes interesting and helpful ideas can come from very odd place. Never say never.

Guest Contributor – Milo Mindbender – 25FEB2024 – Higher Mis-Education

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“in the same way that the government puts a brake on the cost of drugs by acting as the largest provider of medical insurance through Medicaid and Medicare they can put a brake on the costs of college tuition”

The rise in tuition cost is caused by government intervention. Every year they back loans to 17-20 year old students, and increase the amount they front. These loans wouldn’t be available to buy hard goods, real estate, or stocks but they will purchase a seat in the university. The terms of the loans are predatory, but voluntary with almost no forethought regarding getting out from under them. Without the influx of wide eyed government sponsored students the higher education system wouldn’t be offering doctorate degrees in “The Tao of Harry Potter”, “medieval Russian Literature”, or “Social Responsibilities of Porn” because nobody would purchase said degrees for a real world application.
I believe this got started 60 years ago in an effort to level the playing field in pursuit of equality. When the IQ test became no longer usable as a entry to the job market, a substitute had to be procured, and a college degree, in any subject became the new standard. It wasn’t immediately viewed as just any degree, but slowly morphed into the pursuit of the sheepskin, vs receiving an education.

Guest Contributor – War Pig – 25FEB2024 – FISA Expiration

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war pig

FISA should never have been enacted so yes it should expire. There are no “loopholes” in the Constitution for government to exploit and if We, the People, do not jealously guard our rights the cancer which is government will kill our Republic.

Having said that I doubt much will happen. Used to be I thought our own government would never use false flag attacks against us. I was wrong. It has been a standard tactic by the left ever since KKKlinton.

Guest Contributor – Milo Mindbender – 23FEB2024 – Election Follies of Yesteryear

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Rachel Maddow’s meltdown over the 2016 election was priceless. Another zinger is all the “celebrities” planning to move to Canada, or Europe over that election. I didn’t hear anyone threaten to leave America in 2020, nor 2008, 2012 over not winning.
The slow dawning that Hillary had gotten done to her, what slick willy did to the US in 96, by having her supporters vote in the open primary to give her a punching bag to run against. This backfired on her, the junior representative from IL, and community organizer deployed people voting for him, and by the time she caught on the nomination was lost to her.

Guest Contributor – Milo Mindbender – 21FEB2024 – 2020 Redux

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It seems that the people and organizations doing the cheating stopped caring about how obvious it has become, since there are no consequences delivered, and they get to hold the moral high ground in their view.
I am looking for another created crisis to allow major unsupervised absentee voting, and in Georgia specifically Atlanta another sewage leak, actually a dripping toilet to create an opportunity for my “overlords” to do the right thing since I don’t vote the way they tell me to.
They must in their view of this because they are the arbiter of right and wrong, and know more than my redneck self does about the real issues. Otherwise, they might not be in power, and who could survive that?
Look to see many August, September, and October surprises to be unleashed as a way to preserve their food trough. Greed is bad enough, but when you couple it with envy, the sky is the limit on what is possible.

Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 18FEB2024 – New York Exodus

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How many corporations will look at what happened to Trump, and start making HARD decisions about conducting business in New York City or State? Some truckers are already refusing loads for NYC. How many billions would it cost NY if those companies closed their offices and moved their operations to surrounding states like CT, RI, NJ, or PA. The COVID experience with remote office work proved that large corporate administrative centers are not essential to conducting business. The money saved on real estate costs may well counter the cost of server farms and optical fiber networks. Not to mention relieving workers of having to face long commutes or living in outrageously expensive apartments in the city.

In his zeal to “get” Donald Trump, this idiot DA and his megalomaniac judge may have sown the seeds of New York’s final financial ruin. Remember, if they can do this to a financial powerhouse like Donald Trump, who won’t be targeted?